What? No surgery today??

Today we "thought" Matt was scheduled to have hernia surgery. He didn't eat anything this morning, we had a babysitter lined up for the day, and he was prepared to lay low the next five days or so. He even told work he would not be in for the next three days.

At the end of his doctor's appointment last week where they determined he had a hernia, he was told to be at a clinic at 11:15 am on Thursday. I had received a automated call to tell me about his appointment.  A nurse never called and talked to him about surgery or had anyone given us any surgery instructions, which we thought was kind of odd. We just thought they forgot or something. As for today, we thought we were going to meet the surgeon right before the surgery and the surgery would be done in this building. I know surgeries can be done in outpatient facilities, so it all made sense to me.

He checked in and filled out some paperwork and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Matt was taken back to a room and we chatted with the nurse a little bit. Again, we thought we were just meeting the doctor before the surgery.

Soon the doctor came in and introduced himself. He wanted to see where Matt's hernia was and said, "Yep, that's a hernia." He then went on to explain how he was going to fix it. Again, nothing out of the ordinary!  He then said "You are going to need about five days off for recovery." So I said out loud, "Ok, he has today, Thursday, Friday, and then the weekend. He should be ready to go back to work on Monday, right?" The doctor just looked at me. I said, "He is scheduled for surgery today, right?" The doctor said, "He's not having surgery today! You need to see me, we need to reserve the operating room, reserve the anesthesiologist, etc. Who told you that you were having surgery today??"

Matt and I were kind of stunned. So now he wasn't having surgery today?? It was kind of hard to wrap our heads around for about ten minutes. We were all ready for surgery!!

The more we thought about it, nobody really informed us of what was going on today. Matt said when he saw the family doctor last week, the doctor said, "You have a hernia and you will need surgery. We will go ahead and set it up for you." Shortly after that, a nurse brought Matt a piece of paper with an address and a time on it. He assumed that this was surgery since they were just talking about it. He said he never heard anything about a consultation.  We then heard from his mom (retired nurse) that sometimes you meet the surgeon right before surgery, so that made sense to us.

So in the end, we saw the doctor, he verified that Matt had a hernia, and we set up surgery for October. It is for real this time!! We followed all the steps like we were supposed to! We were in that office not even 30 minutes!

The bummer part of it all was that Matt was looking forward to getting this fixed today, and now he has to wait another whole month. He said the hernia doesn't really hurt, but it is fairly uncomfortable.  He says it starts to hurt if he does too much, so he has been laying low lately. He is not looking forward to another whole month of restriction and being uncomfortable!!! I guess he is just going to have to grin and bear it until October 5th!