Yesterday was another biiiiiig day!
As it turned out, I ended up spending a lot of it at my desk and alternately on the phone and on the laptop.
I forgot to mention that at my appointment with Dr E, he had also given me the name of a Dietician (who will hereby be known as L) that I need to get int touch with to make an appointment to see as soon as possible, so that I can sort out what my pre-op requirements will be, but also whom I will continue to touch base with as needed not only during the post-op phase, but ideally in the years following.
As Dr E had only given me a mobile number, I chose to send her an introductory ‘about me’ text, asking her to contact me when she was available, as I didn’t want to call and potentially interrupt a session with another client.
Next was to book the CT scan and the Barium Swallow, which I would have to go back down to the city for.
The city is not a place I relish going if I don’t have to, so having looked through my calendar for January, I realised that I would have to be going down there on the 9th to put our middle son on a plane home, as he was coming to visit for a week on Jan 1.
Surely I couldn’t possibly be lucky enough to swing the appointments back to back on that day??
With fingers crossed, I called Qld Xray and explained what I needed to have done, and that was hoping that maybe they’d have availability from mid-morning onward on the 9th?
They did!
I am now booked in for 10:10am on the 9th of January.
CT scan and Barium Swallow sorted!
Go me!!
By the time I had arranged those appointments, I realised I had received an email from Dr E’s Receptionist C, that had attachments for the Pre-Op Fasting requirement, the Fee Estimate, and the Procedure Booking Info.
The ‘paperwork’ also explained how I personally needed to contact the Anaesthetists offices and request a quote for their services for my operation, as well as needing to contact the Private Hospital that my surgery will be done in and to book in my proposed admission and also to request a quote from them as well.
Having only ever gone into hospital through the public health system, I’m finding this very daunting, as previously all this admin was always done by someone else behind the scenes and I assumed that that’s just how it was always done.
Wrong!
I sure didn’t realise that I would be needing to do all this stuff myself – and I’m already scared of making a mistake and turning up at the hospital only to find that I can’t have my operation because of some stupid clerical error that I made somewhere along the way!
Sheesh… ?
Ok.
Back down to business.
I emailed the Anaesthetists offices and explained that I would be having surgery at X Hospital on 13.02.23 for Roux-en-y Gastric Bypass and that I would like a quote for their services.
I also explained that I wasn’t altogether sure I was doing this correctly, but to please help me out if I wasn’t, and then pressed ‘SEND’.
I got a reply later in the day from them, saying that they had not yet received Dr E’s surgery list for that date, so could I please supply answers to a host of questions that they listed.
I did as requested, noting to myself that I hadn’t even bothered giving the poor people my surname on my initial email!
Good grief!
The next thing I had to do was book my hospital admission – thankfully I could do this online -but first I had to register for an online account with the Hospital prior to be able to do the admission forms.
Thankfully the process of registering was quite easy.
On to to the booking for my admission for February 13th.
To be honest I found it quite a long arduous anxiety-inducing process doing the online forms.
There was probably about 12 pages all up and it took me well over an hour and a half to finally complete them.
Midway through doing the hospital forms – thankfully prior to me actually submitting them – C from Dr E’s office rang and asked if I could move my surgery date from the 13th to the 6th!
Rather surprised, I asked if I could ring them back in five minutes to let them know, so that I could call my Wife and discuss with her whether or not that was going to work for us. C agreed.
I called my Wife, we discussed and then agreed that it would work – and I also couldn’t see any reason that it wouldn’t – so I called back C to tell her that we would go ahead with the new date being 6th of February 2023.
She said she would reissue the paperwork to reflect the change of date.
Yikes suddenly now it was only seven weeks until surgery!!
I went back to filling out the forms for my Hospital admission and also changed the date on those from being the 13th to the 6th, finally finishing up and submitting them at around 4pm.
It was right about then that I realised I also needed to text the dietician again to tell her that there had been an update of my surgery date – so I texted her right away, before I got caught up in other things and forgot.
Not long after I pressed send – she called!
As it turned out, she was on her way to Tasmania for her Christmas holiday, and her business wouldn’t be open again until 9th of January, and was booked solid for at least the first week back.
However, when she realised that my surgery date had changed, she suggested that we get together (over zoom if necessary) after her work day finishes, on the 9th.
Bless her kind little heart…
Note to self: sort out ordering the vitamins Dr E wants me to be on. (BN multivitamins)
It turns out that Dr E likes his patients to have a 4 week pre-op diet schedule – which means that pre-op will start on – yes – January 9th!
Luckily, I already have a whole range of shakes, protein powders, bars etc that I have been trialing over the previous months, and whilst Dr E and the Dietician has a preference for ‘Formulite’, she is happy for me to use what I already have here, and we will work my pre-op meal-plan around those.
Phewww!
She sounds lovely and bubbly and I’m looking forward to meeting her in person.
Dietician appointment sorted!
I even remembered to email the Anaesthetists offices for the third time for the day, to explain that there had been a change of date.
I’ve just now heard back from them as I’m writing this and the advise is that they should have the quote to me by late today or early tomorrow, and that my Anaesthetist will be a Dr M.
Dinner last night: Fish Tacos.
Day 1 of countdown and I’m exhausted!
48 days until surgery…
