Introduction
Hearing that you need surgery can be scary for most people. Some people have gone almost their whole lives without needing to have surgery and do not know what to expect. When having general surgery, the best thing that you can do is talk to your doctor and follow the advice he gives you. You will of course be undergoing test to make sure that you are healthy enough for the surgery. One of the tests will include a blood test. They will be doing a complete blood count to make sure your numbers are in the right range. He will also listen to your heart and check your blood pressure. Making sure that you are healthy is a very important step for your doctor to take and also good for you.
History
After having tests to make sure that you will be healthy enough for the general surgery the next step will be to select a date for your surgery. Depending on the circumstances and what kind of surgery you will be having, this could be as soon as a week to a month out. You will also receive some literature explaining your surgery and what all will be involved. You may even meet with the anesthesiologist to talk about what kind of medicine he will be giving you to put you to sleep. You will also be given instructions on what you can and can not do the day before your surgery. This will usually include what time of night you need to stop eating. If you eat past that time, you need to let your doctor know. It can be dangerous if you eat and are given medicine that put you to sleep. Do not fib and tell the doctor that you stopped eating when they told you too.
Features
After your general surgery, you may be in the hospital for a couple of days. This is so the doctor knows that your blood pressure and your other vital signs are good and you will be okay once you get home. You usually will have some instructions to follow once you get home and most of the time these include when you can drive again. After your general surgery, your doctor will also want to make a post-op appointment to make sure that you are healing like you should. This is all routine procedure following an operation. Sometimes you will also have stitches that need to be removed and will have to go back to the doctor for that.
Tips and comments
Having general surgery can be very scary and frightening to people. If you listen to your doctor and follow his advice you will be okay. Some people when they have surgery try to do things to soon and end up hurting themselves and suffer from complications. Another thing to do is keep the site from your surgery clean. This will help you not have an infection and suffer more than you should be. Make sure you do your follow up visit with your doctor to make sure you are healing right. He will then also be able to tell you how soon you can go back to driving and work. Sometimes people heal faster than they thought they would and having surgery is not so bad for them. Millions of people have general surgery every year and are thankful that they did.
