Ethereal

You know the brain is a weird thing? (See above) One minute it's fully comprehending something, and the next that something is completely out of reach and inaccessible. That's how it's felt with this upcoming surgery. I've known about it for a couple months, hell I half-begged the doctor to do it, but it hasn't felt real to me in all that time since then. Ethereal, that's a good word for it. It's like some vague threat that nobody really takes seriously, yet is still very real. Tomorrow that threat is realized, because that's when I'm going in to get my left shoulder replaced. I did have a very short period of realization during my hospital pre-op last week, which resulted in a half-second panic attack, a single smothered sob, and then total composure and the connection to the surgery flitted back off into the ether.

This is kinda what it looks like...
only worse

The surgery is taking place at 7:15...in the morning. Which means I need to be at the hospital at 5:30 am, which means I have to be awake at approximately 4 am. I'm debating not even bothering to go to sleep, because that's about when I go to bed anyway. The surgery itself will be a total shoulder replacement, sawing off the ball joint and replacing it with an artificial head and fixing a plastic cup to the socket area so the fake head has a snug place to sit. The x-rays showed that the shoulder configuration essentially reversed itself, with the head collapsing around the socket...it looked weird. The x-ray tech complimented me on my train wreck of a shoulder. Someday I'll talk about how much I enjoy x-ray techs and their odd, somewhat morbid sense of humor that totally jives with me. But that's a post for another time, space, space-time, and quantum. Maybe some strings and branes for added effect. Look, I had to throw in science somewhere...

The reason you haven't heard from me in the last two weeks is because of all the work I've been doing trying to get ready for the surgery. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up (no I don't work for the Mafia...usually) and things to get put in place so I don't have to worry about anything other than my recovery for the next few weeks. School, paperwork, government stuff, medical things, life, friends, stress, all that needs to be taken care of prior to a surgery. Even if these surgery is completely ethereal to me, the full ramifications just out of reach to my conscious mind, I'm still under an inordinate amount of stress. I've been increasingly anxious without having a concrete reason (even knowing full well a lot of it comes from an unconscious worry about the surgery, I can't connect it on a logical or conscious level), so it's lowered my ability to focus and be able to do things, which requires me to prioritize what needs to be done and neglect certain others. Most of that has come at the cost of my social life and writing, two things that took a major hit in the last month when I semi-dropped off the face of the Earth. I figured that's something that I can pick back up after I'm doing better, whereas making sure my grades remain unaffected and finishing up paperwork on time seemed to be a more pressing issue.

This is the voice in my head for those who remember

I have taken some solace in knowing that this shoulder isn't as bad as the right one (which was replaced in June) and that I'm familiar with the workings of this one. The second joint always seems to be easier than the first one I've found (as evidenced by having both hips and knees replaced separately), so that does alleviate a little of the stress. It's still there, it always is. As blasé as I've been about the surgery and reassuring to everyone that it will be fine, there's always that little voice going "Yea but what if it isn't?" It's a hard voice to ignore. It convinced me I was going to die last year when I had my left knee replaced, although clearly it was wrong. That doesn't mean I can shut it off, but I have been slowly turning down the volume to its rambling statements of doom and hellfire.

I suppose it will be another couple weeks before any meaningful posts come out of this blog again. There might be a quick "I'm fine" post when I feel up to typing, or maybe something written by someone else with a quick explanation of how everything went. Otherwise, I'll be laid up and unable to use one arm and on enough painkillers to make a whale very, very happy. I'll try to get something out at a reasonable time.

Until then,
Andrew Bundy