Hm. It’s possible that emergency surgery is better than planned surgery, in that you get to forgo all the stress of figuring out, in advance, how you’re going to cope. Instead, I’ve been spending hours in figuring out and putting in place preparations for every damnfool contingency that I know is going to come up, and then wondering what I’ve overlooked and what kinds of fiascos being unprepared for those will evince.
Some of these contingency preparations are things that we all should have in place, just as a matter of course. Others present themselves when a doctor says you’ll be out of commission for three days to two weeks and veterans of the proposed surgery say it may take two to three months to convalesce and up to a year to get back to normal.
Here’s what you get to think about when faced with a doctor’s pronouncement that you need surgery:
Medical:
Living Will. If you don’t have one, ya better get one. I do, and after I paid a lawyer a hefty fee to make one out for me, I learned she was using boilerplate that can be downloaded from the Internet. Google “living will” and the name of your state to pull this up. Download, customize, fill it in, and see to it that your representatives have copies and that all your doctors, hospitals, and other medical care institutions have copies.
Durable Health Care Power of Attorney. Your representative will need one of these to be able to make medical decisions for you, should you be too incapacitated to do so. It waives HIPPA restrictions so doctors can speak with the person about your condition.
Durable Mental Care Power of Attorney. This one allows your representative to obtain mental health care for you should you lose your marbles. This also waives HIPPA restrictions.
But while you’re filling out the endless forms at the doctor’s office, be sure you designate your representative as a person with whom information about your condition can be shared under the HIPPA laws.
Financial:
Will. Make out your will, long before the need for it becomes apparent. Get it witnessed and notarized. Be sure your heirs have copies, as well as your lawyer and financial advisors.
Investments. Designate a beneficiary for all of your investments. If you’ll be leaving money to more than one person or entity, then the beneficiary would be “the estate of [name].” If you have only one heir, then make that person the beneficiary. This will greatly simplify transfer of funds in the event of your demise.
Bank accounts. You can designate a beneficiary for a bank account, too. You also can make your representative — assuming he or she is responsible and can be trusted — a co-signer on your account. This makes it possible for her or him to pay your bills if you’re out of it but not quite dead yet. Or to cancel your auto-pays if you are dead. 😉
What will Medicare or insurance cover…and what not. I’m told there’s someone at the Mayo who can help figure this out given which policies I’ve got. Tomorrow I need to track that person down and make an appointment.
Durable power of attorney: Enable a trusted representative to handle your financial and other personal matters while you’re out of it.
Personal:
Pets. Decide who will care for your pets should you croak over or become too ill to care for them. Don’t assume that they will do so: ASK! Line up someone to take the livestock in the event of illness or final exit.
Funeral arrangements. You can make your own arrangements in advance. Be careful not to get ripped off. At the least, you can let your survivors know, in writing, how you would like to be disposed of and what kind of memorial, if any, you would like to have them put on for you.
House. Who will take care of your yard and houseplants? Does someone need to run interference with regular maintenance workers, such as a yard, pool, and cleaning services? Make arrangements for someone to handle these matters.
Though I’m not planning to croak over any time soon, I do feel like a Mac truck is bearing down on me. And the more I look around, the more things pop up needing to be done before I go into the hospital and get myself incapacitated for a period that may be anywhere from two or three days to two or three months. The number of things to set up or to cope with is amazing:
Pool: Hired a service to take care of the pool until such time as I’m able to do it again.
Cleaning: Hired a cleaning lady. May have her keep coming indefinitely, since I hate cleaning and she does a much better job than I do.
Dog: Holy shit. Realized that Ruby will be exactly 7 months old on the day they roll me into the OR, and very likely to come into heat shortly thereafter. She needs to be spayed! And there’s no way I’m going to be able to cope with dog surgery on top of my own surgery. Arranged, pending the vet’s approval, to have her fixed mid-July; she should be pretty well recovered by the time of my own procedure.
Plumbing: It’s likely to be a week or two before I can bathe. The shower in this house is essentially unusable. The previous owner installed very beautiful travertine on its three walls and lovely clear glass shower doors. His parting shot on the walk-through? “These travertine walls have to be stripped every six months and re-sealed.”
Uhmmmm…. Don’t think so, White Man!
So I’ve avoided using the shower as much as I can and instead actually bathe in the bathtub. When I do use the fancy (large!) shower stall, I have to clean and dry all three travertine walls from ceiling to floor(!) and then clean and dry the damn glass shower doors. And obviously, if I can’t raise my hand over my head, that task is going to present a bit of a problem. Meanwhile, I use the bathtub in the other bathroom as that: a bathtub. It has an elegant ceiling to floor decorative fabric curtain, and so is not designed to be used as a shower.
So I bought one of those spray heads on a metal hose that you can aim at specific parts of your body. That should make it possible to wash the stink off, anyway — bear in mind that it’s 110 degrees here, and by August it will be 110 and humid. The plumber just installed that (since I didn’t know if the old, unused shower head was frozen on or what). Also got a plastic shower curtain, a 2nd shower rod, and shower curtain ring things. It’s going to hugely uglify the bathroom. But I guess it can be undone when all this is over.
Transportation: My son will drive me to and from the hospital — in theory, this is an outpatient procedure. But last night I got a package informing me that the day before the surgery, I have to traipse way to hell and gone to East Scottsdale for a preliminary procedure which may leave me not quite well enough to drive home. I can’t very well ask him to take yet another half-day off work. So I’ll have to find someone else to drive me out there on and back on the day before the surgery.
Someone to watch over you… And the reason I can’t ask him to take off more time is that he’s already taking off two days to take care of me and may be stuck with me over the weekend, too. There is, after all, a limit.
Dog2: Better have food and gear stocked in to feed the critters for as long as you’re unable to carry groceries into the house. If you cook your dog’s food, as I do, you’ll have to cook and freeze a couple weeks’ worth. Or more…
Food: Speaking of food, I’ll also have to get in enough chow, prepared or easy to cook, for myself.
I’m quite sure this doesn’t cover everything. What an unholy hassle!
Good lord yes I’ve been making this exact same list, actually. Just because I don’t want to find ourselves in the position of needing it and not having it. Surely do wish I could give you a hand with some of the post-op coping and driving and whatnot but I’m sending all the good thoughts I can!
Heee! You’d love it in Arizona. 😀 It’s a balmy 110 degrees here right now, at 6:35 p.m. On the other hand…no relatives!
Good luck to you, Funny! I hope you recover quickly from your surgery and, yes, it is an unholy hassle but at least you caught all this early and better out than in. Thanks for the advice on taking care of legalities …. all things the spouse and I need to do and have been talking about.
Best of Luck and a sincere wish for a speedy recovery….What I’m getting from you sharing this “journey” is just how complicated our lives have become. You got me to thinking what happens if I have some type of illness that requires me to be off my feet for a while….HOLY CRUD!…As I am an “army of one” and am not getting any younger it may be time to simplify life a little bit….Thanks for sharing ….
Yup. It’s hard to conceive, isn’t it?
Well, it may not be possible to simplify life — all this stuff has to be done or you don’t eat! But it MAY be possible to think through some short-term arrangements and how you would implement them.
For example, the cleaning lady and the pool guy will be a huge help. Though I hate housecleaning and would happily keep the marvelous Luz on my payroll forever, I don’t mind maintaining the pool…but that doesn’t change the fact that I won’t be able to do so for at least two or three weeks. Can’t afford to pay them both for any length of time, but a month or two won’t break the bank.
Speaking of the bank, automatic bill-pay (initiated on your end, not the arrangement that has the creditor engrossing money from your account from its end) is a godsend. Here, you can choose to pay the utilities as they are racked up or to have your bill averaged over the year — which means higher bills in the off-season BUT the same amount all year round, making it possible to pay even the otherwise erratic electric bill with bill-pay. If you use your bank’s bill-pay system, you can simply turn it off in the event of a dispute with the vendor.
Having pets does mean one needs to think about who would care for them in an emergency, or how you can find new homes for them if, heaven forfend, you get to the point where you won’t be able to care for them, ever. My son will take the pup, and he may take Cassie if he’s pushed to it.