Sunday, July 30, 2006

What a difference a year makes!

One year ago today, I had the (I still pray) last major surgery to correct a string of recurrent incisional hernias from my gastric bypass. I fought the insurance company for six long months to give me the surgery, since it included a tubal ligation, hernia repair with gore-tex mesh and, most of all, a panniculectomy (which is pretty much a tummy tuck on steroids). In spite of the in-depth research that I did to prove the long-term success rate of such an approach, the insurance company didn't want to spend the money and it took them awhile to understand that spending $25,000 once would be far more economical than spending $15,000 every three months to repair the hernias that re-opened. Thankfully, they finally listened and I had the surgery. I was in pain! You can go here to read a bit more about it if you're interested.

Now, one year later, I am in a completely different place; one that, back then, I knew was coming but didn't really spend a lot of time contemplating. Two weeks from today we will be leaving Minnesota and moving to Illinois. I've got the truck rented and I'm desperately searching for available friends to help us load a truck on a Friday (sigh!). I weigh about 13 pounds more than I did after surgery, which is a bummer, but I haven't had any hernias, which is wonderful. I'm glad, too. I don't think I could handle it if that happened again. I'm leaving my job with my wonderful benefits for the unknown and it is somewhat unnerving to me.

I know my post isn't making a lot of sense. I guess that should be too much of a surprise; it was over 100 degrees today and I packed a ton of boxes in a house with no air conditioning (well, a tiny unit in the bedroom but that doesn't count for the rest of the house) and no screens on half the windows. Perhaps my brain is fried. Or maybe I am on auto pilot, trying to avoid the reality of the emotional pain of leaving my friends, family and city. Or maybe I'm just really glad that I'm not spending tonight lying in a hospital bed, pressing the morphine button to try to stop the pain of three operations in one.

Oh well... Time to take my confused brain to bed. Nighty night.

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