What scared me before surgery...
When I first made the decision to have Gastric Sleeve surgery I was dead sure I was going to be making the right decision. I was a very fit person that worked out constantly, ate well, wanted more out of life, but was trapped in a body that no matter WHAT I did, didn’t want to give up it’s hold on all of the fat.
In my mind I was 100% sold, knew it was what I wanted and knew it would happen.
I had no fears, real concerns or massive anxiety.
However, once it was all signed off, booked in, planned to happen and I needed to start making sure I was prepped, that was when the fear and the anxiety started.
I’m not sure if it was influenced by other people asking why I was doing it, wanting to know more about what happens but all of a sudden, about 2 weeks out from the surgery I started having the absolute worst nightmares every night.
I was already starting to get a bit worn down at that point; I was two weeks into Optifast so I was feeling hungry and had been working out ruthlessly hard, sometimes up to 2 times a day, so my body was hurting like a mofo. All of that added up to some non relaxing sleeps to begin with but adding in the nightmares made it worse.
Every night I would find myself waking suddenly freaking out thinking I was already in surgery and that I had been one of those ‘one in a billion’ people that when they are put under anaesthetic still feel everything that happens and are fully consciously aware. Or I would dream about dying on the operating table and wake up freaking out about it. Or the anxiety about all of the potential complications would have me start randomly panicking out of no where.
No one knows it, but there were several days at work where I would hide in the bathroom, cry and just freak out at the thought of what I was about to do. There is no doubt I was excited and looking forward to it, but moments would come out of the blue where all I could think about what if it all goes wrong. What if I don’t wake up from surgery, what if I do but something serious has gone wrong, what if I can feel everything that happens to me, what if I can’t cope with the recovery.
The anxiety I was feeling at times started becoming a lot more to cope with then I was expecting, so to cope with it I think it was why I worked out twice a day a lot. Yes, I was doing it to get my body as fit as humanly possible before surgery, drop as much weight as I could and shrink down my liver, but also, it was just a really good stress reliever.
The gym became my safe place to vent out all my anxiety
When the night before the surgery hit, my unsurprising amount of anxiety kept me awake for nearly the whole night. In fact I don’t think any of us slept that night since we all had that feeling of nervous apprehension.
One of the last things that went through my mind before I walked into the operating theatre was “if I do die, have I done enough to have made a positive impact on the people I love”.
Dark I know.
Definitely not the best attitude to go into surgery with, it’s like I was almost inviting something bad to happen. But, I put on a brave face, smiled and joked. Hugged my husband and mum and made my way in. I tried to keep up a brave face the whole time, but when I lay down on the operating table the tears started. I apologised several times for crying, got it out of my system and then told myself out loud “everything is going to be fine.”
You know what…it was, and I couldn’t be happier.
