Surgery Day

January 27, 2021

Surgery time 145pm

What a big day today is! In away its like being reborn. Let's just say that's how I'm looking at it. I'm being woken up into a whole new life, into a completely new chapter, new all in itself. This isn't like waking from any other surgery either. This is waking up and being on life support.

I think each year I make it to, today January 27th it should be celebrated!! So to next year, I can do this 🫁🎉

Am I nervous? Honestly no. I am just so ready to be able to breathe again! You have no idea how much I am just looking forward to just being able to breathe without the feeling of constantly drowning. I am looking forward to surgery more then nervous about it. Since this is my third surgery with this same surgeon, I feel really good about it. It should be a fairly easy procedure as well.

What is the recovery time? When looking this up. This really is a case by case, person by person basis, I found 1-2 weeks was the average for the initial healing, but things like speech, etc. can take a couple months to relearn. If I remember correctly though it takes 1-2 months for a stoma such as one for a feeding tube to mature. I would think your neck would take more then 1-2 weeks.

You lost me at Stoma. Ok. A stoma is any surgical hole created to give entry to the body is called a stoma. So the hole my J tube enters through is a stoma. My colostomy - the part of intestine that is now my "butthole" is a stoma. The hole in my neck for my tracheostomy tube is also called a stoma. I will now have 3 stomas or 3 holes and entry points into my body. This can also lead to a high risk to infections if I'm not personally careful. This really comes down to cleaning and maintaining the stoma. That means everyday I am taking care of the skin and area around the stoma 2x a day. This is how I keep my J tube looking so nice but it also greatly lowers my risk of things like sepsis which can happen and is a risk.

Coming out of surgery I likely will not be able talk. Why? So the tracheostomy tube will be placed in the way of my vocal cords. Your vocal cords need air to pass over them to make noise. This will be interrupted now. The plan is to have an uncuffed trach (I will show examples of each in another blog) placed. This should allow air to still be able to pass over my vocal cords. There is a small chance I could wake up and talk, but its likely I won't and to plan for that. Speech if often a bit of a process to regain after. There is a risk in loosing speech altogether. I spent 16 years of my life not really talking it wouldn't be too devastating. Some of you probably wouldn't believe that as much as I talk now, haha. As I say though life is forever changing 💜

I'm always updating after surgery so be on the lookout for those. I'll try and have a new blog up on Friday the 29th on how surgery went and how I'm doing and adjusting to things.

Thanks so much for reading. Chin up, chest out, march forward, go.....