How Monika's Surgery was postponed - and we can only accept it as it is

Today I am writing to you from a hotel room in Gurgaon. How come? We came here yesterday, after having admitted Monika to the hospital. I actually intended to send you today the message that her surgery was successfully completed. Unfortunately I cannot – but not because there were complications during the surgery but because it didn’t take place! Monika had fever in night, coughed and showed all signs of a big cold. The doctors decided that they could not operate on her today.

I told you last week that we were getting ready for the surgery, making plans with the doctors and so on. We had then placed the date of the surgery right before Ramona and my flight to Eastern India, so that we would already be in Delhi. That was cancelled first, as I told you yesterday, and now the surgery was cancelled as well. In fact, the whole journey to Delhi did actually not make sense but you know what? I don’t really mind.

I do mind those delays by people who don’t keep their word and I don’t like having to change my plans due to them being unreliable. In cases like Monika’s however, I am very flexible. When we were at the pre-surgery consultation last week, Monika had a slight cough and the doctor prescribed medicine against it. Reema, Monika’s mother had also told me that the cough was fine by now. Yesterday evening however, maybe due to her nervousness or a new virus or something, the coughing got worse and she had fever. In the late evening, I got a call by Reema that the doctors had decided to postpone the surgery.

Well, that’s how I went to the hospital this morning, not to take Monika to the Operation Theatre but to take care of the discharge papers and formalities. The anesthetist explained that he could not take the risk to go in a surgery with a chest infection and the immune system being down. He would like her to get completely and 100% fine before she goes into surgery. We thus talked about coming back in about a month, when it won’t be as cold anymore here either!

So even if we could have skipped the complete trip to Delhi, we decided to just accept things as they are and have fun as we go along with it!