I am Here. I am Now.

I’ll be at the hospital getting ready to be taken to surgery exactly 7 days from this moment. My partner will be with me and hopefully my brother.

Or at least that’s what’s currently scheduled to happen.  I got my stealth MRI results yesterday. And although the image indicates that my meningioma looks the same as it did in late June, the MRI written report has measurements that seem to indicate that it has shrunk. The measurements do not match up with what the image is showing. So I decided to send a message to the doctor to ask if my tumor is somehow shrinking or if maybe the MRI report is confusingly written.

It took my doctor’s office over a week to respond to my last message with questions. I don’t actually have over a week at this point so I’m hoping they will be quicker. If I don’t hear back by tomorrow afternoon I will probably send an email to his assistant. I would like to know this weekend whether I will be having brain surgery next week.

I don’t know if I’m ready for this thing. I have quite a few things left to do. I am still working on finalizing some documents that I plan to bring with me to share about my history and health needs while I am in the hospital. I also need to empty out the bag I plan to use to bring things with me. I will likely wait until the weekend or Monday before I start packing, because most of the things I will be packing are things that I use every day.

I am trying to not be scared about this experience. I’ve never had general anesthesia so I don’t know how I will react. I’ve only had surgery once and it was local anesthesia. It was knee surgery over 20 years ago. And in that case I didn’t even have to stay overnight.

And then there is the whole staying overnight thing. I know hospitals tend to be noisy with lots of beeps and machines and lots of checking on me. So I have no idea how I will sleep. I already have a lot of trouble sleeping every night. Most nights I seem to only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep. I have been told that it is unlikely I will sleep much, if at all, while in the hospital. And maybe that will be fine, the catch is that I am still taking a few medications that try to force me to sleep at night. So even if my brain is awake, my body is often sedated some.

I am Here. I am Now. 💜