My panniculectomy surgery just got postponed again, this time to August 9th, because of the backlog of cases due to “COVID interruptus.”
The poor gal who called to tell me this expected me to chew her head off, I think, because she sounded so distraught at first that I thought she was going to tell me my doctor had died! It was a very unsettling few brief seconds!
Then she wanted to explain it all, and why they needed to postpone my surgery. I quickly assured her I’m not (never have been) a difficult patient, and I totally understand why Dr. Goldsberry-Long had to make the decision.
She has a remaining backlog of cases because COVID shutdowns wreaked such havoc at her hospital, which was Ground Zero for the COVID outbreak a year ago here in Washington State; they were dealing with all of the cases in the Seattle area 24/7 for a number of weeks and were on the front lines of deciding how to tackle the pandemic locally, regionally and nationally! (That’s why my chest masculinization surgery was postponed to August 24th last year from a March date.)
They can only schedule one “elective” (non-urgent) surgery every Monday at the hospital for Dr, G-L, because the rest of her time will be taken by urgent surgeries. They were scheduling two non-urgent surgeries every Monday, but it became apparent that that just wasn’t going to work long term. (Who wants an exhausted surgeon working on them??? Not me!)
My doctor has lots of patients who need breast reconstruction surgeries as a result of mandatory mastectomies (due to cancer), so her schedule is crammed with those. My surgery isn’t considered “urgent” in the way those are. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable having 16 or more pounds of hanging skin on my tummy and abdomen, and it’s downright nasty during hot weather because of the skin breaking down in those areas, but by the time summer comes, I will be just weeks away from the surgery and I can do something to mitigate against the skin breakdown for a time.
The additional weeks also give Lisa and me plenty of time to hit the Orting Trail and to walk. I’m already walking an hour a day (have been for about two weeks now) and since it’s slowly getting warmer, I expect we’ll be able to start hitting the trail three days a week along about the end of this month. That will give us all of April, May, June and July and the first week of August to run off some more fat and get me in excellent shape for the surgery–so I’m feeling pretty good about that extra time!
I have no problem honoring my doctors’ health and stamina! I respect their right to call a halt when it all gets to be too much for them. They need to remain healthy and well-rested enough to do what they do reliably and well for their patients!
