Pre-Surgical Clearance

It takes me less than half an hour to limp crosstown from my home on the Upper West Side to Lenox Hill Hospital which means I arrive 10 minutes early for my 9 a. m. autologous blood donation. Given the fact that staff in various departments already have entered my personal and insurance information into a computer, you might expect the system to produce it upon command.  This doesn't seem to be the case when I register.  For the first time, I'm also asked if I have a health proxy.  I don't.

The nurse who takes my blood donation tells me she has put off getting a hip replacement.  She decided to do the injections first.  They haven't helped her much, she says, which I find more reassuring than her telling me that Dr. Ranawat is a great physician.  I tell her I have been advised never to donate blood because I am in a high risk group and I have had Hepatitis A and a positive test for Hep B antibodies, although I have tested negative for HIV.  She duly records this information.

I've never given blood before but am pleasantly surprised by the comfort of the reclining chair she tells me to sit in.  For the next 20 or so minutes, she tells me about the superior care available in New York City hospitals, based on the near-death experience her husband had with a mouth infection in New Jersey.  After my veins dutifully pump out a pint of blood, I can't believe how greedily I consume the Lorna Doones, Fig Newtons and cranberry juice that she gives me.

Next I need to be medically cleared for surgery by Carl Reimers, MD a Lenox Hill Hospital cardiologist in the adjacent building.  While setting up the electrocardiogram, his assistant apologizes but she will have to send me back to the same building where I gave blood for a chest x-ray and a urine sample.  Dr. Reimers appears briefly, asks me a couple of questions, reads my EKG and pronounces me fit as a fiddle.

So far, so good--all this has been accomplished in the allotted 2 hours.  But as I register for the 3rd time that morning with the chest clinic, I become a little weary of repeating the same information over and over.  I also have to wait nearly an hour before giving a urine sample and then it's another 30 minutes before a technician escorts me into the x-ray room.