consult

Well, I was indeed alive when I woke up. And I still am, believe it or not. :-) Either that, or I am a g h o s t w r i t e r....

The bite on my arm is calm. Still hurts around the elbow joint and up the forearm, but I am not worried.

The right side pain is consistent, and quite sore. I will go check it out if it doesn't go away. My doctor isn't available until Monday, so I made an appointment for then. But if there are any changes for the worse, I'll go to a different doctor. I think we should do an ultrasound and check out the scenario. It is accompanied today with appetite loss. Oh, and there is such a thing as stump appendicitis. Check this out (and yes, it'd be rare, but that never stopped my body!)

Heavy day in Tel Aviv today. I met with Dr. Szold. First impressions: good man. Pleasant, personable, not egotistical, good listener, and honest about how he felt about my situation.

The surgery will be much more involved than I had originally thought. Turns out that the hernia is only about 6 cm.'s long. The rest of the protruding area is in-tact stomach wall muscle, although quite thin. He said that it is thin because there is no fascia connected to it, strengthening it. His suggestion is to put in a big, big mesh made of surgical material over all the stomach wall muscle on the left side. He'll make it bigger than the graft to extend over the margins. It'll be anchored to the pubic bone, and sewn into the muscle and whatever-all-else that I don't know. It'll be a long surgery because he'll have to separate the skin graft from the muscle and all the stuff it is stuck to after three years of adhesions. He said it'll take quite a bit of recovery time, and I'll be in pain. But after it all, I'll have a well supported stomach muscle, and should I choose to go ahead with the reconstruction, this is a step that makes that easier.

I know a guy in our community who had NF long before I did. We have spent lots of time talking about our experiences. He also came to visit me in the hospital when I was there with the hole in my gut.

I ran into him at cupat cholim (health fund clinic) a few weeks ago. He looked unhappy, which is pretty unusual for him. I asked him if he's OK, what's wrong. He said that he has so many herniations now in his gut that they cannot be fixed. His muscle is too thin, and too broken in too many places. He showed me under his shirt, he said "I am held together by velcro". I saw a few different belts and corset holding him together. He is perhaps 60, at the oldest, in my opinion. His doctors said they cannot fix him.

I don't want to get to that position. I also am scared of a big procedure (although laproscopic), and big pain. :-( But I know I am strong, and I heal. And I will be left with a stomach wall muscle strengthened by the mesh supporting all of it.
And the GYN procedure will be at the same time. That is a much easier issue.

I have time to work with this and digest it.
In the meantime, I want to know that my right side pain and loss of appetite is nothing to worry about.