Wednesday, November 07, 2007

oh domainity, oh doctors

DOMAIN

Look up. At the address bar. You see that? You see what I'm seeing when I look where you're looking? It's my own custom domain, www.thepalinode.com.

So far I don't know what to make of it. It looks a bit funny. A bit lumpy. Schmutzie said that she felt an instant of blog importance when she switched to a custom domain, but I feel like I'm wearing an oversize shirt or a hairstyle that demands more of me than I'm willing to give. In a few days that feeling will fade, and the new address will shrink to fit my sensibilities.

One thing I do know: aside from a few notable exceptions, blogs with custom domains are automatically taken more seriously than the blogspots and diarylands and typepads and livejournals of the blogosphere. Therefore I will take advantage of my new badge of authority to make all kinds of unfounded pronouncements/accusations/dicta on the terrible state of live-action furry fantasy role-playing conventions society.

Don't ask me if I checked out www.palinode.com, because I have, and someone is standing on it.


DOCTOR

As many of you know, my back has been messed up most of 2007. Last April I was referred to a neurosurgeon with a waitlist so long that by August I hadn't even been called for an appointment. Dave, my chiropractor, arranged to have me see another neurosurgeon. It took a total of two appointments, x-rays and CT scans over six weeks to have neurosurgeon B agree that I needed surgery. On September 28, I signed the forms in the expectation that I would be under the knife in six to eight weeks max.

After three weeks' silence from the hospital, I phoned the surgery hotline and found out that the six to eight weeks that neurosurgeon B had promised guesstimated was off by three to four months. So I took six months' leave from work. I'd be damned if I was going to keep showing up at the office, my body screaming in pain and my mind diluted by morphine. I could do all that in bed, thank you very much.

On Monday, Dave phoned me again. It turned out that my surgery had been deemed elective, which meant that as far the health care system in my province was concerned, I could sit and rot. He summed up my situation with the kind of concision that the rest of the health care system seemed unable to match: You can't work, Aidan, and that's not good. When you've reached the point that you can't work you should be considered a priority.

Exactly.

He said he'd make some phone calls.

Yesterday I got a call from the hospital. My chiropractor had spoken with another neurosurgeon, one who seemed willing to take my problem seriously. Would I be able to see neurosurgeon C on Thursday afternoon for a consultation? Um, yes.

I phoned Dave to let him know that his efforts had paid off. Dave said: You're seeing him in the afternoon?

Yes, I said.

Okay, then. Don't eat lunch.If his schedule is open and he thinks your problem is as serious as I know it is, he may be able to operate on you immediately. It's happened with two of my patients.

Tomorrow afternoon, folks. Maybe. Wish me luck.

15 comments:

Gwen said...

I am sending you all the good karma I can muster and am thinking about you. I hope it happens, posthaste.

Gwen said...

I almost forgot - congrats on the domain. Very cool. Was it hard to switch? I feel so inferior now.blogspot.com

palinode said...

Gwen - Thanks for the encouraging words. Switching over wasn't very difficult, but I first transferred over from godaddy to mydomain. That was time consuming and the procedure wasn't very clear. Once my domain was in the good hands of mydomain.com, the process was pretty smooth and not difficult at all.

Anonymous said...

Best of luck tomorrow! Here's hoping that soon we will be reading stories of you and your happy healthy back.

Anonymous said...

oh my freaking god am i ever pulling for tomorrow to be the lucky day. but even if it's not surgery day, may it be the start of something good and extremely fast.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the doctor (Maybe pack a lunch to eat on the spot if you don't get the surgery right away?)
Congrats on having a big kid site :-)

Anonymous said...

Good goddamned luck, mister. I hope this happens for you because sweet christ it sounds painful what you're going through.

Anonymous said...

Whoa, good luck there. Cronic long term crap like this sucks sucks sucks. I've been there; I had to stop typing for a year and a half due to RSI back in the mid-nineties, and I'm a computer programmer for heck's sake...

Bronwyn said...

Good luck!!! Hope you get sliced into soon.

Nate said...

Sending good thoughts/prayers your way.

Bruce Johnson said...

...and I thought Canada was supposed to have a better health care system than the U.S.?

Good luck dude.....morphine gets pretty old after a while.

Kate said...

You know, I'm not a praying woman at all. But last night, while I was trying to fall asleep, I thought very very hard at the Powers That Be, and asked that you get your busted back fixed up soon. And then this morning, I see this post, and I can only hope that someone was listening.

I bow down to your domain name.

Unknown said...

Health care in Canada may be free but nobody ever said it was fast...
Best wishes

palinode said...

The health care system in Canada is not a monolithic institution by any means. It varies from province to province, but overall it gives excellent service. If I had cancer of some kind or a life-threatening illness, I'd be getting good care. Where I live the health system is plagued by an institutional approach that sees back problems strictly as elective surgery, plus we have (I think) a shortage of doctors, many of whom prefer to live in larger centres where there are, arguably, greater opportunities. The net result is that our neurosurgeons have insanely long waiting lists, and I have to wait until I am no longer able to work.

Contrast this with my wife's cervical cancer. She was treated swiftly, her surgeon used a procedure that most places still cannot offer, her in-hospital care was wonderful, and now she's 100% cancer-free. And it cost us nothing but our taxes, which are not burdensome in any way. If we'd lived in the States, we would never have been treated so well, even with health insurance.

Friday Films said...

Hmmm, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the domain thing. I think blog loyalty comes from people knowing you're out there on the one hand and then knowing you'll consistently deliver on their expectations, whatever those may be. You can do that pretty much anywhere on the internet. Voila: http://beta.bloglines.com/topfeeds?page=1

I maintain that people read your blog for the excellent quality of your writing and Palinodeness that is yours alone, wherever you're housed. But if your smart suit makes you feel more confident, then you go girlfriend!

Good luck with your surgery - I had a sympathetic nightmare about it last night. My coworker Yuan and I both had to go for some type of vaginal surgery. She claimed it was really awful and I had to envision her lying unconscious and naked on the operating table in a way that makes me uncomfortable around her today.