If you're reading this blog, it seems a safe assumption that you know me, at least a little bit, so it probably comes as no surprise when I declare myself A Planner.
You might even know or recognize that I am not someone who enjoys taking things as they come... it's not that I eschew spontaneity, but rather I tend to fill my time up and have little room for spontaneity. This has really been true about me since I was a teenager. In some ways I've loosened up on this as I've gotten older, and in some ways it's only gotten worse. Sorry, not sorry: I like to know what's going to happen and when. I like to write events down in my home-made planner and plan around them when other things come up. On the plus side, I am usually pretty reliable - if I tell you I'll be somewhere, I'll be there - but on the down side, I really struggle with vagueness or "let's see how it goes."
As you might recall, I left my neurosurgeon consult appointment committed to a "let's see how it goes" approach. And I honestly felt okay about it in that moment, because the alternative was brain surgery. I was so wildly relieved that whatever I was dealing with was not definitively something terrifying (like brain cancer), that taking some time to breathe and bask in the relief felt reasonable. Several people in my life, including blog readers as well as my parents and my husband, said things that more or less boiled down to "why aren't you getting this thing out as soon as you possibly can?" And the answer was that it felt okay to wait...
Until it didn't.
Because I really don't like uncertainty. I really don't like "wait and see." At least not with things that impact my time. I'm fine with surprises and gifts and things, but when I'm looking at an event that will have a noteworthy impact on life - time, money, health, etc. - it is verrrrryyy hard to just roll with the punches.
I had basically decided that I would schedule the surgery for as soon as possible following my June 23 follow up appointment, but realized that scheduling surgery and medical appointments in general is such a gamble; who knew how long it would take to get something actually on the books, once I let them know I was ready. I would hate to go to the June 23 appointment and be told it would take another 3 months before they could get me in.
All this to say, at my mother's urging, I contacted my neurosurgeon's office via their portal to explore my options for scheduling (it's all portal-based at this point! I couldn't even figure out what phone number to call if I wanted to!).
Me: Hi Dr. NeuroSurgeon. I wanted to touch base to let you know that I'm confident I would like to schedule the surgery for as soon as possible following that next round of imaging and follow up. Does that feel reasonable from your perspective?
[one business day later]
Dr. NeuroSurgeon's Scheduling Guru: How's June 29?
No discussion, no additional questioning, just, essentially, YES that's fine. I was blown away. He did tell me that as soon as I felt like I wanted to have it removed we could go ahead with it, but I don't think I really believed it would be as simple as me saying "let's do this."
As it turned out, June 29 wouldn't work for me. We did some back and forth and came to terms with July 27.
That's right, folks. You heard it here... July 27 I'm having brain surgery to evict the unwanted tenant, squatting on my brain.
More to come and more to unpack. There's obviously a lot going on emotionally with all that, plus I haven't even really gotten into the fact that I still have headaches (albeit, less dramatically terrible ones) quite frequently - and the doctors don't think that the meningioma is responsible. While I'm NOT a doctor, I do tend to disagree with their assessment. I suppose only time will tell... Stay tuned!
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