Upcoming Surgery This Week

Talk about a whirlwind of a weekend!! Geesh. Is it Friday yet???

Oh no wait. Friday just passed.

Wowzers.

My Friday night ended like this:

A few friends brought tasty things and came over to chill out after a long week, and trust me when I say that it was a LONG week.

Aside from the regular grind of work/school/daycare/dance, I had to spend a little time at the cardiologist. Because I am a medical mutant and there are like 2 other people on the planet besides my kids and I that have the disorder that we have, I spend a lot of time letting doctors and med students analyze me. It really is a great set-up because the doctors get the chance to analyze a Real! Live! Freak! and I get access to medical care that medicaid otherwise wouldn't cover.

So I spent some time letting the doc's check out my aorta, ran on a treadmill while they monitored my heart, and at the end of the day I did not die and everyone was happy. Actually my heart looked great, not a day over 21, and that's what I was hoping to hear.

And I'm also glad that I didn't die, because I got the chance to chaperon The Girl Child's school field trip (with the teacher that now hates me, so that was fun).

She got to ride a horse:

And I got the shit scared out of me by a very large, and very angry turkey.

She was really happy that I was able to go with her, and I was thrilled as well.

It wasn't all fun and games though, Frisbee Boy's Mom had a knee replacement, so if you wouldn't mind sending up a few prayers for her I'm sure she would appreciate it. Her spirits are up but she is obviously in pain, so send her some good vibes!

And as if that weren't enough "medical" for one week,  I want to talk about something involving The Boy Child.

But first, a detour...

One of the BIGGEST topics that I get trolled on is from the post "Thursday I'm Getting My Face Broken." In that post I talked about how a surgeon offered to fix my broken nose, despite the fact that I couldn't afford it. It is CONSISTENTLY the biggest topic that the trolls latch onto. Every single time an article of mine runs on XOJane, they bring it up in the comments section. "I know she is full of shit simply based on the fact that she said the surgeon said her nose surgery would have been $28,000. What the fuck are they fixing it with, diamonds? There is no way in hell a nose job would ever cost that much. She is such a liar."

Some variation of that gets posted quite a bit and I've never bothered to respond before, because I don't care, Why should I?  If they had actually read the post they would have seen that I wasn't in some plastic surgery center where people come in to get nipped and tucked, I was at one of the major university hospitals in the city. I said that the doctor was a certified ear, nose, and throat surgeon, as well as a renowned facial reconstructive plastic surgeon, who was also the head of the entire surgical department.  This wasn't a guy who does boobs and tummy tucks, and my surgery wasn't being done in a cosmetic surgery center. It was being done on hospital grounds, with a staff of people (anesthesiologist, techs, nurses) that work within the hospital — not a staff belonging to a cosmetic surgery office.

How people cannot wrap their heads around the fact that a surgery, in a hospital, with a reconstructive ear, nose, and throat surgeon, might come out to being around $28,000 is beyond me.

You can't even get your appendix laparoscopically taken out for less than that. Hell, break your leg, go to the ER, and your insurance will get billed 20k.

But anyway, yes, people (aka the trolls) tend to flip out over my surgical costs because IT SIMPLY CAN'T BE TRUE.

And the only reason that I am even bring this up, is because I'm about to tell you something else.

Let's bring it back around to The Boy Child and the doctor appointment that I told you he was going to last week. The Boy Child met with with the children's hospital specialist on Wednesday morning. After the doctor reviewed his test results, he scheduled The Boy Child for surgery on this coming Wednesday.

I'm obviously nervous and scared, but it has to be done so I'm just going to push through and hope for the best. The doctor seems really great, and I trust him. I like that he sees The Boy Child as more than just a patient, but as a person and part of my family. I know that sounds silly but when you deal with as many doctors as I do, you come to realize that to a large portion of them their patients are no longer people, but rather simply just chart numbers. But Wednesday we dot to see a doctor that saw us as more than just another time slot in his schedule.

As I was sitting there the doctor said "He needs surgery, and he needs it next week. I'm going to go ahead and get him scheduled at the children's hospital satellite location at...." and then he named a hospital not all that far from my house.

I interjected with "hey, I'd love that, but the medicaid plan we are on doesn't cover surgical procedures at satellite locations, it only covers them at the main hospital in the city."

The doctor put his hand up like a teenage girl shushing someone and said "yea they didn't cover this appointment either but your pediatrician explained your situation to me and I'm not going to make you drive into the city. Just let my staff worry about it and you just worry about your son."

Wow.

WOW. 

I have no idea if "my situation" is referring to my ridiculous fear of the highway, or some sob story the pediatrician gave him about my ex leaving. I really have no clue. No clue, and I'm not even going to ask. The important (amazing) thing here is that The Boy Child skipped the 10 month appointment wait time, was seen at a satellite location, skipped the 2 month surgical wait time, and is having surgery at a hospital that isn't even covered by medicaid. Now I know that a big reason the schedule push was done because of how sick he is, but if you've ever been on medicaid you know that sometimes even medical fragility still gets you sent to the back of the line, and to top it off, the doctor is willing to accomodate us for reasons that are being done only because he cares.

We are so blessed.

So Wednesday it is. I'm trying my best to calm my nerves. The Boy Child is meeting with the Child Life team on Monday and they will attempt, through play therapy, to prepare him for what is going to happen, He in the meantime, is just as feisty as ever.

In fact, allow me to show you a pic that I snapped yesterday, but before I get to the picture, let me first set the stage.

I walked into the kitchen and The Boy Child was standing there with the fridge door open, and facing the food. Instantly I had a pretty good idea of what he might be getting into. He had been bugging me all morning to pour him a glass of dark chocolate almond milk; a treat that I buy them once or twice a year, and a treat that I had bought the night before. I kept telling him that we would have it after lunch, but being 3yrs old, he was pretty sure that was at least a year away.

"Hey, are you touching the chocolate milk?" I asked him.

"No" he said quite sternly. "I did not!"

Then he turned around and looked at me.

As far as I can tell, he took the lid off the milk, and then when he tried to lift it off the shelf  it just tipped forward and bonked him in the head before going back to it's upright position.

Even standing there with the evidence literally dripping off his face, he maintained his innocence.

I tell ya, I've got strange kids. This morning they both woke up and came into my room, asking if they could go downstairs and eat breakfast.

I LOVE that they are finally old enough to get their own breakfast! I mean they aren't cooking eggs or anything, but The Girl Child can get them something simple and they can each alert me if the other one is choking, so I had no problem telling them to go right ahead. But then they asked if they could eat in front of the TV.

If you remember, my kids eat like animals.

I told them no, that I wanted them to eat in the kitchen.

"Well we can't see the TV from the table!" they argued in unison. "Can we eat on the counter?" questioned The Girl Child.

"No, I want you in the kitchen, on a chair" I said.

They both ran off.

I came down 20 minutes later and they were in fact eating in the kitchen, on a chair, in the doorway, watching TV.

And that my friends, is how we roll around here.

Unfortunately all the rolling hasn't been smooth. My child support should have been deposited into my account on Friday, and when it came, it was significantly less than what it should have been. I immediately called the child support office, and lo and behold, THE ORDER DEFAULTED IN THEIR SYSTEM AND IS NOW ONCE AGAIN THE SCREWED UP ORDER.

Frustration doesn't even begin to cover it.

Did I jinx myself or something when I posted last time?

As I was on the phone listening to head of the Child Support office telling me that, I had a vision of some slap stick comedy movie where an angry person crushes their cellphone in their hands.

I was like one failed calming breath away from being that person.

I got off the phone with them and then on the phone and called every state office I could find numbers for, and then spent the entire day getting redirected and transferred around. Eventually all the offices closed and there was nothing that I could do but shelf it for Monday.

UGH!!!!

There was not use in stressing about it all weekend, so I really did just try and push it aside for a few days.

I went on a date with a boy I'll tell you about later.

And then today I took the kids and we went out to lunch with my grandma. We rarely get a chance to see her anymore so that was really special! After that it was off to a high school graduation party for my Platonic Husband's son.

Yep, you read that right, that pretty lady's son graduated high school today. Can we just take a minute to give her a round of applause? Not only did her son graduate high school today, but my Platonic Hubby is only a few years older than me. She had her first two kids when she was so young that her daughter turns 21 next month. And don't let that wow you, let this wow you: She beat every negative statistic out there for girls who have children while still in high school. She herself went on to graduate high school and then graduated from college. Her kids have graduated high school and her daughter is in college majoring in psychology. AND, she is happily married to the father of her children and now they also have an adorable soon-to-be 2nd grader.

CAN WE SAY AMAZING?

You just don't hear stories like that anymore and I am proud to have her as my friend.

I do however, hate her for constantly throwing parties where the two of us gorge ourselves on Cheetos, or as I refer to their misleading chemical filled puffiness, "air and death." Addictive little fuckers they are.

She seems to have the same problem.

Overall it was a great time. The kids had fun and we had fun.

But then as we were leaving she handed us a bag of brownies, which of course I had to take because the kids saw them, which of course I then had to eat, because you know, brownies, so at this point she can just go to hell because I'm pretty sure she is trying to fatten me up on purpose.

So yes, that was a long week and this was a wierd post, and I am now going to work out and then head to bed because this upcoming week looks like it's going to be even longer. Yikes!!

If you are looking for an actual article to read, check out a few other things I worked on this week:

"The California Senate Approved A Bill To Make Vaccinations Mandatory"

"Moms Who Hate Me Because I'm A MILF, You're So Damn Insecure"

I hope you all have a great week and please keep my Boy Child in your prayers on Wednesday!