Today I will be spending all day at the hospital for my pre-op testing for my brain surgery, which is less than two weeks away now! It’s going to be a long and exhausting day for someone who barely gets out of bed anymore, but at least I’ll have my dad to keep me company all day!

So what is involved with all this testing?

To be honest, I don’t know what some of it is actually for!

My first appointment is at the brain tumor center at 10:10 am. Apparently I have to complete some sort of health assessment with my neurosurgeon’s nurse. I’m a little confused about this one because the paperwork says “in most cases” I should be able to complete the assessment online and skip this appointment. But I never received a notification to complete any assessment, so I’m assuming I have to go to this appointment. If not, there will be some time to kill. But just in case, I’ll call the office in the morning to see if I actually did complete a health assessment and just don’t remember doing it.

My second appointment is at 11:15 am on the literal opposite side of campus (seriously, they can’t get much farther apart; it’ll be almost a mile walk). This is some sort of internal medicine pre-op assessment with a nurse from what I can tell.

Third stop of the day is bloodwork at 12:15 pm. BMP, CBC, PT and aPTT, type and screen, that sort of stuff.

Then I make my way back about halfway across campus for some quality time with radiology. My 3D CT scan is at 1:30 pm and my MRI is at 2:20 pm. These scans will be pretty high tech, as the neurosurgeon and ENT doctor will use them during the surgery to guide where they’re going. It will also be interesting to see how big the tumor is now, having been on medication for four months and now off medication for one month. My biggest worry is that it won’t be visible. But isn’t that a good thing? As far as I’m concerned, no, because something has to be causing all these symptoms I’m still having and if it’s not the tumor, then I don’t know what I’m going to do.

After getting my head scanned to death and my eardrums blasted out (if you don’t know what an MRI sounds like, YouTube it, and then imagine listening to that for almost 45 minutes), it’s back to the far side of campus again. This time it’s for my anesthesia evaluation at 3:30 pm and “admit interview” at 4:00 pm, whatever the heck that is.

Hopefully at some point during all this, I’ll have time to eat and visit my coworkers. I’ll be bringing snacks just in case I need to eat on the way from one appointment to the next.

I think my biggest worries are about the tumor suddenly not being there and being on the go all day. Granted, my neurosurgeon did say, “If we can see it on a scan, we can remove it.” But I still have this irrational fear that it won’t be there and then we’ll be stuck trying to figure out what’s causing all these symptoms I’m still having. I’m terrified of that prospect. I’ve gone through so much already and I’m almost at the end. I just want it to be over. It would just be another horrible blow to my psyche if I go through all this tomorrow and they find nothing wrong.

Here’s to hoping I can survive the day in one piece!

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