The Big Day, Part 1

(Author's note: I'm writing this as if it were the day of the event, even though it's over three weeks later.)

Lynn and I arrived in Orange last night, at the same Best Western we stayed at during her surgery; hey, if it's not broke... The hotel is seriously nothing to look at from the outside, and I'm not sure what continent their Continental breakfast hails from, but if I had to guess, I'd say Antarctica (leftover rations from the science crews down there, perhaps?). Still, it's conveniently close, and located on the same road as Chapman Medical Center, which makes it easy for those of us new to the area to navigate - stay on this road, drive east or west, and you're guaranteed to run into either the hospital or the hotel. And it has free wired access to teh Interwebz*, a bonus for technerds like ourselves.

Late last week, we got a call from the N.E.W. Program, asking if we could reschedule my surgery to Monday instead of Tuesday. I told them we would love that - the earlier the better! - but it wouldn't be possible since we had to pick Mom up at the aeropuerto and all that jazz. Her backup plan, then, was to reschedule my surgery for 7:30am instead of 9:30am. This I could do, and agreed to.

Which means that this morning, we woke up at the gawdawful hour of 4:30, in order to get to the hospital by 5:30. You read that right, 5:30 for a 7:30 surgery. It sounds crazy, but we found out during Lynn's stay at Casa De Slice that you need every second of that to get everything done.

We showed up to a sad, empty hospital at about 5:20ish and went to the front desk, which was manned by a young girl who looked entirely too together at 5:30 in the AM, not to mention too young to drive. She signed us in and alerted Admitting that we were there.

Luci came out to get us, and she looked none too pleased.

Luci was in admitting when were there for Lynn's surgery, too, and considering all the crap we had to do and money we had to turn over, we had a pretty good time there. Luci was a hoot. Obviously Eastern European of some kind - Polish, perhaps? I forget - with a thick, but understandable accent, and prone to using her hands wildly as punctuation.

So for the first 10 minutes we were in her tiny office doing the necessaries, Lynn and I were both confused - was this the same Luci who had been so vibrant last time around? What had happened betwenn February and May that could have turned her so sour?

In the final analysis, I can only guess that it was the early morning and that we were the first customers, because eventually she realized (or we mentioned) that we'd just been there in February, and she livened right up. that was the Luci we remembered; it was good to see her again.

After we were done, she led us down a few hallways to the pre-op staging area and we said goodbye to Luci.


*This misspelling is deliberate, making fun of the pidginhackerengrish that so many poor typists have thrust upon an unsuspecting public. See I Can Has Cheezburger? for ways to use these powers for Good.