Ignorance is Bliss

I'm a little over two weeks away from having to have a hernia operation and I look forward to it with highly mixed feelings. My emotions run the gamut from "denial", all the way to "denial while in excruciating pain". It's weird. Sometimes I feel pretty good, good enough, at least, to convince myself that I was imagining things. "That must have been a dream!", I tell myself. "It's all better now!"

And then an hour passes and I realize once again what an idiot I am.

My anxiety has been increasing in slow waves as the reality of having to have an operation becomes more apparent. But today, I decided I have a choice (not the choices I want, but still...). I decided I can continue to be a slave to my own senseless fears; fears growing like mushrooms in the darkness of ignorance (I just made that up!). Or I can empower myself and step into the Bright Light called KNOWLEDGE (not to be confused with that other Bright Light). I decided that it's my fear of the unknown that's feeding this fear (the first fear, that is. Not the second fear). If I take some of the mystery away, it won't be as intimidating. "Knowledge is Power", I decided (I heard this somewhere). So even though I've had two different doctors tell me what's going on, I decided I will do a little investigating myself. Why let my imagination run wild?!?!??

In my thirst for knowledge, I came upon this helpful checklist of symptoms:
"A bulge in the groin."   Check!
"Bulge may appear gradually over a period of several weeks or months."   Check!  
"Bulge may form suddenly after you have been coughing, bending, straining, or laughing."   Check!
"Groin discomfort or pain."  (This seems a little redundant to me, but ... Check!)
There's more, but you get the idea.

(All this talk of "the Bulge" reminds me of a funny story: I'm in the surgeon's office. He's groping me. He's describing those very symptoms above while I can barely stand. He stops and sits there, thinking. He stares seriously at me for a minute and then he says: "Are you able to push the bulge back in?" HA! I would have laughed out loud but as you can see from above, that would have been counterproductive.)

Anyway, along with the helpful checklist, I came upon this video which manages to be both enlightening and disgusting. You get bonus points if you make it past the first fifteen seconds.

As I unfortunately found out, this is one of the milder videos.