Navigating Life - Post Back Surgery

Lower spine image

I have a life-long** strategy for making decisions. That is to ask myself what decision sets me up for the best chance at easing my future path? (Have written about, but not posted this strategy). Generally, this works well assuming

1.      I know what decision will lead in the desired direction.

2.      People who need to cooperate with my decisions do so.

On occasion someone will tell me, “No”.

Let me say that again. On occasion someone will respond to a request of mine with, “No”.

Who among us feels happy when that happens?

This works on me much like going to a store, say a grocery or pharmacy, and finding that they don’t have what I’m looking for and that item is something that I believe the store should not only have, but have in abundance, all the time. I just can’t fathom it and I continue to examine the shelves closely and wrack my brain to come up with a possible alternative section it could be in. The situation is unacceptable, and I won’t accept it unless and until I convince myself that it really isn’t there. This usually includes asking someone.

Telling me “No” in the face of my completely reasonable request(s) is equally unfathomable and unacceptable. It’s just a matter of helping the right person see that telling me, “Yes” is far better for everyone.

If you’ve followed me at all, you know that I just had back surgery last Thursday. I apologize that I haven’t written up the surgical experience and aftermath itself yet. But this thing happened and is part of the situation, so I decided to write it first.

I was allowed to leave the hospital after one night instead of after the two they anticipated. Once that was decided the nurse seemed to get in a big hurry about getting me out of there. He started speaking very quickly and (in English-ish) about instructions for being at home. He also told me I that I will need for the bandaging to be changed every three days so I should go to the hospital in Gambelas sometime on Monday (today) to get that done. The last thing was that he made me a follow-up appointment with the surgeon for next month back there where the surgery was done in Alvor. Here’s the geography.

• Immediately next door to our apartment building is the hospital where I got the pre-op tests. For brevity I call it the Rehab Hospital.

• The hospital in Gambelas is where I had the first consultation with the surgeon. It’s a 10-20 minute Uber ride or a longer bus ride.

• Alvor is where the surgery was done and is an hour+ Uber ride or longer train ride.

All three places are part of the HPA Saude system (think Novant). Which one do you think you’d rather go to three days after having back surgery? I told the nurse that the Rehab hospital (I used it’s full name) was right nextdoor to us and asked if I could go there to get the bandages changed. He said, you guessed it, “No”. You must go to Gambelas.

Let that soak in a minute.

AAACCCKK!

I thought to myself that I would read all the instructions when I got home and take if from there. Well, truthfully, I also tried to change the location of the appointment in September, but he wasn’t going for that either. Really, I think he just didn’t have all the information. So I’ll tackle that eventually.

Upon arrival at and settling in at home, I pulled out the post-surgery instructions I was given. Aw, man, they are in Portuguese. I knew HPA Saude could provide English because they had done so on my previous visits. By this point it was 7 or 8pm on Friday. So I thought, either someone will call to check on me tomorrow, or I’ll have to contact someone on Monday. No call on Saturday.

This morning, I sent email, only about the bandages and the Portuguese instructions to the woman, call her T, who had handled the surgery details and scheduling, and I copied our Serenity Nurse (medical concierge), call her D.

Unsurprisingly, D responded first and she advised that I just go next door myself and ask them if they could change the bandages. Happily, before I had a chance to do that, T responded. She got me an appointment at the Rehab hospital and provided the rest of the instructions in English.

Cooking with gas now! Scott and I reported at the appointed time and the bandages were changed and another appointment scheduled for Thursday. Including walking over there and back, all this took MAYBE 10 minutes. I SWEAR, if we had taken an Uber or the train for this… GRRRRRRRRR.

At this point I feel fairly confident that I will be able to change the follow-up appointment with the surgeon to a closer location also.

The message for everyone is, ya don’t have to take NO for an answer without trying to get the YES! What do YOU think?

** could be a slight exaggeration