Bad Omens

Okay, so the first doctor was a washout.  Fine, just find another doctor, right?  Sign up for his monthly pre-op orientation session, go, and get the ball rolling again.

It wasn't that easy.

I signed up for doctor #2's orientation session online.  The class was scheduled a couple of hours before I had to go to work (I've done a 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. airshift for years now).  I show up, and there's a note on the door - the meeting's been cancelled.  No warning, no phone call, no e-mail - just cancelled, no reason given.

The next day I called the doctor's office and rescheduled things.  Turns out I didn't need to go to his orientation session since I'd been to one when I was still considering doctor #1.  That'll teach me to deal with a doctor over the Internet - do it by voice, so you'll know who to yell at next time.

By the latter part of 2009 I was finally getting things squared away for my bypass.  I'd met the bypass doctor, got cardiac approval, had the psychiatric and other counseling done, got insurance approval, and was just waiting for a final appointment with the surgeon prior to the operation.  I was in a bit of a hurry at this point since the end of the year was fast approaching and my insurance deductible would soon re-set.  The Gods of Scheduling must have known this, because it seemed like there was a delay at every possible point.  Even that final pre-op session with the doctor was rescheduled to another day, just hours before the appointment time.

I'd considered myself lucky to have made it through the mindfields of dealing with doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies, but contrary to how I felt, my luck was running out.

Come the day of the pre-op doctor's appointment and my wife and I were sitting in the exam room, talking with the surgeon.  I was on an examination table that was rather high off the ground, and I had taken my glasses case out of my pocket and was holding them for some reason I can't recall.  Somehow I managed to drop them onto the floor on the right side of the table.  I bent over to retrieve them, and right as I got my arm to the floor I felt something go *POP* on the lower right-hand side of my rib cage.  This was followed by a pretty good dose of pain.  I had either pulled a rib cage muscle or done some damage to the cartilage between the ribs, but for some reason the surgeon didn't seem too concerned.  The pain would stay with me for the next four weeks and would impede my recovery, but I didn't know that at the time.

I should have recognized right there that I'd been getting bad omens for weeks.  I didn't even want to consider it, though - I was determined to get the gastric bypass, and I wasn't about to get superstitious before the operation.

Shows you what I know about superstitions, I guess.

(To be continued...)