I am having my hip surgery today-finally, April 15 has arrived. My ride will be here in about 3 hours; it is 0500 or so-as I start this. We'll see.

They're still planning on the "core decompression," so far, and not the hip replacement. That's good news in the sense that it's good that I'm not (yet) facing a hip replacement; but also they are standing by to replace my hip should things "go south," as I say. I signed releases for both, and the consent for a transfusion of blood products if they do a hip replacement.

Funny how the list of "Call me when you get settled into your room" seems to grow. Except the one woman from another "support site" can only seem to talk about cracker and other junk missing from her home and how it's proof of an affair on her husband's part; and he's just "mentally ill," and on and on: I ignored the email for the most part and "spammed" her email--and blocked her on the site--and tried to forget: but another email to greet me: but she's not once mentioned my surgery--so to heck with her; she's useless to me anyhow.

I am taking my mp3 player with me with all it's awesome playlists; the relaxing harp music; the comedy; the pain meditations. They say they'll keep me until my pain is under control. But that is my fear. In the six months since I've essentially been "tortured" by the PMR clinic, until I "fired" them; I have not had my pain really under "control." But the anesthesia clinic says that they have a "pain team" (which does not include my former doc) that can see me. I have told them that the submucosal ("fentapops") are what works for me for acute pain; and could we please try that. It's been repeatedly noted; but I can't seem to bring myself to trust that they will have listened and heard what I said.

I am doing a "Video documentary" of my "Hospital/Recovery" experience; and I plan also to audio record key conversations; yes, there's nothing that says I cannot; and you know how doctors CYA; well, why can't I? And how can anyone criticize me for doing so?

But it's more than that: The dose of my "Long acting" medication is almost half of what it has been at the lowest therapeutic dose prior to this. Is it any wonder I've been an antisocial, irritable, depressed, anxious, *****y mess? Gee, can't imagine if it couldn't be because the PMR doc lead me to believe that I'd be put back at my "old dose" but he seemed to try and stop halfway there; but was finally forced to realize he couldn't get away with that; so I am at 2/3 of the dose. Wonder why I've been in constant and severe pain; and my moods have been so "up and down?" People have tried to talk to him to no avail; even his own psychologist. So I fired him..

But what the problem is--people seem to feel that this hip surgery is going to "solve it all." No, it will help; but my baseline pain before I saw this idiot in PMR put me on 160mg/day of oxycontin; or 80-120mg/day of methadone--before my hip condition was diagnosed or was even a problem. Plus what I required for BTP. Yeah, lots of it was due to tolerance; and when at 160mg/day of oxycontin; I decreased my own dose to 120mg/day. 160mg, seemed just like too much and the same with the methadone: I decreased myself from 120mg/day to 80mg/day. Again, it was too much. But what remains was this was my baseline of pain before this hip problem ever came along.

But they want to think that 'oh, you're going to feel so much better,' and then they say, 'we can then drop the amount of meds you're on.'

Well, even what amounts to the basically "piddly" dose of meds I am on barely is touching my basic level of pain; let alone what my hip has added to it; so this "management" is a joke. And then to start talking about taking what little I have away from me is cruel. Why is it cruel?

Because this allows me to get to the mailbox one or twice a week. It allows me 6-8 hours of sleep; but not after being awake for 2 hours halfway through: I sleep for four hours, and then for another 3 or so hours after that-if I am lucky. And this was my life before this hip problem came along.

So my fear? Losing the little I have. Yeah, I am scared: but not of having surgery--at that, I am an "old hand."

Make sense?