Getting to India

And finally we were on our way! Er...

We were supposed to fly down to San Francisco from Eugene, then on to Frankfurt and Chennai.  Well, fog shut down one of the runways and we were delayed for almost three hours getting out of Oregon. We missed two flights to Frankfurt, and the next one wouldn't have gotten us there in time for the flight to Chennai.  For some reason there was not a flight from Frankfurt to Chennai the next day, so we spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express near the airport and flew out the next afternoon through Hong Kong to Chennai...! (I've said this before: when I get my flight itinerary, you can assume that the flights listed are the flights I WON'T be on that day.)

Of course that got us into Chennai after midnight Wednesday night, and I was supposed to be admitted for all the pre-op stuff on Wednesday and have surgery on Thursday the 14th.  So I called my contact Janet at WorldMedAssist (the medical/travel agency that many people work with for international surgery) and got the following email through her from Dr. Bose:    

Obviously the surgery cannot be done on the 14th as she is arriving early morning on the 14th.
We will postpone the date of surgery by a day.

We will take care and not to worry.

Are you kidding me?!  "Take care and not to worry?"  I was amazed that he was willing and able to reschedule my surgery.  What a relief!  I wasn't sure yet if we would have to move the flight home and what all that would entail, but I'd cross that bridge later.  I was glad we bought the travel insurance, since the airline doesn't pay for hotels needed after weather delays.

Here I am in the Hong Kong Airport

Couldn't get there heading east, so we headed west and hoped for the best.


We arrived in Chennai around 3:00 am, showered and slept for a few hours.  The first day I had all my pre-op tests including an x-ray of my hip, a chest x-ray, an echo-cardiogram, and an EKG.  Then we met my surgeon Dr. Bose, (as awesome a guy as I'd been told), and then I was all clear for surgery at 8:30am on Friday.


Dr. Bose also gave us more good news - even though we delayed surgery by a day due to travel issues, he didn't think it was necessary to change our return travel arrangements - we could still fly home on the 25th.

The hospital experience in India was a little different than I expected - on the one hand, I didn't always understand the nurses and attendants, and there are just so many people here, that getting through the hospital for tests was sort of overwhelming.  Maybe it wouldn't have been if I lived in a more metropolitan place and was used to having so many people around.  But on the other hand, the orthopedic ward and my room were total serenity, the food was really good, and the nurses and attendants told me when they were seeing me for the last time that day and if they would be back the next day or later - it was very personal.

The procedure took around two hours to complete and Dr. Bose said the surgery went smoothly with no complications.