hurry up and wait

Yesterday was my final preoperative appointment with Valley Medical. Mom drove over from Yakima and we had a very lovely breakfast prior to heading to the hospital. I felt a little guilty about the two eggs, bacon, biscuit because it was a HUGE amount of food - but at the end of the day I'm thankful I didn't start the day on just one piece of toast and 8oz milk with protein powder.

Our day started to go sideways when the receptionist couldn't find my name on the schedule for the day. Considering both mom and I had taken the day off work, and the fact that there are two solid weeks of prep before the surgery we HAD to see the doc that day.

The other issue is that apparently I was supposed to pay yesterday, but no one said anything, so I didn't have my checkbook on me. I mean come on, how many people carry a checkbook any more? So, I knew I was going to have to "zip home and back" once we were done. While the hospital is close to my house, it is still far enough away to have to involve the Hwy 167 and I-405 interchange.... for those of you NOT in the PNW... imagine waiting waiting in line, inching forward, waiting, inching, and then some ass-hole cuts in at the last minute (because he's too good to wait?) oh... I don't like it Sam I am, not one bit.

So, the appointment was at 10 - we go to the little room and they (very nicely) offer us a water. 10:30 we start the super fun powerpoint RISKS OF WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY (subtitled... If you sue we are so going to bring this to court to say "I tole you so!") This was awesome because it went through all the terrible things that could happen and my mom who is supportive but a little bit of an alarmist was twitching in the chair next to me.

We finish that... wait 30 minutes, the nutritionist comes in (and you should know that any one of the people can raise their hand and tell me no, this isn't going to happen) and we discuss my food logs. I'm worried about this part because while I've been good about keeping track in the last week my diet has pretty much gone to shit. PIZZA... seriously I ordered pizza and it was really really good.

Anyway... we talk, she says she's happy, I don't have to log food anymore. Of course, I start the LIQUID Diet Monday. It isn't as awful as you might think, it's only 2 weeks and for 13 of the days I get to eat one meal in addition to the protein drinks. I imagine I'll actually be cooking!

She leaves, then we wait and wait and wait.... by now its 1pm and the staff is cooking up their lunches. Finally the exercise guy comes in and he's happy too. We talk about my gym plan, but asks me to wait until he clears me to join the gym. (he thinks it will be 3-4 weeks after surgery before I'm doing much more than working up my walking duration and intensity. I'll have an 8 week restriction on carrying anything over 20 lbs. (Maybe I should do my Christmas shopping now...)

Once we're done all we have to do is see the doctor and we can go. By this time mom and I are surfing the Internet on the computer. We've read CNN.com, the Onion, the comics (seattle pi and the Times) we've read back posts of my blog, spent about an hour looking at the before and after photos on the obesityhelp website. We talked to my dad, and started talking about which one of us would be more tasty if we had to eat one another.

at 2... (seriously 4 hours into this) the doc comes in and he basically shuts down our complaint about the day. The scheduling snafu screwed his day pretty hard too. I was a little put off, and had a hard time focusing because of the hunger pains, but once we started talking it faded away.

Wouldn't you know it... somewhere we missed a couple tests, so once we were done we had to go to the lab. (no blood draw yeah!) The doc gets up and says... ok, once the nurse comes in you're ok to go...

She didn't come until 3. I loved her immediately (there's a moment when crankiness turns to hysteria and I"m funny during hysteria) and we finished up in about 30 minutes. Looking at the time, and the fact that it was going to take us a least an hour to get home and back with the money the nurse called in a HUGE favor and made arrangements for me to make the payment next Monday.

The labs weren't too awful and we finally left the hospital at 4:30. We stumbled down the hill and had our lunch/dinner (linner maybe dunch.) We had planned to go shopping and all sorts of fun things, but ended up seeing a movie instead. All that sitting around really wore me out.

Mom left early this morning, and I'm about to hit the gym. It's Yaz' birthday today so I need to run out and get the perfect card to go with the perfect beyond perfect birthday gift.