It's time to get my spleen OUT!

January 18, 2022

It's time to get my spleen OUT!

Hello Hello Everyone!

So sorry for the long wait since last post. But to be fully honest, there hasn't been anything going on since last blog until yesterday. It has just been this incredibly fun waiting game on surgery date and how to go about things from there. The wait is hard and it wasn't any easier this time around. Now that all the testing is over and the doctors had decided that I needed surgery, I just wanted to get it done as soon as possible. However, instead I got to wait. If I have not turned into the most patient person on the planet after all this.. haha

Anyway! Surgery day is TOMORROW! (Wednesday January 19th)

Around noon tomorrow, I will be picked up in my room to go for surgery! How exciting right?!!

Yes and no! Here is a thing, I have been very excited since last week that I am finally having the surgery and that things are finally happening. But then when I got the surgery day yesterday, something twisted in my brain! Suddenly things felt so real! So I had very mixed feelings for couple of hours and got quite emotional. Now that I was having a surgery, we were getting closer to an answer, which is so exciting but at the same time extremely scary. My brain started going thousand miles per hour. Also! abdominal surgery, that's kind of big deal. Especially when they are removing an organ from my body. All that just seemed overwhelming in the moment.

I have also been worrying about the scar that will come from this surgery. How big will it be? Where will it be? How noticeable will it be in the future? All those kind of questions were important for me to ask. For many years, I been very insecure about my stomach and it's just something I have been working on. I know, my stomach looks great and it's strong and I shouldn't have to worry about anything. But, sometimes I do and I just wanted to try to limit any future insecurities or emotions after surgery with a potential very large ugly scar on my stomach.

Yesterday, I met with the anesthesiologist. She was a very sweet lady and was able to calm me down quite a bit! After meeting with her, I actually felt pretty comfortable and confident going into the surgery. She explained everything to me really well. Including, what will be used to put me to sleep (I have had issues with anesthesia during past knee surgeries), how long the surgery will take (~2 hours), how long it will take for me to wake up again (1-2 hours) and things like that. She also comforted me by telling me that the surgeon that will be performing the surgery is a specialist in taking out spleens and is very good at what he does.

Today, the surgeon came to talk to me! I had prepared a full list of questions to ask him (the organized me haha). He made slight fun of me for it, but all in a nice way! The surgery will be performed in the OR, which happens to be only 2 floors above where I am right now, which makes it very easy. He will make a cut longitudinally on the midline of my stomach just above my belly bottom. It will be around 7 cm (2.8 inches) ideally. However, he said that he hasn't often worked with this large of a spleen, so things kinda have to be done on the go. He might possibly have to extend the cut either further up or down, depending on things. Also depending on how invasive the surgery will be, will affect recovery time and things like that. The amazing news though is that I will be able to leave the hospital most likely on Friday (2 days after surgery), as long as I can walk and eat.YAY!! can't wait!! I will be on very strong pain medications in the beginning and I have to be very careful using my abdominals at all. General recovery according to the surgeon is about 6 weeks for full recovery, but again, it will depend on how the surgery goes.

After they take the spleen out the doctors will be running all kinds of tests on it. Where they will be trying to figure out what caused the spleen to become so enlarged. Some of those tests will take only ~2 days to come back, whereas others can take up to 2-3 weeks to get the answers. So after the surgery, there will be another waiting game. The biggest thing according to my doctors is to try to rule out any type of lymphoma (cancer) first. Thankfully, I will not have to wait in the hospital while the testing is being done. I will only have to come back for a post-op follow up 7-10 after surgery where they look at everything and evaluate when I can fly to the US. Everything will also depend on the results from the tests of my spleen, if I will need any additional treatment.

My parents are planning on flying to Iceland in the next couple of days to be able to be here with Ryan and I after I am discharged from the hospital! I am so very excited for that. So I will have all them with me helping me through the first part of the recovery.

Also! Today the doctors provided me with a picture of my spleen from one of the scans I did. Aaaaand OH MY GOODNESS!! It was even larger than I thought. I will leave the picture here below. I am soooo glad I am getting this out! No wonder I am having some complications. The spleen is pressing on so many things in there.

Outside of this, I have been feeling better physically since mid last week. I have had more energy and felt more like myself. The nausea and low appetite has been slightly better, but the late afternoons and nights are always the worst. The worst part of this weekend tho was that I had to move rooms on Friday night and start sharing a room with another lady. Oh how the world changed. Sharing a room with a random sick individual, isn't a lot of fun! but she was pretty nice so it went okay. She was discharged yesterday though, so I am now alone in this two person room. We will see what happens after the surgery. Not only did I start sharing a room, but I also changed sides in the hallway, which meant that I had no window anymore that Ryan could come visit. So that was a very big deal for us. It made us very sad that we couldn't do window dates anymore. Since then I have had to be extra creative with my time... I have been doing more walking, PT exercises and a lot of self care! Nail polish, facial masks, facial cream, lotions and long hot showers.

This weekend I was also able to watch skiing, which one of the races ended up being one of the most exciting races I have ever watched!! So much fun! I have also finished another page in my coloring book, done some crocheting and FaceTimed family and friends. In addition, I have been reading the book the my professor gave me, its called "THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY: THE TIMELESS ART OF TURNING TRIALS INTO TRIUMPH" by Ryan Holiday! It's an amazing read and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an uplifting book.

Lastly, Ryan and I just created a GoFundMe account and wanted to share it with everyone. We have had so many people ask us how they can possibly support us and/or help us through these uncertain and tough times and we thought this would be a good platform for people to support us if wanted. Things have definitely been challenging for us lately with an unextended stay in Iceland, had to change plane tickets multiple times, having our dogs in the US during all this, Ryan not being able to go to work as planned and so on. You can read further about it on the link, which you can also use to support us. But, again! No pressure at all :)