It has been sometime since I wrote in my journal. If anyone is out there, you will be expecting a progress report on my surgery. I thought I had better tell you not to hold your breathe. The surgeon had the cheek to cancel me as a patient and subsequently my surgery just a few weeks before it was due after we had booked and paid in full the petsitter, booked and paid for parts of the travel, booked the hotel and other various things. 😈 Why ❓ ❓ Apparently he took offence at two little questions that my pratice nurse in the local GP office asked me to ask him about my aftercare. That is is, that is all ❗ you are canceled, do not past go, do not collect any money, go directly to jail 😡 You have no idea how devastated I was, I couldn’t eat or sleep for several days. I quickly scheduled another appointment with a different surgeon and checked that he was aware that I would be coming from Aberdeen and had a hernia that needed to be fixed with a BMI that was higher than the perfect standards until they took off the excess skin. He was ok with it, but once there the reality was that he was NOT ok with my location or my hernia. so that was £400 in the toilet. that also pissed me off immensely, was that just a ploy to get the consultation fee when he knew that he wasn’t happy with doing my op? Husband had given me the idea to flip our september holidays and the July surgery around becuase he had asked for and been given off those two times from work. so that was what I had to do, in the midst of all that stress and hurt and anger. Because the holiday was being planned with about 2-3 weeks notice, as well as being the height of tourist season, it ended up costing at least double if not well on the way to triple what it would have cost. so that was more money lost as well as the expenses incurred becuase of this stupid evil surgeon. 😡 We decided to have a look at the surgeons in the USA. they have more expertise and expierence with reconstructive surgery like what I need than any doc here does and they are NOT squeamish about it like the second surgeon here was. Also the consultation included a digital photo session with lovely paper underpants, and about an hour or more worth of time consulting all for about $40 which would only be about £23 instead of the £110 that these surgeons here charge and than turn you down. I went to the same pratice that my mom had hers down with although it was a different surgeon as they have seven in their pratice. they have a surgical area there in the building and since I will have my hernia fixed here in the UK on the health insurance my husband has with his work, he could do my surgery there and it will be done as outpatient and not require any hospital stay. he didn’t think that he could get all my loose skin unless he did a 360 degree cut all the way around and neither the surgeon or I was keen on that. 😯 But he did say that he would go half way around which is further than the surgeon here wanted to do, and he would than do a T -cut and pull in and that would remove more on the sides too. it won’t get it all but it will get a lot of it and once that has setteled and healed, I can reevaluate if i am agreeable with the results or will require a backside body lift and finsih the other half. I am hoping the results will be good enough that I won’t want to go futher. he said he could do my boobs and my arms at the same time later on in a different surgery and he said to wait a couple of years on my eyes, he said it was a “soft” call if they should be done now or not. He was also cheaper than the doctor here who wanted to charge me £7500 for the tummy alone, as he would charge me about $8000 for the tummy and get more results. $8000 was about £5000. huge difference even with the travel to go. I would stay there for about 4 weeks if there was no complications and my mom said that I could stay with her. I would do it in the summer time as that is a slow time for me work wise as well as mom works in the school system and is off for the summer months. But becuase things went so well in Colorado too, we really want to get moved over there as fast as possible so I maybe putting my tummy tuck and all other reconstructive surgery on hold for a few years. I will get the hernia fixed but that will be on insurance. So I flew over to Michigan, with no one the wiser, waited for Chaz to get off the boat as he was delayed for a day because of the tropical storm Cindy, than we were going to go to Dad’s surprise 60th birthday party. No one knew that we were coming except two of my friends. No family nothing. well mom got out of the hospital the day before we arrived and was back in the hospital the day after. she cancelled the party on the thursday. it was for the following day. it was the focus of our michigan trip and we were so disappointned so I called up my brother david and enlisted his help to finagle something on the sly anyways. he got the grandparents to agree to go to the hospital with the story that he was going to surprise dad and give him his presents which was the story was also the truth. he than tried to get dad to go to the hosptial but dad wasn’t going becuase mom said that she was tired and he had been with david all day at the racetrack driving Nascars. (something special that david had with his work) so david called mom and said he wanted to give dad his presents because his wife becky was eyeballing the presents and if he didn’t get them out of the house she was going to lay claim to them. so mom called dad and said she wanted him to come see her. it was a little out of the ordinary for her to do that so he went in a big hurry thinking there was something wrong. David and Becky showed up at the hospital first, and Charlie and I showed up a few minutes later. dad saw us and was on the phone. mom was sitting on her bed with her head down becuase the nurse was checking her breathing with the stethescope so she did not see us. we stood there quietly as dad kept saying cheri look who is here. finally she heard him and raised her head and just looked at me. about 20 seconds later she started to squeak and scream than slapped her hand over her mouth as she realized that she about deafened the nurse who still had the stethescope to her chest. mom was so excited to see us, she had me sit on the bed and instead of hugging me she kept petting my face like a puppy dog and saying over and over how thin my face was. 😆 becuase she had not seen me since November of 2003 and pictures don’t really get the point across. I went wearing my fushia belly dancing outfit, with a long flowing skirt, harem pants, a long flowing fushia and purple top with long petal sleeves and my purple vivid fringed poncho, with my pink jewled little slippers. they all loved my outfit and I had to keep an eye on my poncho as my sister in law becky is a purple hound like me. I did manage to get home with it. than I started to give mom her presents, and as I did that, in walked the grandparents. Grandma Cooley just stood there and looked at me for a full 45 seconds before I could see the recognition go across her face. she DID NOT RECOGNIZE ME ❗ 😀 so it was a HUGE surprise all the way around. I spent time with mom up at the hospital most of the days, took my spinning wheel up there and showed her how to spin. She was even spinnning by hand on a drop spindle. Than I showed her how to weave with a peg loom and I would do the spinning and she did most of the weaving. I would leave with the three bobbins full and when I came back the next day she had wove all of it, and I had three empty bobbins waiting to spin again. we did that until we had used up all the fleece. and than the rug was finished. I will have to get a peg loom and send it to mom for a present. won’t she be happy with that 😉 we got to visit the Meijer Gardens again and spend time with my friends in GR. We even got to visit Grandma B at home for a while one evening. Than we packed back up and flew out to Colorado and went to Canon City. We stayed at a lovely campground in one of the new remodeled sleeping cabins and proceeded to get busy with talking to builders and such. saw a lot of homes, and decided on our final design as well as mostly where we would put the house. got in touch with one of the developers for the ranch who also did the roads of the ranch and he put our driveway or rather road in the last day we were there. so we now have a quarter of a mile long driveway and we also went down to the county courthouse and got an address. so we have our official address and our driveway but not house yet. we still hope to be over there sometime end of 2006 or middle of 2007. we now have a master plan which we had to tweak a bit after the road was in and we could see where things would go better, and an address and a drive. so that was a lot of progress made. I also mad more contacts and renewed old contacts for work for me when I am there, did 14 massages that last week and from what everyone that had one said, apparently they all enjoyed it immensely. My therapies aren’t anything like what they do there. so that will allow me a nice welcome niche that will get me started. I was ready to come home, not becuae i wanted to be here in scotland again, but becuase it was a three week holiday and the longest holiday i have ever been on in my life. I wanted to be in my own four walls, with my own bed, and my own puppies again, had all of that been in Canon, well I would never have left 😉