 So as I sat down to film this video for the second time because my mic didn't work and I wasn't aware of it, the first 25 minutes that I filmed, I spilled water all over my beautiful purple sweater. Count our blessings, it wasn't coffee. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you for joining me here today. The title is not clickbait. As you are watching this, if you're watching it when it comes out, right now I am being put under anesthesia, taking a nice forced nap, and I wanted to tell you guys what was going on. I haven't talked about this previously, but I thought now might be a good time to clue you in considering it's happening literally right now. And shocking to some, and has absolutely nothing to do with my leg, my leg is doing great. But a few months ago, I talked about, I'll link the videos down below, having some significant kidney issues, a bad kidney infection, I was in out of the hospital, the emergency room, had some very poor experiences during that time, and had unresolved pain. I had really bad abdominal pain that didn't go away, but this is not the first time that has happened. It's actually happened kind of recurrently for years. I always have some form of abdominal pain, but I've kind of learned to just sort of ignore it because it wasn't cancer, it wasn't anything super large and scary when we ran through tests years ago, and so other things, like my leg got in the way of kind of looking into it further, but this time it got so bad, it's been getting worse over time that I decided to really dig into it. So I started seeing a few different doctors and OBGYNs, and it was determined that most likely, I have something called endometriosis. Basically it's a tissue disorder where your uterine tissue decides to start growing other places, which causes a lot of problems. Now, one of the complications with this is that it cannot be diagnosed through any kind of imaging or testing. You literally have to have exploratory surgery to see if it's even there, but I have suspected I've had this for years. Doctors have suspected I've had this for years. I was actually previously checked out for it. There's a high probability that this is what's going on. I don't want to have any more surgeries. I've had quite a few in my life. I've had a lot of very poor medical experiences. I'm pretty hospital-averse at this point. So this is not something that I was gonna do, but the only other option to deal with this is to go on hormones. Basically there's a medication that's now approved, but it pretty much pushed you into early menopause. I'll be honest with other physical health issues that I have and mental health issues that I have. I don't want to play around with my hormones until I actually know for sure that that is what is going on. That just really freaks me out. I don't want to be on medications that are that potentially life-altering. So after thinking about it for a while, talking to my doctor, talking to my husband, considering it, I decided to go ahead with it. So right now I am having a laparoscopy, I think it's called, where basically it's kind of interesting if it's not you. They blow you up with gas, so like your stomach gets really larger than it normally is, so they can see inside of you. They have three different incisions where they put cameras in and they look at everything. And I think regardless, and my doctor said this as well, it'll be a good idea to look at what's going on just because of the continued pain that I've had. If it is endometriosis, they can remove as much of that bad tissue as they find. It'll help with symptom management for a little while anyways, and then there are medications that can help with that. If indeed it is endometriosis. Now, I have actually had this surgery one time before many years ago because I thought something like this could be going on. At that point, it wasn't endometriosis, but there are times where you can start experiencing symptoms of endometriosis before it's actually visible. So the current thought is that it's just continued to grow, which is why symptoms have gotten a lot worse. Hopefully, fingers crossed, you've been watching this video for a few minutes now, so I suspect I'm probably fully under and they are starting to inflate my body with gas. So weird to think about, but it should be a pretty easy process. The last time I did have this surgery, I had some pretty nasty complications. It's the only time I ever called an ambulance in my life. I was in extreme pain a couple hours after surgery, so just to make sure that doesn't happen this time, I'm aware of some of the factors that went into that. I'm gonna be staying at the hospital much longer than normal recovery, just to make sure we don't run into those issues. Everything will be fine, fingers crossed, and I should be home by this evening resting. I will be updating people over on Instagram on how things have gone. I kind of mentioned this, but the last few months of being involved in the world of medicine have been very traumatic. There have been some things that happened in hospital settings and with doctors that have left a very significant mark. So I'm really not looking forward to being in the hospital or being around doctors and nurses who are doing an amazing job and trying their best. It's just prior bad experiences, but I do believe that this is the best step to kind of figure out what's going on and hopefully take care of some pain in my life. And I've been trying not to tie myself too much to the outcome because there's a part of me that's like, I really hope they find this because then again, it's an answer, answers are important. We'll know what's going on. They can kind of fix it. I'll know how to manage it long-term. But at the same time, it is possible that that isn't what's going on, even though I do have all of the symptoms for it and it could be something else. And if that's the case, then the search continues and I will continue to try to find a solution for it as I feel like it. Because I'll be honest, I'm kind of exhausted of seeing doctors, but I don't want to be in pain either. So it's a catch 22. Also kind of interesting about this surgery in particular, they obviously know about my prosthetic leg and asked what I normally do with it in surgery. And I was like, well, I always take it off, give it to my family to hold in the lobby, which I'm sure looks great to anyone walking by. But they actually requested that I keep it on because of how they position you in surgery. They weren't sure how they could do it if I didn't have a leg. So I'm actually gonna be keeping my prosthetic on during surgery, which is gonna feel weird because I never keep it on when I'm sleeping or anything like that. Here we go. I'll be honest, the only part I like about surgery, I hate all of it, right? There's one moment that I actually enjoy. And it's that moment as they're like, all right, we're gonna go ahead and put you under count backwards from 10. And if you've never had surgery before, they'll do this sometimes. And you expect to be like 10, nine, eight, seven. Oh, I'm getting sleepy, six, five. No, it's like 10 out. I love that moment of like the moment right before you go out when you're like, oh, I'm just gonna take a nap and there's nothing that can stop me. You gotta find the little things to enjoy in the process, am I right? Maybe I'm just making myself enjoy something that's actually really terrible, but you know what? If it works for me, it works for me. So I'll be taking a nap. I'll be updating you guys, like I said, on Instagram later on how things have gone and talking about the whole process in upcoming videos. This is something that a lot of women, unfortunately, do have to deal with. It is not that rare of a condition. Not everyone has it, obviously, but it is something that can occur. It's a tissue disorder. And so if this is what they'll find, I'll definitely be doing more videos about that to help inform people and maybe get checked out themselves if they're experiencing these symptoms. From what I understand, the first three or four days are not really fun. They are kind of painful, but after that, you can start to kind of return to normal life at two weeks slowly, but surely by four weeks, I should be able to do everything that I'm normally doing again, which will be great. Fingers crossed, that goes according to plan and will be smooth and easy. I'm trying so hard to be cool, calm and collected about this. Is it working? Is it coming off like I'm cool, calm and collected? Also, this is my hospital chic outfit. I'm sure the water will dry before tomorrow. I was told to come in super, super loose, comfy clothes, so these are like a size too big, which was amazing, because with all that gas and the incisions, they want you to either wear a dress or super loose clothing. So I found this at Target for 20 bucks. I love it, it makes me feel pretty. I also have this weird thing about surgeries where I like looking as put together as I can going into surgery. I won't wear makeup or anything like that because you have to take it off anyways, but I always wear like pretty jewelry and whatever kind of cute hospital clothes I can find. So I'm wearing my Alexa jewelry tomorrow, which should be a little confidence boost as I walk into the OR. I'm gonna end the video there. Thank you so much for watching. I truly appreciate, oh, by the way, if you like this little mug here, this is a beautiful little mug. You can also find this artwork on hoodies, on t-shirts, on my website, FootlessMerch.com. Personally, this is my favorite mug to currently sip coffee out of, which I enjoy every morning, so check it out if you're interested. But enough of that. Again, thanks for watching to my patrons. Thank you so much for your continued support, especially during the last couple months when it's been very difficult to work consistently because of being in and out of emergency room and hospitals and issues. I'm truly grateful for you guys. Thank you for your support. And to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else, but you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes, and I really appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you, and I'll see you in the next video with an update. In the meantime, if you need updates, check Instagram, the link is somewhere, somewhere down below. I love you guys. Thank you so much. Bye.