Two And A Half Weeks

Well, it's just two and a half weeks until I have my Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (MrgFUS, or just FUS) for my depression and I would be lying if I said that I wasn't getting a little bit anxious.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I am really scared about doing the surgery.  I'm both scared about it not working and scared about what I will do to rebuild my life if it actually does work.  However, one of the things that I am most anxious about is what I will do between the time of the surgery and I find out whether or not it works. 

My surgery is on November 19th and I will be staying overnight at the hospital, coming home on the 20th.  Those should be eventful days.  However, the next day is the 21st and I don't know what I am going to do on that day, or on the 22nd or on any of the following days.  I can imagine myself just sitting there waiting for something to happen.  The doctors say that it might be three months to a year before I notice a change.  That's a long time to wait expectantly for something to get better.  Not only that, but there is the chance that I might develop side effects as well.  These side effects are mostly related to short term memory or verbal memory problems.  Therefore, I will also be constantly second-guessing myself, wondering if I just happened to forget something or if that is a sign of a possible side effect.  Thus, the time following my surgery is going to be very anxiety inducing as I wait for the changes to come (and they might never come) and I am on guard against side effects (which also may never come).

With only two and a half weeks left before the surgery, I should have hope that my years of depression and anxiety might soon be over.  This surgery provides my best chance at a cure after years of medications and therapies that haven't worked.  I should be hopeful.  However, depression is an insidious disease.  It steals all of your hope.  I am left feeling hopeless and that this surgery will be like everything else that I have tried and won't work.  I can't help but feel like there is something intrinsically wrong with me that makes me this way and that there is nothing that I can do to get better.  Thus, I am not very optimistic about my chances of success.  I know that this is counterproductive as going into a new treatment with a positive attitude makes that treatment more likely to succeed.  However, the depression steals all of my hope.  Dante was right when he wrote that inscribed on the gates of hell is the phrase "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."  When you are left with no hope, you truly are in hell.

As I mentioned earlier, I will need to spend the night in the hospital after my surgery for observation and to have another MRI the next morning.  I was hoping to get a private room, because I am not a very outgoing person and would prefer to be by myself.  However, the research manager for the study that I am taking part in has informed me that everyone who has surgery at Sunnybrook Hospital and is being kept overnight for observation must stay in the Surgical Short Stay Unit.  This is a 10-bed open ward concept unit and there is no option for a private room.  I don't like the idea of this.  There will be very little privacy as I have to spend the night with 9 other people who have just had surgery.  I am not looking forward to this aspect of my surgery, but I guess that I have to deal with it if I want the surgery.

The next thing that I must do for this surgery is attend the first part of my screening/baseline testing next week.  It is at this time that I will have a physical and neurological exam, psychiatric scales testing, a CT scan, an MRI and blood-work.  That should all go well.