Okay, my dear friends. I am scared to death. Some of you may remember how thrilled I was on my birthday, Sept 9th to be told that I am a candidate for Lung Volume Reduction Surgery. I saw my doc and her team on Wednesday, my surgery is scheduled for Nov 16th. She told me that I will awaken in ICU with two chest tubes in and that I will be in terrible pain. She said that it is very important that I get up as soon as possible (my chest tubes will be hooked to wall suction) and that in spite of the pain, I must deep breathe and cough to keep from getting pneumonia. She said they will be ready to transfer me to University of Virginia hospital if anything goes wrong. If I get pneumonia, I will be on a ventilator and if I don’t respond to being on a ventilator soon enough, they will do a tracheostomy with the idea that I will improve. I was told at the last visit that I would be in the hospital for three days and that I can return to work after two weeks. NOW, she is telling me that they have to make me a lot worse to get me better and that it will be three months before I feel like myself. I may have to be on oxygen 24/7 during that time. I cannot work and carry a damn oxygen tank with me, I have two badly damaged shoulders and I can hardly carry a purse. Yeah, I am scared. I have had a lot of people tell me that she is just warning me of what COULD go wrong and that she really doesn’t KNOW me or how hard I push myself to get better after any injury or surgery. I have put off shoulder replacements for YEARS now and my MRI’s confound my doctors because they say I should not even be able to raise my arms and I work out, I have never given up but that’s JOINT pain, I am used to it, I have lived with it for years and years, I have not lived with lung pain for years. Shortness of breath and fatigue, yes, pain, no. I have broken ribs and gone through that horrendous pain trying to breathe, obviously, I made it. If you are still smoking, for God’s sake QUIT. This surgery, at best, will give me five years and then I will be looking at a lung transplant if I am healthy enough. I will be over 70 in five years and I am sure there are younger people who are in need of organ transplants. I would never put my life before someone else’s. That’s where I am right now, scared to death, trying to get through this one day at a time and we are supposed to MOVE at the end of November…yeah, life is sometimes a bit stressful. By the way, if I was still smoking, I would automatically be denied this surgery, you have to have not smoked for over a year, just one more thing I have gained from not smoking. I will admit that a fleeting thought went through my pointed head because that is how I have always dealt with fear…not THIS time. I have all of you and I have a solid quit.
