Letting go

After nearing three weeks, since I was first informed I was experiencing iron deficiency anemia, after 8-10 back and forth calls between my nephrologist's office and BCH's infusion center/insurance team and subsequent denial: I'm resigned to the fact it's impossible to get my iron deficiency anemia addressed prior to this fifth surgery.

I had been anemic and inflammatory most of last year. This is interfering with the healing (last reading was 6 and 5 is considered 'very low'). So I can only hope and pray I wake up from surgery since I'm losing blood through my drain and will lose even more blood in surgery.

I'm brooding heavily with these thoughts and the thoughts of never getting through this. This is what happens when you subject a patient to 5 surgeries in 11 months... it starts to wear on a person. And one co-morbidity, the anemia is not being addressed. What's next, amputation?

I just don't know what to believe in, anymore. Insurance are being dicks with covering anything, I'm starting over due to a series of mistakes on my providers' parts. I have been as vigilant to see all of this through and it's all for nothing.

I also have genuine worry about my surgeon's talks about not only re-doing the original surgery, but also calling in a plastic surgeon to extend my skin graft and gastroc-flap. It will take a very long time for that to heal... not a mere matter of 2 weeks of antibiotics... I think this means after two months I'm officially starting this process anew. With any open wounds, I will need to maintain antibiotics, at least I would imagine, if we are wanting to give this the full potential of working out, save for amputation.

There is also worry given a focal point of my ongoing pain is at the level of my femur that since my femur was broken during the first surgery if that won't also be a complication of the untreated infection, deep into the bone. Certainly there is no shortage of pure-blood, or blood tinged drainage out of my jackson-pratt drain, popping, etc.

Taken collectively, here are my primary worries:

• Perpetually stuck in this limbo phase with my health, eventual loss of insurance, loss of job, loss of 'life' and losing my mind.
• Not waking up from this surgery, given how anemic I am currently, and the preceding seven years of health issues that has precluded recovery.
• Waking up in untold amount of pain, like I was from this same procedure in November, but now add a skin graft and another cut of my gastroc. Being told this is only an over-nighter in the hospital, when the last one was a 4 day stay. Increasing level disfigurement in my leg with a 'monster-sized' graft, and less of a calf-muscle strength for plantar/dorsi-flexion. Don't even get me started that it took easily 4-5 years before my brain rewired itself correctly where the medial belly of my calf felt normal to walk on (and less like a 2x4 board sewn under my skin).
• Eventual amputation, eventual kidney failure, and remote worry of sepsis (or re-mergent dormant infection, which tends to happen if they find osteomyelitis).
• Best case scenario: this is not my last surgery... and from the point of my last surgery, I have to still go through physical therapy and learn how to walk again.
• Worst case scenario: some bad shit, perhaps even more bad shit, suffer well, and still end up with my leg amputated or sepsis.

I'm sorry if this pangs you to hear this most recent post and be like: Zach is losing it. I am just putting this out there so I don't need to carry it with me. It is also taking a different approach... an approach of not expecting anything, so that way it will soften the blow of my disappointment. I never asked for any of this sort of stuff to have happened to me, but it did. Just the other day, I had to renew my cryo'd gametes because I'm sterile from the cancer treatment.

I had a talk with my Mom the other day regarding feelings about life circumstance. I call it brooding, she calls it "being on trial", I raised her, with the true feeling for me "it feels like being in jail." It doesn't feel free. No matter the level of cynical optimism and positivity that has brought me through the losses of a brother and a father, enduring cancer, surgery, losing friends with the same cancer, bad prognosis, to graduating and to really apply myself to my lab job (memories that I love)... and to just keep pushing... well, of course as before I'll keep pushing... but I'm getting really tired of doing it. When the action is so devoid of pleasure, why do I even keep doing it? Why do I even try to exert control over anything?

While it may seems alarming at first and sound like I'm giving up, I'm deferring this one to spirituality and God. I have been told I am a strong person (even an amazing person; don't change a thing because you are perfect just the way you are)... I will try to not let this get me down, but I feel like the time is now one of reflection, one of prayer. Whatever happens will be... hopefully it will be for the best. Hopefully all of the efforts to this point will matter and make a difference, but if not, I should not sense or let it overtake me as a failure because I did everything I could do. Few people understand what it's like to struggle through the normal life, additional adversity challenges and then add your own health challenge into the mix and maintain a basic level of functionality (many may not even know of the struggles I regularly endure, but I also refuse to transform into a martyr. I think it's great to remain grateful for everything one has... there is true value in that. But right now, I'm apathetic and don't have much to look forward as this battle drags along. Let's just hope I'm wrong and this is a low point, cuz right now I'm a bit disillusioned, pissed off and angry (especially the role of my old infectious disease doctor had in plunging me into this current predicament by ignoring my symptoms of infection,  stating emphatically it was an impossibility; gee, thanks!).

Final positive end note: I wanted to thank everyone out there that is reached out to me in group or individually to make me feel less invisible, understood and in some cases special. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. <3 I know you have your own problems you may be dealing with, but thank you for taking time out of your day to change your focus onto mine ^_~

I might post at least once before the actual surgery next Thursday at 12PM, but if for whatever reason that doesn't happen, I'll touch base with y'all on the other side... hopefully things will be better and there is a silver lining to all of this :)