The Creepy Things

Two things bother and creep me out the most out of everything about the surgery.

#1 THE REACHING IN OF THE SURGEON HANDS.
Make an 8″ incision down my chest? Sure, No biggie.
Use tools to break my sternum bone and pry open my rib cage? That’s just a regular Sunday park walk.
Stop my heart and use a heart lung bypass machine? Whatever, I invented the heart lung bypass machine!
Putting your gloved, surgeons hands INSIDE OF MY BODY to reach in and touch stuff? Now THAT makes me crumple like a paper doll making a crazy-eye-teeth-clenched face. For some reason I am reasonably ok with much of everything besides the reaching in. That’s just gross and creepy.

#2 THE LEAVING IN OF THE STUFF.
The second thing that bothers me – on a more conceptual level because obviously there would be no point otherwise – is the leaving of stuff inside. Things that were not there to begin with, the surgical steel wire to bind bones, the valve itself beating away brand new and fresh. I like all my parts exactly how they are now, even the parts that don’t work as well as they should. They are all mine and I like them. The thought of suddenly continuing my life with these ‘new additions’ makes me feel weird and oddly uncomfortable.

I guess on a scale of 1 to totally stressed, having these as my ‘worry’ issues aren’t that bad overall. For the most part I am dealing with it by not over thinking anything that isn’t directly in front of me. But when my mind slips into future-fast-forward, these are the worries that creep in. And when they do overwhelm me, I instead think about just throwing my new pig value a birthday party and making a welcome cake for my surgical wires. Then I marinate on the fact that out of all the hands in the world, Dr. Hickey and his team have some of the most talented digits to poke around inside my chest with. (Even if that is a super weird thing to do to an unconscious stranger.)