As usual, I overpanicked about today.

That is not to say that I’m not in a rather spectacular amount of pain right now (because I am), but just that (so far) none of the things I was worried about really went wrong.

The neurosurgeon only ended up doing one patch instead of two. He did this one a little higher on my spine than the last one, had me lie in different positions to distribute the blood further up and down my spine. Not to mention that he was able to make me hurt from my thighs to my brain, so reason says he was able to add pressure throughout my spinal cord, hopefully closing up the leaks and ending these 7 months of hell.

The procedure took considerably longer this time than the 20 minutes it took last time. The anesthesiologist didn’t want to give me Versed, he prefers Propofol, which makes me wildly ill (which has been proposed because there’s a correlation between egg allergies and Propofol). When I told him this, he insisted that it was surgery that made me sick, not Propofol. And while he may be correct, if the Versed worked fine last time, why change it now? I don’t think he appreciated how close I was to a nervous breakdown.

In the end, I won. He pushed Versed, which didn’t do a whole lot this time, so then he pushed more. And more. And holy God, I was higher than a damned kite, but simultaneously really sleepy.

I was barely awake for most of it, but I distinctly remember them arguing about what level they had the needle inserted at because if they counted from the bottom of my spine up, they were one lower than they were if they counted from the top down. I finally managed to string together a sentence of words to explain that I have an extra lumbar vertebra (don’t act surprised, OF COURSE I DO) and that ended that hullaballoo.

Then the IV they were supposed to pull the blood from didn’t work, so they had to start another one, while I was lying face down, with my arms hanging at my sides.

But in the end, they got what they needed, they pushed a ton of blood in, they made it hurt like it was supposed to, and we should know soon if it worked.

He said that by Friday I may notice a difference in the headache. This is both astoundingly exciting and simultaneously terrifying. On the one hand, it could be fixed, like now. On the other, we might know, like now, that our only real treatment plan doesn’t work (see also: square one).

And so for now I’m just going to stick with the wishful thinking. And wallowing in a tiny bit of painful self-pity.

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