Pre-op study

how will this body cope?
where will they cut me open:

back, abdomen, chest?

I still haven't heard from the surgeon, and the question I ask myself at the moment is: where will they cut me open to access my spine? The cysts being rather to the front of the spine, and not the back, he wondered how they'd access them. The drain I've had from birth or nearly runs from my head to my abdomen and I have scars in my head, my throat and right below my ribs because that's how they ran the tube that carries the spinal fluid from my head down to my peritoneum. Now I'll have another one, from (I suppose) the top of my back down to the same area. Will they use the same path? Will they have to open in different places? Will they have to open both in the back and the front? I hope I can talk directly to the surgeon because I'd like to ask him these questions - no one else can give me answers to that.

Julie and I had quite a difficult moment, emotionally speaking, because I drew up my advance directives in case I end up in a definitive coma because of the operation. I did it because I suspect my parents wouldn't see things as I do, and I don't want Julie to have to fight with them in that case. There is a patient in France who's been in a definitive coma for years now. His wife asks for all machines keeping him artificially alive to be stopped, several courts have mandated that the machines be stopped, but part of his family (his parents and some of his siblings) still fights in court for the machines to keep him alive. I don't understand this position. What use is it, keeping him "alive" like this? That is not life, for me. I wouldn't want that for myself and that's why I drew up the papers. As if this wasn't difficult enough, we inevitably went on to talk about what I'd want done with my ashes (no burial of my body, thank you very much). It seems a bit strange to be talking about these things at 43 and 38 years of age respectively, but we feel strongly about them, and we wouldn't want our parents interfering, hence the need to put them on paper.

Well, that was a joyous blip, wasn't it? And I didn't mention the fact that the Rassemblement National party (far right) won the European Parliament elections in France, to top it off. The party I voted for won't even have their campaign expenses reimbursed (they got less than 3% of the votes), but at least I got to vote for the people I truly wanted to vote for.

President Macron had forcefully called for people to vote en masse to keep the Rassemblement National from winning the election in France. People did vote more than they had in 25 years... but the Rassemblement National won anyway! And yet, Macron does as if nothing had happened. Clearly the vote in France (and I suppose in most EU countries) was as much a reaction to national politics as it was truly meant for the next five years of European legislation, and therefore Macron's call to arms was understood as a referendum regarding his policies, but he doesn't budge.. Aaaarrrrrggggggh! Well, I suppose if he did and we had an early Presidential Election, Le Pen would take the seat this time. But it's only a maybe. If Macron continues on the same path, I'm afraid it's a certainty for 2022.

Oh, an even more gleeful post! :-D