Surgery

About three and a half years ago I broke my arm mountain biking. I mean really broke it. We're talking both the radius and ulna broke completely in half with a bit of the ulna poking out. A few surgeries and a bone graft later I still have one more plate to take out. The ulna wasn't entirely healed when I left Japan so I had to leave it in and hopefully have it removed later. Because I won't be able to make it to Japan this year to have it removed before the bone begins to grow over it, I decided to look into having it done here.

The insurance company told me to have a doctor write a recommendation then they would likely cover it in the UAE or Japan, but definitely not the U.S. A good friend told me to talk to a coworker who recommended a great bone surgeon. With how slowly things here go and in the medical community specifically, I figured that by the time the whole process was completed, I'd be lucky to be scheduled for surgery by fall.

The doctor took some X-rays, had a look and told me that I should come back to have the blood work because once the insurance company approved the surgery, he had two weeks to schedule it. Last Tuesday, I went in for the consultation and blood work and figured I'd hear back a week later. On Saturday, while I was out with my kids, I got a call from the receptionist telling me that my surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, May 31st and I should be at the hospital by 7:30 am for an 8:30 surgery. Also, I needed to meet with the anesthesiologist the day before. I wasn't given an option to change the date. That WAS the date and time.

Not feeling confident that the receptionist told me everything I needed to know, I called back and was forwarded to the technician who did my blood work. She told me that I needed to take the medicine the doctor gave me an hour before the surgery. I explained that the doctor hadn't given me any medicine to which she replied that I needed to come in to the office to get the prescription, and go to the pharmacy to pick it up. As it turned out, not only was I picking up medicine for to take before the surgery, I was picking up the anesthesia injection to use during my surgery to physically hand to the anesthesiologist along with the CD with my chest X-ray on it. All of this was information the receptionist didn't feel necessary to communicate.

When I was in Japan awaiting surgery, I was in the hospital a day or two before the procedure and a few days after. In this case, I'll be going in tomorrow an hour before my surgery and leaving that afternoon. Wish me luck.