Well, knowing I had to have it done and in only 2 weeks… didn’t give to much time to “plan” things. No, I didn’t particularly have anything to deal with planning or preperation, no money, no assets nothing where a will would be needed. I didn’t have anything, but I did do some journaling to “say my final words” to my kids. Sounds a bit corny, but if you are in this situation, you know what I am talking about. It is hard to accept that you might live or die and you don’t know which, so what do you do? We knew basically nothing but there was a tumor, it was dangerously close to the brain and they would remove it and “see what happens”. They couldn’t tell me anything else so what was there to talk about? How do you handle what you don’t know? Life goes on for everyone else and we just took it best we could, didn’t talk about “it” much, just spent time together.
My son took me to the pre-op stuff- you know where you have to go in 3-5 days prior to the surgery and get registered, blood work and such. I also thought that I’d donate my own bood for myself. Might as well, considering all the tainted blood problems you hear about. So on Wednesday before the surgery day of Monday, he drove me over to Los Angeles (about 60 miles and 1 hour west of me). Inspite of my having an appointment, and being there about 15 minutes prior to that appointment, I still sat there for 1,1/2 hours waiting. I was really aggrivated as there was no one else there, nothing appeared to be going on, but there I sat.  Finally they called me in. No one else was in the room, no other patients, no one else waiting where I was, seem totally evacuated. Just me was there. Why did I have to wait so long? Well, they took my blood and than I went to the hosptial to do the other pre-op stuff and they say “Oh, no! You can’t do them on the same day you had blood taken! You have to have at least 24 hours between these things”. So I have to go home and come back the next day. Why didn’t they tell me that before when I made the appointment!!!!
So I go back the next day – Thursday – and it literally took 6 hours at the hospital to do what turned out to be maybe – at the most – 1 hour of actual “work” for the pre-registration, few x-rays and general blood work. The rest of the time my son and I just sat there being uncomfortable, hungry, annoyed that again, even though I had an appointment time and was on time, the entire day was spent sitting in one waiting room after another – just thinking and realizing why I was there in the first place and getting more and more scared and nervous. And we usually couldn’t even sit together – he was in the waiting room, I was someplace else. We couldn’t even talk. And I gotta say that this hospital’s employees were some of the rudest and most uncompasionate people I have ever met in my life. This huge, nationally renouned hospital and they can’t even be “nice” or pleasant to the paitents, much less show any compassion. I kept thinking – “boy, if they registration people are like this, what are the nurses going to be like?” I wasn’t concerned about my doctor as he was the most accomodating doctor. He answered all my questions and even asked me to ask him more! He and his staff were the nicest and most understanding people, so I didn’t worry or wonder about that.  But after the surgery, I’m in the hands of “other” people and my first impression of the hospital staff was not good at all. NOt something I want to know at the start of such a major surgery.
Well, with all taht finally done, we went home to wait out the weekend. I had to be back Sunday night at 6pm for check in because surgery was scheduled for 6am the next morning.Â