I have decided, dear reader, that I really don’t like forced vacations. What’s not to like, you ask? Aside from the fact that I didn’t make any money this past week, I also had a week’s more anxiety than I should have from last weeks surgery postponement . It didn’t help that I walked into the consultation on Wednesday this past week and the doctor again proceeded to tell me everything that would go wrong. Basically he said that I wouldn’t have perfect eyesight. And? I thought to myself, it’s not like it was perfect to begin with, even post Lasik. They did not even look at my records so they did not realize that I had provided all of the records that I had both pre-and post Lasik so that they have a benchmark. To say that I am not impressed by Dutch healthcare is an understatement. Having said that, and because I’m generally a fair person, this could’ve happened in any of the countries that I’ve lived in. The US the UK or Greece may have been just the same. As the week slowly tipped down towards Wednesday the 23rd, I kind of found myself wishing for more classes so that I could take my mind off of the surgery.
Because of the schedule snafu, I worked today, I’m working tomorrow before the surgery, and Thursday and Friday after the surgery. The Dutch doctors will also not give a note so that I can send it to VIPKid to cancel those classes. They don’t get involved in your work life. They did say they would prefer if I didn’t work but I told them that I was not going to lose that income and more importantly, have a big black mark on my record. No thank you. What I have done is closed Off my schedule so that I can do as little work as possible post surgery. The plan is to go back to full strength the following week. I was also marginally worried about putting 1 million eyedrops in my eye post surgery, after all, it has been 20 years since I’ve had to do that with contact lenses so I didn’t think that I remembered how. Luckily Jasper offered a solution and got me some saline drops so I can practice.
Speaking of Jasper, I feel quite guilty when it comes to him currently. He took the week off so that he could help me in my recovery. I am not allowed to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds, Nor am I allowed to bend over. The concern is for pressure on the eye and dislodging the lens. With the surgery postponed to a week later, Jasper cannot take that time off and so will just come and pick me up post surgery. I will have to figure everything else out on my own. Scheduling shenanigans of the doctors might put my health at risk then. After all, if I’m alone, and I forget and I bend over, I risk during damage to myself. While sick leave and vacation are clear in the Dutch legal system with what you can do and what you can’t, and Jasper’s company is quite generous, I’m not sure what that means for partner care. So, the vicious cycle of guilt and self recrimination keeps going round and round in my head. And yes, I do know that it wasn’t my fault, but still.
In other medical news, on Sunday I walked to the convention center in Amsterdam and got my first vaccine. On the form it asks if you’ve been treated for any allergies to drugs or food, and because I have a Codeine allergy that is quite severe, I was asked to stay not the 15 minutes post injection but 30. All in all, the care that I received there was much better and more solicitous than the care that I received at the doctor. I was really quite impressed. I was worried about side effects the following day and so I canceled in person classes for Monday. I did have an online class for two hours in the morning and an evening class with Claudia for English Center. I pushed my usual Monday lesson in Amstelveen with Freek to this morning and later today I have conversation playground.
The schedule shuffle has been truly exhausting this week. Tomorrow pre-surgery, I have my last lesson with Lili who wants to move to a British teacher and I’ve been coordinating with the English Center for that. Luckily they gave me a new student named Vicente who needs writing help. I’m quite pleased that they come to me for Writing teaching as I really like the work. In other writing news, the blog for English Center is a bit on hold until I can recover from surgery. But once surgery is over I plan on giving writing for search engine optimization my full attention.
That shuffle extended to my personal life as well. I was supposed to go to Greece from 25 August to 14 September. Instead, I will be extending my stay another week because my nephew is being christened. And I was able to do it for fairly cheap. €75 is not a bad price for a ticket change. So some of these posts will be coming to you from beautiful sunny Greece. At least, I hope it will be.
The Writers Group met in person for the first time in over a year and a half this past Thursday. We met at the central library which we thought was open to people working there, but it wasn’t. It’s open only by appointment and you have to have a subscription. You have to reserve a table and you can only come alone. Luckily we were able to find a table outside of the library because the restaurant next door was closed. I was also able to secure a reservation at our old stomping ground of O’Reillys to have a drink that was glorious. It felt really nice to sit and talk about writing and other things with friends in person. I hope within reason, that this is a herald of things to come and that things will slowly start getting back to normal.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 