First things changed

...and then they changed again. It's from a Tom Petty song, but it may as well be my theme song.

If you have kept current on my blog you will know that I received some really good news the other week regarding the doctors plans to start with orhtoscopic diagnostic surgery. The plan was to freeze me from waist down and stick the camera in my knee, and decide whether the reconstruction surgery is needed. If it is required, we were going to wait a month and then proceed with the real meal deal.

Well not much has changed except all that matters. After my previous meeting I started to change all my plans. The sitter for my cat, not canceling my gym membership, school schedules, even all the preparations for a month in the hospital. This took considerable work but was enjoyable as the chance to not undergo ACL reconstruction gave me some hope.

I went back to the hospital last Friday. After hours of drawing blood, snapping x-rays, doing ECGs, and other preparations for surgery, I sat down with the doctor again. The three main doctors who are working on me sat down prior to that appointment and discussed my situation. They created a revised plan.

I am now going in to the hospital on the 20th. I will have 2 days of observation before they operate under general anesthetic. They will proceed as planned with the diagnostic surgery, however this is where the scenario changes. They decided that it is best, if determined that I require reconstruction surgery, to continue on at that point and do the entire surgery.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind, that if the surgery is required that I will get it done. That is not an issue. Hell, even doing the surgery as a continuation makes sense to me. That is about as far as I get in understanding this situation.

What I have not been able to get my head around is why it changed and changed again. It seems like I was offered a false hope, on which I proceeded to (as I do) plan the next large chunk of time. I have a lot on my plate, but I managed to turn everything around to the new plan, but now it has gone back to the original...sort of. And I am at a loss. I have to do full preparations for both possible outcomes, and in the 12 days between learning about the new new plan and the surgery I have very little free time. That is really just the stress though (and not to down play it as it really is a lot of fucking stress), the worst part is the anxiety.

If you haven't put the pieces together yourself yet, let me do it with you. I will go in on the 20th. I will go under on the 22nd. I will wake up on the 22nd and learn what they have done to my knee, and whether I am in the hospital for a week or a month, and whether I need only medication or a years worth of rehab. Pretty much I know nothing, and that isn't going to change. Some of my friends here don't seem to understand that that causes a lot of angst for me. However, anyone who truly understands my personality also understands that I don't do very well with uncertainty. I like schedules (as precise as possible most of the time), organizing, and preparing far in advance. So 3 days ago I found out that 9 days from now my entire life is a big question mark.

So I am trying to hold myself together as everything is up in the air. I don't want to experience the moment, but since I must I just wish the waiting to be over, when I wake up (groggy from the sleepy juice) and see whether I have a cast on my leg or not.

Cast = 1 month. No cast = 1 week.

That equation is my life for the next 9 days, and all I wish is that I could forget about it till then.

If anyone is familiar with Kafka, I think I understand on a very personal level some of the feelings he had. A total lack of control juxtaposed with the power that the doctors have over my life and schedule. I feel very powerless over something which I am used to having full control.