My Adventures with Dad #3

Yes, it's back!! The ever thrilling and sometimes shocking... (insert booming voice here) Adventures with Dad! ...part 3 :)

My day started out normally for me. I rubbed my eyes, ruffled my hair and scratched myself. Then, I heard my cell phone ringing. It was my aunt, she sounded frantic and said, "You better call your dad, he's acting crazy!"

"Wha...", is all I got out when I heard the beep of my call waiting. It was my dad. I told her he was calling and that I'd call her back.

In my previous adventures with dad, I didn't mention that a small tumor was found in his left kidney. The doctors thought it best to remove it as soon as he was healthy enough for surgery. The surgeon scheduled him to have it done two weeks after discharge from the hospital. Well, my dad freaked out and we had to get a second opinion. The second doctor wasn't as eager to perform surgery so soon from being hospitalized, but still recommended it. My dad was relieved, he liked the second doctor's opinion better. Or so he thought. I know now that he was just terrified of having surgery.

Yesterday, over a full month after my dad was discharged from the hospital, he had to get an exercise stress test. And today, he found out that the doctor read the results, was satisfied with his condition and thought it best to perform surgery as soon as possible. This was what my dad had to tell me in the phone call.

My dad has never had surgery before and was worried about it. Very worried about it. I reassured him and told him it was safe and that the hospital did plenty of surgeries similar to that everyday... blah blah blah (insert bullshit here). He sounded relieved. He really did want the surgery, but he was just scared. He told me he wanted to schedule the surgery in June because he was worried about my sister's vacation that she had planned for May and also the expense of her airline ticket to come see him. I told him not to worry about that and to just schedule the surgery, preferably at the end of this month. We finally hung up.

About 10 minutes later, he called me again.

"I can't remember the name of the doctor... I think it was Mac something"

"Dad, I don't remember it exactly, it was something like McDougall or McDonough. Call your primary doctor and get his number from them, they referred you to him"

"Oh... okay... bye"

Another 20 minutes passed, and while I was in the shower my dad called again. He left a message.

"Well, I called the doctor and he said he could schedule the surgery for the 13th"

When I heard this message, I thought he must be mistaken... he must really mean he scheduled the surgery for next month. The 13th is tomorrow!

I called him back, "did you mean the 13th of next month?"

"No, this month, April 13th... why what is today?"

"OMG! Today is the 12th, the 13th is tomorrow!"

As you can see, I was pretty upset by now and told him I needed more than one day of notice. I actually have important plans this weekend (of which I'll share later) and that there was no way my sister could get there by tomorrow either. And what happened to him worrying about the cost of her airline ticket?!

He said he'd call to move it to later this month or next month and woefully hung up.

ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH