Surgery Eve

Tomorrow morning I go to the hospital for my first ever surgery. I really have mixed feelings about the procedure. I'll feel a lot better after my gallbladder's gone, but the idea of having a part of my body removed is disconcerting. That's the part of the surgery I'm most unsure about. I'm not so much afraid (like I was in the emergency room) as I am coming to terms with losing something that was with me since I was born.

Of course, I also think that these feelings are just a bit silly/frivolous. It's not like my gallbladder forms a major part of who I am, and I'll be able to get along just fine without it. Also, I'll have a very interesting story to tell when people inevitably ask what I did this summer. Not very many teenagers can say they've had abdominal surgery, let alone had their gallbladder removed (which is normally a procedure that's done to people at least in their 20s). I'll feel better, and my summer won't be like the other students.

This is what's passing through my mind tonight. Slightly more pressing, though, is the fact that I won't be able to eat or drink after midnight tonight. That's going to be seriously difficult, since I'm always thirstiest after the sun goes down for some reason. Not having breakfast is going to make the whole ordeal much harder, since being hungry makes me incredibly grumpy. The grumpiness will be amplified by getting an IV placed, which is hard on me even when I have normal blood sugar levels (needles? EEK!). But there's a good reason, so I guess I just have to go along with it.