#my surgeries were totally necessary and the pain i would be in if i hadn't had them outweighs the pain and discomfort i was in bc of them

[foxymoxynoona]

Omg. You had a surgery? Please be rested and take care of yourself. What surgery did you have btw? Is it too painful now?

Fun fact: this surgery for this type of rare tumor I guess has never been done before and my surgeon joked he's going to name it after me 😂😁 I'll put more info below the cut for those who don't want medical stuff on their TL.

I had a VERY large tumor in my small intestines --now confirmed to be totally benign, but no one understands how it got that big or why because it just doesn't happen. My surgeon couldn't believe I hadn't already had an emergency blockage, it was so big. It's also been taking all my blood and nutrients for a while, so my nutrition is, as they put it, "shitty." Mainly I just was aware I've had really really bad anemia for the past few years, and I was hospitalized in May with a hemoglobin of 5 (which you basically die under, that's so critically low.) They weren't sure what would be necessary to remove the tumor, so I had an open exploratory laparotomy where they basically just go in and figure it out, but we had expected I would need a whipple procedure which is a VERY risky precedure where they remove a bunch of your digestive organs and re-route what's left. (I can explain more why if anyone is curious, I learned a lot about it haha.) FORTUNATELY once they got in there, I didn't need the whipple! They were able to remove the tumor and only my gallbladder and a couple bile ducts along the way.

Even this was still a major surgery though with lots of risks and I've had a few complications that wound up lengthening my hospital stay. 2 days after surgery, I developed a leak which can be a fatal complication or need an emergency surgery to fix, so that was scary, but my body managed to maintain and fix it all on its own after some scary days and only minor assistive procedures! I kept having random white blood cell increases they feared were infections but then I'd fight them off. They also put me on IV nutrition through a PICC line to try and repair my malnourishment as best they could, but also because I can't eat a normal amount of calories yet, so my blood and nutrition levels are still not back to normal ranges but improving!

I finally got to come home after 13 days. It's still early recovery days and I'm still on soft food diet and strict rest and have follow up appointments and all that, but I'm doing a little better each day! It's been a really scary journey getting here, but hopefully things can continue to improve from here. The pain is pretty bad and I have a gnarly midline scar now but I'm coping and it's getting better and and someday soon I may feel better than I've felt in years so that would be really great! And hopefully no more scary life-threatening hospital stays or anemia!

#asks #anonymous #personal #tw: medical #tw: surgery

[dramatic-dolphin]

i think we should stop pretending surgeries aren't traumatic. a surgery is deliberately inflicting a major injury on you that can take months to heal. the idea that it being necessary or even life-saving makes it somehow not traumatic is nonsense. our brain and trauma responses don't work like that

#i'm tagging this as #medical trauma #just to be safe #anyway #my surgeries were totally necessary and the pain i would be in if i hadn't had them outweighs the pain and discomfort i was in bc of them #and yet it still left me with nausea and panic at the mere notion of going to a hospital. #even thinking of it makes me want to break down in tears. #these two facts do not contradict each other!!