One of the last things I remember before going in for surgery two weeks ago was one of the OR nurses (who in my mind has become Cheryl Wheeler) asking me "so, honey, you getting a Mercedes or a Chevy" in the inside reference that would only make sense to a liver-transplant patient...
Picture the intersection of the two lines about an inch or two above the navel, and no circle around the mercedes (duh).
Where the grey line is previous surgery from 20-odd years ago (so old, so, so, old...).
I looked at her and said "oh no, I get a sailboat!" And thus the eventual landscape of my abdomen was discussed in the parlance of pre-opp.
The "Mercedes" incision, as I understand it, used to be the typical incision for liver transplantation:
Now there is the more commonly-used "Chevrolet" incision:
Now there is the more commonly-used "Chevrolet" incision:Picture the intersection of the two lines about an inch or two above the navel, and no circle around the mercedes (duh).Now, I expect to do a better graphic later, but ..... drum roll, please ..... I give you the HMS Shirley:
Where the grey line is previous surgery from 20-odd years ago (so old, so, so, old...).So I have all this newfound respect for women who've had c-sections, and anyone else who's had that transverse abdominal incision -- ugh!!
But the worst part of it all is that Janice Joplin has been song-worming her way through my head for - let's see - about 10 days now and I cannot make her leave.
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