Uncelebrated Events

With all the stuff happening in my life these days we completely forgot about our wedding anniversary last weekend and Mother's day was pretty much ignored in this household. Steve's Mom died a year ago and my own Mother died one day before Mother's day three years ago. I suppose there will come a time when we will again celebrate these events, they just didn't seem terribly important this year.

Yesterday I had to go for pre op at the hospital that is doing the surgery. I spent seven hours and still didn't resolve the most important issue... rehab, seems the social worker left for a meeting just around the time when I was done with all the other tests. Convenient I'd say. What did I spend seven hours doing you wonder, me too. Most of those hours were spent waiting. Steve dropped me off at 8 am and I waited half hour for the nurse. We went through my medical history and I tried to address some of my concerns with being sent home four days after surgery. She insisted these concerns would be addressed by the (disappearing) social worker later. She kept insisting that I needed to appoint a "coach", someone to help me at home after surgery, drive me around to physio (at my expense), and someone to make me meals. I kept insisting that nope, don't have a coach nor can I get one. All my friends work and I'm not about to ask neighbours to take care of me. This is the busiest time of year for my contractor husband who is generally gone by seven and not back before five and my offspring lives in a different province. What are they thinking...

Then I saw a anesthesiologist who explained the latest technique of spinal freezing instead of general anesthetic. The next step was a neck x-ray, blood work and EKG. Each of these required traipsing to different parts of the hospital. Trying to get a coffee or something to eat was near impossible with the strange hours of the cafeteria and I finally did end up with a sandwich at 2 o'clock. By that time I needed Tylenol 3 just to be able to walk.

My last stop was with the on site doctor who checked me over head to toe and pronounced me fit for surgery. By the time I called Steve to come and get me seven hours had passed and I was beat.

Last night I Googled hip replacements in Germany and if I had 10,000 Euros I'd go there. I'm embarrassed to be a Canadian citizen in the Province of Ontario. With all the extra tax money they have taken from us in the last four years specifically for health care we have gotten nothing back, in fact they have cut services across the board, sadly...