On My Mind....

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you probably are aware by now that anytime I post a title such as this one, it's most likely gonna be a bit on the convoluted side.

And if you think that, tonight you most certainly would be right!

So many things on my mind today.

Mandy left yesterday. She and Deb (her boss-lady/friend) drove to Pittsburgh, got a motel room there and spent the night so that Thursday a.m., they could take the shuttle from the motel to the airport, leaving Deb's truck at the motel, and eliminating having to pay parking fees at the airport that way. Then, when they return next week, just hop the shuttle back to the motel, grab the pickup and ferry themselves on home!

I talked to Mandy around 11 a.m. and they had finished checking in then -just waiting to board the plan and take off around 1 p.m. for Phoenix. She called this evening about 7:30 or so -was with her Dad then and they were about to head out to start their run to Laughlin but were gonna get a motel room for tonight -as they were both pretty well exhausted. Bill talked to her a little later at which time she told him they were someplace in Phoenix but were lost cause her Dad had made a wrong turn when she told him to go one way and he went the other but her Dad was saying it was just the opposite that he'd made a correct turn but Mandy had told him to go in the other direction -something like that. (I'd love to have been a fly on the ceiling of his truck to have been able then to hear them arguing over who was right, who was wrong, on the directions. She is SOOOOOO Very much his daughter!

Maya is staying with Mandy's best friend, Jenn and her family till next Tuesday evening -when Mandy comes home so I am left to watch over Kurtis. This isn't that bad to manage with just him as in most problem areas here with the kids, Maya is just enough older (and wiser, maybe smarter then because of that) than Kurtis and tends to be the troublemaker. She either leads him astray or if she can't do that, she beats him up! Nothing like sibling love, is there?

This week, after after received the news from my doctor that I now need to have a hysterectomy because I have a virus-type infection in the cervix that is considered to be CIN2 (kind of like Stage 2 of the cancer stages is how I understand it) and since I will have to have surgery and they will have my "belly" open (as my OB/GYN dr. puts it) she thinks it would be highly advisable for me to have the hernia I have fixed at the same time.

Now, this is where things get confusing I guess.

My OB/GYN Doctor is a local physician and the doctor who did the last surgery on me is on staff at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and I need to contact him and get his opinion on whether he advises having the hernia repaired then.

Things get a bit more convoluted here now too. Those who have followed my blog since my beginning days may remember that the last surgery I had (in 2006) was to have a colostomy and the hernia I have is, apparently, in the stoma (which is the opening of the colostomy.)

None of the local surgeons here want to mess with this hernia repair because they aren't exactly familiar with how the surgeon in Pittsburgh performed and looped and what not, the colon when he did the colostomy so they think the hernia repair, if it is to be done now, should be done by the UPMC surgeon. Which is pretty much okay with me except I don't know then if he would also do the Hysterectomy because he is an internal medical surgeon, specializing mostly in oncology type patients/colo-rectal stuff, etc. So would this mean I would then also have to be referred to a surgeon on staff in Pittsburgh who specializes in OB/GYN stuff?

So, yes -that stuff is weighing on my mind a good bit right now.

But what really is bothering me more than anything else is the worry about the prep stuff I will have to take prior to the surgery, regardless of where it is done or who does what?

If you've ever had any kind of abdominal surgery, you know what prep stuff I am talking about there then, don't you? YEah, drinking that horrible stuff -either magnesium-sulfate in a pint bottle, or some stuff in a big gallon jug or just a teeny-tiny bottle of the magnesium-sulfate pretty much like taking a straight shot of rot-gut whiskey, but the reaction of one's body to the intake of this stuff -no matter how you take it -is that it then gives you the nastiest case ever of the "Runs" -or Montezuma's Revenge or whatever name you want to call it.

And I have had to drink this crapola (to make me do just that you know) enough times that I can't even stand the thought of drinking that stuff ever again. Just the mere thought of it makes my mouth pucker and my stomach begins to roll and churn making me feel like I need to go throw up, ya know.

What I'd really like to know is it possible for a person needing to do a "clean-out" number on their intestines -for purely medical purposes -to use maybe a colon cleansing pill in place of drinking that vile and very disgusting other stuff?

And regardless of what one has to ingest, my other concern then is how many boxes of colostomy bags should I invest in and have stacked in the bathroom when I do have to do this prep for the surgery anyway?

And, by doing that, what risk am I putting myself in then that all that extra flow might just cause the darned intestines to get overworked, overwraught and rupture someplace else in the process then too?

Yeah, that's the dilemma that really has be bugged very much right now.

I've been trying now since Tuesday to get in touch with the Pittsburgh surgeon but to no avail. Can't even get through to his physician's assistant to explain what's going on here now and why I need to at least talk to him, maybe will have to go see him in advance of having any surgery done.

I'm seriously thinking of telling the OB/GYN doctor here to just to the hysterectomy and I'll worry about the hernia stuff later if it does in fact become a necessity. But I do see her logic in the idea of tending to the hernia while the getting at it is good and wouldn't necessitate then another abdominal surgery somewhere down the line and having to go through the damned prep problem all over again then too!

And, when one's mind is as convoluted as mine does tend to be under the most normal of conditions -well, you can see then what a bunch of confusion this does pose for me, can't 'cha?