The two songs currently occupying my mind are: (1) Gorrilaz - Tranz (pronounced Trance), (2) Covenant of Thorns I'll See The Stars, (3) Mitis - Wildflower (Special Mix) - the song I would want played at my funeral, (4) Shook - You Were Bigger Than Life and (5) Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta. The second song in particular mirrors my sentiments the past 18 months, in the lead-up to my above-the-knee amputation. When I think of Wildflower, I think of my whole life in general, but especially how happy I have been managing Dr. Stitzel's research lab these past 4 years.
Anyways, I promised I would be putting out another video since my last post. What I wasn't expecting was the pain to be especially bad the past 10 days or so coming off the antibiotics and especially rounding out 15 days tomorrow. So the planned vLog update #2 is going to be a bedside update of how the amputation went: the sensations, pain, etc. I'll also discuss what happened in the lead-up to surgery and the experience in the operating room, the anesthesia and coming back out of it in recovery. Here's to hoping I had a good anesthetist (I hope he'll agree to some ketamine and an epidural). I imagine since, once again this is a guillotine amputation (where they leave things open and don't want me up for anything that also means I'll wake up with a catheter.
As far as today is concerned, I finally crossed off the final pre-req on the list to be cleared for this surgery. I was supposed to meet with my plastic surgeon to discuss the TMR last week, but then the day before I got a call requesting I cancel and reschedule since there was some other medical emergency with another patient that he needed to attend to. So I finally met Dr. Greyson today. He told me Dr. Stoneback had so much to say about me and talked in great length about my case and because of that he felt like he already knows me. However, with that being said, he wanted for me to recount everything that had happened to bring me to the amputation. So I began all those years back with pain after sparing people in Karate, to the whiteouts and the weakness and falling. The diagnosis, the chemo, the surgeries, more chemo and all of the revision surgeries that came after. Which brought us to the final portion: the past 18 months, especially.