I was fully prepared for surgery on Tuesday. Mentally, I had come to terms with hunkering down for a month. Physically, I had practiced maneuvers for getting out of the shower to identify points where I would be most tempted to reach out my soon-to-be-injured leg for support.

In typical fashion - and in these past couple of months particularly - something came up. My surgeon’s assistant called me on Monday night to inform me that “Dr. had a family emergency and is on a flight out of the state. Your surgery tomorrow is now canceled.” It was disappointing, but I found some relief in her saying that she’d call me back the following to reschedule the surgery. It reminded me of an idea in a book I’m currently reading (Alchemy by Rory Sutherland) with the premise being that people are (generally) more appreciative of the case in which they know when their discomfort will end as opposed to not knowing when their discomfort will end, even if the discomfort ends sooner.

The concrete example given is the case of a late train. If you’re stuck on a train platform waiting for a late train, knowing that the train will arrive in 10 minutes will give you a more positive experience than the case of not knowing but the train arrives in 5 minutes. Writing this out makes me think that this is obvious from the perspective of the train rider, but if you are a train administrator, perhaps your target metrics are tied to train arrival times instead of riders’ happiness.

Anyway, all that to say that my anxieites were calmed knowing that my new surgery date would be known is less than 24 hours.

They called me back on Tuesday rescheduled for Friday (the day I’m writing this) - great!

I’d already told work I’d be off for several weeks recovering, so I took the next few days to relax (i.e. start studying for the LSAT again) and try to remain positive going into the surgery.

Thursday came around and I received another call: “Dr. ’s family situation has unfortunately gone in the wrong direction and he is still going to be out of the state on Friday. We’re going to have to reschedule you for next week.”. While I certainly have sympathy for my surgeon’s situation, I had to laugh at the sheer bad luck.

I am now - dare I say, allegedly - scheduled for Tuesday of next week. My fingers are crossed.

As a silver lining to this, my dad, who was planning to fly out anyway, will arrive the day before my surgery instead of six days after, which means that he’ll be with me for the most important days of my recovery.