The Night Before Surgery

I’m in bed getting ready to take the gabapentin prescribed to me by the surgeon. It’s supposed to be used as a pain killer, but she told me to take two at bedtime the night before my surgery to help me sleep. I guess my 130/80 blood pressure at my pre-op had her thinking I was a little stressed out. She’s not wrong. And it’s not just about the surgery, but I digress.

My pre-op also consisted of having to take a COVID test to make sure I test negative before surgery. Which makes me wonder, what was the point of having the surgeon and everyone else in the o.r. get the vaccine?

This will be the third time I had to get a COVID test (see previous post). This time instead of a swab test, I got to do the spit test. 

See in the photo where it says, ‘spit to here’? Yep, I spent a good couple minutes spitting just to fill that space from the white section on the bottom to the wavy line on the top. Then, the blue stuff in that other vial get mixed with my spit and sent to the lab. Two days later I find out the results were inconclusive! Not negative, not positive, and not enough to clear me for surgery. So I had to rush back today and do another test, this time the swab, and hope they can get the results back within the next 24 hours! Did I mention my higher blood pressure?

In an effort to keep from going nutty with anxiety over the next 24 hours, I’m hoping that writing this blog will serve as therapy. So far, it seems to be working. 🙂

Tomorrow, I’m going to do laundry and prepare my post surgery detox drink. Making this drink has become a tradition to help purge the anesthesia out of my system. And yes, I’ve had multiple surgeries in the past few years. Here’s the recipe if you’re interested:

As far as the surgery goes, it’s an elective, reconstruction surgery that was delayed twice because of COVID. I’ll be home a couple hours after it’s over, and then I should be feeling pretty good after a week. It will take a few weeks for me to completely recover.

But for now, its two gabapentin and lights out! I’ll post a post surgery update on Self-Care Sunday. Will I have a negative test result? Will my blood pressure still be elevated? How did the surgery go? Is my family already exhausted from taking care of me?

Stay tuned to fined out!

Take care everyone!