Picking up from last time –
I’m not telling the conversation in a totally linear way because somewhere before it got too fight-y, she asked who’d be staying with me for weeks after the surgery 24/7. I sort of chuckled a little about 24/7, mentioning something like “not literally, right? Since someone will have to run to the store or go somewhere at some point.”
And with intense eyes immediately, she said, “Absolutely 24/7.”
Are you even being serious with me right now? Oh my gosh. Great that you want me to be taken care of, but eesh.
She then said something about how statistically people do so much better when they have a constant supporter after surgery. I got maybe three words out in a sentence trying to explain, “I recovered great from open-heart surgery when no one was there,” before she cut me off hammering home “statistics!”
Yes, how could I possibly argue with numbers when I have personal experience and know how I recover from surgery? (Not even that I was actually trying to argue with numbers. But honestly, do you have to be so intense and not even let me talk? This isn’t cool.)
So, basically, intense conversation going nowhere. Eventually it ended. (Thank goodness!)
I will return to Big Kidney Day. But for the time being, let me flash forward a little just with the social worker part of it. Because once I got to my parent’s house at the end of the day, I was livid when I was talking to my dad!
(Granted, more stuff will come later to help justify my high level of rargh. But already, we’re up to a pretty good amount.)
Now, my dad, who is more stubborn than I am(!) (I know, right?) – and by the way, argues for a living – he said he wouldn’t have standed for someone just cutting him off and saying the blanket statement that statistics dictate what’s right for me. He would’ve asked follow-up questions. “May I see the study? Who commissioned it? How many subjects were there?” etc., etc.
I love my dad for many reasons, but in that moment, one of the biggest was because instead of saying, “Stand down a little sweetheart. Do you really need to challenge a social worker when you can just go along with what she’s saying?” – he said, “I can’t believe you didn’t take her to task even more so! Go get her studies!”
Do we have to be quite that crazy and argumentative? No. We really don’t. It probably would’ve made my life easier to not ask any questions and tell the social worker what she obviously wanted to hear…
But I’m a patient! Yes, this surgery will obviously be both most beneficial and most stressful to the recipient. But I matter. I’ll be going through something too. Instead of treating me like a number and a checklist, should you take one second as a freaking social worker to think about what I need or what’s best for me? Is that, or is that not, kind of your job?
After my talk with my dad, I am in such agreement with him and his awesome argumentative nature. I start googling. And this is where we’ll pick up on Sunday.