Hello, my lovely readers! First and foremost: I am so sorry there was no blog last week. A lot of things about last week did not go as planned, my schedule was totally off, and I honest-to-god did not realize until Monday morning that Thursday had passed me by.

The reason last week was so out of whack was this: I have been avoiding dealing with a minor but persistent and annoying medical issue for many months now. I finally got myself to the doctor at the end of March, who wrote me a surgical referral, which got to me mid-April. I called and made the appointment for Tuesday, May 5, because that was the earliest day that my partner could get off work to come with me.

It is worth noting at this point that this is basically the first time I’ve ever been referred to a specialist – I always had a PPO when I was under my parents’ insurance, and since getting my own HMO plan, I hadn’t looked very seriously at any sort of specialist care. So I am totally new to this process and have no idea what I’m doing.

I was under the impression that this was going to be a super simple, very quick, local anesthesia, in-and-out sort of deal, but I wanted my partner with me both because I did not relish the thought of facing a strange doctor who may or may not be at all trans-competent alone, and because I wasn’t sure how much help I was going to need with aftercare stuff.

So we got to the surgeon’s office Tuesday morning, and as soon as the nurse came in and started talking to us, it became apparent that this was not the actual surgical visit, but the consultation for a rather more involved procedure than I thought I was going to be in for. This would have been really nice to know ahead of time, but in the end we just sort of rolled with it. The surgeon and nurse explained the procedure in more detail (which is still an outpatient procedure, but will require general anesthesia and something like five or six hours in the hospital, and someone to drive me home), gave me some information to take home, and told me to call them to schedule a date once I’d figured things out on my end.

I had totally cleared my schedule for Tuesday and for Wednesday evening, and I decided to keep it that way. Unfortunately, not having my usual activities to trigger my brain, I didn’t remember to post a blog about it last week.

I’m writing this on Monday afternoon, because Tuesday I won’t have time, and surgery is scheduled (for real this time) for Wednesday. I’m nervous, but not as nervous as I had been: even though my partner can’t be there, a friend offered to take the day off to keep me company, and another friend is going to take me home when it’s over. I feel so well cared-for, and so lucky to have the friends that I do.

All that to say, it’s been a couple of wild weeks emotionally. I’ll be glad when Wednesday is over (and I will try to add some sort of update before or shortly after this goes live to let you all know how it went).

Update: Surgery went well; I was very pleased with the care that I received and I had great people looking out for me. I’m feeling very loved.

And, at least as of 6:30 Thursday morning, I’m not in much pain at all. I’m going to work hard to stay on top of the pain meds (and therefore on top of the pain – once the pain kicks in, it’s hard to get it back down), but I’m feeling well enough that I’m at least planning to get some work done from home. Today (and probably tomorrow, too…I don’t know that I’ll be up for public transit yet by then).