No letter from the hospital with my prescription and lab req yet. Damn it.

Julian is being kind enough to check the mailbox once an hour, and when he does so he tries to determine if the mail has been delivered today.

If it hasn’t shown up by 3:30 PM, I am going to call the contact number in the email from the hospital and have a chat with them about options and consequences and such.

The smart part of me really wants it to show up ASAP so we can get the testing done and the prescription filled and I can be all ready for the procedure tomorrow^[1].

The dumb part of me wants it to fail to show up so I don’t have to go do the scary medical thing tomorrow morning.

What can I say, I’m complicated.

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Oh for fox’s sake!

Just got a call from the department doing my procedure.

They asked me the usual Covid screening questions. No, I am not sneezing or coughing or bleeding out the eyes. No I haven’t been licking strangers. No I have not been out of the country. I’ve barely been out of the apartment.

But while I had them on the phone, I asked them about the whole lab tests and prescription letter, and it turns out there never was one.

I repeat, there never was one.

Turns out that when I said yes to them emailing me the documents, they took that to mean, “I will then print said documents with the printer I totally have and there is therefore no need to mail me jack shit. Ta ta!”

Whereas I thought it was just a backup measure for the hard copies they were sending.

Oh well. The procedure will go as planned regardless. They will just do the lab tests in the hospital beforehand.

And the prescription can be started after the surgery. But it MUST be started ASAP because it prevents post-op complications.

Something to do with platelets. Sounds pretty important.

Oh well, at least I can just relax and mentally prepare for the procedure now. It is 16 hours away and counting.

This time tomorrow, I will hopefully have a mended heart. Wish I could be completely out for it. I am tired of this medical shit I got to be awake for.

Whatever happened to taking a nice nap and waking up in a recovery room?

But like I said before, it’s not like I remember my angioplasty. Whatever they had me on was real good. I just remember being very relaxed for a while. Not technically asleep, but not all that far from it.

So really, it’s a matter of showing up, letting them do their thing, hopefully taking a nice long recovery nap in hospital care, then coming home.

I am nervous about the post-op stuff. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where if I forget to do something, I will bleed out and die.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.

More after the break.

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Dear St, Paul’s Doctors….

You know, I remember that song from my 1970’s childhood. It was a huge hit, and rightly so. It’s one of those songs that does what everyone else was doing at the time and yet somehow does it better than the rest.

It gets it right, is what I am saying.

And I remember loving the song back then because it was so upbeat and happy without being cheap and fake.

It has a great vibe to it, and then as now, I am all about the vibes.

I remember hearing it on the radio and singing along. I remember seeing it performed on TV (by Donnie and Marie, no less). I even remember hearing it from someone’s tinny cheap transistor radio at the beach one day.

Yet somehow. until I looked the song up last week, I totally missed that the male singer was Elton Freaking John.

I guess, inasmuch as I thought about it at all, that Amazing Duet and Elton John At the Height Of His Fame were too big to fit in my mind at the same time.

Anyhow, I assume you get how it relates to my current situation.

In 8.5 hours, I will be admitted into St. Paul’s Cardiac Catheter ward and they will start prepping me for my angioplasty.

Basically, they are going to make an incision, use it to slide wire catheters through my veins in order to first use balloons to clear the blockages from my heart arteries (hearteries) then install expandable tubes call stents into said arteries in order to prop them open and keep them open.

Simple. Routine. Easy. Just a bit of plumbing work, really.

ON MY FREAKING HEART.

So yeah, you could say I am nervous. I am not used to having to summon up this much faith in the competence and focus of others and it feels very weird.

But what choice do I have? When the shit is really going down, despair and doubt are luxuries you cannot afford. Everything has to be focused towards making it through.

So I am going to summon up all of my small but vital supply of faith in others and go into this thing like I am a patient on a medical drama and thus I know everything will be fine at the end of the episode.

Use the power of the fact that I was raised by television to see me through it all!

I’m not allowed to eat after midnight, because apparently I’m now a Gremlin. And only clear fluids after midnight, and only until three hours before the procedure. so 4 am.

That will be an adjustment for me. But whatever. Another challenge to trudge through.

Right now I will go to bed and get some sleep before it’s go time.

Next time I talk at ya, I will have an upgraded heart.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow if I am up for it.