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William Trankle  Most of my prep was mental.  The physical pain, discomfort, weakness, etc, are all normal and largely out of your control, but how you are mentally going into surgery is a bit more difficult.  After my first operation, I had a bad experience getting my Blake tube pulled, and I also had an NG tube installed for 24 h to handle morphine-induced vomiting.  Thus, my first procedure recovery kinda sucked.  That made going into the 1st re-do more difficult, and it was fraught with its own complications that made it unenjoyable.  That meant for my second re-do, I was in the worst headspace, but it turned out to be the best recovery experience.  That was entirely because I had a surgical team and recovery team that knew what they were doing.  That is SO key.  Dr. Marc Gerdisch did my 2nd redo, and there was a ton of scarring that they had to dissect just to open me up, so make sure your surgeon has experience with re-dos!  Good luck.

Erica Archibald  That’s really good to know! I forgot about scar tissue.  That’s for sure a problem. I’m confident I’ll have a great surgeon and team. My head space is ok and I need to think beyond surgery to keep it that way.