Image source: Pexels

Did you ever have to undergo a surgical procedure (minor or major) and did the mistake of looking online for information regarding it? What did you look for? Footage of the surgery itself, photos of the patients with the same diagnosis, or information of the downtime and the length of the recovery?

I am sure that some of you did and seeing post-surgery images got you scared and chickened out. From this perspective, Internet is not a good thing. In this vast ocean of data, it's hard to handle the amount of disturbing information and remind yourself that you may have stumbled upon a rare scenario which will not apply to you.

After you saw or read story about a surgery, those images are stuck into your mind and haunt you to the point that you feel tempted to ditch the surgical treatment that you voluntary signed up for. Once you saw a worse case, it's quite normal to experience fear . Question is, how do you get rid of it and go back to your happy place?

Sometimes you can't simply ignore the feeling and you might need some extra help in order to be zen again.

I personally don't like the sight of blood, stitches or wounds. I wasn't cut for it, otherwise I might have chosen to be a doctor. I can tolerate pain as long as I don't see its direct cause. Visualizing it makes the pain more intense and less easier to manage.

In my early twenties when I had my first surgery, I fainted as soon as I saw my stitches on my swollen, dark purple and bruised skin. Back then, the doctor had mentioned that my stitches looked beautiful.

Yesterday I underwent a Xanthelasmas removal intervention. Prior to the excision I asked my buddy Google for recovery time for Blepharoplasty. I had some questions that I had forgotten to discuss with the surgeon and I thought it was important to know the answers.

In case you don't know what Xanthelasmas are, let me help you out. Xanthelasmas are those small deposits of fat or cholesterol under the skin, that some lucky people get around their eyes. It can be genetic, it can be due to high levels of cholesterol or simply anomaly of the levels of lipids in one's body. In my case, they were genetic, as my mother and older brother had them, though not as big as mine.

Thus, yesterday, my friend Google helped me land on a blog which presented a detailed diary of a post-surgery.

My cholesterol filled-plaque looked similar to this. I had them for two years and seeing that they only got bigger, I decided to do something about it.

Therefore, I went reading more on this blog and freaked out when I saw the post-surgery photos which looked like this:

Before seeing this image, I was fine. After I laid my eyes on it, I got cold feet and almost cancelled everything. At that point I did not care about anything. All I knew was that I did not wish to end up like the woman in the photo above. I chickened out like a school girl!

Images source: here

It took a lot of convincing from my best friends and two hours spent on creating an acrylic painting (which turned out pretty rad) to get back to my happy place and decide to go on with the Xanthelasmas removal.

In the evening, when I got to the clinic, I spoke with the surgeon about my fears and he managed to chase away any last doubts. Plus, the excision of the lower and upper fatty lumps was not a big thing as I thought.

In addition, this morning when I looked in the mirror I was more than please to see that my face did not look anything like the image that almost made me change my mind. Not even close!

In conclusion, do NOT follow my example and consult Dr. Google! Address any of your concerns to the specialist and you'll have a less stressful day!

Unless stated otherwise, all photos used in this posts are taken and owned by myself. If you wish to use any of my images, please contact me!

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Please leave your feedback in the comments, I would love to hear your thoughts!

@2018 LaviPicu aka The Lyme Poet. All rights reserved.