Pre-operative Assessments

Before my doctors will operate, they require additional testing to be done beforehand. A cardiovascular assessment and a psychological evaluation. 

I had an ECG and a stress test done by a cardiologist. From what I understood, there are two reasons for this. The first is to make sure my heart can handle the anesthesia and laying on my stomach for 6 hours as the surgery can be fairly long. The other reason is to make sure my body can handle all the hormone changes and ups and down post-op. When a person lives with chronic pain and then suddenly that pain ends or decreases, your body and your hormones go crazy and can impact several body systems.  

I also had a very long, very thorough pre-surgical psychological evaluation done with a psychiatrist.  My doctors started requiring every patient prior to surgery have an assessment done because they were finding that a certain group of people were not having as much success after surgery compared to others. They found that people who have depression, anxiety, or are dealing with an underlying mood disorder can feel physical pain, and unfortunately many chronic pain sufferers struggle with depression and anxiety due to how the pain causes such high levels of stress and severely disrupts your life. My doctors want to see which patients are experiencing this as they can fix the physical issue, but this alone its not enough for success. It also may affect the patient’s ability to cope with expected post-op sensory changes. Basically, they want to make sure the patient has all the support and tools they need to maximize the surgery’s success. 

My results for the psychological evaluation revealed that I don't suffer from anxiety or depression, however I do respond to stress higher than a "normal" individual does.  Because my body runs at a constant level of stress due to chronic pain, my baseline is higher than it should be. So even if there is something small that is causing me stress, my body responds a lot more aggressively because it already has a head start. With this knowledge my doctor explained to me the importance of deep breathing, meditation, etc to keep stress under control in order to avoid severe pain flare ups.   

I also had bloodwork done and had to stop any injections (nerve blocks, botox, trigger point injections) in surgical area. I had to watch what I ate to make sure I didn’t take any medications, herbal supplements, or eat any foods that could increase bleeding and bruising.