Sometime on Wednesday I’ll be driving into Los Angeles for the double blood patch. They ended up not being able to schedule it last week as promised, so the recovery time has been shortened from 10 days to 5.

I’ve been doing all that I can to prepare for it, which so far has included a lot of cleaning, schoolwork, laying around and relaxing. But more than that, I’ve been trying to pretend like it isn’t happening.

I know that I’ve had, in total, 3 blood patches to date. The first was pretty simple, the second was in an emergency room (and was a special kind of torture because it was done with me upright with a major spinal fluid leak) and the last one was done by my current neurosurgeon. The blood patches I’ll be having on Wednesday will be duplicates of that last one.

I’ll get Fentanyl and Versed again, I’ll probably be in the same room as last time, I’ll be with the same doctors and end up in the same recovery room. If anything, I should feel comforted. For once, I know what to expect.

But I am terrified.

The last blood patch was by far the most painful of the three, largely because it was done with a high volume of blood (what my neurosurgeon is known for doing). It put a lot more pressure on my back (obviously, as that was its point) and it made all my back muscles seize up and scream with pain whenever I moved.

Obviously I survived, clearly it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was horribly painful, for days, even weeks afterwards. I still clearly remember waking up in the middle of the night three days after the last patch to sit up and look at the clock only to be completely overcome with pain from trying to move my body. Every move I made for the first week or two required careful consideration, deliberation. I couldn’t put on shoes without pain, I had to put on pants without bending over. It was awful.

And this time I’m having two of them at once.

I’m probably most afraid of the pain. If one high volume patch was that bad, I can only image that two is going to be worse. I’m worried about pain control because even if they give me narcotics, I won’t take them (they make me feel worse generally) and in terms of over the counter drugs go, I’ll only be allowed Tylenol.

I’m worried about recovery time because I start back with all 8 classes next week and the last thing I want to do is start out the second half of the semester with more absences.

I’m worried about whether or not I can handle this amount of pain.

I’m scared of the sedation. Yes, I loved my Versed last time, but honestly, I hate sedation, twilight or otherwise. I even hate Novacaine. I hate being not fully conscious, fully aware, it makes me feel out of control. And as the world’s biggest control freak, I do not like that one bit.

I know that since the past 3 blood patches have been, for all intents and purposes, totally fine, I have no basis for most of these fears, but fear isn’t really about being rational. It’s about feeling, it’s about the not knowing and it’s about the helplessness that accompanies that.

And even though it’s not rational, I’m simply terrified that something will go wrong this time.

And I wish there was an easy way to quiet the fear. I hoped that by saying these feelings aloud that they would suddenly become more manageable, or would suddenly occupy a smaller piece of my mind. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, they feel bigger and more real now. Seeing them in print makes them seem real, even if they aren’t.

And I’m realizing as the days and hours tick down that there’s not much to do now except wait, distract myself and hope that I’m wrong.

And hope that in the end it’s worth all this worry and pain.

5 Responses to “If I was fearless”