First it’s the dietician. With this litany of things I can and cannot do. 2 weeks out from surgery it’s weird-ass diet time for me. Don’t know if you’ve heard of Optifast? or Sureslim or Tony Ferguson’s? Well that’s what I have to do for 2 weeks. Liquid fake food.
As it happened our health fund had just asked my husband to participate in a trial of some sort for a new one called Kickstart. So I got it for free! It ain’t cheap so this was a big win. 3 synthetic-fruit flavoured shakes 3 times a day. Plus 2 cups of vegetables a day – to keep you regular. Right on! I feel like an old woman already.
Kickstart wasn’t so bad. Tasted ok. Was pretty filling and each hit was only 139 calories. I won’t suggest that I was by any means perfect in my adherence to the Kickstart diet. I had family birthdays and work lunches that were unavoidable. And I had more salad than I was supposed to most days. But I still lost about 8kg in that two weeks so can’t complain about that!
Next I got a phone call was from the anaesthetist office. We sent you an invoice that said you needed to pay the fee of $1200 a week before surgery. The bill arrived a week before surgery. Thanks for the notice guys. The call came 3 days later. So there’s another $1200 I’ve gotta pony up this week. Hadn’t really planned on that sucker. Oh well, good thing it’s pay day!
Finally I got a call from the hospital. With a litany of questions and instructions that just did my head in. Clearly the caller had read this list out a million, trillion, billion times. For me it was my first time and it was WAAAAAY too quick and WAAAAAY too much. An email follow-up would be have been a worth while exercise cos I forgot stuff I was supposed to do (like showering with anti-bacterial wash for 2 days beforehand – oops). Fortunately noone seemed to give a toss on the day.
The day before surgery the hospital called again. This time to tell me I have to pay $475 dollars on check-in. I mean, admission. Well, there’s another few buckaroos I hadn’t budgeted for.
All of these calls were so brain numbing. Not in a boring sense… in a I can’t compute sense… too much.
But none of that came close to what was going on in my head.
Second thoughts? Lordy yes! None of it seemed real to be honest, until the call came asking for my money. Then it became so real. Hyper-real. In living colour. Hyper-colour, in fact. Or not. (I’ll let the joke go now, I’m not one to cling. Or am I?).
I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Fear of the unknown was paralysing in many ways. My ignorance and stupidity was profoundly daft. For example, I mistakenly believed I would have a hole in my side for the rest of my life. There is no hole. I am just an idiot. Thank god my husband is not. Many shed tears will attest to my unbounded relief. Really though, I just questioned everything I was doing. Then I ignored it and put my head in the sand. Then I got excited and philosophical. It changed from day to day.
In the end I stuck with it. I chose NOT to let my fear paralyse me any more. God, now I sound like Tony Robbins. Or the father from Little Miss Sunshine. Or Tom Cruise in Magnolia. (let the joke go, loser!). I just kept on keeping on. I took faith from those around me who never faltered. Who believed in me and what I had decided to do. And so I went under the knife.
And that was that.
