AWKWARD TURTLES & ACOUSTIC NEUROMAS

Today as I browsing through some of the older discussion topics on the ANA forum, I stumbled upon some pictures kindly posted by fellow AN-ers. Post-op pictures. Pictures of shaved heads and stapled incisions and bruised stomachs with 3 inch long scars. Honestly, it was a bit like flipping through Frankenstein's photo album. Now, I know I shouldn't be surprised. Or slightly horrified. I know with any major surgery comes scarring and that I'm not going to get out of this situation without a few physical reminders of what went down in the OR. But I have purposefully avoided looking at pictures of what the post-op incision sites look like. Mainly because they kind of gross me out. And make the situation entirely too real for my liking. This is another area where I'm fine with just having a vague, foggy idea of what my head will look like after getting drilled into.       Scared (Or perhaps scarred? For life!) Or at least I was. I guess my curiosity finally got the be

Well this post is a few days late. I was all set to write an entry on April 11th to mark the final 30 days until my surgery, but you know what they say about the plans of mice and men... Anywho, this is the first chance I've had to hop on here and say a few words. With only two weeks left until opening night of Chicago, the race is on and between rehearsals and work, I've pretty much only been home to sleep this week. And I haven't really been doing much of that either. I feel like my pre-surgery jitters are on a bit of a roller coaster at the moment. Some nights I'll be completely fine and others I spend agonizing over what's to come. Then throw in the usual pre-performance anxiety and, well, I'm feeling rather exhausted. Thankfully, I have a three day weekend to try and catch up on the sleep I've lost and psych myself up to do it all over again next week. Outside of the nerves, however, I do feel like I've started the next phase of this "journ

Just got home from the Cleveland Clinic. Wow, what a morning. Seeing as I got up at 6:30 and didn't leave the clinic until after 1:00, it was certainly a very loong morning if anything. The actual appointments went smashingly. Dr. Gonzalez is just as friendly and down-to-earth as Dr. Woodson (it's hard to believe he's a neurosurgeon), although it was difficult to understand him through his thick accent. (He completely gave up on trying to pronounce translabrynthine.) He won't really be involved much in the actual surgery. As Dr. Woodson put it, he's her "backup singer" for the procedure. Should, heaven forbid, anything go wrong during the surgery, he'll be there to swoop in and save the day. And if I have any issues with a clot or CSF leak post-surgery, he'll also be the one to take charge. The longer of the two appointments was with Dr. Woodson, mainly because she was running late and because she's doing the bulk of the work for the surgery.

Tomorrow I have my pre-surgery appointments with both Dr. Gonzalez-Martinez and Dr. Woodson. I'm meeting with Dr. Gonzalez-Martinez at 9:25 and then Dr. Woodson at 11:00, so it's going to be a long morning. (Simply hiking across the Cleveland Clinic's MASSIVE campus will be tiring enough. Especially since the Neurosurgery and Otolaryngology departments just had to be situated on completely opposite ends.) The plan is to leave home around 7:30 (sigh) and hopefully miss most of the Cleveland rush hour traffic. I have my MapQuest directions printed and ready to go (no GPS for me)--although I'm pretty sure I have the route memorized by this point. And my typed list of questions is sitting beside my laptop, ready to interrogate Dr. Woodson about all of the concerns that I've had a month and a half to ponder. I feel like tomorrow is the official start of the countdown to my surgery. These are the appointments that will "get the ball rolling," if you will. Up t