Thank you to everyone who responded. Hopefully my doctor will be able to access the leads easily and pull them down without any troubles, that way the battery site does not have to be messed with. In that case I'm thinking the pain will maybe be more like after the trial? I was still in quite a lot of pain then, but I was at least able to do things. If both sites have to be opened up, though, then I know the pain will be the same as the implant surgery. I guess I'll just have to cross that bridge if I come to it. And I know it's really bad timing with the grad school visit, but I still don't want to cancel it yet because part of me is holding onto hope that I'll feel well enough to make it. My doctor said my surgery can be outpatient this time, so we'll see if that remains to be true or changes like last time. Last week I rescheduled my PT appointments for the date of surgery and the following day to late afternoon for both and I did this directly with my therapist because no one was at the desk that morning. She gave me a look of are you crazy? and asked "why would you want to come in on the day of surgery?" I had to laugh and when I explained that when I came in on the same day of the trial I felt so much better and I think it really helped, she said ok and didn't question me anymore. That's just my personality to want to go go go and it's hard to scale back ahead of time

A week from today my stimulation will hopefully be out of my stomach and stay that way!