One Step Closer to Me

After spending yet another day in horrific pain I made a phone call to my neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins on August 18, 2010 (Baltimore, MD, USA) and asked how soon I can have the Glycerol Rhizotomy. My doctor’s physician assistant promptly returned my phone call and stated that there is availability on September 16th to which I exclaimed, “Sign me up!” I received a phone call the next day explaining that I would have to meet with the doctor before I could have the surgery and I was given the date and time of that appointment. I thought that once I was given a date and time for my surgery that I was “good to go” but I didn’t quite anticipate the other steps that were needed. I was given a time for my pre-operative appointment with the anesthesiologist and appointment with the radiologist for full head x-ray. This was all coming together very nicely and I thought I was just ready to go but then my husband reminded me that I needed a hotel. I was overwhelmed with the idea of going through the 12 page list of hotels that Johns Hopkins gave me and was quite thankful when my mother offered to call. She went through the whole list of hotels and asked each one of them their daily rates, the price for parking, if they had a shuttle to/from the hotel and hospital and made a list of them all. After finding the most suitable hotel for what we needed it for, close enough to the hospital for convenience yet quiet enough for recovery, we booked it.

Surgery date – check
Doctor appointment – check
Pre-operative appointment with anesthesiologist – check
X-ray appointment – check
Hotel reservation - check
Transportation – check

It seems like I have everything in line for my first surgical procedure to attempt to relieve me of trigeminal neuralgia pain. I feel, for the first time in eight months, that I can relax and not worry about my next course of action. I just need to make it through my pain attacks for the next 25 days. Sounds easy, right? Over the next 25 days I have a lot planned. I will be finishing out another month’s end at work, which is extremely busy for us, I will be traveling 430 miles by car (thanks to my youngest brother for flying down to drive me those 430 miles), attending my best friend’s wedding (my twin brother’s wedding), traveling those 430 miles again to return home (this time my husband will be with me to drive me home), make it through another busy work week, and then travel 5 hours to Baltimore for my appointments and surgery. That makes me tired just typing all of that information but I cannot wait for that week in September. This is what I have been waiting for. I have been longing for the day for a medical procedure to help rid me of the pain, which allows me to come off of the medications that make me feel like I have the brain capacity of a two year old. This is just one step closer for me to be ME again.