First, a big thanks to the care team for my son, who are keeping his life as normal as possible while his mom and I ramp up for me going in for surgery in a week. We have his day care split among three different providers (due to limits in their schedules): my mom (who will also be looking after him over night twice next week), the North Medford CDC, and a local in-home provider named Michelle (who we found on Craigslist). With my wife and I working the crazy schedules we do (me with a HS theater, her with an overnight 40 hours a week at the hospital), these folks see Robert for portions of 6 days each week. I am actually really looking forward to getting some days with him in the coming weeks. The CDC can't do anything extra to help, schedule-wise, but they are a rock when it comes to being stable and supportive. Michelle is able to accommodate a lot more weirdness and I hope to be able to make that flexibility not be a hardship for her. And obviously, my mother will go from 8 hours a day two days a week to 21 hours each for the day of and day immediately following the surgery. And then she'll get to care for me, too, a couple of evenings after that.
Then the other thing that happened to today that I need to express some amazement and gratitude about is a thing called mealtrain.com where one of my former students is coordinating meal prep for me and my family on some of the high stress days coming in the next two weeks.
I've had some amazing response and comments from people I'd lost touch with for years, including SCA friends I last saw in 2001, Wesleyan classmates I've only occasionally sparred with in facebook threads over the last 25 years, and SCA folks I've never even met in the context of an event. At least two former students brought me to tears with reflections of my role in their life that I had no awareness of...
A week from tonight, I'll be finished getting everything ready. I'll be in the hospital by 6am the following morning. If things go like last time around, I'll be under by 7:30am, and awake again around 4pm. Last time, I then watched the season premier of Battlestar Galactica on the tiny TV across the room form me in my recovery room and spent one night in that room before moving upstairs and having and additional night in a 'regular' room while they made sure everything was working right with me. Not sure what I'll do this time, but I am three weeks behind on Agent Carter :). Last time, Jenny Warren dumped all the Harry Potter books on me and I read the lot during my recovery. I started the series again just after Alan Rickman's death and am (slowly) repeating that effort. Feels like I should just call the Potterverse my recover reading for all things.
I do have one more pre-op appointment later this week... a Sinus CT and meetings with the anesthesiologist and the admit team. Not sure how and when the next wave of billing will hit, but as of today, all the things that are already due have been paid for by this online effort ($3200 of it has made it through to me, so far.. more should be in my account tomorrow AM). There is still a fair amount to go before the out of pocket cap is met, but my level of stress has plummeted over the past few days and that can only be a good thing!
Then the other thing that happened to today that I need to express some amazement and gratitude about is a thing called mealtrain.com where one of my former students is coordinating meal prep for me and my family on some of the high stress days coming in the next two weeks.
I've had some amazing response and comments from people I'd lost touch with for years, including SCA friends I last saw in 2001, Wesleyan classmates I've only occasionally sparred with in facebook threads over the last 25 years, and SCA folks I've never even met in the context of an event. At least two former students brought me to tears with reflections of my role in their life that I had no awareness of...
A week from tonight, I'll be finished getting everything ready. I'll be in the hospital by 6am the following morning. If things go like last time around, I'll be under by 7:30am, and awake again around 4pm. Last time, I then watched the season premier of Battlestar Galactica on the tiny TV across the room form me in my recovery room and spent one night in that room before moving upstairs and having and additional night in a 'regular' room while they made sure everything was working right with me. Not sure what I'll do this time, but I am three weeks behind on Agent Carter :). Last time, Jenny Warren dumped all the Harry Potter books on me and I read the lot during my recovery. I started the series again just after Alan Rickman's death and am (slowly) repeating that effort. Feels like I should just call the Potterverse my recover reading for all things.
I do have one more pre-op appointment later this week... a Sinus CT and meetings with the anesthesiologist and the admit team. Not sure how and when the next wave of billing will hit, but as of today, all the things that are already due have been paid for by this online effort ($3200 of it has made it through to me, so far.. more should be in my account tomorrow AM). There is still a fair amount to go before the out of pocket cap is met, but my level of stress has plummeted over the past few days and that can only be a good thing!
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