Pre-Op Appointments

I had all of my pre-operation appointments yesterday.  This will probably be a boring post, but I just want to remember it later...so this is for my documentation mostly.  

I thought I would just walk into the doctor's office and pay my portion of the surgery and that would be it, but it wasn't.  Since I will be a part of a clinical trial (since the implants they will be using are not approved by the FDA) I had to fill out TONS of papers and sign & initial a lot of pages.  Also, they ask that I come back a bunch of times for follow-up visits and to fill out questions again regarding the clinical trial.  Good part is that I get paid $50-$100 each time I come in and do their surveys.  :-)

I guess I'm part of the "satisfaction and psychological" portion of the clinical trial and not the "health" portion.  It sounded like there were different groups.  I had to answer 11 PAGES of questions about how I feel about myself, my body and my breasts.  lol!  A lot of them were pretty funny.  I had to choose a number between 1 and 5 stating how I felt about my eyes, nose, hips, butt, feet, etc....#1 being I dislike them and 5 being I'm very happy with them.  lol!  I also had to indicate whether I was a depressed or happy person about 40 times, but the sentences differed slightly.  Kevan thinks that it is for them to tell whether the new implants helped my self-image and made me less depressed.  Since I've had a double mastectomy....I'm guessing that is going to be a YES.  lol!  It also asked me if I considered myself to be a healthy person.  Well....I just had cancer...so....not so much.

After all of the paperwork Miss L (my favorite nurse there) took my temperature and blood pressure.  Of course, I can't have a blood pressure cuff on my arm anymore (due to my bilateral lymph node biopsy) so they had to take it from my leg.  It is pretty annoying.  Then, Miss L walked us through how to take care of my drains (again) and what to expect.  Ugh.  I hate drains!  Also, I will have to do my exercises again (hopefully, I will remember better than last time) and I will have lifting restrictions as well.  They want me to be able to lift my arms that day.  Thinking about it hurts.  Then, I got to pay a huge payment for my surgery since the doctor is out of network.  :-(  Not so fun.  I'm glad we had the money in savings, but we were hoping to not have to pay so much since Kevan still doesn't have a job.  Oh well.  God knows and he will provide what we need.  Luckily, the hospital is in network so all of that stuff will be paid for...just the doctor is out of network.

After all of the stuff at the doctor's office we had to head to Centennial hospital and pre-register.  After registering we met with two nurses to go over surgery information.  They acted all excited for me.  lol!  They said they can't wait for my surgery and that they think I will look great when I leave.  They will be in the surgery...so that was a little odd since they are going to see me without my clothes on.  lol!  I know....they see it all the time.  They told me this surgery should not be as bad as the one in May.  I should be able to lift myself up...unlike last time...I couldn't do it for almost 3 weeks.  The downside is that I won't be able to unwrap my chest wrap for 2 days after.  So, not only am I gonna be stinky....I won't know what I look like either.  Bummer. 

Today I had to have an ultrasound of my ovaries.  I'm still having some major menopause symptoms so they wanted to check them out.  The doctor said everything looks good.  So, no worries there.  :-)