Author: Openbah

I got a call from a resident at my surgeon’s office today. My new surgery date is March 14th. I feel confident that it will not change again. He explained why they’ve been changing the dates. The first time was because they had too many surgeries scheduled that day and wanted more time to spend on my surgery (6-8 hours). The second time they changed the date was because the doctor wants to be around after my surgery in case something comes up and they need him to be there. The resident I spoke to said if it were him having the surgery, he’d want to have it on the 14th.

This is a big relief for me. Yeah, the surgery isn’t until 18 days from now, but at least it’s a definite date. Not knowing was really stressing me out.

At this point I can expect to get off crutches sometime in the middle of September.

My NYC surgeon’s office called me at 6PM tonight with some pretty good news. They successfully rescheduled 3 other surgeries so that I could get operated on March 4th. Just one minor issue: the surgeon is leaving for a conference in California the day after my surgery. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter to me, but he may decide he wants to be there himself to monitor my recovery. The choice is his, and I assume he will make the decision he feels comfortable with, and that will be okay with me.

Tomorrow morning I need to call the Marine Corps OSO and tell them I need to get a new set of travel orders. I never mind calling them, even when I know I’m being a pain in the rear. They’re always happy to help make things easier for me, no matter how much more work it means for them.

Got a call Friday at 4PM from the surgeon’s office in NYC. I knew immediately what they were going to tell me, I didn’t even need to hear her say it. “You’re going to want to scream,” she says. I tell her she’s probably right.

The doctor was looking over the upcoming surgery schedules and decided he wanted more time to spend on my surgery, and was going to push me back to March 18th. I freaked: I told her that this wasn’t just a surgery date they kept changing and that it was my life they were screwing with. She said she’d do her best to push 3 other people scheduled for March 4th back, and schedule me for then.

I’m expecting a call from her tomorrow with hopefully some better news.

People keep saying I should screw them and have the surgery somewhere else, but it’s just not that easy. Even if I found someone else to perform the surgery, I wouldn’t get it before March 18th. I would need to get all new X-rays, MRIs, blood tests, referrals, authorizations, physicals, etc. That means more doctors visits, more traveling, more paperwork, more hours spent on the phone, and so on.

But people don’t think of that, it’s easy for them to just say “you should have the surgery somewhere else.” They think that’ll make me happy. I think they have no idea.