My brain is going to explode

So this week has been completely crazy. We had a ton of overtime forced on us so I've been working some very long hours. I'm thankful today is Friday and the end of my day is just around the corner. On top of work, I've been doing an amazing amount of hard core thinking about my life. A good friend, I'll call her J, called me on Monday night. J was my roommate in college. We are both now nurses, but she is a far better one that I turned out to be. Anyway, it just so happens that J works with surgical patients and sees alot of weight loss surgery post-ops. Lucky for me, this provides a very unique look into this whole process.

So, she called to talk with me about surgery and what she sees from the nursing end and what recommendations she can make for this journey. I got a great deal of information from her, more than I realized. It has forced some long and hard thinking from my end, and I am grateful. I need to know all the good, bad, and ugly than can be with my choice for weight loss surgery.

After several days of really thinking about things, I've made the decision to continue to press forward with my plan. J supports this decision and has given me some good things to research and explore in regard to what surgeon and what hospital I choose. She is happy to be by my side on this but out of care urges me to be EXTREMELY well educated about everything prior to jumping off into the procedure. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have been spending alot of free time doing research on local hospitals and reading about different surgeons. I feel like I have my choice narrowed down to a couple of places. One of them is through J's hospital. She told me if I went there I would be getting a great surgeon (one of the best); however, he has absolutely zero bedside manner. I am pretty hesitant to see a surgeon who will not make rounds on me the days following my procedure. The good thing about making the decision to use her hospital is that she can make arrangements to care for me during my stay. How fantastic would that be? Having a nurse you know personally and who is a damn good nurse to boot. I'm not sure anything could be bad about that and it would set my mind at ease knowing I would get top notch care in the days following the surgery.

I've come to realize this is a very tough and big decision. I have two more seminars scheduled, one is coming up next week and the other in March. I am trying to be very careful and take my time on this. Some days I wake up and think about it and am ready to go, other days I think about the struggles that could come and am not sure I want to go through with it. I think when the time is right my heart and mind will come together and decide yes or no. When that does happen I intend to put 100% of myself into whatever decision is made. For now, my education continues.