Six Weeks

The good news around here is that we have a new date for the Slacktivixen’s long-delayed surgery: May 31.

This is the fifth time we’ve had a date scheduled for this surgery, so we’re only cautiously hopeful that it will really happen this time. But we live in hope, in part because we can’t imagine how we’ll manage if they delay this any further.

Part of the reason this has been so hard to schedule is because it’s a high-tech, robot-assisted procedure. That’s not really optional. She had the conventional surgery many years ago and it didn’t take. The robot-assisted approach let’s her doctors make sure the problem will be solved, dramatically reduces the risk of life-changing side-effects, and cuts her expected recovery time from two months to one week.

That last bit isn’t the most important part, but it matters just now because my wife is working to start her own business. That’s always a challenge, but it’s especially challenging for her now because she’s in constant pain. That’s why she’s having to start her own business — because she got fired by the salon she worked at for more than 20 years due to the pain keeping her from working as much and as fast as she was able to before her health problems started. Now she rents a suite and books her own customers and is able to follow her doctors’ orders to accommodate her health needs because she’s her own boss.

That’s going well, so far. She’s got a solid base of customers who rave about getting the best haircuts they’ve ever gotten. That’s enough business to cover the rent for the suite and most of her expenses, but until that business grows some more, we’re still basically living off of my income from the Big Box. She keeps beating herself up for not hustling more to make her new venture profitable and I keep telling her that she’ll be able to do that after May 31, once she’s not in pain all day, every day, and she’s able to eat regularly again. You can’t be out there hustling to book more business when your doctor is telling you that you’re putting your health in jeopardy if you book too much business. After May 31, we can go whole hog with the promotion and the networking and the advertising, but that all has to wait until after the surgery. Doctors’ orders.

And May 31 is now just 44 days away. Six weeks. You just have to get through the next six weeks.

I swear, though, if they try to delay this surgery again I might just go all John Q. Public.

The last scheduled date was supposed to be in January. That got nixed because her electrolytes had crashed due to the reason she needs the damned surgery. That was the rescheduled date from the one in December, which got pushed back for insurance reasons due to her having to switch to my health plan due to her having gotten fired due to the reason she needs the damned surgery. That December date had been the earliest possible date because she spent the first five weeks of 2023 in the hospital, in a medically induced coma, due to dual infections she contracted due to the reason she needs the damned surgery.

She spent all of 2023 in pain because she couldn’t have the surgery because the thing the surgery was supposed to fix had almost killed her and then she had to wait another month because her new insurance plan had to be properly aged before it was accepted for this “optional” surgery for the thing that had almost killed her, and then it got pushed back another five months because the same condition sent her to an emergency room in January for a couple of bags of Potassium and Magnesium and whatnot. It’s crazy-making to keep hearing that they won’t treat her condition until she stops having the symptoms from the condition requiring the treatment. It’s maddening for me and I’m not even the one in actual pain.

So my wife is in constant pain and she feels like she’s trapped in a medical Catch-22 timeloop and in the middle of that going on for two years she was forced to try to start her own business.

The amazing thing is she just might pull it off. Not overnight, but eventually she will. But only if she really gets the surgery this time.

Six weeks. We just have to get through six weeks.

This is not a pipe dream or a false hope or a reckless lack of planning. The surgery really is expected to fix what ails her.

Her pain will be gone. She’ll be able to eat normally again. All of the doctors’ orders and restrictions and accommodations will no longer be in place because they will no longer be needed. The living room we jokingly refer to as the “invalid suite” will go back to being a living room. Six weeks from now she’ll have the surgery and by eight weeks from now she’ll be close to 100% for the first time in two years. And that version of my wife really will be able to turn her new business into something more sustainable and profitable.

We just have to get through six weeks.

Until then, we’re on shaky ground, faced with overdue bills and late fees that are making the bills that follow those more expensive.

So this is a fundraising post, a request for money. A plea for money. Because we really don’t quite know how we’re gonna get through the next six weeks.

My PayPal link is here: