July 31

That’s my date. A bit later than I had hoped, but coordinating the schedules of 4 surgeons in the summertime is a bit like, well according to the secretary at the Department of Surgery, “getting an audience with the Pope.” Since I’ve never tried to do either of these things, I have to take her word on this. I’ve already entered the next planning stage – deciding when to start my leave from work, figuring out what needs to be done around the house beforehand, scheduling flights and caretaker time after the surgery, etc. Fortunately Pat and I just returned from a 10 day vacation to Banff and Jasper (Alberta, Canada) and while I can’t say that we “relaxed”, we did have a fabulous time – spent out days hiking and enjoying the Canadian Rockies. While early June was a bit chilly, it was the perfect time to see the wildlife – just out of hibernation, but not annoyed with the tourists. We saw white tailed and mule deer, goats, sheep, elk, moose and bear, lots and lots of bears. And the baby animals as well – fawns, lambs, and even a mama bear and 2 cubs. I took tons of pictures – will share some soon. All in all we had a great time – like I said we were busy so it wasn’t like sitting on the beach with a book for a week, but it was the perfect change of pace. We planned this vacation knowing it may be the last time for a while I am comfortable traveling (though who is ever really comfortable with port-a-johns???)

I’ll write more later, just wanted to send out the “save the date” info.

July it is

Apologies for the delayed update – technical glitch behind the scenes which locked me out of the website for the past week. Didn’t make much of a difference though because I didn’t have any information or news to share until yesterday. After several phone calls and frustrated messages, I heard back from Dr. Nauta’s assistant. She said he was finally able to arrange a conversation between himself and the other three surgeons he wanted on my case. Now that they were in agreement about what needed to be done, we were ready to schedule a date.

As we had previously discussed, July seemed to be the best option for many reasons. We decided to try for a Thursday since this was Dr. Nauta’s scheduled Operating Room time and so we knew this piece of the puzzle fit. We ruled out July 3rd because of the holiday and decided to try for either of the following two Thursdays – July 10 or July 17. The problem now will be coordinating the schedules of 4 surgeons to make certain they can all be available. Because Dr. Nauta is Chief of Surgery at Mt. Auburn, he does have some clout and I think this will make some of the other doctors a little more flexible with their time. At least I’d like to think so.

In addition to Dr. Nauta who will be doing the majority of the operation, the other doctors include my urologist, Dr. Karian, a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wells, and another general surgeon, Dr. Vittemberger who was actually the first surgeon at Mt. Auburn to operate on me all those years ago. He still recognizes me and says hello in the hallway when I see him.

I should get a final date from his office by the end of this week, but I feel much better knowing that we are this much closer to getting this over with.

OK, late night, much to do. Back soon.

Still waiting

I’m not holding out and keeping my surgery date secret. I still don’t know when it is going to be. I’m a bit frustrated at this point and just want the date so that I can move forward with planning my next few weeks of freedom. I’ve left a couple of messages for Dr. Nauta and finally today I heard through the Mt. Auburn grapevine that he will let me know my surgery date by the end of this week. There are many things I need to do to prepare and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to ask for 6 weeks of lead time before the surgery. In the past I’ve had surgeries that were scheduled 1 or 2 weeks out and those were stressful as I struggled to quickly get everything in order – work, home, family, etc. I definitely left many loose ends with those surgeries.

I’ve also had surgeries that I knew about weeks or months in advance – and those are stressful in a whole different way. It is possible to have too much time to think about things – I end up trying to micromanage. Given my history of unexpected complications (my leg for instance…) I am actually not freaking out about the “what if’s”. I know I can handle whatever is thrown at me – at least physically. Right now my imagination is getting the best of me and I am assuming that the reason I have not heard from Dr. Nauta with my surgery date is that he can’t find a neurosurgeon willing to take on my case – that the doctors don’t want to operate on me because of my history and previous complications. I know this isn’t the situation, but in the 3 weeks since I met with Dr. Nauta and told him to go ahead and schedule things, this is one scenario that keeps popping up. I’ve been assured that this is a crazy thought and not even a possibility. I’ll rest easy when I have my date and list of doctors – maybe not. I’ll be able to focus on worrying about the actual surgery and recovery, something more concrete and reasonable to stress over.