A Reminder!

"Hello. "

"Hi, is this Mr. Wilson?"

"Yes it is."

 "This is Dr. Amer's (fictitious name) office and I'm just calling to remind you of your procedure next Tuesday."

 I almost fell off the chair laughing and told the pleasant young woman that the last thing I needed was to be reminded of was my procedure on Tuesday. She laughed nervously and continued to remind me that I needed to call the hospital between 11am and 2pm on Monday to find out when my surgery was scheduled the following day.

As a reminder to readers (certainly not me), my procedure is abdominal surgery to remove a good portion of my colon and the malignancy that sits there. Anyway that was toward the end of a day that had involved an appointment with my Anesthesiologist, dropping off paperwork at an attorney's office and stopping at the branch of a local home health care agency to pick up supplies for my CPAP machine. All of these things were related in some way to my surgery. Started traveling at 7:30 am and got home around 1 pm with a stop for a quick bite to eat. Later in the day the call, the reminder.

So my saga continues. I have met wonderful care givers along the way and I've been impressed with the major impact administrative support staff and nurses have in the important relationship with patients and doctors. I've seen this before but it amazes me all the time. Doctors are very busy concentrating on their work, the technical and diagnostic aspects especially, and they're seeing many people sometimes one right after the other. We each want and expect their full attention. The people who help make sure that happens are their support people and RN's and I for one am grateful for those folks and the role they play. It makes a real difference when you think you're in the hands of caring and competent people as you try to figure your way through the process of your own health care.

It reminds me of all of the challenges that we have in life - physical, emotional, financial, educational - and how important it is along the way to give or recieve a hand of assistance along the way. Someone to just take the time to help you through the maze you may be seeing. Good people are out there everyday doing that for people, from the healthcare worker to the grocer or bagger at the grocery store. With all of our differences, political, ethnic and economic status, there are commonalities that just break through and takeover it seems. I like that and I'm paying more attention to it. It's one of the positive aspects of our human nature.

So this weekend I plan to tidy things up and keep busy before that damn procedure. I'm finding that I have an awful lot to do and not enough time to do it. I also go through periods of laziness (don't know another word or what else to call it) where I just get a bit overwhelmed and say the heck with it and sit and contemplate things like this.

I wish I could say I'm not concerned and a bit scared but I am. On the other hand I've also concluded that this is just one more challenge in life and you just have to face it and move forward. It's also been pointed out to me that I'm really on the good side of the continuum of diagnosis and treatment. I could be sitting here undiagnosed and untreated for a long period and then what? So we move on, plugging away. Making sure what needs to get done, gets done or at least identified.

With all of this activity, I hope I don't just plain forget about that procedure on Tuesday morning.