Going Under The Knife Again

Im not really a stranger when it comes to surgery, I think this upcoming one will be my 4th or 5th for various things over the years. However when I was 21 I needed to go through open heart surgery in order to fix my bicuspid valve that had an aneurysm that was at risk of bursting. Although I wasnt the happiest person at the time, having to take a semester off school and undergoing a surgery that by all accounts had a painful recovery, I really didnt have much of a choice. It was either surgery, or likely death if the aneurysm burst.

So I went through the surgery, spent 7 days in the hospital in what was genuinely the worst time of my life, despite the drugs I was on and after spent about 3 months at home before I could really do anything too intensive. In order to get to my heart, they have to break my sternum, so essentially that was where all the pain was coming from. I wrote a post about this a very long time ago while I was in recovery, with more details, but its not a surgery you want to have, especially if you are older since your chest will take much more time to heal.

However what has been bothering me since the surgery is that in order to make sure the sternum fully heals, they wrap wires around it and it seems one or a few of them are pushing on areas where there are exposed nerves, making it very painful. For many activities where I have to move my chest, I will get a sharp stabbing feeling and this has led me to avoid many of those activities. Because of this, I have been gaining a bit of weight and im completely out of shape. I cant live the rest of my life like this so I have opted to have the wires removed this upcoming Tuesday.

The surgery is simple, but they still will need to make an incision down my chest again which means ill have to wait a bit before I can be fully active. The nice part is I most likely wont be kept overnight in the hospital which is great for me because I dont think I could deal with that again. I went for preop testing yesterday and I was having a ton of anxiety because the run up to the surgery was very similar to the first time. I was having a bit of flashbacks and ultimately ended up having a panic attack. Im not the calmest person to begin with when it comes to the body, blood, ect so im never the best person when it comes to surgery.

I am hoping that in a month from now I will barely remember anything and ill be glad that I underwent the surgery. I want to start lifting again and get in shape which I havent been able to do for some time now. Its not a major surgery so I dont expect anything odd to happen but its nice that I have this outlet to throw my thoughts out there especially since I am a relatively nervous person. I might write a few articles in advance and post them the day of and maybe a few days after while I am recovering, or I might just relax, I havent decided yet. I think overall this will still be a net positive in the long run and it is something I need to do if I want to get back in shape and back to normal.

-Calaber24p