At my cardiology appt...

...I was given two months... I have to go back in early May to see where the pacemaker battery power is then. You'd think that'd be wonderful news... but honestly it was a bit of a good-news-bad-news thing. I mean... certainly it's good news that I'm not having surgery next week... that IS a relief.

And yet... I was disappointed that in two months I'll spend all that time winding myself up again... imagining going in for surgery... worrying about what's coming up in my schedule that I won't be able to do... what I'll miss... because I have to have surgery. The all-too-clear answer is that I really have to spend some time dealing with the (at the risk of sounding melodramatic)... trauma... of that original pacemaker placement. That's the catch here... it's not really about the current surgery... all of my panic and fear stems from 20 years ago. I know it seems like I should have gotten over it by now... maybe I should have... but I didn't. I endured that few months of hell around the pacer placement... and then I SHUT IT OUT.

I didn't think of it again until I walked into a hospital room 10 years ago to get the pacer I have now... and then I panicked. If someone hadn't been standing behind me as I walked into the room to get prepped... I would have run. Seriously. Hands down. No doubt about it. Since I was cornered I started to cry. I know, doesn't really sound like a well-adjusted 31-year-old... to burst into tears because I walked into a hospital room. The hospital staff's solution... drugs. They gave me a mild sedative while we prepped... and tears continued to roll out of the corners of my eyes... into my ears... and everyone looked at me pathetically. I guess I should have known then that I had not dealt with the original pacer placement drama... but once I came out of surgery 10 years ago... I bounced right back... happily told everyone how much easier it was to recover from the replacement surgery than the original surgery... and I moved on. Buried that heavy shit that I didn't want to face... and I skipped happily away... blissfully ignoring the fact that this pacemaker too would eventually run out of battery power. Why face something now if any reason to face it is a decade away???

Well, those damned decades go by faster than you expect. On the front end a decade seems like forever, and when you look back it feels like last week. I mean, really... didn't I just DO this??? *sigh*

But if I really think about it... maybe I was just given two more months to address all the crap I carry with me as emotional baggage that stems from that pacemaker placement surgery 20 years ago. Maybe I was given a little time to really process it... instead of having to go through it all again in another decade.