Tracheal Stenosis Part Three

It is now time for part three of the saga of my tracheal stenosis. My surgery Friday turned out to be more adventures and humbling than I thought it would be. First, I will start with the most humbling piece. Turns out there was a reason why God chose to make me wait so long for experimental surgery. Turns out another woman needed the exact same surgery that I did. I had my pre-op appointment with Anderson on the 8^th and on Wednesday a lady called requesting a surgery from him. He let her know that she would have to wait two weeks, but she told him she couldn’t wait. Being the most amazing doctor he scheduled her after my surgery on Friday. He was doing the exact same procedure on her that he was doing on me. Both of us rocked the surgery and are doing well. This humbled me big time. Simply because I was so irritated that delays and obstacles kept getting in the way since the end of December and now I know why. Jesus knew that another lady needed help just like I did. Talk about a miracle and a huge blessing for both of us.

Now on to the procedure itself. Because my trachea is a big challenge. Dr. Gabrielle the Ansegialogist took the time on her day off to do this for Dr. Anderson and I. She is awesome. She asked others suggestions and got some great input. Though, one of them was a big pain. I had to suck down a feeding tube while awake and before we got into the surgical room so that she could suck out the acid and other things out of my stomach so that nothing would become an issue. It was the hardest and most annoying and interesting thing I have every down medically. It’s a long, long tube that you basically swallowing down through your nose into your stomach. Then they hook up a suction machine in order to suck stuff out. Not fun at all. It burned a bit when they took it out because of the acid from the stomach.

I had three part in my trachea that has scar tissue and Dr. Anderson lasered them all out. Including the lowest one that is near my chest wall meeting the thorax. When it came to the Mitomyacin-C, he could only wait 2:50 minutes for it to dry because I needed to breathe instead of the 4 minutes. Because of this he only could put on a small amount and not the full amount. I could be going in to having this same exact thing done again.  I will be going in for my post op appointment in the next two weeks. I have to call for an appointment.

I had some amazing nurses, both male and female who took care of me. Kelly, my caregiver took me and she stayed with me the whole time on surgery day. And my neighbors Fran and Tim picked me up and took me home. I felt so blessed by everyone.

While in the hospital, I laid awake contemplating many things. The first thing was that I feel like for the first time that I am going to be able to pursue some of my dreams. That means, it is time for me to write my book and not a memoir, but an encouraging book with tips and ideas to help someone live a rocking life. I have read some memoirs and they are a big boring and I don’t want that. The memoirs I love and enjoy reading include ideas and inspirations and that is exactly what I want mine to be.

I got some great ideas of some articles that I want to write for Chasing Wellness with Jamie and Jamie Chases Butterflies. I will soon be writing up a survey so that I can ask my readers and others questions about what they would like for me to share or write about or do. It is important for me to connect with people and show them I value them.

Here are some great tips so that you can have a great stay in the hospital:

1. Bring a bag of things to do. In my bag, I had my tablet, my cell phone, chargers for both, coloring book, bible, pens, journal, and color pencils.
2. Be sure to say thank you and please when asking the nurses for something. Respect is achievable even when you are hurting. They work hard and deserve a thank you and please.
3. Have a notebook so that you can write down your questions for the doctor or nurses when they are not in the room. It helps.
4. Ask your primary doctor to print out your meds, allergies, and diagnosis so that you can have them for when you go to the hospital. It is so helpful to you and to the hospital when you can just hand it to them.