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| 2003, with Okie; the hay barn at my ranch |
Nowadays people don't see me doing that. The people who know me think--I think--that I am a little bit older; a little bit overweight. But you all didn't know me :-) Y'all don't know who I was and I'm still that person :-)
And here's the thing. I mean a lot of people have had surgery for different things over the course of their lives. Maybe you were young and you broke your arm and you needed to have pins put in your arm to set the bones. Maybe this; maybe that.
I was the craziest most adrenaline chasing female I had ever known. I had a hard time
finding friends who would do things with me because of that. And when I suddenly developed osteoarthritis without any warning at age 47, I was in complete denial. I was sure it was a pinched nerve. I kept working out 4 days a week. Then 3 days a week. Then two days a week. And then eventually I had to stop going on a regular basis because the pain was so excruciating and I couldn't figure out how to ease it.
And even then, I did not see that it was probably something to do with my hip and that it may not be manageable without a replacement. Even then, I denied it. And all that time ago there was no Obamacare and I was afraid to go to the doctor for fear of having it diagnosed as something extreme that they would make me pay for. Yep, I guess I'm a walking billboard for the health care act. Never thought of it that way.
But let's fast forward to almost 10 years later. I have health insurance, I have a diagnosis, and I'm finally accepting the fact that I have osteoarthritis in my hips at even such a young age as mid '40s.
But I have never even been in the hospital overnight. I never even had my tonsils removed. I've had a few stitches and that is the extent of it. I can't sleep at night thinking about being "put to sleep" for general anesthesia.
In my life I have already been present for the last moments of animals I have loved and had to make the hard choice to euthanize. I know what it means when we talk about, "put to sleep." I'm scared shitless.
But there are other things too. They want to literally take a bone saw and cut my femur. They want to cut something up around my hip area; I'm not as familiar with those bones so I can't tell you which ones. But in my mind what I am seeing is them removing a quadrant of my skeleton. I see them removing the thing; the framework; the livelihood and the support of all that my happy times have really been about.
And I am just fucking panicked. I am aware that I have this scheduled, looming, date of my surgery months ahead. And I can't even talk about it with people because if I do my eyes filled with tears and I can't keep from crying.
Even though my voice is solid and firm my eyes are leaking like sieves.
.... Fast forward to 7 years past my first total hip replacement surgery, December 12th 2022. My beloved best friend whom I've known since we were seven or eight is going into surgery this morning. They are going to have to cut her open from her sternum to her pubic bone. She has stage 4 ovarian cancer and this is her best option to survive it. They will be removing her uterus and her ovaries and her lymph nodes and they will be checking all of her organs for signs of cancer cells. If they find them they will be removing some or all of those organs.
I'm in absolute mortal fear. I am a mess emotionally. Yes okay, I have other shit going on in my life and that is certainly impacting my emotions.
But I am unable to stop reconnecting with those emotions and fears that I had before my surgery. I really thought I had moved past those. I really thought they couldn't trigger me again. I went to a therapist before the first surgery and I really made huge progress and felt prepared for that for surgery. I did not have the same issues on the second surgery and I have attributed it to that therapy.
Yet here I am, feeling very afraid and concerned for Alice. My precious friend.
I think I have come to realize that I can have mortal fear for something that might happen to somebody I need and love in my life just as much as if I had it for myself.
I don't love it; these experiences that are so profoundly emotional. But also I'm a great person to be the one experiencing these because I have both feet on the ground. I am one of those people that you can shove really hard and I will not lose my balance. And thank God for that because this is shoving me. It's shoving me really hard.
I know Alice went into pre-op about 7:00 a.m. this morning. I wasn't sure how long her surgery was going to take. I did not hear from her until almost 4:00 p.m. this afternoon when she finally got to her room after recovery.
Yes those were just brief words to say she was out of surgery and she was tired and that was all I got. But from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. today with 9 hours.
I know from personal experience that recovery time takes an hour or an hour and a half. Prep, kind of the same; maybe a little less. But that still seems like maybe we are talking about a 7-hour surgery.
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| 1995, after winning a downhill mountain bike race |
finding friends who would do things with me because of that. And when I suddenly developed osteoarthritis without any warning at age 47, I was in complete denial. I was sure it was a pinched nerve. I kept working out 4 days a week. Then 3 days a week. Then two days a week. And then eventually I had to stop going on a regular basis because the pain was so excruciating and I couldn't figure out how to ease it.
And even then, I did not see that it was probably something to do with my hip and that it may not be manageable without a replacement. Even then, I denied it. And all that time ago there was no Obamacare and I was afraid to go to the doctor for fear of having it diagnosed as something extreme that they would make me pay for. Yep, I guess I'm a walking billboard for the health care act. Never thought of it that way.
But let's fast forward to almost 10 years later. I have health insurance, I have a diagnosis, and I'm finally accepting the fact that I have osteoarthritis in my hips at even such a young age as mid '40s.
But I have never even been in the hospital overnight. I never even had my tonsils removed. I've had a few stitches and that is the extent of it. I can't sleep at night thinking about being "put to sleep" for general anesthesia.
In my life I have already been present for the last moments of animals I have loved and had to make the hard choice to euthanize. I know what it means when we talk about, "put to sleep." I'm scared shitless.
But there are other things too. They want to literally take a bone saw and cut my femur. They want to cut something up around my hip area; I'm not as familiar with those bones so I can't tell you which ones. But in my mind what I am seeing is them removing a quadrant of my skeleton. I see them removing the thing; the framework; the livelihood and the support of all that my happy times have really been about.
And I am just fucking panicked. I am aware that I have this scheduled, looming, date of my surgery months ahead. And I can't even talk about it with people because if I do my eyes filled with tears and I can't keep from crying.
Even though my voice is solid and firm my eyes are leaking like sieves.
.... Fast forward to 7 years past my first total hip replacement surgery, December 12th 2022. My beloved best friend whom I've known since we were seven or eight is going into surgery this morning. They are going to have to cut her open from her sternum to her pubic bone. She has stage 4 ovarian cancer and this is her best option to survive it. They will be removing her uterus and her ovaries and her lymph nodes and they will be checking all of her organs for signs of cancer cells. If they find them they will be removing some or all of those organs.
I'm in absolute mortal fear. I am a mess emotionally. Yes okay, I have other shit going on in my life and that is certainly impacting my emotions.
But I am unable to stop reconnecting with those emotions and fears that I had before my surgery. I really thought I had moved past those. I really thought they couldn't trigger me again. I went to a therapist before the first surgery and I really made huge progress and felt prepared for that for surgery. I did not have the same issues on the second surgery and I have attributed it to that therapy.
Yet here I am, feeling very afraid and concerned for Alice. My precious friend.
I think I have come to realize that I can have mortal fear for something that might happen to somebody I need and love in my life just as much as if I had it for myself.
I don't love it; these experiences that are so profoundly emotional. But also I'm a great person to be the one experiencing these because I have both feet on the ground. I am one of those people that you can shove really hard and I will not lose my balance. And thank God for that because this is shoving me. It's shoving me really hard.
I know Alice went into pre-op about 7:00 a.m. this morning. I wasn't sure how long her surgery was going to take. I did not hear from her until almost 4:00 p.m. this afternoon when she finally got to her room after recovery.
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| Me & Alice, age 12, on my horses, with her mom. |
I know from personal experience that recovery time takes an hour or an hour and a half. Prep, kind of the same; maybe a little less. But that still seems like maybe we are talking about a 7-hour surgery.
I know this has been a long, drawn out, "poor me" fest. I just... I really need my friend Alice. I really need Alice.
** Update, I am only publishing this after the fact of Alice's surgery, and while her recovery is laborious, it seems she's on the mend. Fingers crossed for a complete eradication of the cancerous cells.
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