We are less than a week away from Barb's surgery and everyone is starting to get excited. Yesterday we took a trip into the big ciity so she could have all the pre-surgery stuff done - talk to the anesthatist, physiotherapist, nurses, and to rent some of the recovery kit. She is looking forward to having it over and done with and to strat the wait process for her second knee. The good news is that she will have a general knock out as opposed to a spinal which was one of the options that had been presented to us. I can't imagine why anyone would want to be awake during a total knee replacement listening to the sounds of the bone saw and smelling the smells..... At least she won't have to put up with that. Count backwards from 100, 99, 98.....Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Wake up and it's done!

She is excited about the surgery but jointly we are more than a little pissed at how the pre-surgical stuff was handled. It turns out that one of the four vials of Barb's blood was "confused" with someone caller Turner who happened to be in the same clinic at the same time. Now she has to get the blood done again - at 0645 the same morning as the surgery! That means that we either drive in, leaving Shelburne at 0300 to make that date or go in the night before. Seriously inconvenient all because some lab tech couldn't read! I remember working on a project in one of the hospitals major pharm labs for 18 months. Durning that time there were two seperate occassions that there was doom and gloom covering the lab like a shroud. After loads of proding I discovered that the cause of the gloom was that someone had died on the operating table because they were given the wrong blood, the confusion caused by a mix up much like the one that has just happened for Barb. I guess that I should be glad that they caught the error rather than being the cause of another gloom and doom situation. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? How many other cases occur that have resulted in a fatality. I know that the two cases that occured that I knew about were covered up quite nicely and no one was ever faulted. I know that everytime that I have gone into the hospital for a procedure that might require blood or such I make sure that Barb knows that if anything happens to me she is to demand a full disclosure independent autopsy.

Enough rant, eh? (How Canadian)

The yacht clubs on the NW Arm are starting to get into the swing of security. We got our magnetic proximity passes, that will let us get into the boat yard, in the mail yesterday. It isn't airtight but at least it will minimize the exposure to evil doers and lookie-loos. They'll all have to come in on foot at least. As someone who has had our boat broken into at least once before I am very much in favour of this.

Our boating buddy, Mike, is coming down to visit us this afternoon for dinner before heading on to Yarmouth. He has a business teaching search and rescue and disaster planning and is running a course down there this weekend. It'll be great to see him, or should I say them as he is bringing his wife Heather along with him, and show off our place and talk cruising.