Fear and Perception - Monday 10/8/2007

The illustration above clarified my thinking about the gall bladder: it's green, it lurks, and you have to go in X-Files style and route it out. Afterwards--or maybe even during the surgery itself--you will be able to eat a cracker with a big lump of cheese on it.

All right!

For those of you outside the range of my whimper, this will be news.

I'm going to have my gall bladder removed on October 22nd. I have a 2 cm+ gall stone that periodically causes me pain and discomfort. I've been convinced, as the surgeon said last night in the pre-op consultation, that "The risks of not having this surgery are greater than the risks of having it."

Plus, I don't trust the state of health insurance in America. If I should leave or lose my job, this would be a pre-existing (read that: non-covered) procedure. As it is, it's a common and low-risk surgery.

Still, I'll be taking off work for the two weeks the surgeon recommends. My mom's coming out, so we can talk a lot and she can make sure I keep walking more every day, etc.

I feel a lot more confident about this after having the consult last night (with Hydra there for extra questions.) They also ran tests, most of which I have the results of already (kudos to the Internet and Kaiser's use of it), which identify me as in good health going into this. Better than in a crisis, which a gallstone can create.



Seriously, if you'd asked me yesterday morning, I would have described Dr. Z (the surgeon) as looking kind of like this guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's ultra-creepy episode, "Hush," but with wispy hair and a fillet knife behind his back.



After seeing him last night, I realize that I would actually cast James Olson--remember him as the single guy with the key from Andromeda Strain (1971)?--as Dr. Z.

Much nicer.

Cool Thing: On a side note we watched a PBS show about California during World War II last night and I learned that Kaiser Permanente really started the concept of HMOs with the Kaiser Shipyards. When I looked up their history, I see that it's earliest incarnation was in Mojave, CA and that it treated workers on the Los Angeles Aquaduct that brings water from my beloved Owens Valley to L.A.