Somewhat helpful facts

The spidery ants of insomnia are creeping back into my sleep. Everything is so much less funny at 3:26am. My humour is not gone, but it is the only thing that seems to be getting any sleep around here.
Sometimes facts help:

• My surgery is the first one of the day scheduled for 8:00am on Thursday (15^th) at Toronto General Hospital. We check in at 6:00am. (“Check in” like this is a vacation at some kind of boutique hotel…)

• The surgery itself should last around 4-6 hours.

• My family will be able to see me when I am back in the ICU, but I will remain asleep until all parameters of concern are lifted. This can be anywhere up to another 4 hours until they are satisfied that my body temperature is back to normal – they drop your temp to 34c during surgery to minimise the brain oxygen requirements – and that my heart and lungs are doing their appropriate jobs, they will then start to wake me up and remove the intubation tube.

• In a best-case scenario – which mine will be because I am awesome – I will stay in the ICU Thursday night and into the next day. Once they are happy that I am stable, all the drainage tubes are removed and I will be transferred to the cardiovascular surgery ward.

• Again, the best-case scenario is that I will stay in the hospital for about 4 – 5 days total and then be discharged for home care.

• This type of adult congenital heart valve replacement has a major morbidity risk of 1% including stroke of 1-2% including recovery time. (I don’t know what all of that means, I copied it from a letter the doctor gave me). But anything with 1% risk odds are my kind of gamble.

• The team that I have here is top notch – and I am going to keep saying how wonderful they are because it makes me feel immeasurably better about everything – GO TEAM!

NOTE: I have included this excellent Kristen Wiig animation because this post was too terribly serious)