[I've been unable to get at my laptop for a week, so this one's a big update. I'll probably misremember some things and get some of the details wrong. What follows is my recollection of the events from the night before surgery through a week post op (yesterday). Enjoy.]
In my prior post, I said I'm not brave. I've confirmed that pretty well. I am able to put myself into a situation where I'm scared as hell and have no choice but to move forward. Is that courage? Stupidity? Determination? Some combination? Well, whatever it was, I did that...
Day Minus One (Sunday)Sunday morning, my mom and I drove up to Bensalem, PA. There wasn't anything I needed to do until 4 or 5 pm, but we got up there around 1 and met my friend Lisa, who lives in nearby Philadelphia for lunch. For some reason, there are no open coffee shops in the area, but my iPhone guides us to several nonexistent and closed places before we settle on a cheesy local diner. I'm on nothing but clear liquids today, and have been on a liquid diet since yesterday, so the orignial plan was not to go to a place that serves real food, but here we are. My french onion soup (I just ate the broth) is actually pretty satisfying. The diner's playing an odd mix of music from Lisa's and my high school days (crappy '80s rock). It's awesome.
I get back to the hotel just in time to start on my surgery preparations at 4 o'clock. Driving around looking for coffee takes longer than you'd think. I've heard that this part is rather unpleasant. It is, but not for the reasons I'm expecting. At 4, I drink half a bottle of magnesium citrate (laxative). It makes me feel slightly queasy for a few minutes, but it's not even bad tasting. I watch a couple of DVDs. Nothing happens. At 8, I drink the other half of the bottle. I'm expecting this to clean me out. Nothing. Some minor grumbing in my intestines, but otherwise this isn't doing anything. I start to worry.
Around 9:30, I page Dr. McGinn. I had heard to expect to spend half the night on the toilet. The fact that I haven't gone once even makes me worry something's wrong. She says not to worry and to use the enema (last step in this process) in the morning as planned. I'm probably just already mostly cleaned out from being on the liquid diet 2 days straight.
Day Zero (Monday -- Surgery Day)I actually slept pretty well, surprising me. Shouldn't I be more of a wreck? I get 5 hours of restful sleep though, and get up at 4:30 am to do the last step. I've never given myself an enema before. I'm not really sure what to expect, so I administer it to myself in the bathtub. Clear liquid goes in. About 3 minutes later, clear liquid comes back out. Nothing. Now, I'm really worried, but I can see what McGinn thinks in an hour.
My mom asks me at a little after 5 if it's okay that she takes a shower. She doesn't want to tie up the bathroom for obvious reasons. I tell her it's fine. About 1 minute after she gets in the shower, I have a sudden urge. Of course. Luckily, the hotel has a ladies room off the lobby. The enema has the desired effect, and I feel pretty much cleaned out and a lot less worried. This was the one thing I was supposed to do the night before surgery after all. Anyway, it's a relief.
We get to the hospital a little before 6 am, right on time. We check in, I have blood drawn, I change into a hospital gown and I'm lead over to "Short Procedures". I thought 4 or 5 hours was a long time to be in the OR, but maybe not. I guess that's comforting in a way.
Dr. McGinn is there right on time. She had warned me the night before that we might not start on time because Philly was forecast to get 10 inches of snow the night before. I told her I didn't have any big plans for the rest of the day anyway, so that was fine with me. My little joke. Anyway, she made a point of being there early to check on me and how I'd done with the bowel prep. I told her it was fine, in the end. All according to plan, or sort of, anyway.
I don't know why a doctor would schedule surgery for 7:30 am, but it does have the benefit of not giving me much of the morning to fret over all the things that could go wrong. The nurse sticks an IV in my arm (I hate needles, but I'm coping pretty well) and then the anesthesiologist comes over and shoots something in my arm. That's all I remember. I have no recollection of getting wheeled into the OR, having the mask put on me, or of waking up in the recovery room. I think I went to sleep in the prep room, then woke up in my hospital bed, although Dr. McGinn says I spoke to her in the recovery room. I talk in my sleep all the time, though.
Around 1 pm Monday I'm wide awake in my hospital bed. I'm not the least bit groggy or disoriented. I feel like I've just woken up from a really good night's sleep. Everyone told me I'd be groggy and incoherent and might be drifting in and out or have trouble focusing. I feel absolutely fine except for a minor soreness in the groin area. I feel very much awake. A little talkative, maybe, but lucid.
I also feel something else: relief. I've been fretting this decision to go through with the surgery for months. I was stressed over choice of surgeons, getting the paperwork and preparations together, and the question of whether I should even do this at all. Now all of those are done deals. No more choices in front of me. I don't know that I made the right decision, but I'm no longer at all worried about it because my path is set. I chose to have surgery. I chose Dr. McGinn. I got through preparations. I only have one thing left to do, and that's to recover. I still don't know how hard it's going to be (if I did I'd be very, very scared), but there's no choice in the matter. Get better or die trying. I feel very relieved and comforted by this. A huge weight is off me.
Most of the next 40 hours after surgery I spend wide awake. I get tired eventually, but it's like my mind won't shut off. I'm pressing the morphine drip button every 10 minutes like clockwork. I figured out pretty early on that if you press it before 10 minutes are up, it beeps 4 times in rapid succession and gives you no morphine, but if you press it at any point after the timer has reset, it gives you a dose of morphine and one long beep. I usually start pressing it after 8 minutes or so, and just keep pushing the thing until I get a long beep. Since I'm not sleeping, I'm pretty much getting the maximum dose.
Mostly, I'm okay for the first day, but it's uncomfortable lying on my back for such a long time not being able to sleep. I'm glad I have my iPhone. I can write emails and listen to music and it's easy to hold in front of my face.
The nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital are very nice and extremely sympathetic for the most part. There's one nurse who seems intent on rolling me over on my side a little more roughly than I'd like, and seems generally sour, but the rest are very cheerful. I try to be cheerful and friendly back, for the most part. They seem to be having some trouble figuring out what Dr. McGinn wants them to do with me, and later I find out that I'm actually the first surgery she's done at this hospital. I knew we had to change hospitals last minute, because the other one was taken over by a Catholic organization that didn't approve of this type of surgery, but I thought Lisa, Dr. McGinn's assistant, had told me I wouldn't be the first. Gulp. I'm not thrilled with this bit of news. Someone's got to be the first, but I'm not crazy about it being me. Especially when it seems like they don't know what they should be doing with me (roll her and change her dressing or let her lie still, but in a pool of her own blood?). They seem to have checked with Dr. McGinn and she wants me mostly undisturbed for now, to give me a chance to stop bleeding, but they're also concerned with the fact that I'm lying in a little pool of my own blood.
I'm still feeling okay, and I can't do anything but lie here anyway. I feel like it'll all work out in the end, I'm sure. I keep pressing the morphine drip. Whatever's happening to me, I don't want to feel it.
Day One (Tuesday)At 4:30 am on Tuesday, one of the nurses, Stephanie, thinks maybe she should roll me and change the pad under me, since Dr. McGinn will be checking in on me later in the morning, before her surgery for that day. I tell her I think Dr. McGinn doesn't want me moved, and anyway she should be here soon enough. She seems unclear, but is willing to go with my plan. I'm really, really, really not looking to be the one in charge of this project. I want it to go like this: you tell me what to do and I do it. I don't have any medical training. But in this one instance, I'm pretty sure it's better to just wait. It was. Dr. McGinn doesn't want me moved. I'm still bleeding a lot. It's better to let me lie in a little pool of blood than to roll me over and make it worse. Sounds good to me. Let's go with her plan. She has fancy certificates on her wall, and seems to know what she's doing. She's done this before. It's the rest of us that are going through it for the first time here.
By Tuesday afternoon, I'm wishing I had gotten some sleep the night before. I also kept my mom awake all night, since she insisted on staying and sleeping in a chair in the room with me that night. I think I slept maybe an hour and a half and she couldn't have slept more than three all night. Details are somewhat fuzzy, but by late morning, I'm feeling sort of cranky and I can taste salt in my mouth. I really don't like the IV drip. I feel sort of bloated and not very good, and I feel like I should feel hungry since I haven't eaten solid food now in almost 4 days, but I'm not hungry at all. I don't like the IV.
Dr. McGinn's supposed to be stopping by sometime around dinnertime, I'm told. I knew she had that other surgery today (actually on a friend of Jani's from Virginia Beach -- cool), so I don't know when she'll be here. I can have a sleeping pill tonight. That'll be fantastic to get some rest. Sleeping pills knock me out for hours and hours on end. I can't wait. I'd like it at 3 pm, actually, but I can't have it then. They want me asleep after 9 pm. I guess it's easier if you're sort of on a normal schedule, even though I don't really have a schedule here. I'm lying here. I have my mom (freaking out slightly wondering when McGinn's coming back as we get past 5 pm) and my iPhone and the TV. I tried to watch some daytime television, but this is seriously unwatchable. I remember now why I cancelled my cable a year and a half ago. I can watch DVDs on my laptop, too, but it's sort of hard to work, since I can't sit up at all. I'm completely supine, flat on my back.
By the time Dr. McGinn comes by at 8 pm, I'm getting pretty cranky and sick of not sleeping. I really want that sleeping pill. She asks me what happened, since I was so chipper this morning. I'm also running a bit of a fever now. At some point today they took me off the morphine and put me onto vicodin. I think the fever may have something to do with getting off morphine, but I'm not sure. My heart rate's at over 90 bpm (it was 50 going into surgery), so these things may be what's keeping me from sleeping. I'm bleeding more than she expected. I think when you're bleeding a dangerous amount, they probably tell you you're at the "high end of normal" to keep you from worrying. Dr. McGinn says my bleeding is at the "high end of normal", which makes me worry. She knew my blood clotting was slightly irregular going into surgery, but still good enough that she felt comfortable operating. I should be fine, but I can't sit up until tomorrow at least. This is starting to be torturous, the not sitting up part.
Tuesday night I force my mom to go back to the Ramada. I need her to have a good night's sleep. If she's stressed out, she's making me stressed out. I can tell she's really stressing the fact that I'm uncomfortable and there's nothing she can do about it. Anything she tries to do, like hassling Dr. McGinn or the nurses, is likely to be counterproductive. I sort of snapped at her about that, since I had been very patient waiting for Dr. McGinn to come back and she had been kind of fussy and insisted the nurses call her. My thinking is that if you call your doctor too much, you're bound to aggravate her, so if she says she's coming by around dinnertime, you don't start calling her until she's actually late, say at 9 or 10. Anyway, I feel bad about it. I am cranky and irritable. My mom's being great. I seriously would be scared as hell without her here looking after me and she's doing great. But she's tired, and I'm tired. We both just need a good night's sleep tonight. After she leaves, I send her a text message telling her how great she's doing and that I love her. She is. I do.
I finally get my sleeping pill at around 9. I'm mostly watching the clock as it kicks in at 10 pm. I wake up feeling very refreshed like I've gotten a good night's sleep. Then I look at the clock. It says 11:00. Can it be 11 am? No, too dark. Nobody here. Can I have slept an entire day? No such luck, as I look at my iPhone calendar. It's been an hour. Fuck. Seriously? Sleeping pills usually knock me out for 10 hours flat. I cannot endure waiting until morning in this position and wide awake. Why am I wide awake?
I press my call button for Stephanie, who is working her second night shift in a row. I can't even hear the familiar "ding, ding" out in the hall you usually get when you press the button. My door is closed, but still, it's dead quiet out there. This is turning into a horror film. I briefly consider calling my mom (Why, so she can run back here and find a nurse? She'll never go back to the hotel if I do that) or dialing the hospital's main line from my cell phone. Then I remember I have another phone on my bed. It must have like an operator number or something. Probably it works like room service in a hotel, right? Well, I can't figure the thing out, but it's a moot point, because Stephanie comes over the intercom and asks what's wrong. I'm in horrible pain from lying on my back, and it's keeping me from sleeping, that's what. She's coming over.
My options are limited, it turns out. No, I can't move my bed from being completely flat. McGinn's orders are that I have to stay flat because I'm still bleeding. No, I can't have another sleeping pill or vicodin, but I can have a Benadryl. I don't know what that is (later I find out it's an antihistamine -- yeah, those knock me right out), but I don't ask. Sure, give me that. I can also have another pillow under my head. I don't really understand why I can't move my bed up like 2 degrees, but I can prop myself up with a pillow, but I'm not in a position to argue here. Sure, another pillow and a Benadryl. Great. I decide that if I can prop my head up with a pillow, then I can also raise my legs a little, so I adjust my bed just slightly while Stephanie's off getting my pill. It's a big relief to move like 2 inches after being in this position for I don't know how many hours. 40?
I start watching an infomercial about how I can buy foreclosed homes for $300. Nah, I'm pretty sure if I wait for the market bottom, those will hit $200. I'll wait. I drift off to sleep, thankfully.
Day Two (Wednesday)At 4:30 am, I wake up in pain. I took my last vicodin at 9 pm, so it's been a while. I'm allowed to have them every 4 hours. I buzz Stephanie, and tell her I'm in pain. She tells me I should have called for it earlier to stay ahead of the pain. I'm not sure how I could have done that given that I was asleep the past 5 1/2 hours. Oh well, I got a good night's sleep and I feel loads better.
My mom comes by around when they're serving breakfast. I'm really not hungry at all and they've still got this IV drip in my arm, which I hate. It makes me not want to eat much, but I drink some Ensure. I've been drinking these vile things the past couple of days. They have protein. Good for healing. Blech. I can't believe people drink these things.
By lunchtime I'm in okay spirits. Dr McGinn comes by and says I look like I'm doing much better. I am feeling a lot better. Much stronger. We're going to get me out of bed. Okay by me. It's not all that bad getting up, but I feel very lightheaded even propping my head up. Standing's okay. Not really painful at all, but it feels weird. I have a catheter and my groin is all packed up with lord knows what. I don't want to know, but it feels uncomfortable moving around. Still, it's nice to be standing up. My reward for a good 5-minute stand is that I can sit up now if I want. That's way better, even though sitting upright for long periods is sort of uncomfortable because it puts too much pressure on my wounds. Just being able to move feels great though. This is progress. I also get to have the IV out, and I can eat whatever I want, but I'm supposed to drink as much of this Ensure crap as I can choke down. Drinking nasty sugary-milk-flavored something is way better than feeling like crap with an IV in my arm though. No problem.
They inject me with something to help thin my blood, to minimize the risk of blood clots. I would have had this yesterday, but I was bleeding too much. Mom's really happy I'm progressing, and overall, day two after surgery is looking okay. My appetite is returning somewhat. Day two would have been the real turning point for me in my recovery except that I'm about to experience...
Day Three (Thursday)This one's kind of a blur for me. I remember this much: at some point, it became clear that giving me the blood thinner was not a good plan. I'm back to bleeding a lot. I can roll myself over pretty good, so the nurses can change me, but we're still packing me with ice (forgot to mention that, but all the time I've been lying in this bed, they are putting three big ice packs on my groin) and every time we change the pad I'm sitting on, they say something like "you've still got a lot of discharge here." I assume this is mostly blood we're talking about. I don't care to look. I gross out easily.
Also, early in the morning, when the nurses change my pad, the nurse whose name I don't know but that my mom and I have been referring to as the "mean nurse" (all the other ones are super sweet) wipes me down kind of rough while turning me, and I feel a sharp pang on my right side, like a tear. The pain from this little maneuver stays with me for hours.
By afternoon, I'm back to lying on my back and we didn't get me out of bed all day. The pain from this is starting to get really bad. I'm not happy, and I really don't like taking this step back. But if my job is to lie here and not move, then I'm going to lie here and not move. I do what they tell me. I'm not the one who has to look at the blood, just the one who has to lie in it.
It's also my job to endure some severe pain, as Dr. McGinn fixes some serious swelling that I've got, I think on the right side where I felt the tear this morning. She puts in a drain. I don't know what that means, but it feels horrible. I'm crying while she does it. She injects me with morphine and then lidocaine. I'm a complete wuss when it comes to pain. I'm hitting the nurses up for vicodin usually by hour 3.5 in my 4-hour cycle. Today's my worst day by far.
My friend Lisa comes by to try to cheer me up. I play Uno with her, but I can only see my cards, not the stack. She could pretty much put anything down and tell me it's whatever card she likes, because I can barely turn my head enough to look. We each win a few games. I'm not 100% sure we're playing it right. I haven't played Uno in forever. It's nice to have company. My mom's best friend from high school also stops by briefly. She lives in Philly, too, and they're still in touch. They're going out for dinner.
Thursday night, I'm (I can tell from people's reactions) not looking so good. I'm pale. I'm feverish. I feel really weak, much weaker than this morning. I'm trying to keep my spirits up, but Dr. McGinn says I may not get out of the hospital as planned tomorrow, and I'll need a transfusion if I don't stop bleeding soon. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to bleed. Tonight's horrible, but I do manage to sleep some with a sleeping pill.
Day Four (Friday)I wake up Friday feeling a little stronger. Definitely not as weak as yesterday, but not strong, either. I call for my vicodin, and about an hour after popping 1 1/2 of those is when I feel at my best. Three hours after (i.e. one hour until the next dose) is when I start feeling like I really need another. That last hour is getting tough to endure. I consider hoarding half a pill and taking that at the 3 hour mark, to even out the dosage and get rid of this horrible feeling, but I don't. I had my mom ask Dr. McGinn if I could just do 1 pill every 3 hours instead of 1 1/2 every 4 hours, but I can't. So that's that. I do what they say. They make me better. We each know our job.
Mom's job is to worry. That's what moms do. After Dr. McGinn comes in in the morning to check on me and sees that I'm doing better, she decides we'll get me out of bed again and see if I can walk. I can. It's not a big problem, really. Tiring, but I can do it. McGinn says that we'll get me up three times today and then see if I feel ready to move to the hotel. My bleeding's slowed down again and my hemoglobin count stabilized this morning, so I won't need a transfusion. My mom's after the nursing staff to get me up again around lunch, because the original schedule was to have me check out at 4 pm today. I don't really care about the schedule. I don't really feel ready to get out of here, although I'm getting noticeably better even by early afternoon. I just want to lie here and get some strength. I'm eating a lot. That's good. I'm drinking Ensures. That's vile, but good for me.
My second stroll around the part of the hospital immediately outside my room goes pretty well. I feel okay. I get to have my vicodin right before we get me up, so I'm generally feeling good for these little jaunts. When I'm not feeling good is right at 4:30 when my friend Dean shows up for a visit. Dean came up from DC just to visit me. He's such a nice guy. He brought a bunch of cakes he got in Chinatown in Philadelphia. I tell him I could eat 100 slices of cake, but really 1 is my limit. We've got a lot of cake.
Dean gets to see my Jekyl and Hyde routine, starting with Hyde. When Dean shows up I'm in my miserable clock-watching state. I'm staring at the clock on the wall feeling like shit and trying to calculate when is the earliest time I can call the nurses for more vicodin and have them give it to me. Usually, if I call them after 3 hours and 45 minutes, that's close enough to the four hour mark. It turns out I don't need to call them this time, because we're 20 minutes from my 3rd walk of the day, and they want me feeling good, so they bring me my pills without asking. First time they've done that.
At this point, it takes me less than 20 minutes to go from sweating and miserable to downright cheery and peppy after taking the vicodin. I'm a completely different person, ready to stand up and shuffle down the hall. I'm friendly as can be. 20 minutes ago, I was death warmed over. I don't like the vicodin cycles at all.
The third walk goes very well. I don't need the walker or anyone's help. I can go a long way. I feel pretty strong. We decide to call Dr. McGinn, who says she'll come by and see if I'm ready to check out. Meanwhile, Dean and I eat cake and chat. I'm glad to have him here. I told him already he can stay with me and my mom at our new suite, which I may or may not be moving to tonight. Turns out, I am. I can leave if I feel strong enough. I'm still a long way from recovering, but I don't need the nurses for anything. Sounds like a plan.
Getting over to the hotel is a bit hard on me. I'm really glad Dean's here to help my mom with the move. We share my mango cake with the nursing staff, who seem to really appreciate it. I manage to get out of the hospital and into the car easily enough, and the only big difference between the hotel and the hospital is that I can't adjust the bed. That makes things a little less comfortable, but I'm also in charge of the vicodin now. Once I get to the hotel, I decide to take a pill (I'm down to 1 pill every 4-6 hours instead of 1 1/2) after only 3 hours, since the move was hard and as a reward for getting out of there. 3 1/2 hours later, I'll be tempted to make that a permanent change in my schedule, but I don't.
The hotel I've booked (with the help of Lisa from Dr. McGinn's office) is really nice. We've got a giant suite with a big bed (for me) and another big room with two pull-out couches. It's very reasonably priced, and has plenty of room for me, my mom and an overnight visitor (Dean).
Dean and I chat and then watch a movie (American Splendor -- great film). I think I fell asleep before the end, but I wake up in time to take my next pill. I always wake up in time to take my vicodin.
Day Five (Saturday)Dean's off back to DC (really off to Mexico on vacation, but by way of DC) in the morning, early. I'm mostly bored today, and I'm really starting to hate the vicodin cycle. I also notice that I'm not actually feeling any pain that the vicodin's getting rid of, just a craving for the way it makes me feel not horrible.
By noon, I decide I've got to start cutting back on the narcotics. Instead of a full pill every 4 hours, I'm going to take 1/4 of a pill and see if I can make it 3 or 4 on that. Not surprisingly, it makes the time I spend craving vicodin much longer and the relief not all that great. At 3:30 I pop another 1/4 of a vicodin and start a stopwatch on my iPhone, to see how long I can go before the cravings overtake me.
Dr. McGinn calls me in the afternoon to see how I'm doing. I tell her I'm not really in much pain, but I'm getting extreme cravings for the vicodin after 3 hours ("Uh, oh") and tell her about my plan to keep popping 1/4 of a pill instead of 1, to start to phase off them. She approves. I should have asked her if quitting cold turkey would have any kind of effect on my recovery rate, because by about 7 pm, I'm considering that giving the pills up altogether may be easier than trying to phase them out. I'm not sure I can make it, but I know I don't like this pattern where I'm feeling lowsy for 2 out of every 4 hours, and fine for the other 2. I decide if I can get to 24 hours on my stopwatch, I'm off the things. So I switch it to a countdown from counting up. 24 hours is my target.
This turns out to be a rough night, but I've just had several rough nights, so why not one more while we're at it? I lose my appetite completely (but manage to choke down some food, because I need to keep eating to get strong and recover), I feel hot (could just be hot flashes from hormonal changes), I feel generally sick, and I'm sweating like crazy. I still manage to get some sleep eventually, with the help of another Benadryl.
Day 6 (Sunday)I'm still feeling the cravings for vicodin, but not nearly as bad. Honestly, getting to 8 hours without a pill was the hard part. The rest has been okay. At this point, I'm sure I'm on my way to kicking the habit. Unfortunately, I hadn't realized there actually was some pain in there the vicodin was masking, if I'd have ever given it a chance to wear off. It's a very tollerable level of pain though. I can deal with it, but I don't feel at all good. I'm taking Tylenol and Motrin now for the pain and swelling. I have a lot of swelling. I can't have my catheter out until Tuesday, because I'm so swollen. This sucks.
The hotel is comfortable, though, and I can get up when I need to. I'm getting up about 3 times a day. I can brush my teeth. I can use the bathroom (and empty my own catheter bag). A little independence feels good. I still need my mom here to bring me about 10 cups of ice water per day and to bring me food and (ugh) to help me change my maxi pad. Major bleeding stopped a couple of days ago, but I'm still needing a couple of pads a day. Well, anyway, I don't know how I could possibly have taken care of myself the past couple of days. It's really great that my mom is here for me.
Still, I'm basically where I've been for coming up on a full week now. I'm on my back about 23.5 hours per day. I can barely move. This is getting very tiring and frustrating. I can't wait for this goddamn swelling to go down because it's really uncomfortable. I can't wait until this catheter is out of me. This is all starting to wear me down. I'm trying to make the best of it, but I sort of wish I could just sleep for a couple of days here and avoid all this.
It'll be better soon, but not before it gets worse.
Day 7 (Monday)If I were a normal person with a normal amount of bleeding/swelling, I'd have had this stuff out of me today or maybe even yesterday. Instead, I'm still here in bed all day.
On the one hand, I'm more mobile day by day. I can get up easier. I can stay up longer. I can wash my hair, and give myself a sort of bath with the big packs of wipes we took when we left the hospital (mom grabbed everything because they said they had to throw away everything we didn't take with us -- need any gauze? We have lots). So I'm not an invalid.
On the other hand, I can't sit up for very long without feeling the throbbing pain in my groin from the blood rushing to it. I am in a constant state of discomfort, varying from minor to extreme. Extreme discomfort is what I'm feeling tonight, when I'm about 11 hours away from getting the catheter and packing out. I'm starting to count down the hours, wondering how I can make it. I'm trying to sleep. I'm trying to distract myself. I'm wondering if this is all going to be worth the torture I'm putting myself through.
I know it will.
A lot of things are like this, I've found. They take so much work that if you knew how much it takes, you'd probably never do it in the first place. You'd give up before you started. But if you can stick it out, eventually it's totally worth it. Dean and I talked about this the other night. I said in a way it's nice because you can get all the bad stuff out of the way upfront and then it's good. You almost forget all the bad stuff, as long as you don't go foolishly writing it down in some kind of online journal where you're bound to go back someday and relive it. It's also nice if you can commit yourself to the point where there's only one option, which is to move forward. As hard as this is, I know I'll do the work and I'll get through the pain because I don't have any choice. I don't give myself the option to back out because it's too hard.
My whole transition has been like that in a way. A lot of the things that I've done that I was terrified to do, I've done because I didn't see any choice about it. I set myself up where the thing I want to do is actually the path of least resistance. Quitting is not an option.
As horrible as the past week has been at times, at some point I'll have forgotten all that pain, and I'll be enjoying the rewards of what I've done. I think that's a sensible plan, to have put myself in this situation.
Still, it bothers me that other transwomen seem to have little problem with this, and for me it's been everything I feared it would be. Or maybe they just won't talk about it, or forget how hard it is when they get past some of this difficult stuff. I just hope that this week is the worst of it. I need to start seeing some progress, or I'm going to ... well, ... keep going, since I don't see any other choice in the matter.
We'll see.
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