There and Back Again (Again)
Aug. 18th, 2021 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI told Kimberly that we're really Hawaii residents now, because we flew over to Oahu for a day trip. Monday: over on the 10am flight, back on the 7pm fight. (We would have been happy going back an hour earlier, but the 6pm flight was about $100 more for the pair of us, we presume because it's more a commuter flight.)
As with two of our three trips to Oahu since we move to Kauai, it was for medical purposes. Kimberly has essentially been unable to use her left foot since a botched surgery at the end of 2018 left nerves entrapped in a scar. After trying a number of various solutions, they finally told her to wait and see if the nerves slipped out of the scar by the one-year mark, which would have been October 2019. But then there was a cancer scare, and meanwhile we were moving, and then there was a pandemic ....
We finally talked to a new pain doctor about it early this year. He suggested that the only real solution left was surgery to tie off the affected nerves, but needed to consult with a surgeon on Oahu to see what he thought. After which, Kimberly spent months trying to convince him to make that call. Eventually we got an appointment with the Oahu doctor, unfortunately a week after our vacation to Oahu.
So we landed in Honolulu Monday morning for the appointment. We were hours early because we didn't want to be stressed about making it in time.
What do you do with a few hours in Honolulu? Lunch at a good Vietnamese restaurant, the first good Vietnamese food we've had since we left California. Then Kimberly went to visit some Korean stores while I walked and biked around Honolulu some more.
I dunno why I keep doing this under the noon sun. It was tiring.
But I used my Biki account again and grabbed a bike and biked up to just under Punchbowl Crater. There I was disappointed to learn that the only way into Punchbowl Crater was through the back. There's all these neighborhoods right under and they don't have stairs up into the crater of anything. As with too much in Hawaii, it's tourists favored over residents.
From there I walked back down to the civic center, which has a lot of nice greenery and some ridiculous sculpture. And then I biked back to the doctor's office, by one of the couple of cycle tracks in Honolulu. (Not many: most biking in the city proper occurs on sidewalks because the streets are hellish vehicle-murder zones.)
We spent a few hours at the doctor's office and got very surprising news. First, they agreed that Kimberly had tried everything possible for her foot, which wasn't the surprising part. Second, they were scheduling her surgery for NEXT WEDNESDAY, which was the surprising part.
I mean, other doctors in California made her wait like a month TO REMOVE A TUMOR. But they're doing elective (but crucial) foot surgery in a week.
So it'll be back to Oahu for a third time in August. Ay.
And as for the hoped-for results? There's apparently about a 50% chance of improvement for her pain and just a very small chance of things getting worse, so fingers crossed.
And fingers crossed that the escalating COVID numbers all over Hawaii don't cause a cancellation because we'd be out most of $1000 invested into the trip accomodations.
We also had a few hours after the appointment, again to minimize stress. We walked down to the Ala Moana center, which we'd never been to.
Worst shopping center I've ever been to. You know all those super fancy high-end, how do they stay in business because who'd spend that money, stores that normal malls have one or two of? That's almost all that Ala Moana has. Cartier. Celine. Dior. Gucci. Michael Kors. blahblahblahblah.
The food court was more promising because it was huge and had a big variety of food and it looked much more low-brow, and thus I suspect was rare, affordable food near Waikiki. Except it had tons of people. No way they were abiding by the 50% seating that's supposed to be required for all restaurants in Hawaii now. We slipped in to Jamba Juice, which was just inside and seemed safe and then scuttled off with our fruity drinks.
The trip to the airport and our island was uneventful. We unwisely had made the decision to do our weekly shopping after the trip, because we were in Lihue, and that feels like forever away, even though it's only 20 minutes. That was exhausting. Never again after a day trip like that.
But at last we were home.
Unfortunately, it's also been exhausting since.
I had my two days of fulltime consulting work afterward, which always takes the entirety of my energy.
And I had to make plane & AirB&B reservations for next week (both a little posher than usual, hence the $1000: a pretty nice AirB&B and first-class seats back, but we wanted to make sure Kimberly was comfortable coming back from surgery on Oahu with a wounded foot.)
And meanwhile Lucy seems to be ailing. She was agitated part of yesterday and then this afternoon she was clearly distressed, to the point where I pretty abruptly cut my gaming short.
We talked to the vet on the emergency number and he thinks she'll be fine overnight, but we have an 8am appointment for her in the morning.
Hoping that turns out fine and I get a little downtime before we go BACK to Oahu. but there's a lot on my calendar and I'm increasingly falling behind on my own projects for the month. (At least I've begged off Blockchain Commons work. I already knew I needed a week break to not burn out, I just hadn't planned it'd be another medical week.)
As with two of our three trips to Oahu since we move to Kauai, it was for medical purposes. Kimberly has essentially been unable to use her left foot since a botched surgery at the end of 2018 left nerves entrapped in a scar. After trying a number of various solutions, they finally told her to wait and see if the nerves slipped out of the scar by the one-year mark, which would have been October 2019. But then there was a cancer scare, and meanwhile we were moving, and then there was a pandemic ....
We finally talked to a new pain doctor about it early this year. He suggested that the only real solution left was surgery to tie off the affected nerves, but needed to consult with a surgeon on Oahu to see what he thought. After which, Kimberly spent months trying to convince him to make that call. Eventually we got an appointment with the Oahu doctor, unfortunately a week after our vacation to Oahu.
So we landed in Honolulu Monday morning for the appointment. We were hours early because we didn't want to be stressed about making it in time.
What do you do with a few hours in Honolulu? Lunch at a good Vietnamese restaurant, the first good Vietnamese food we've had since we left California. Then Kimberly went to visit some Korean stores while I walked and biked around Honolulu some more.
I dunno why I keep doing this under the noon sun. It was tiring.
But I used my Biki account again and grabbed a bike and biked up to just under Punchbowl Crater. There I was disappointed to learn that the only way into Punchbowl Crater was through the back. There's all these neighborhoods right under and they don't have stairs up into the crater of anything. As with too much in Hawaii, it's tourists favored over residents.
From there I walked back down to the civic center, which has a lot of nice greenery and some ridiculous sculpture. And then I biked back to the doctor's office, by one of the couple of cycle tracks in Honolulu. (Not many: most biking in the city proper occurs on sidewalks because the streets are hellish vehicle-murder zones.)
We spent a few hours at the doctor's office and got very surprising news. First, they agreed that Kimberly had tried everything possible for her foot, which wasn't the surprising part. Second, they were scheduling her surgery for NEXT WEDNESDAY, which was the surprising part.
I mean, other doctors in California made her wait like a month TO REMOVE A TUMOR. But they're doing elective (but crucial) foot surgery in a week.
So it'll be back to Oahu for a third time in August. Ay.
And as for the hoped-for results? There's apparently about a 50% chance of improvement for her pain and just a very small chance of things getting worse, so fingers crossed.
And fingers crossed that the escalating COVID numbers all over Hawaii don't cause a cancellation because we'd be out most of $1000 invested into the trip accomodations.
We also had a few hours after the appointment, again to minimize stress. We walked down to the Ala Moana center, which we'd never been to.
Worst shopping center I've ever been to. You know all those super fancy high-end, how do they stay in business because who'd spend that money, stores that normal malls have one or two of? That's almost all that Ala Moana has. Cartier. Celine. Dior. Gucci. Michael Kors. blahblahblahblah.
The food court was more promising because it was huge and had a big variety of food and it looked much more low-brow, and thus I suspect was rare, affordable food near Waikiki. Except it had tons of people. No way they were abiding by the 50% seating that's supposed to be required for all restaurants in Hawaii now. We slipped in to Jamba Juice, which was just inside and seemed safe and then scuttled off with our fruity drinks.
The trip to the airport and our island was uneventful. We unwisely had made the decision to do our weekly shopping after the trip, because we were in Lihue, and that feels like forever away, even though it's only 20 minutes. That was exhausting. Never again after a day trip like that.
But at last we were home.
Unfortunately, it's also been exhausting since.
I had my two days of fulltime consulting work afterward, which always takes the entirety of my energy.
And I had to make plane & AirB&B reservations for next week (both a little posher than usual, hence the $1000: a pretty nice AirB&B and first-class seats back, but we wanted to make sure Kimberly was comfortable coming back from surgery on Oahu with a wounded foot.)
And meanwhile Lucy seems to be ailing. She was agitated part of yesterday and then this afternoon she was clearly distressed, to the point where I pretty abruptly cut my gaming short.
We talked to the vet on the emergency number and he thinks she'll be fine overnight, but we have an 8am appointment for her in the morning.
Hoping that turns out fine and I get a little downtime before we go BACK to Oahu. but there's a lot on my calendar and I'm increasingly falling behind on my own projects for the month. (At least I've begged off Blockchain Commons work. I already knew I needed a week break to not burn out, I just hadn't planned it'd be another medical week.)