That Thursday, J and I spent the day driving all over creation as she had to visit several other locations to observe something she was spearheading. It was about 350 miles of driving all told and between that and the actual time spent at each site we figured it would be a good 12-14 hours so I told her I'd go with her to keep her company. It was actually a great day, albeit long. We ended up being gone 15 hours or so as we had figured in "lunch time" - which we actually cut short and more or less ate in the car, but we didn't figure in "dinner time" which we actually stopped for and had a nice dinner. Here's what I was wearing - unfortunately when we left the house it was too dark for a good picture outside, so J and I stopped off during the day to get this and I was a bit worse for wear by then. :)
Of course that meant I didn't get a picture with her that day and that's a touch of a downer as her outfit was really cute. As for me, I'm not a big "jeans person", but it was a big chilly that morning so I made the sacrifice. I do really like the top, I can't recall exactly where I got it (Ross Dress For Less?), and despite the fact that the scarf turned into a "crumb catcher" at dinner - I even got comfortable wearing it all day. Actually it was sort of a nice test in a way as all told I ended up being out and about for the 15+ hours, plus a good hour before we left and a good hour after we got home - and I still looked reasonably good and even more than that my face still looked pretty good. The laser really has done quite a bit for me.
As good of a day as that was, Friday took a turn for the worse. J and I had planned on getting our eyebrows done and then we were going to see a movie and have some lunch out before I had to come home and make dinner. Well M was still feeling ill and actually ended up in the hospital for surgery to remove her appendix. It went well and she came home the next day, but she's sore - I can relate - the surgery to remove my gall bladder was a similar procedure. If she had a less physical job I'm sure she'd be back already - I went to work for a couple of hours the day after my surgery and was back full time a week later - but her job is physical so she'll be home for a few weeks. I'm sure it's hard for her and truthfully it's starting to get on my nerves a bit. We've all went out of our way to pick up the slack for her and while she is appreciative of that - she's also sort of let herself become very sedentary. If she continues to do that for the next couple of weeks, she's going to have it rough when she does go back to work and she just doesn't seem to see it. I'm not saying she needs to overly exert herself, but a little walking or something would probably do her some good since she's now going on 11 days since the surgery, but I digress. Unfortunately for her, she, along with M2 and P had taken some vacation next week and were going to take a little roadtrip, and apparently now they aren't for several reasons. So I'm guessing she'll be having some severe cabin fever over the next couple of weeks. :)
Despite our day being turned upside down due to M's medical issue, J and I have been far better lately. We just celebrated our 5th anniversary as I mentioned HERE. I love her more and more each day and I cherish every day with her. If I have a regret it's that we didn't find each other sooner. :)
With that being said, I did have another downer and that's over insurance and SRS. As I had mentioned before J's open enrollment was coming up and while I didn't expect them to cover SRS this year (I figured *maybe* next year) - I still held out hope. And that hope was dashed. That in and of itself wouldn't have bothered me, but from what I can tell the insurance company they use *will* cover it, so her company chose to exclude it this year and that upset me. Probably more than it should, but it did.
So because of that I looked into having the surgery without insurance and as I've said before it's probably doable, but a stretch that I wasn't willing to make. I'm still not sure that I am, but I did start looking into it seriously. Specifically into a surgeon I had previously dismissed - Dr. Harold Reed in Miami. I had ruled him out for three reasons:
- He does his procedure "outpatient" and that scared me a bit as it is serious surgery.
- Miami seemed like it was too far to drive and if I had to fly I might as well fly to Montreal for Dr. Brassard (as one example).
- I couldn't find much (current) information from people who had seen him. Most of what I found was years old and that really concerned me.
Well, as I said I looked into him again and with regards to the three concerns above, I felt I had answers for each:
- Yes he does do it outpatient, but after having my orchi done outpatient I was a bit more confident about being able to handle that. Now I know it's a much more involved surgery, but you are there the first night and after that he does visit every day and really I figured I'd just as soon be in a hotel as a hospital those days. Additionally, it was highly likely I'd be able to return home a few days sooner than most other surgeons which held an appeal.
- In reality Miami is about 17-18 hours by car which is too far to drive in *one day*. However, from here Atlanta is almost exactly half way and is about 8-9 hours. That's about the same drive as we made to Detroit for my Orchi and we enjoyed that drive. Granted we'd be making that size drive two days in a row - but we also would have the option to spend a "layover" day in Atlanta and do things like visit the Coca-Cola Museum, CNN, etc. And I do truly dislike the airport "experience" so being able to make the drive would be nice.
- I did actually find some more current experiences of his and they were all positive. Now there are negative comments about him floating around, but the same can be said of other surgeons such as Dr. Bowers, and even some of the surgeons in Thailand. Others may disagree, but I felt comfortable enough with what I had learned to trust him to do my surgery.
Now I haven't touched on cost, but he is cheaper that most North American surgeons - partially (mostly?) I'm assuming because he doesn't do the surgery in a hospital. I won't lie, that was *a factor* - not *the factor* as this is a life altering procedure, but definitely a factor and the expense including our travel, etc., would be doable now. Still a bit of a stretch, but I felt we could handle it, so with that said I contacted him and he was very gracious in answering some initial questions I had.
However, the first question was the deal breaker and that had to do with my weight/BMI. He would want me to be at 175lbs which is actually a stricter requirement than even Dr. McGinn - she wants a <28 BMI which for me is about 180lbs. Had if he had said something along the lines of what Dr. Bowers wants (210lbs) I probably would have scheduled something on the spot. However, if I have to meet that weight requirement - well then I feel I might as well pursue Dr. McGinn as she's a bit closer and was one of my preferred choices anyway. By no means am I disparaging Dr. Reed over this - I understand his rationale - I just feel that if I'm going to have to spend the time to lose another 30-40lbs I might as well go with somebody who was among my first choices. And truthfully I guess that reality was that it was a long shot to do something too soon anyway as I haven't started having my hair cleared in that area yet - I have my next laser appointment in a couple of weeks and she's going to do my face and back of neck as she's been doing and possibly start down there - provided it's healed well enough from the orchi (I'm fairly certain it has). I'm sure that will take several sessions and probably some follow up electrolysis to get cleared. I know it's not technically a requirement for many surgeons, but considering how much body hair I do have, I'd rather be proactive about it and not have to hope that they can get it all during surgery. So I've rambled on enough about this, lets move on to one more positive so I can wrap this up.
As I've already touched on our 5th anniversary, I'll take about Sampson - I wrote about him HERE. What prompted me to write about him then was that he had been recently diagnosed with early stage renal failure and he's having been having more and more trouble getting around. As it turned out, Emily actually passed shortly after I wrote about all the cats - at the time I figured it was 50/50 as to if it would be him or her. Well Sampson had a vet visit the other day and all things considered the vet says he's doing fairly well. That doesn't change the fact that he will eventually succumb to the renal failure (or something else), but for now he's got a reasonably good outlook and while some might not find that a positive - I do. If you had asked me back in July when I wrote about the cats I would have said that I wasn't sure if Sampson would be here with us in November - and not only is he in fact here with us, he's actually doing pretty well. For that I'm quite grateful.
One more positive - J just finished her rotation last night and has her two days off. Unfortunately I have to work, but I'm sure we'll have some nice quality time together which I'm looking forward to. As I turn around and see her sleeping I can only think about how beautiful and wonderful she is and how much she means to me and those thoughts are what I will go to sleep to in a couple of minutes. I love you sweetie - and you too Sampson (he's lying in "his" desk chair next to me as I type this).
- M
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