My Recent Surgery Hat Trick

a few experiences from the last two years

Medically speaking, the last two years or so have been rather rough. In addition to the usual occasional illnesses, I’ve gone under the proverbial “knife” (now more often laproscopic instruments) several times, two of them surgeries scheduled well in advance, two of them complete emergencies. I’m currently home recovering from the latest one, an appendectomy that falls in the latter class, and I saw Hilarius Bookbinder’s recent article “An objective rating of some surgeries I did not enjoy”, and thought to myself that, before I got back to my usual plans and projects, I might write a little about my own recent surgeries, though perhaps in a different manner.

His piece does in fact provide ratings for the surgeries he underwent, organized along three different categories: “Terror”, “Post-op pain”, and “Overall satisfaction”. The second and third, I entirely relate to. They’re really important considerations, which could be expanded to a number of additional factors.

For example, pre-surgery pain: what was the level of the pain you entered the surgery with, and what would be the likelihood of it lessening or ending on its own? In the case of my appendix, it was pretty bad, close to some of the worst pain I’ve felt in my life. And though it wouldn’t have lessened on its own (in fact it got worse over time), it certainly would have eventually stopped, because if they didn’t remove my appendix, I’d be dead.

Mobility after surgery and how long it takes you to get back full or at least acceptable capacities and activities strikes me as another important factor. I suppose the overall satisfaction could include what the medical staff were like (competent, caring, communicative, consistent with each other? Or the opposites). Or what the hospital stay was like (was the ward or wing comfortable and quiet, or pandemonium, or somewhere in between?). How was the food, if you had any?

“Terror” for me isn’t a category that resonates, though I can certainly see how for many it might. One of the surgeries the Bookbinder discusses, radial keratotomy, would be scary for me, since I don’t like anything going very near let alone into my eye. When I was younger I might have viewed some of the surgeries I recently underwent through lenses of largely unfounded “what if?” fears. But now, when they take me in for an operation, so long as I’ve been informed about risks, procedures, outcomes, and the like by people I am willing to think are reliable, I’m generally good, emotionally speaking.

I don’t think I’ll engage in any rating of my surgeries today, though. I’ll share my reflections about three of them.

The fourth I can say a bit about, just to get the topic out of the way early on. It was indeed surgery, but pretty minor stuff. I had a cyst removed from my lower back that was there for years and was starting to cause me some pain, mainly just by getting in the way of muscle tissues that needed to move around it. That was a simple go-in get-it-done operation. Just a local anesthetic. Had it in the morning and I was home by noon. We mainly just had to monitor the incision site, and I had to refrain from baths until it fully healed.

The other three were major surgeries. The first one kind of snookered me, though, since it was technically considered “elective”, and the surgeon suggested beforehand I’d be up and back to normal work in just a day or two. I thought I’d teach an online class the day after. My wife, fortunately, was under no illusions. It’s good to have at least one person in the household who has a realistic take on the overall situation.

That operation was a cholecystectomy, performed to remove my gallbladder, which had started going noticeably bad about six months earlier. The reason it was hurting consistently, and worse that that, itching occasionally from the inside, was that it was forming gallstones and accumulating what they call “sludge”. I could have had it out earlier, but the initial surgeon I was supposed to go to did not inspire much confidence for solid reasons I’ll skip over, and scheduling an excellently rated surgeon took more time (since they’re understandably in higher demand).

They put you under with general anesthetic, blow your abdomen up with gas, laproscopically remove the gallbladder, seal everything up inside, and then suture the four holes they’ve made in you shut. Then you’re off to the recovery room. It took me longer than why had expected to fully stabilize, and the operation itself went longer than originally planned. The surgeon euphemistically explained that my gallbladder had been “very angry”, that is, in considerably worse shape than they had expected it to be. The gas they use to blow you up can give you some serious pain for a while, and I felt it especially in my left shoulder. But by late afternoon, I was ready to be discharged, and went home.

Recovery took the time that it demanded. Medical staff or websites can give you estimates, but that’s all they are. Your individual body is what ultimately decides that matter. There was a lot of dull pain for quite sometime where they’d moved stuff around in my abdomen, a bit of sharper pains where they made the cuts, and moving around in normal manners that I’d previously taken for granted could cause pains as well.

But I didn’t get any infections, so the pains I’ve mentioned (which lessened over time) and having to spend a good bit of time convalescing (i.e. not doing things I’d like to, e.g. taking baths, going for long walks, working at the cat shelter) were the extent of what I had to deal with. That surgery was back in March of 2026, so two years and three months back.

The next one was entirely unplanned, involved a freak accident and catastrophic injury, a massive surgical intervention, and months of recovery time. That one occurred last year in early October. I’ve written quite a bit about that in my Substack as “Lessons Learned From A Fall” a seven-part series. I’m going to give you the short version here. I fell just right and shattered the head and neck of my femur, the stump of which then went up into my hip socket itself. So about 1/3 of my femur and the entire hip socket had to undergo emergency hip replacement surgery, which does some of the same work but is a very different operation from ordinary, routine, scheduled him replacement surgery due to the amount of bodily trauma involved.

That isn’t laproscopic surgery by many means! Instead, there’s a massive but precisely mobile framework that holds your leg in place and manipulates it as needed. They made a long incision at the top of my thigh, where they extruded the torn up femur so they could saw off the unsalvageable parts, and then attach the new titanium portion of the femur, driving an anchoring spike deep down the center of the bone. They also went in through there to scoop out the wrecked hip socket itself and replace that with ceramic. Then there’s fitting the call into the socket, and testing the fit and movement. My surgeon wasn’t entirely happy with that, so he took the first femur portion off, and then replaced that replacement with a second one, which he worked to his satisfaction.

There was a lot of pain both before and after that surgery, and of course a much more massive and longer-lasting impact upon my mobility. But by March this year, I was past most of that (I’ll likely have minor nerve pain the rest of my life from where the surgeon had to move it during the operation), walking well without a cane, getting around just fine with the new hip.

And then last weekend, things went south once again for my body. I suppose I could have known that something was up, since I’d been feeling run down over the last week, and having occasional low-grade abdominal discomfort. But until the actual pain in my right side came on and then intensified, there’s no way we could have known (though if we were sufficiently hypochondriac, I guess we could have suspected!) that what had happened was my appendix was going bad.

Looking at the medical notes, that organ had already gone bad. A day and a few hours passed between my first feeling the pain, which got worse quickly, and the surgery, and by the time they took the appendix out it was necrotic, firmly stuck to the intestine, and had ruptured. That explained why I’d been feeling rough for days before it, and it also explained why I was feeling the levels of pain I’ve experienced days after the surgery.

It’s one thing if they can make a few cuts, inflate your abdomen, go in, snip the appendix away, and seal you up. It’s quite another when they’ve got to cut and tug a dead organ lose from the other organ its adhering to, and suction the slop out of your guts so you don’t get any sicker than you are. They gave me some serious doses of some high-powered antibiotics, first by IV, then in pill forms.

Fortunately, having had that gallbladder removal more than two years back, I had a good idea what to expect with the aftereffects and the recovery for this surgery. That extends to levels of pain, limits on mobility, restrictions on activities, and the fatigue that can hit unpredictably. So this time around it’s easier for me to maintain a sense of perspective and proportion about all these matters, and to feel less frustration, impatience, and disappointment.

There are two considerations that really put all of these matters into perspective. When it comes to this recent unplanned surgery, I can keep in mind what the outcome of not having the surgery would have been, and that’s pretty much guaranteed death for me. The other is that I’m extraordinarily fortunate to have a loving and supportive partner and wife, Andi, who was with me through each of these surgeries and through the recovery times.

So now, once again, we’re together in a time after a crisis, rebuilding and getting things back on track. That will likely take some time, involve a few setbacks or detours, and go more slowly than we’d like. But given the alternative, that’s quite all right!

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Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, the co-founder of The Stoic Heart®, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.