I’m a little late with this week’s blog, my week has been busy with the highlight being a trip to hospital for a very long awaited appointment – pre admission before surgery to replace my left shoulder.

This was the fourth attempt to have this appointment.  Three times we had to reschedule due to flooding, but finally I arrived. 

It’s a long day.  The drive to the hospital takes a bit over two hours on a good day – and luckily, we had a good day!!  I checked in and then the waiting started.  I was nervous.  This waiting room is familiar and it is usually over-crowded, over bright, over noisy, and far too many anxious and sick people for comfort.  I have been known to go into melt-down in this waiting room, so this is where, in this situation, Trust really begins for me.

Because I don’t have a car, and couldn’t drive it anyway because of my dodgy shoulder, I have a driver/escort to get me to and from appointments.  She is like a human guardian angel.  She steered me through the tricky bits and before I knew it we were in a quieter waiting area where we spent most of the day seeing various doctors, nurses, and technicians.  I was weighed, measured, prodded, poked, ECG, X-ray, blood work and more.  I chatted with a registered nurse, an orthopaedic doctor, an anaesthetist and more. 

It struck me suddenly, as I was talking with the anaesthetist, how much trust we place on the people to whom we entrust our health.  When surgery is involved that trust is pretty extreme – after all, especially when surgery is involved, we are, absolutely, at our most vulnerable.  I am (broadly speaking) about to have the top of the humourous bone in my left arm cut off, replaced with metal and plastic, and the whole lot sewn back together again.  That’s pretty major.

In this situation, we have to trust that our medical team know their stuff.  That they have the knowledge and experience to do everything they can to ensure a great outcome.  That we will be treated with respect. 

The people I saw during that visit are not likely to be the same people who will perform the surgery, but I’ve had surgery before at this hospital and I was treated only with kindness and respect.  A reverse shoulder replacement is considered major surgery.  I’m not worried about the actual operation; I feel the care of the people I spoke with.  It’s when I get home afterwards that is going to be interesting because my arm is likely to be out of action for up to six weeks. 

Hmmmm.   I’ll be typing with one hand.  Or maybe experimenting with voice-to-text.  Could be ‘interesting’!!

Thank you for reading

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Auri’An Lay

Exploring Life through a neuro-divergent mind