Today's Update

Pretty Flowers

I am working against three deadlines this week - trying to get my car inspected (not going great), trying to get the repairs of my front porch in motion to satisfy my insurance company (also not going great) and trying to get all of this addressed before my knee operation on Friday - which remains to be seen whether it is going great, not great, or somewhere in between. So far, initial signs are not promising. This has nothing to do with the health of my knee (or lack thereof). But rather, it is the moving target of when I have to be at the hospital for the operation.

I was hoping for an early morning operation, for a few reasons. First, I just wanted to get it out of the way, and the sooner, the better. Second, I can’t eat twelve hours before the operation, and while it’s unusual for me to eat anything before lunchtime anyway, knowing I can’t eat (or have coffee), makes me want to eat even if I'm not hungry. (Such is my nature on many things, I guess.)

I was also hoping to have the operation done earlier in the day so that I could be home, if not by the time Sam gets home from school, than at least by his dinner time. At some point, he'll begin to worry and worries can be hard enough to deal with when you’re alone, but they get harder as the day gets later.

Another reason I was hoping for earlier rather than later time, is that if this happens late on a Friday afternoon, and the surgeon is anything like me, his mind could be anywhere except where it’s supposed to be (i.e., on me). I could forgive him if he sliced into the wrong knee of someone else.It will be harder to forgive him if he does it to me.

The surgeon’s office first called me about two weeks ago (or rather, called my answering machine) and said I had to be at the hospital at 12:30 for a 1:30 operation - not my ideal time, but it could be worse.

Then, last week, they left another message on my machine saying that the time had changed and that I had to be at the hospital at 9:00 for a 10:30 operation. Leaving aside the question of why I had to get there an hour and a half before the operation in the morning and only an hour before the operation when it was in afternoon, I felt this was good news. But then, on Monday, I came home to a message that said the schedule has changed again - and now I had to be at the hospital at 2:30.

This was not only worse than before, but I noticed that this time, they didn't say anything about what time that actual operation was going to be. If it keeps to the same pattern, the wait time should be even shorter. I can only assume that this is because as it gets later in the day, especially being a Friday, everyone wants to get out of there and go out to the bars, or wherever it is they go.

But that’s not all the message said. To make it even worse, it said that they "apologized for the change," but it was due to “equipment problems (!)”... whatever that means, and "if I had any questions, to please call their office." I had questions.

I called their office yesterday and I got their answering machine. I left a message but I never got a call back. Not a good sign. I’ll try again today.

Until then, it's back to dealing with the issues of my car and my house.

Other than that, everything is going great.