I guess in a word, this first week was eye-opening. This trip has been quite different from recent ones in several ways. I guess since I'm more familiar with the city now, I'm even more interested in being part of it as an escape from the actual reason I'm here. That hasn't really been an option this time, which has made things a lot tougher than I anticipated. I'm missing home and friends more than ever and find myself going to bed as early as seven just to escape my own thoughts.
My appointments have been pretty routine. I had very in depth meetings with all the people that will be involved with my surgery. It was actually pretty interesting. They're taking extreme measures of caution because they're quite concerned about my unstable health condition. The biggest news is that Dr. Ramakrishnan, the ENT/surgeon insisted that I stop taking my aspirin. I've been on 1300 mg of aspirin for quite a long time now. Stopping the aspirin means I'll have to go through the desensitization again. (a two day intense procedure in the ICU) He cleared it with Dr. Olson - and I dropped it from my daily regimen. I'll find out when I meet with her more about her thoughts on dropping it for good or going through the desens again.
We were all surprised to find out how much of an impact the aspirin has had on my breathing. Of course we had hoped, but truly had no idea. About a day after stopping, my peak flows began to plummet - drastically. For these days leading up to the surgery, I've simply been doing everything I know to keep breathing and focus on the reason I'm here.
