(random, health, 354defeat)

[elainegrey]

Thursday, the nurse wrote, after i left a message in the chart software:

I just checked and it looks like a decision will be made tomorrow.

I am out of the office tomorrow but I will have the person who is working on your case (R--) send you a My Chart message when [they find] out.

Thanks,
A---

Friday morning i wrote, It will be a relief to know. I am glad that the prep for me before the surgery is minimal: discontinue one supplement, no analgesics. No big diet change.

I found out at around 11:45. I was in a bit of a spin and a bit emotional. The original denial came about two weeks before the original surgery scheduled date, that the insurance stuff far outweighed any anticipation of the actual surgery. Now it's less than a week away. Colleagues said, "Congratulations," which felt weird.

Other things were going on with work that heightened my emotions (experty visibility). Muchness. Christine has a Family Thing today that has her emotions all heightened, too. I think part of the feeling is a very low grade fear of a totally novel experience. Does it map to the same sort of experience as a colonoscopy or removal of wisdom teeth? Which were a blip of disruption. Am i being silly allowing two weeks for recovery? I guess i do have the experience of pneumonia, which didn't hospitalize me, but did take over a month for recovery. Anyhow. I continue to poke the future with sticks but will have to wait for it to transform to the present and past before i will know anything.

Meanwhile, on a conference website, labeled "Networking," this image:



I added the bars across the eyes (who knows if that's enough for facial recognition avoidance). Two other photos were in the series, "The Exhibition," which featured a single woman, and "The Conference," which had a crowd of people in chairs applauding with a woman center (a few others in the crowd of men). This photo -- well, i assume the conference is trying to be welcoming and show diversity, but this just resonates with the awkwardness i feel when facing all the tables at networking time at conferences and heightens it with all the suit jackets being all that navy-grey tone, and the woman standing wearing something else. Of course with me it was a bright tangerine orange. My copresenter commented that it was easy to find me in the crowd.

Comments

[sonia]

Good luck with the surgery! Having extra recovery time is much better than not enough.

Yeah, I just saw a photo from the most recent RailsConf (software conference) that was a sea of 30s-ish white men. Which is the exact thing I experienced the one time I went 10 years ago, except in person they're also *tall* 30s-ish white men, so it was even more overwhelming to a medium-small woman.

[elainegrey]

Thank you!

I'm (was) the height of an average American man, so i never quite had that forest experience. I can appreciate the overwhelm you must have experienced. I've only once attended a big industry conference that focused on a technology like that, at the conference center in San Francisco. It was far too much vigilance and stimulation, and i might have gotten something good out of five minutes of a presentation.

[weofodthignen]

So the insurance has greenlighted it? Yay!! Break a leg!

Business and its de facto uniforms, ugh. (Though my first on-campus professional interview, which went quite badly, every department member, including the one woman, was wearing a suit in the same shade of grey. My newly acquired Brooks Brothers suit would have fit right in except that she was in pants and I was in a skirt, and my blouse was pale yellow instead of white. I never saw that again in academia; it said volumes about the place, as did the assumption I walked right into that I would be keeping up with modern fiction.) I hope actual business men are usually more diverse and more independent in their clothing choices these days (degrees of baldness doing an awful lot of work there).

[elainegrey]

Thanks!

[tamena]

I Hate Insurance Companies!
and I'm so happy this is finally moving in the correct direction!
It's now night time - I hope Christine's thing went OK for her today
and NO you are not being silly with 2 weeks, it is far easier to say "hey! I feel good, I'm coming back early" than to have to say "hey I feel like crap still I need another week"

[elainegrey]

Thanks. She's worried about her siblings, each having their own serious challenge in their life. Other than caring so much it hurts her, Christine is fine.

[amaebi]

Re: Appointment achieved: Whew! If only carried stress relieved felt simply good. :/

Also, planning more recovery time than you wind up needing is swell.

Re: Photo: At least she's not serving them coffee. :/

[elainegrey]

"If only carried stress relieved felt simply good. :/"

Christine and i are so different: she gets emotional anticipating stress, i get emotional after stress. It does mean we can look out for each other, but it does have a sort of out of sync-ness to it, too.

[amaebi]

Feeing you hard.

Gentle handtpats offered to both you and Christine: to be taken as desired.