I have a date!

Well, if you thought I'm going on a date with someone upon reading the headline, you'll be disappointed.
I was woken up today by a loud slam in the letterbox, sounded like a newspaper only that I don't have any newspaper subscriptions and this was shortly after noon. Up I went to have a look and it wasn't a newspaper but a very thick envelope with the regional hospital logo on it.

I've got a date for my pre-op and surgery! Pre-op is on the 18th and surgery on the 26th of SEPTEMBER! So that is really soon! Sooner than I had ever imagined as I had expected to have to wait at least until October. I suspect my gynecologist has been pushing a bit for this to happen as soon as possible as he was rather peeved about me having been left in this state for several months before the appointment in early August.

I feel surprisingly calm about the surgery to be honest. Considering it's a pretty big surgery and I've only had very minor procedures done before that didn't involve incisions or stitches. I'm not worried about the actual surgery as all I need to do is sleep through it and wake up afterwards. I'm more worried about the first hours and possibly days after surgery as I'm difficult to treat pain wise. I can get enough morphine for most people to see pink elephants and I may still be in a lot of pain. I may well opt for an epidural as pain management while I'm in the hospital, as long as they put it in when I'm asleep...
There are two very likely reasons why I'm difficult to treat when it comes to pain. One being the EDS and how it for some causes resistance to painkillers. The other is the fact that I most likely have the red headed gene which also causes resistance. Going by the fact I have a lot of freckles on my arms and shoulders, and my hair looks like a carrot when I try to bleach it, I don't even need to have the genetic test done...

Other than pain management, I only really worry a bit about the healing as I have no experience with stitches and simply don't know how my body will handle it. The hospital knows about my Ehlers Danlos and they have experience with operating on EDS patients so I'll just remind them to put the sutures closer together than usual, and leave them in for longer. I just hope they won't rip through the skin which may happen with EDS. I'm also allergic to some adhesives so need to be careful with what brand and kind of tape is used. Sometimes there's differences even within the same brand. I can use Tegaderm without problems, I use them all the time over my patch, but a Tegaderm+Pad will rip the top layer of my skin off!


Other than having got a surgery date, not that much has happened since my last post. I'm battling the same crap as usual, including having an awful time with insomnia. I've been out and about some with my parents, day trips to some places in my region. The other week we went to a lakeside town not too far away from my old high school, because that town has a nice ice cream place with home made ice cream that we wanted to try.
This past Friday I was in the big amusement park in Gothenburg together with my parents, that was totally unplanned and unexpected but a lot of fun. I'm still paying for it now, by having some flu like symptoms and feeling generally crappy but it was so worth it! I had not been to that amusement park for over 6 years and it was beyond awesome to ride some roller coasters again! Had I known about that trip beforehand I could have prepared for it and rested up and would have probably been feeling better now. But heck, with things like this, it's worth it to feel crappy afterwards because you're having a blast while there! The fact Friday was a pretty summer like day with a warm evening surely made the day even better!

Will be really busy now until my surgery. Still a lot of preparations to be done to make the recovery as smooth as possible. And I've found something I'm going to try as entertainment while healing, along with it being a way to keep the family tradition and my grandmother's legacy alive- I'm going to start with counted cross stitch! Small scale at first but have found a couple of advanced patterns that I have as goal to manage one day. I hope my hands can tolerate it, but I am going to try it at least!

Now I need to fill in some documents that the hospital wants me to send back as soon as possible and then just wait for sleep to come to me... It's almost 2am already and while I am tired, I know it will be like last night if I do try to sleep now. I'll just end up tossing and turning until after 5am! Last night I tried to go to sleep before 1am, I was still awake by 5:30am :/