Today I was in the bathtub and I looked down at my torso. I thought about the fact that I will lie on a table with my torso exposed for them to operate. I touched the place where they will make the incisions, and send in the instruments to take my kidney out. This operation will be done laparoscopically, which is how my husband's kidney was also removed. It means they make several little incisions on either side of your torso for the instruments and the camera to go in, and then they make a longer incision in your lower abdomen, where they take the kidney out. Kidneys are sometimes removed with a very large incision, and that takes a lot longer to recover from, because of all the muscle they have to go through.
I have never had an operation, unless I count getting my tonsils out when I was a kid. When I was giving birth to my daughter they thought they would need to do a caesarean and even swabbed my stomach, but in the end, the last attempt with the forceps worked. So no scars on my torso besides stretch marks!
I trust the people at St. Joseph's, the doctors and the nurses. They saved my husband`s life, I know they will be careful with mine. And yes it will hurt, I have no illusions about that, I saw how painful it was for my husband. But I also saw him recover within a few weeks. And this is simply not as scary as what we went through with him. He had the kidney out, but we were still so scared about the cancer. Would it return, and where would it return to? It was a relief to have the cancer removed but after the surgery we were still a long way from recovery.
For me it will be different; the road to healing begins the first day (barring any complications), and it should get better bit by bit, day by day. And the amazing thing is that a piece of me will be working inside someone else`s body, giving life.