Dating Dilemma

Yesterday we closed on our house re-finance. This means we took a bunch of equity out of our house in order to pay for my two surgeries. We also got a hell of a nice interest rate on our mortgage (4.75%, yippee), so we feel pretty good about that part of it. Not so good about having to raid essentially all of my non-retirement life savings in order to pay for surgery, of course.

Since I’m now funded, in case Aetna doesn’t want to play nice, I talked to the surgeon’s office today about getting an exact date in July. If I get the date I want (July 1), that’s only a bit over 8 weeks away, and there is so much to do between now and then.

They replied that they are “not ready” to schedule July because they are “not sure what they are doing quite yet.” Huh? Does that mean they may or may not be around in July? I want to have confidence in the people who will be cutting my pelvis apart and screwing it back together. I don’t have high confidence in people who are “not sure what they are doing.”

This answer also ticks me off. Do they not realize that I need to schedule time off work (and frankly, it’s not going to be easy for those at my office when I’m gone), file papers for STD and FMLA, get a bye on my coveted downtown parking spot, order a hospital bed for my home, order other post-surgical necessities, get a hotel room in Tacoma for the night before surgery, donate blood for myself (twice), get an appointment for a pre-surgery physical with my GP (who normally has a THREE MONTH lead time), etc., etc., etc. These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.

I know doctors put a premium on nobody’s time but their own (no offense intended, any MDs that are reading this, but you know I’m right). That is why you can wait an hour and a half to see a doctor for 20 minutes, and there is no guilt or remorse shown by the doc or the staff. So perhaps this surgery scheduling is done last minute, so that I can scramble to get everything done, because the surgeon doesn’t believe that I have a life outside of their operating table to deal with beforehand.

Yes, I am feeling pissy. I have been recently promoted at work, and so I’m working a lot of hours and taking on a lot of new responsibility, all of which will be put on hold somehow for 6 – 8 weeks starting in July, which is just around the corner. I have to get everything in order with my staff and projects before then. I am doing some traveling to judge and for vacation, so I’m not going to be at anyone’s beck and call to just run on down to the blood donation center. I have scheduled a week-long visit from my stepdaughter, who I haven’t seen in a couple of years. My stepson is graduating from high school, and we are having a party. And on, and on, and on, the same list of real-life things to do that any of my hip sisters probably had before their surgeries as well. I will be putting most of my life on hold post-surgery, as will my husband, and my mother, who has promised to stay with me during the day while my husband is at work. Other family members and friends have been equally generous with their future time.

I am a project manager by trade and temperament. I need a time line. I need a countdown. I am at odds with nothing to plan toward except a vague “July.” I need a surgery date.