Well, here we are again, and I have some gigantic updates that I need to do for you all. This post will be quite different from the others in that you'll be subjected to far less story-telling and more of a 'shopping list' of events just due to the sheer volume of things that have been happening. :)
So, where to start?
Firstly, I've been taking a bit of break from this to try and sort out my issues with the accident. It's now sufficiently been manhandled into the foggy part of my brain so that it's not a debilitating level of stress any longer and I'm ready to deal with whatever happens on the insurance front.
To take you right back, I did end up remembering to call Dr Jayadev on the Wednesday (2 days after the smash) who confirmed that my bloodwork had delivered a 'surprisingly excellent' result for beginning my hormone therapy. Turns out that I'm nicely geared to accept Testosterone into my system, my liver is in brilliant condition (thank you Ngaire for never drinking!) and that my blood count is great.
All blazing green lights for me to get needles stuck into my bum.
With that news I quickly made an appointment for the 5th of April to do just that and then fell back into trying to make it through the week.
Coming home to Mel was a Godsend.. having a major negative event happen to you when you have no friends/family/partner physically around to comfort you can be very draining. Especially when you can't sleep. Or eat. Or anything kinda life-giving like that.
By Saturday I'd sorted out enough stuff that I could make a conscious decision to just focus on organising my transition by getting everything locked down and paid for - which helped me enormously. It also put me into 'Project Management' mode which is always helpful when it comes to dealing with emotional issues, and restored some confidence as each result was achieved.
I'd been dealing with a lovely woman at Dr Brownstein's office called 'Katrina' via e-mail about getting my chest surgery locked down. We'd been going back and forth trying to get things to fit and registered for some point at the back end of the year, and were down to around 6 dates that could possibly work in for me.
The accident somewhat crystalised things for me and without hesitation I fired an e-mail to her that booked in the earliest one available within the date range - the 20th of October. Katrina quite efficiently shot back payment details for the scheduling surgery fee ($500 US), which I paid, and now there is 'Patient Confirmation' package winging it's way across the oceans to my snail-mail box.
My surgery will be performed on the 20th of October, with a pre-operative appointment on the 19th of October in which they will biopsy my breast tissue and take me through exactly what is going to happen during the 3 hours I'll be chemically disconnected from the world.
The second cab off the rank was sorting out flights to actually get us there (in once piece) for a semi-decent price.
Now that the surgery was booked in we had some timeframes to work with. By previous experiences I wanted to allow for at least 48 hours of jetlag-recovery-time so I wasn't dealing with both an exhausted body and a fairly serious procedure simultaneously.
We decide that ideally this would see us leaving Sydney on the 17th of October, which is a Sunday.
Over the preceding weeks Mel had been doing some fairly serious legwork researching flights and had come up with the best case option of around $995 one way per person with a transferral flight in the middle of it from LAX to San Fran.
Having taken a few international flights with work I knew this wasn't too bad, but I seriously couldn't stand the concept of having to deal with LAX, trying to sort out luggage and then having to get on another plane to San Fran AFTER a 10 hour delay in said shitty airport.
Blarg.
I decided to engage the services of Gavin, a friend of mine who has seen and been through quite a few ups and downs with me during our time together. Gav has spent more time on a plane than many others on the planet can lay claim to, and most of this has been international.
He can recite the steward's safety procedure word for word pretty much regardless of the airline and rattles off specifications of planes like they were a make of car.
Seemed like a good plan to have a chat with him before booking anything in, particularly when money has become such an important resource right now.
So off to Gavin I went, credit card in hand, and asked him to wave his magic wand of 'Galileo'. And wave it he did - securing us flights with United Airlines on a Boeing 787-400, direct from Sydney to San Francisco, for $1385 AU each.
... return.
(And there was much rejoicing.)
This particular initial flight from Sydney to San Fran, amusingly enough, will see us set down 6 hours before we take off. Gotta love racing before the dawn.
Mel finds a particularly nifty site that tells us about the feedback on each particular seat, including the best volume of space and where to sit in an ideal world. We make a selection based on the quietest and largest areas to stretch out so we're well taken care of each way.
Flights: done and dusted.
The next item on the list is our accommodation. Mel again had put quite a lot of time into searching the web to try and find us optimal lodgings.
We needed somewhere that had 2 beds because I essentially will need to sleep alone until the drains come out from the operation. (Approx 9 nights.) We also needed somewhere quite 'homey' in that it was fully self contained, had laundry facilities and was also pleasant for me to spend a lot of time staring at the walls.
Mel had come up with some awesome places, some of which had truly scary pricetags. ($3700 US a week? Urk.) We needed something around the $1K mark, preferably under, and so we glumly went back to the drawing board to try and see what things we could do without rather than with.
By sheer chance I stumbled onto a website called HomeAway.com and herein we found our jewel.
A fully renovated 1940's style condo-apartment with more features than you can poke a stick at for $900 US a week. We were stunned. Not only two fullsize queen beds, it had two actual bedrooms flooded with air and light. A fireplace, completely decked out kitchen, laundry facilities, bath AND shower (bath very important for a chopped up man), all linen etc etc etc.
We booked it straight away for the 3 weeks we need. ($2700 US) I don't just want to rent it, I want to live there!
Accommodation: Check!
What remains to be done now is to physically pay for the surgery itself ($5,500 US) and work out additional funds for living expenses while in the US and the facility/anesthesiologist fee. ($2,300 US.)
While I'm still slightly short of the funding required, but there's time to sort that out.
The most important thing is that many balls are now rolling, and that this thing I've been researching for 8 years is finally going to happen.
First blog post
8 years ago
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