Rather than clogging Facebook up with long posts. I’ve decided to try sharing all of my surgery and surgery aftermath stories in a blog. I’ll probably abandon this pretty quickly, but you never know!
Tomorrow I’m going in for surgery to get a second ostomy. I have had an illeostomy in some form since 2008. Once I figured out ways around the challenges that came with having a bag I have had very few limitations (I can go on and on about the few limitations, but this is a blog for updates, not whines).
I’m optimistic that the jump from one bag to two bags will be less daunting than from zero to one, but I would be lying to say I didn’t have a tremendous amount of anxiety about the change. Up until now my ileostomy has been a relatively invisible disability. It has always been easily concealed by clothing. Depending on the placement of the urostomy I might not be so lucky after tomorrow. But, I figured out the one bag challenges, I assume I’ll be equally up to the new ones.
Here are my expectations for tomorrow: I’ll wake up unreasonably early. Drive to the hospital and use valet parking. Try and fail to make nurses, doctors and other medical staff laugh. Will request obscure indie music in OR, instead will listen to classic 70s songs and fail in my fight to stay awake while they fill me with knockout juice. I’ll wake up in intense pain and be asked to stop cursing so loudly. When things have settled I’ll be back in a patient room. I’ll ask for my phone so I can attempt to text nonsense to friends and family. I’ll nod off often and wake up at midnight to get Wordle in 6, and Connections with 2 failures.
I’ll be in the hospital for 5 to 7 days. I’d like to be like an action movie hero and start trying to walk right away. Instead, I think that won’t happen until the following day (if I’m lucky.). I know it’s always good to get walking as soon as possible, but directly out of surgery might be asking too much.
The next time I update this blog I’ll probably be in a narcotic fog. See you soon! And you two, cloud creatures!
