How To Recover From Surgery with Dr. Doni Wilson | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hello there. It's Dr. Dami, and I wanted to do an update about my health and my process with the growth on my neck and the upcoming procedure to address it. First of all, I want to say thank you to all of you who've been so supportive, sending your prayers and support over the past year. Really, this started even two years ago when I injured my shoulder and it ended up causing my body to grow kind of a cyst. It's kind of a type of cyst on my. What's called the sternoclavicular joint, which is the joint where the clavicles come together at the sternum in the middle of the neck or the chest here. And it has grown over the past year. So even during the pandemic, when a lot of people were staying out of the medical offices, I've actually spent more time in medical offices in the past year than in the whole rest of my life. I've had every kind of imaging, you name it, multiple CT scans, biopsies, MRIs, ultrasounds, even a PET scan.

In order to evaluate this growth. Mostly I'm in cancer clinics to evaluate it. Although we've seen nothing to indicate that this is cancerous. All the biopsies have been benign and negative. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be cancerous, although they don't really have a name for it. It's like a cyst, like a lipoma. But also, we don't really know.

A lot of practitioners were hesitant to do surgery, I think partially because they were doing less surgeries that were considered elective surgeries for the past year.

At this point, though, I have found a surgeon who is planning to do a surgery to at least get a better idea of what this is, so they can hopefully excise at least part of it or remove at least part of it.

If they are able to excise it, hopefully it doesn't come back again. It's also given me a real chance to think about what it is and why it started there. And I always like to ask why with any kind of health issue, what is our body trying to tell us? I did that same thing with myself. I think for sure, my body was telling me that I overdid it. I overdid it with exercise. I put too much weight on my shoulder, and because of it, the joint responded with this kind of inflammatory response, although luckily it's not been painful. It's a little bit uncomfortable, I would say. And there's pressure, but luckily it's not pain, I wouldn't say. And so that's Part of it. But also it's interesting if you're familiar with chakras in the body. This area, the throat, is the throat chakra, which has to do with.

Using your voice. Sometimes it's decreasing use of your voice, sometimes it's increasing use of your voice. Sometimes it's saying things you haven't said or saying things in a way you haven't said them. So I've really explored a lot in terms of. In terms of my throat chakra and learned a lot there. It's helped me to really become more comfortable in myself and what I believe and what I have found to be helpful for people. So in some ways I'm grateful because this experience has taught me a lot about myself and my body. And it's given me a chance to really experience the medical system in a way I haven't needed to or had to in my life.

There's a lot of ways that I feel grateful for this experience. And I really found a lot of gratitude for the health practitioners that are helping me, my doctors and nurse practitioners and all of the even surgical coordinators and insurance people who have helped me along the way.

Now I'm getting ready to go in for this procedure.

It's in a couple days from now. I really also got an appreciation for those of you who are getting ready for procedures or going through different.

Medical appointments for your health issue.

I've helped a lot of patients over the years who were going into surgery and recovering from surgery until I have a surgery protocol which has been very helpful. Patients always report that their surgeons find that they recover faster and they do so much better than patients who haven't followed my surgery protocol. This has been a great opportunity for me to use it on myself, or it will be this week. Because with the surgery protocol, there are some things we can do ahead of time, like eating clean, decreasing inflammation in your diet, avoiding sugar, avoiding food sensitivities, just really dropping inflammation because then when you have less inflammation going into surgery, you're going to heal so much faster. Also getting enough sleep, which I have to say last week there was a few nights where I didn't get enough sleep. I've been really working on trying to catch up on sleep and be ready so that when I go into this procedure, I'm well rested and also plan on needing a lot more rest after the procedure. Also the stress recovery activities, which I encourage doing all the time anyway as part of my care method. But I especially want to do that as I'm preparing for surgery, making sure I'M getting in lots of time to just process, process the idea of going under anesthesia, of the unknown, of what information are they going to get from this? How is it all going to go? How am I going to feel afterwards? There's so much to think through, and it takes time and processing, journaling, talking to friends, meditation, to be able to process these different experiences that we go through. It's pretty intense. And even exercise, one of my surgeons always says to me, keep on exercising, because it is true. When we exercise and we're active, we have the muscles that are going to help us recover, and it's going to help us through the process of the procedure. So it's important to keep active. Now, of course, after the procedure, I'm going to have some days where I probably won't be able to be as active, but that's okay. Then I'll get back to it as soon as I feel up to it. So I use the care method to help me prepare. And then also there are certain supplements. I mean, most times before surgery, the surgeon's office will tell you to stop taking all your supplements, which sometimes that's just the easiest thing because they are not able to review everything you might be taking. But the most important thing is you don't want to thin your blood too much before surgery, so you want to stop taking anything that might thin the blood. Like, I usually would take some omega 3 fish oils. Sometimes I take some curcumin. Both of those, especially at higher doses, can thin the blood for me. Sometimes if I'm taking higher doses of folate, that will cause more thinning of my blood. I just look at it as, okay, let me just, for the past couple weeks, decrease the fish oil and anything else that might have been too much blood thinning. I actually like to increase my vitamin C and glutathione in preparation for a procedure because I know my body's going to need the immune support and the antioxidants to help metabolize the medications and to help with the recovery, the tissue recovery.

I tend to use a little bit of those nutrients that are going to be supportive without thinning my blood. Then I'm definitely prepared for after the procedure as soon as I'm able to start taking supplements again. Definitely going to take arnica, which is a homeopathic remedy for trauma. You can start taking arnica ahead before the procedure, but you definitely. There's studies to show that it's helpful to take arnica probably for at least a week and even a month after A procedure so you can get arnica 30C eaten from the health food store and start taking it right away. Dissolve it in your mouth so it doesn't even really require to swallow anything. So I would consider that the minimum is a homeopathic arnica pellets a 30C like three pellets twice or three times a day. And then I'll also start taking more vitamin C and zinc and vitamin A because those are all very healing and supportive to the immune system. And collagen, which is part of helping the tissue heal from an incision. I'll also use natural anti inflammatories like bromelain, which is an enzyme, but when you take it away from food, it is anti inflammatory to.

Any inflammation in the body. If you take enzymes with food, it digests your food. If you take it away from food, it digests inflammation. We use bromelain, two or three capsules twice a day or three times a day to really help decrease the inflammation. It can also help decrease the pain. This way I'm hoping to minimize use of any kind of medications for pain. Let's see. So those are some of the keys.

Sometimes instead I could take vitamin C, zinc separately or I could take them in the EHB or my immune support formula that have the C and the zinc already in there along with some other herbs that are antimicrobial because we want to be preventing infections.

And then let's see, I'll also take more glutathione and Nac because I'm going to want to help my body to detoxify. I'll also use a probiotic because I want to have support from the good bacteria for the immune system. I'm not sure if I'll need to take antibiotics. A lot of times with a medical procedure you'll have to take some antibiotics to prevent infection. And so then you definitely want the probiotics to help stabilize your gut bacteria. I really feel it's a good idea to have the hookworms or helminth therapy. I already have helminth therapy happening for myself for the past few years, so I'm happy to have that around. It's going to help protect me with my immune system and for the healing time. And so they also are, I think are key for any kind of procedures and surgery recovery. Let's see, those are some of the key things. There's definitely some others I'll be doing like making sure I get enough protein and collagen. And then afterwards I'll definitely bump up my fish oils and flaxseed oil to get the healthy fats. Healthy fats decrease inflammation in the body. If we have less healthy fats, we increase inflammation. If we have healthy fats like fish oil, flaxseed oil and so on, then we can decrease inflammation in the body. And that's the key. We want to be able to decrease the inflammation so the body heals faster and the pain goes down faster.

So those are all the supplements. I'll be thinking about the diet, I'll be definitely sticking with my clean eating.

And then also.

Let'S see.

What else was I going to cover for you? Definitely the stress reduction. It all comes together potentially some of the peptides which are helping with recovery from stress and trauma as well. Then I'm going to just have to see how the surgery turns out, how quickly I recover. I'll update you, I'll see if I can record again.

A couple days to give you some follow up in terms of how the procedure goes, what I learned. Anything else I can share with you? One thing I did, and I definitely suggest this before doing a procedure is they don't always require that you go in and do a pre op visit at the hospital. But I chose to because I feel like to me, the more information I have and the more information they have about me, the better. So I went in today and met with the anesthesiology team to find out which medications are they likely to give. It might change again on the day of the procedure, but at least I have a sense of what they're going to give. I can look up potential side effects. I can look at the metabolism and make sure I have the nutrients to help my body metabolize the anesthesia. Also they checked for, they do a COVID test, they do a blood type test. Even though I already know my blood type, they wanted to recheck my blood type. They also check for INR and pt, ptt, which is how thin your blood is.

And they check for a few other things too, like liver enzymes and they don't. But I asked to check for homocysteine, methylmalonic acid, vitamin D ferritin, because to me this gives me nutrient information and I want to make sure that I have that my methylation is working well. Right. Those of you who are familiar with addressing methylation will know what I'm saying. You know, we want to make sure that my body's using my B vitamins effectively because the B vitamins are very important for detoxification and making healthy cells and making healthy neurotransmitters So I really want to make sure my methylation is working well and that my dosing for methylation is going well. So I checked my homocysteine, which was right at 7, so it was perfect. My methylmalonic acid is for B12. It looked good, too. My vitamin D looks pretty good. I'm going to take some extra vitamin D the next couple days to make sure it's really at a good level. I like to get it even above 40 if I can, and it's right about 40. And ferritin, which is your iron storage, they check for anemia. But I asked to check for ferritin because I want to make sure I have enough iron storage and even boost that up a little bit before the surgery because I know there's going to be some blood loss that's just part of it. Right. So we want to make sure our body can have the nutrients it needs to make more red blood cells. That includes the B vitamins as well as iron. So the next couple of days, I'm going to be boosting up my vitamin D and iron so that my body has what it needs to really recover and repair after the procedure. Let's see. So those are the tests I asked for. Those are the communications I had with. I've been in contact with the surgeon's office, with my other doctor's office. I've been in contact with the anesthesiologist office with the hospital. The thing I find with the hospital is they have a lot of paperwork and they'll just give it to you all at once when you show up for your procedure, which is kind of overwhelming because when you go in for a procedure, you have to go in fasting. So you already got low blood sugar levels probably. And if you're like me, I wear contacts and you can't have contacts during a procedure. So I'm going to need to wear my glasses. But they don't always tell you all this, so that's why I'm just trying to mention it to you. If you have a procedure you're going in for, bring and you wear contacts, be prepared that you're not going to be wearing your contacts. You're going to need to have your glasses with you so that you can see. Especially because they have a bunch of paperwork for you to review and sign. And if you can't see, it's going to be very overwhelming and frustrating. So just anticipate. There's some paperwork from the hospital you can get ahead of time. Like they can Complete your healthcare proxy and. And some of your contact information ahead of time. They'll make sure that you get your insurance all set up ahead of time so that the billing hopefully goes smoothly. It takes a lot of work, by the way. I had to do a lot of phone calls and back and forth to get the blood work from my primary care doctor's office to the surgeon's office and to get the referral from the primary care doctor's office to the insurance company and to the hospital. All these steps really required me to be proactive. You have to be willing to make these phone calls, ask them to send it to you. I kept asking them, send me my blood work, then I can forward it. Send me the referral so I can forward it. Then I can call the insurance company myself. Just know that it's very likely you're going to have to be your own health advocate and be willing to make these calls and send these emails and ask people where does this need to be at what time so that all these pieces come together to be able to make the procedure possible. And they don't tell you a lot of that. I've just figured it out along the way and then. Yeah, then you can. I anticipate that when I go in fasting on the day of the procedure, they're still going to give me more paperwork. They're going to make sure I understand what the procedure is, what it involves, what the risks are. Then I'm going to need to agree to that. Even though it's, you know, we all hope it's all going to go smoothly, but you never know, right? You never know how it's going to go. So you have to be prepared and think it through all ahead of time. And then you have to have someone there to pick you up, bring you home afterwards and help help you at home to be eating and getting dressed and taking care as you recover.

It definitely is a process that requires a lot of intention and attention in order to have the best outcome from it, I would say to really be able to get through it. Because if you think about it as. Anytime we have a medical procedure like that, it's a stress on the body. It's a stress because of the emotional stress. It's also a physical stress because now the body's going through not only exposure to different medications and chemicals, but exposure to a wound that's gonna need to heal and potential infections is gonna need to fight off. So it's a lot of stress that's coming onto the body. So if you think about it that way. You wanna help prepare yourself for that stress ahead of time. You wanna be as in the right mindset when you go into it so that you can flow with the stress and be ready for the stress. You wanna be hydrated. Even though you're fasting, you need to be hydrated and that means water as well as electrolytes. Your body can get through the stress better then as soon as you come out of the procedure, being able to go right into stress recovery mode, getting the nutrients and all of the care that you can to help your body recover from that stress as efficiently as possible. That's a bit about how I look at surgery or procedure, medical procedure, and what I'm learning and experiencing in the process. And I'll be updating you more along the way in case this might be helpful for you. If you're going through any kind of medical procedure, medical process now or in the future, something a lot of people.

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It'S Dr. Donnie and I am back from surgery. I had the surgery the day before yesterday. It was actually later in the day, about 4pm it's amazing to me that all this medical team works all day and into the evening.

Anyway, I had really an amazing experience. I feel so grateful to my doctors and the nurses and the residents and everyone who was involved in helping with this procedure. I just can't even say how it felt like it went so smoothly and I had so much support from everyone also in my life. So I feel really grateful for it. You know, going into it I. I think probably like most all of us, when you go into a surgery you have fears. You know what's it going to be, how's it going to turn out, what's going to happen? And to be able to go through this procedure like this and feel like I, you know, went so well and I had so much support and now I'm, you know, in the process of recovering and healing, which is also going really well. I, the doctor was able to successfully remove this, I guess I'll call it a cyst because we don't yet have the diagnostics of exactly what it, what to call it. That was growing here in the middle of my neck or chest. And so now I have a necklace of sutures here on my neck instead. And you can tell it, it's a little swoll, but that's just part of the healing process. And I don't have any pain. I've really not been in pain at all. I haven't needed any pain medications. I take my natural approaches. Like I've been taking the arnica, homeopathic arnica, multiple times a day. I take the bromelain, which is the enzymes that digest inflammation. I take two of them at least three times a day. I wait until it's been about an hour since I ate or before I eat because bromelain works better on an empty stomach as an anti inflammatory. Then I also take my vitamin C and zinc and vitamin A and glutathione and alpha lipoic acid and many other things, berberine, that's antibacterial to help my body with healing.

And I'm not taking any antibiotics. I haven't needed that. So it's been really good. I'm so grateful and so glad to get to try out my own surgery recovery protocol. My assistant Melissa gave me such great tips, basically to say she's like, make sure you have your arnica in your bag with you because sometimes when you're racing to get ready to go to the hospital, you end up forgetting the thing you need. You knew things like having the little bottle of arnica pellets and having the bromelain handy. And she made sure I had slippers, comfortable slippers to wear and comfortable clothes to wear. So thank you, Melissa, for those tips because I think that makes a big difference to have what you need. What I found is when I came out of surgery.

It didn't disrupt my digestion at all. Actually, I was ready to eat because I hadn't eaten all day. You're fasting when you go in for the procedure. And then I got out at like 6pm So I went to farm to table. I always like to search for farm to table restaurants because they're more likely to have whole foods and organic options and you know, foods that are not inflammatory and had a really beautiful dinner and then was able to go rest and you know, I feel more tired than usual, a bit groggy, doing less than I usually do, but I'm able to do quite a lot. And the main thing is just making, making sure I don't do too much because I don't want to lift. You know, this area is still healing. So I'm not. I can't lift more than 10 pounds and I need to rest a little bit more during the day, make sure I stay hydrated and eating healthy foods and proteins so my body can heal. And one thing that I was going to share with you when I realized, when I went into. I realized a couple of weeks before the procedure what I wanted to do is when I went to the surgery that day, I wanted to bring flowers for my doctors and my care team. When I went into the hospital on the day of the surgery, I stopped at the flower shop and got four bouquets of roses and gave them one bouquet to the the pre surgical nurses and another bouquet to the after surgical nurses and a bouquet to the surgeon who is amazing.

Also to the anesthesiologist, both of which were women.

My surgeon, an ENT surgeon, has been in practice for about 30 years. The anesthesiologist is a woman who also had a resident who was a woman. I felt like I was really surrounded by this female energy in this process, which was really beautiful. They would ask me what do I do, what do I do with my health. They were so excited to hear about me being a naturopathic physician and a midwife and how I help my patients. It was very supportive relationship.

And encouraging to be able to experience it that way. I was able to communicate with them about what medications were they going to be giving me for anesthesia. Then I was able to research that ahead of time to see how I could be supporting my liver, including with one of the other supplements I didn't mention yet is calcium D glucarate because it supports the glucuronidase pathways. Of course, I was supporting methylation with my methylated B vitamins because that all is important for liver detoxification.

So far, so good. I just wanted to update you and let you know that I'm doing well and I'm really excited to have had this opportunity to go through this process. It was a long year of finding the right surgeon to help me.

Observing this and getting it all set up to be able to do this procedure. It just feels really good to finally get to this point and be able to share it with you. I'll continue to update you on what I find out about the results from the from the diagnostics they ran on the cyst when they removed it. I hope this inspires any of you who have an upcoming procedure or surgery. You got it. You can do it and there's support to help you through it.

If I can be of help in any way, reach out so I can help guide you and give you a protocol to follow to help you through the process and the recovery so you can get through it in recovering.

The thing is, I guess I would say as smoothly as possible, we want to try to prevent infections and we want to give your body the space and time to heal in its own way, whatever that looks like for you. But we want to give it the support it needs.

I'm here for you if you need it. And thank you all again for all of your support and care and messages of support. I really appreciate it. All right, talk to you soon.

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