So, Alhamdullilah Alhamdullilah Alhamdullilah, I’ve been given the green light for the aneurysm surgery in the US.
It took 6 months and an unknown number strings pulled, but it came through. Which is great, because after the second month of waiting, I’d given up on that fight and had tried to find other options. With the number of hospitals and doctors I emailed round the world trying to find neurosurgeons who could fix my brain, I am pretty sure now I’m on Snopes list of scams, right up there with the Wealthy But In Need Of Your Assistance Nigerian Prince. Especially given that so very few of the folks I contacted responded, and no one satisfactorily. So if this approval hadn’t come through, I may have gone back to Singapore for hakka noodles with a craniotomy on the side.
For the record, I am not a scam or a spam bot. I am just a modern day Marco Polo, trying to weather the choppy and dark Seas of Internet to discover Medical Tourism Success, so please do download the angiogram and MRI files I sent you, they’re not viruses! Dammit, I am a trailblazer and pioneer! One day, in the future, they may name a special Cerebral Aneurysm Spa Hotel Flight Package after me. Or maybe I'll just banned from hospitals around the world. Fame is fame. :P
Anyways, now I am once again facing my old nemesis of Logistics. Oh, she is a cold and cruel beast. I have to book tickets from Dubai to Chicago for myself, my husband and my mom. Then I have to figure out how to get us to Tennessee in the most affordable and least stressful way possible – difficult given it will be Fourth of July Weekend. We may end up doing a ROAD TRIP. PARTY TIME. EXCELLENT. I like road trips. Though I am a bit scared of crossing the Mason Dixon Line with my headscarf and brown husband. Somehow, I think they’ll know we’re not New Age Amish with Oversized Mexican Companion. We’ll have The Mormon Momma run interference. “Do you have a moment to talk about Christ?”
Once in Tennessee, I have to make arrangements for my mom to stay someplace nearby so she can come and go between there and the hospital easily. Mali is planning on camping out on my hospital room floor, as he did in Singapore, like my own personal guard husband. My mom will come during visiting hours to keep us company. My hospital room is going to be like Weekend At Bernie’s, but with the deadness dialed back to anesthetized – which is a word I cannot spell no matter how many times I’ve had to experience it.
As this procedure is of the less invasive type I was trying to find in lieu of the craniotomy, thankfully I will be out of the hospital fairly quickly, Inshallah. I think I’ll be discharged within 3 days. I’m supposed to get some rest time in before I take my brain into the upper atmosphere so after I am discharged we drive back to Chicago and give my brain some time to decide how it likes the internal remodeling. Then it’s back to Dubai for the rest of Ramadan, Inshallah.
*whew*
That is the plan anyways. I hope and pray it all goes smoothly. Man plans, but God is The Best of Planners.
Aameen. InshaAllah it will. :) You have duas pouring out for you. Even those who only remotely know you. 'Achi Bachi' - that's how my baday mamu refers to you. :D
ReplyDeleteand 8hugs*
ReplyDeleteJazakallah meri jaan. I am "Achi Bachi"?! I am surprised anyone in Pakistan would label me as so. I thought I was the "Chajjay phard charnay wali" or the "Lardkoun Ko Marnay Wali" or the "Tordi Si Pagal Wali". :D
ReplyDeleteMeray mamu ko logon key pehchaan hay. Ammi says baday mamu can count 'udhti chirdya kay par'. :D Also, Chajjay pay chadhna does not make one a Gandi bachi. I approve of Larkoun ko marna (being the elder sister - perks) ;) . For the last part, at any given moment if I encounter the callers, I'd roll my eyes, and flick the ears and noses of them. Yeah.
ReplyDelete