Because I’m THAT tough!

Savvy or stupid? You decide. You know that foot surgery I’ve been talking about for months? I had it done yesterday. Just 4 weeks after my c-section. But really, I had some very good reasons for having it done so soon. The biggest reason was financial. My insurance co-pays and deductibles are increasing a lot for 2010. And I have already paid my out of pocket maximum for 2009. So having the surgery in this calendar year costs me NOTHING out of pocket. If I were to have it even next week, it would likely have cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 in co-pays and deductibles. Also, I just wanted to get it over with. I’m sick and tired of this foot pain.

So yesterday, before the ass crack of dawn, my mother drove me and the baby to the orthopedic hospital. I was told to be there at 6:30am. (BTW, I still haven’t thought of a permanent blog nickname for baby girl, but for the moment I am calling her Squeaky. I’m very lucky, she hardly ever really cries, but when she fusses she makes these little squeaky noises.) Knowing that the surgery would be done with twilight anesthesia and an ankle block, and that I would be pumping and dumping for 24 hours, I wanted to be able to nurse her until the last possible moment when they took me to pre-op. Both the man who took care of the initial paperwork and the nurse who was to escort me to pre-op suggested I nurse in the bathroom. Ummm, no. I didn’t use the bathroom in the waiting area, but according to my mother, there wasn’t even a chair in there. Did they expect me to sit on the toilet to breastfeed? Ewwww! I was wearing a nursing top and had a blankie to drape. I was appropriately discrete in the waiting area.

Then the nurse took me to pre-op, where the surgeon stopped by to initial my foot with a marker to indicate which one he was operating on. He was impressed with how well I’m doing after such a recent c-section. (Hey, 10 weeks of self administered PIO, I’m tough as nails.) The anesthesiologist, a resident, and a PA all came by to go over things and have me sign even more paperwork. I peed in a cup for (bwahahahahaha!) a pregnancy test. Turns out I was very lucky it was negative, as it would not have been unusual to get a positive so soon after delivering, and if it was positive, despite the fact that we know I’m not pregnant, I would have had to fill out a shitload of additional paperwork, possibly delaying the surgery. (Geez, what a sentence. Maybe I shouldn’t blog on percocet.)

I walked to the OR. They got a step stool for me to get on the table. Started the IV, and off to dreamland. Woke up in recovery, where they gave me a nice tuna sandwich. After a while in recovery, they took me to another area where a physical therapist gave me a quick lesson in crutches. Then they let my mother come back with Squeaker. Gimme my baybee!!! The surgeon came by and said everything went well and of course he admired my beeyootiful baby, and we were allowed to leave. It must have been quite a confusing site at the orthopedic hospital to see the woman being wheeled out in a wheelchair carrying a little baby. (They do not have an obstetrics dept.)

Went home and pumped (and dumped) and napped. In the evening, despite some pain and under the influence of percocet, I finished the design of Squeaker’s birth announcement and uploaded it to the printer. Because I’m THAT tough! ;-)

That was my Monday. How was yours?