Tue, 11 February 2003

As scheduled, I had two pre-op appointments yesterday (Monday 10th): with the doctor and with the hospital. Charlene Abbott came with me, primarily for moral support (Kiron is in Las Vegas this week), but also to write down all the answers to our questions, so I didn't have to. I'm glad she did, because I have a memory like a sieve.

Actually the first one was with Ling Yu, a colleague (perhaps an assistant?), and not Dr Kobs afterall. She checked the strength of the knee and answered some of my questions. She also mentioned something about a large cut down the front of my knee (perhaps 2-3 inches??). Upon reflection, that discussion worried me a bit, I guess because I thought this was to be arthroscopic ACL surgery.

Charlene and I had coffee at Starbucks in between.

The second appointment was at the hospital. We went through a bit of paperwork and we met with the anesthesiologist who's going to be putting me under. No blood tests which was somewhat surprising.

I'm glad they showed us the paperwork they'd printed out -- it reported that I was to have "medial stitcher tray" surgery. I queried this because its my ACL (anterior collateral ligament), not my MCL (medial collateral).  Turns out the entire diagnosis was an error: this tray really is a tray -- its the steel tray that the surgical instruments are placed on during surgery! Needless to say they intended to correct that.

We then met Bob (Charlene's husband) at Bear Rock Cafe and had lunch there, then I went off to work.