Hi Mandy,
Good to see that it looks like you are finally getting somewhere. And the surgeon himself rang?? You must feel very honoured. :lol: :lol: :lol: At least no doubt he thought so!!!
The pre op assessment meeting is done so they can check you are fit for surgery. They ask heaps of questions and then take a blood sample, check your blood pressure, check your weight, do a swab to check you don't have MRSA (yeah I know, the chances are you'll walk out of there, rather than into there, with it!!) and do an ECG. That part all takes about 25 minutes. Then you see a junior doctor who too asks loads of questions, unfortunately most of them are the same as what the nurse asked which is pretty irritating. One word of advice. The clinic on a Tuesday starts at 9.00a.m. I was fooled into thinking that if it was the first appointment of the day, then there could be no waiting around, right??? No!!! Far from it. The junior doctors are doing rounds until 10.30, so you end up waiting over an hour and a half just for a junior doctor to turn up. I was pretty cross as it is just bad planning and clearly they think that patients have nothing better to do with their time. If you can try to get an appointment 11.00ish. Although having waited as long as you have, you must be so pleased just to see the cogs on the wheel turning again.
The results take a week to get processed then they will look at getting you a date for surgery. I think their standard waiting time at that point is 6-8 weeks, but maybe it will be quicker for you. If the surgeon is honouring his original 'decision to operate date' then they will want to get it in within 20 weeks otherwise you become a 'bad' statistic. After 26 weeks an appalling statistic! Unfortunately, it has very little to do with your health, just which boxes they need to tick.
My complaint still rumbles on. The surgeon has completely hidden herself behind the complaints procedure machinery, rather than just face up to her shortcomings and dare I say it actually apologise. I think it's all in two parts now. The first part is them investigating what's gone wrong, which is taking ages and then secondly the impact of that on me and what they intend to do about it. It looks as though they have backed out of the conciliation meeting, cowards. I was going to be outnumbered there 4 to 1 but I was still willing to go. Now they are going to respond (again) in writing and the Lead Surgeon is going to be reviewing my case. I have a surgery date now of 28 November, but originally the letter re the complaint was going to come after the surgery, which I was unhappy with. They are going to try to speed it up, but I won't be holding my breathe! I think that if the surgeon is not willing to come to the conciliation meeting (heaven forbid she may actually have to apologise to me!!!) then she may also decide that she doesn't want to operate on 28 November either. Quite where that leaves me I have no idea. I have told them though that I will be far from happy if they cancel it at very short notice. Whether I end up with another surgeon now I won't know. But I'm supposed to be admitted in 18 days and to say I am pee'd off is something of an understatement. Right now I don't really care if I have the same surgeon or not. I'm not going to ask to change, if she feels uncomfortable that is her problem. I personally, wouldn't give her the satisfaction. After this is all over I can safely say that I will never set foot in King's again.
All that I want now is closure on this whole sorry saga. The firm where I work has been very good about this over the last twelve months, but they need to know where they stand so they can make plans for my absence. So far Kings have not honoured any of the dates they have given me and although at least this one is in writing, I still don't believe it is going to happen. If you get a pre-op assessment date around 27-29 November, feel free to visit me, it will be good to have a chat!!!