Hi Ladies
Well, after all my ups and downs last week, and reality hitting home Saturday night, and only two of my friends actually coming to Gang Women's Day yesterday (the others all backed out.....), I thought today was going to be a real challenge!!
The financial people at the hospital insisted that I go sign up for Medicaid to cover the Medicare deductible... <sigh> When all of that was said and done, DH said to the case worker "What was all this good for, anyway, if you're just going to deny us?" She said "You were going through the formalities to make the hospital happy. Just take them this paper to prove you've been here and signed up, and they'll take it from here." Ohhhhh-kay.... So I wasted two hours of time and a LOT of paperwork <shrug>
Then I got to the doctor's office. The nurse did her thing with me, we went over all the papers from my previous visit in September. I reached into my purse and pulled out the list of questions I printed from here and added to and deleted from as I felt like it, and scribbled ALLLLLLLL over the margins with questions of my own!
Doc came in, explained the surgery once again, went over all the risks and benefits and etc., had us sign the consent form. Then... He saw my paper. "I take it you have questions for me?" and grinned. I said "Yeah, I found the HysterSisters website and started with their questions and made them my own." He grinned even wider, said "How is it there?" I said "WONDERFUL!" He said "My nurse says it's great and I should at least go read it. Is she right?" I said "You got it!"
What a lovely person he is, he patiently answered EVERY question I had on the paper, and turned to DH and said "What's going on for you with this? Are you all right with it? Do you have any questions? Is there anything I forgot to talk about?"
He looked me over, said my lungs are quite clear, and despite having had a cold last week and still having a little post-nasal drip, I'm good to go!!
Tomorrow, I go to the hospital, have blood work done, meet the A-man, and hopefully have an EKG (I have one goofy heart valve and while it's never stopped me from doing anything in my life that I wanted to do, I'm a little bit overprotective sometimes about "How's it doing?")
We did agree that I'm going to be put to sleep (I DON'T wanna know what he's doing while I'm asleep!!!!), but have an "intrathecal morphine block" before I wake up so that I'm not in pain for 6-12 hours after surgery is done. We'll take pain control from there with morphine if I need it, or Percocet; then Percocet dwindling down into Aleve at home. (He offered Motrin, but I don't have exactly wonderful responses to Motrin - like, it doesn't even work on me!!!). I told him I'm one of the "loonies who actually LIKE prune juice" and he laughed, said that was wonderful by him, drink away!
The bad news..... I have to do a Fleet enema the night before..... But after that, "prep" is done. <whew!!>
Bet after reading all of this, YOU're saying "WHEW!", too!!
Hugs to all of you, thank you SOOOOOO much for being so supportive and warm and kind!
Cat
Pre-op physical today, doc is TOO funny!
