All children are impatient. Patience isn’t innate. It’s a skill learned that requires a fair amount of maturity. As a child, I thought my impatience made me special since so many people pointed it out. Fact is, I was no different than any other kid who wants what they want right now.
The last four years have been a lesson in patience and validation that I have the trait in spades. No matter how many times I’ve sobbed, yelled, cursed, thrown things, or otherwise tantrumed, I’ve been patient as I’ve waited for my new knees.
I didn’t have much choice. It was my lack of patience that landed me in this position in the first place. My need to move fast without taking the time to check my path caused my arthritis, unlike people unlucky enough to draw the cards of genetics or autoimmune dysfunction. Osteoarthritis, like fatness, tends to be viewed with disdain. You brought it on yourself, so deal with it yourself. Both of those factors likely led to the orthopedist I saw two years ago yesterday telling me that while I was a candidate for knee replacement surgery she wouldn’t do it. Or my then-general practitioner who said, “Well, you’ll just have to be more careful, won’t you?”
Bottom line: this is my fault, and so it’s acceptable to live with these knees:
My surgeon took a large series of x-rays during my initial consultation a few days before Christmas. I didn’t see them. I just know they were enough to prompt him to schedule surgery immediately. I got my new right knee one month and two days later in the midst of the Omicron surge even though surgeries around me were getting canceled.
Recovery has required far more patience than I thought. Patience with my body as I stumble through doing too much physical therapy, or not enough. Patience with the broken health care system and an insurance company that is being run by squirrels. Patience with my own pain. Patience with the massive case of Surgery Brain that doesn’t want to leave me, which means having patience with myself today for getting the wrong time on my physical therapy appointment and forgetting that I have a lab test to take today.
The patience with myself part, especially for these missed appointments, leaves me wanting to put my walker through a window. My impatience isn’t simmering, a quiet sigh. It’s a raging hag that wants justice for … what? Life being unfair and humans—especially this one—being fallible? Doesn’t matter how many things I throw, it won’t change that. I have to be patient.
I had to be patient last week when Squirrel Life and Liability decided that, despite approving my second knee replacement on March 11th, they weren’t going to approve the following hospital stay. Just toss me out along with the bag of medical waste I’m leaving behind. Let The Squirrels take care of it.
During the initial consultation with my orthopedist, I told him I was willing to take out loans to pay for my $75,000/each new knees if insurance didn’t approve them. Why wouldn’t insurance approve me? he asked. I’m telling them you need them so they’ll approve them.
Oh, but he didn’t know my relationship with The Squirrels. He had to make an appeal for my hospital stay, which he won. And now I have to refrain from singing “The I Told You So” song to him when I’m at the stage where they’ve given me the happy drugs but haven’t knocked me out yet.
(Don’t count on this scenario not happening. Last time, in that state, my anesthesiologist wished me good luck on surgery, so I shot him with a pair of finger guns and said, “No, Doc, good luck to you during my surgery.” What I’m saying is I can’t be held responsible for what I say in the twilight.)
We had to move my surgery from March 11th to March 16th to allow time for Team Squirrel to get their shit together and decide that, perhaps a hospital stay for someone who just paid a visit to the bone saw is a good idea.
It’s an exceptionally long five days.
I planned to fill the time with physical therapy, but Team Squirrel also decided to nix coverage for the therapy center I chose after one appointment. It took a week to get an approved appointment at the only local center with any openings before my surgery. For my first appointment yesterday, Surgery Brain took part in a miscommunication and was 15 minutes late for an 8 a.m. appointment. Today, SB mixed up Monday’s 3 p.m. appointment with today’s 1:45 p.m. appointment. There’s still the possibility of a 7 a.m. appointment before I leave on Tuesday but I have run out of slots in my brain that remember times.
This. Is almost over. All of it is almost over. While it took years of waiting to get to surgery, I’m halfway finished with it. And despite the best efforts of Squirrel Life and Health and the Surgery Brain, I’ll still be leaving for Elmhurst, Illinois, on Tuesday afternoon because I have this:
It’s almost over but the waiting. And in six and a half weeks, my left leg will feel the way my right leg feels now, which is pretty damn good. But there’s no calm when you’re waiting for your life to begin.