Off to See the "Wizard's Castle"

I am entering the "system". At 10:00 am this morning I will begin the process to have my operation next week. A "pre-op" admission complete with "driving and living" instructions. They are me to bring all my pills (mostly vitamins) to this mornings meeting so they know how their drugs will react with mine. I am guessing they will tell me to stop anything that can "thin" my blood.

I was at the hematologist's office yesterday for about 3 hours. One of my previous diagnosis (1o years ago) was that I have a disease called Von Willebrand disease. This causes a problem because my blood had a tendency not to clot and obviously if I am going into an operation, a non-clotting blood has no advantages! So I gave a number of blood samples and I they preformed a number of tests. At the end of the day, I received a phone call and all is well. My blood profile falls within the range of a normal person ... geez does that feel good saying that I am normal (at least partly normal).

What I found most interesting is the improvement in the science of medicine. When I was with the hematologist, Dr. R., I described to her the test I took. The test, about 10 years ago, was done by cutting my forearm with a small shape blade and then a nurse would "time the bleed" to see how long it took for the small wound to stop bleeding on its own. When Dr. R. heard this, she smiled and said: "That's what we did a long time ago. We have come a long way since then and can now do a simple blood test to determine the problem." What this told me was that medicine is being advanced at an expodential rate.

This is good for me. Maybe having 2 young doctors doing the surgery on me next week is not so bad. Maybe they know what they are doing the "Wizard's Castle". I am off right now to see the "Castle". Back tomorrow.