The Emerald Rose

sims,

    So what is my week like now? FILLED!!!! UP at 6am three days a week for Cardio-Rehab from 7-9 am, that’s three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, OR out walking the neighborhood for 2-3 miles on Monday, Friday, then a 2 hour workout at the Gym on Saturday, but Sunday I relax and just go to church, play on my computer until 3pm, then down to the Pub for a couple of pints. Oh year, and then after all the workouts it’s time for breakfast, shower, shave, about 30-45 minutes of reading or study (right now it’s the U.S. Constitution, ( those Founding Fathers were MF smart, too bad we turned the country over to the Ricky Retardo crew!). Oh yeah and whiloe all that is going on I’m answering e-mails on my Blackberry, or calls. Then I go to work (never before 11a.m., I’m training the Company expectations properly.)

     At night an hour of Pub decompression time, and home to supper, and relax in front of the TV or on the computer, and somewhere in there I eat a big salad and a serving of raspberry jello at my desk and check my personal e-mails (today it’s a tuna salad on a bed of lettuce, onions with oil  and vinegar and oregano)

     Between you an I this is a great retirement job, I can get it done with four hours a day of work, and two hours of creating work for others, i.e. writing e-mails to attorneys for “legal opinions” on foreclosures, property liens, interpretation of the Associations documents (about 150 pages for each Association I manage) and if I’m really getting bored, I go “out on property” (ride around the places I manage and wave to folks just so they can say they saw me managing, it’s kind of like being a Governor. And, time permitting, I shoot the shit with my maintenace guys, security guards, pool cleaners/life guards ands make sure that they totally understand the Community Association policy and procedure manuals where it is not writtenb that it is about the “illusion of work”, and not necessarily the actual “art” of work, by then it’s time to go home for the day. God is that tiring!! 🙂

 

     Part II of the new hit series for 2009, “As the scapel cuts”, a tense drama of worry, costs, and bureaucratic bullshit, a “newer, kinder, and more compassionate healthcare model” (For example, in the old days MAYBE they check your blood type before they open you up, but to maximize the fees charges new models have been developed to replace blood typeing.) About two weeks before your “procedure” (they don’t ‘operate’ any more, it has a sleazy conotation to it.) You get a call for a “pre-op procedural briefing” you go to the hospital, go into a nice office with a pleasant and inteligent nurse type who proceeds to ask you about every “boo-boo” you’ve had in life, every pill you’ve ever  taken (sorry “ingested” now”) a serious inquisition on “known” allergies, and then the show and tell part. The nurse type will walk you through the entire experiance from the time you are supposed to report to the hospital to the time you go home the next day, they check the scheduling to see how much time your Doctor has booked the “procedure suite” for and assure you that is plenty of time, then do the whole operation verbally (sometimes pretty “Dick & Jane” type booklets with anatomy illustrations and pleasant looking people playing with grand-children, etc. Then they ask “Do you have any questions?” If you do the usual answer is, “I’m not sure about that but you can ask the Doctor that day before he starts when he comes by to see you beforehand, He’s the Doctor, I’m merely a lowly nurse.”

         Once you run out of questions (BTW this “conference” is allotted 60 minutes) at the end of it you get an “Oh, by the way, may I see your insurance card so I can make a copy and we won’t have to bother you anymore about that sort of thing, and then I’ll take you down to the lab where they will draw some blood to check your clotting factors and type it. And I’m running off copies of everything we talked about and all the information we have so you can go home and read it, as well as your instructions.”

        “What instructions?”

        “Well stop taking all the pills you take about a week before the operation, except your high blood pressure pill, and no more vitamins or other supplements and particularly no Asprin, it’s a blood thinner and that could create problems for you. “

         And blythly skipping down the hallway together they lead you to to the “Lab Rats” whose eyes light up at the sight of a fresh victim. The nurse smiles and leaves, the “Lab Rat” grinds the tip off the needle and then says something like, “You’ll only feel a prick” before pain flashes through you and spots go before your eyes. These new needles have little vials that pop in and out while the needle stays in place so they can get numerous samples with out removing and re “sticking” you. So five tubes of blood later she says , there you go, and puts a wadded up 2″x2″ gauze pad on the site and flods your arm up and says “Just hold it that way for a minute. ” She comes back with a seemingly harmless scotch tape roll and slaps a piece of tape over the gauze pad. “There you go honey, you’re free to go.” Unless they need more “tests”, which in my case involved an EKG.

        So to answer your question, I go in Tuesday morning the 11th of August at noon, they “do me” at 2pm, over by 4pm, off to recovery for two hours and then into “intensive care” for an overnight rest. The next day they let me out about noon or so and I go home to “recuperate” they tell me it’s about a week or so before I’m leaping over tall buildings at a single bound, but a real “piece of cake” compared to the “By-pass” stuff.

        Of all that I forgot to tell you it’s my left carotid artery, and the only worry I have is the comment on page 63 of the recovery “packet” that says “should you dislodge the bandage and see significant bleeding, unlock the front door of your home call 911 and laydown and put pressure on the area until the paramedics get there.” I looked in the index and the glossary and there was no definition for “significant bleeding” , so let’s hope I don’t get that.

      This should be the last thing they need to do, all my numbers are “poster child” and I’ve dropped a total of 40 pounds in three and a half months, and wake up every night yelling “Put me in Coach, Put me in!!”

 

     More later, I need a couple of Guinness tonight!

Mr. G

 

     Now aren’t you glad you asked? Now I know how those old farts feel when they are yappin’ about thier scars and “procedures”!

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