Two days to the big day
Please do not pull here
Two more days. Surgery is Thursday.
Covid test down. For whatever reason, they don't tell me what the results are: they just send them to my doctor. I don't think I am positive: I've been pretty isolated and have zero symptoms. But if I did test positive, what happens? Do they cancel my surgery? Do they do it anyway and then isolate me? It all seems weird.
- update - I checked MyChart and I do not have Covid. So I guess I will never know the answers to all my questions.
I also received a call today from the hospital for pre-registration. It was the standard details: name, address, emergency contact, religious preferences...you know.
They also wanted to speak to me about payment plans for the surgery, which is reasonable. They had spoken to the insurance already and determined my remaining out-of-pocket expense (I'd blown through a LOT of it already with my myriad appointments), my co-payments, the "professional fee," and whatever. And they had calculated my expected costs for the surgery.
I think the majority of the reason for this call was to ask about putting me on a payment plan of some sort. But then she dropped that if I prepaid, she could offer me a 15% discount on the hospital fees. That's a lot of money! And it says quite a lot about how many people can't pay if they just up front offer a steep discount to get people to pay it. That's not a great look for our health care system.
I remain grateful that I have excellent insurance: so far we've paid a lot, but it's been manageable. My out-of-pocket maximum is not enormous (and I will hit it in the coming weeks). It's funny, we used to have crap insurance. We opted for good insurance mostly because we have great people who work with our company and we wanted to offer a good perk for them...but so far I seem to be the one most benefiting from that choice.
I've been asked if I'm nervous, and while I guess I am (it's surgery after all), mostly I'm eager to get this done. And also distracted af. Like really not focused. My todo lists are so detailed at the moment because I can't remember anything from one minute to the next. I told Stephen last week that I wished they would just call me and say "surprise! we have an opening! Come on in!" Yes, I know that isn't how this works. Whatever. But also it still feels a little bit unreal, since I still don't feel like there's anything actually wrong with me. Aside from the goddamn hip which still hurts but I never got it together to get to ortho once the cancer cascade of appointments happened. But frankly, a sore hip does not make a pending double mastectomy seem anymore real. Just saying.
More tomorrow...