Its all coming together! Many Thanks...

These last few weeks have been stressful to say the least. There have been so many details to get sorted out as I near my last day of work (tomorrow), as we prepare to fly to the city of surgery (November 21st) and have my Father-in-law come stay with us for a week to help take care of me. Add getting a Physical done to the mix and its safe to say I have been busy.

Up until late this morning we still hadn't had any confirmation that we were going to be able to fly with Hope Air. Then that fateful call came and the news could not be better. My husband and I are flying out this Sunday and have our return flights all booked (assuming recovery goes smoothly). I am grateful to the social worker for all of her time and effort in arranging this, and to Hope Air for the wonderful service they provide.

Work. Its been crazy busy. I have had a temp in the office for the last three days that I have been training as she will be covering me for the 8 weeks I am off. She's wonderful, really is. Smart, and able to think and use common sense to make sure things run smoothly. Its been a bit of a challenge as being the only full time employee means that my job has a lot of components and we only have 3 days of training. I think she might be a little overwhelmed, but I do have 2 days before surgery next week when she will be on her own and able to reach me with any questions that she has. Of course this also means that I have a lot of tasks that I can't hand off as they need my special touch and need to get done before I leave tomorrow. My desk needs to be totally cleaned off and organized (a much larger task than the simple sentence may lead you to believe it is) and the list of tasks to do seems to be growing the more I go through my stacks of paper. I think its safe to say that I will be working late tonight.

Which doesn't leave a lot of time for getting my home in the condition I want to leave it in. I am normally a fairly tidy person, but when we have guests I like to make sure the place is spotless. I typically would do this a day or so before the guest arrives to ensure that I don't undo all of my hard work. The plan was to do a good section of the deep scrubbing tonight but both my hubby and I are working late. This in itself is not too much of an issue, but it does mean that the remainder of our weekend will be spent cleaning instead of enjoying the mobility that might take me a while to regain post-op.

As I mentioned, this is something that we would normally do our best to get started on much sooner, especially with areas that we don't interact with on a daily basis (ie the guest room); however as the best laid plans often do, this went by the wayside. I was contacted by the hospital where the surgery will be and told I needed a full physical and family history. Great. I called my doctor's office. They are booking into December and there was no way they could squeeze in a full physical. Which meant I needed to find a walk-in clinic that would do one. Again, not an easy task at all. I received the call Tuesday around 3pm basically saying if I didn't have a physical I wasn't going to have surgery. So despite a slightly busy work week I pretty much dropped everything that I was doing and started making calls. I was fortunate enough to find a clinic that does physicals on walk-in, and away I went. It apparently has been longer than I thought since I had my last physical as I didn't know they made you strip. Ya... down the just undergarments, and even then, only on the bottom. I wasn't exactly anticipating this and thus when the doctor gave the instructions to strip and sit on the bed thingy I was in a touch of shock. If I'm going to have to get naked, I prefer a bit more notice. Anyways, made it through, got the paperwork and thus ended what I thought was going to be a quiet night packing and cleaning.

One of the good things that happened this week was my mom sent me a surgery care package. Since she can't be there with us, and works during the week she wanted to do something to let me know that she was thinking of me. She sent 2 pairs of slippers (1 for the hospital - as I was advised to throw them out when I leave due to the germs they will have picked up) and another for recovery at home as I am prone to cold feet. There were yoga pants (2) and sweat pants, both with very loose waistbands that can be tightened with drawstrings as opposed to elastics as I have been advised that I will be tender after surgery and will struggle with waistbands. She also sent PJs for the hospital (these will be laundered thoroughly instead of discarded post-op) with a great waistband. My mom loves me very much and this was very, very much appreciated. In fact, its going to be 90% of what I pack for the trip as its pretty much everything I need, clothing-wise that is.

I'm busy, and a touch stressed (I haven't been sleeping the last 4 nights) but not worried about surgery. My husband and my mother take care of that for me, and a lot of the stress has been alleviated today with the confirmation of Hope Air flights.

And I know that I am making a bigger deal out of cleaning my place to within an inch of its life, but it really doesn't take that long and being the lovely procrastinator that I am, I have a feeling that even if I didn't have an impromptu physical or a late night of work that it would still get done this weekend.

The good news is its all coming together. My temp has done wonderful during training and knows where to go for help if she needs it, the tasks I have left to do before I go will not take me as much time as I think they will (as soon as I get my procrastination out of the way and just focus), my mom's wonderful care package took the packing stress away as I now have everything I need, and we have our flights. We have a place to stay with a good friend of mine who, in a more generous gesture than I could have dreamed about has also offered up a vehicle to use while in town, and family to help take care of me when my husband has to go back to work. I'm very lucky that this is all coming together so beautifully and I don't need to stress about anything anymore. Maybe, if I get enough done today, I will even be able to sleep tonight. Now that would be a real treat.