Reality bites

I am not a great writer by anyone’s standards and some days I’m not in the mood…today is one of those days.  I’ve had Dr. appointments almost every day this week with tests, scans, blood work and on and on.  The cherry on top was finding out my mastectomy is now scheduled for Valentine’s Day.  You just can’t make this @#%! up.

Brief and to the point, isn’t it?  So i decided to add a little for my girl. She was up at a quarter past six this morning, drove cross town for a follow up with the oncologist then got back home and returned a phone call from late yesterday. They left a message yesterday. They’d scheduled the next step. I told her to change the date but her attitude is why give the cancer cells the extra time to rebound. Yeah she probably has a point. We’ve known for over half a year this was coming but now the cold hard reality has a date on the calendar.

 So to back up here a touch Jeannie started her week with an appointment across town. Surgeon number three, who was the polar opposite of the surgeon on the middle. The first surgeon was great but the issue was more where the surgery would be done and a lot of the people we’d run into. Surgeon number two might well be nicknamed Doctor Darkness he was such an arrogant jerk. Surgeon number three just has it together. She just said let’s take it from the top and ended up probably spending an hour with us. I could be wrong but I think she really just came into the office for us because she’d done surgery early that morning at the neighboring hospital. She was dressed like she just came from the O R (as opposed to how they look when they’re doing normal office hours). And she had that touch that inspires confidence while showing compassion. I’ve said before there should be more women doing this type of work because they know there’s a one in eight chance of them being the patient (as opposed to Doctor Darkness who we think secretly hates women).

Anyway there are lots of positives going on in that she’s in great shape and her blood looked great at this mornings appointment. She does still have neuropathy in her toes and fingers from the chemo. Tomorrow for her day off she gets to jump out of bed at about the same time as today and drive across town in the sub freezing cold again, this time for a new MRI. But her discomfort with the situation surrounding the surgery is handled with the discovery of Doctor number three. By and large her attitude has also been great through this, way better than mine would have been.

Just to illustrate a couple of points with the previous surgeons I sent a note to Doctor Darkness AND his boss speaking to his rotten bedside manner. It was actually a very civil letter suggesting some remedial work in people skills. No response. Not even thanks for stopping by here’s a coupon your next oil change is free. Then she was supposed to have an appointment Wednesday with Doctor number one. She cancelled first thing Monday. But yesterday afternoon the phone rang wondering where she was. The last in a whole series of missteps from that particular health care organization.

Anyway as her immune system builds back up we’ll get a little fun in before she’s having to recuperate yet again.