I was supposed to have hip replacement surgery today.  I am disappointed that is was canceled or at least postponed.

I had chosen the doctor, worked out the schedule, borrowed the walker, and was ready to go. Until….pre-op lab work identified a uti. Two weeks on an antibiotic should have cleared things up, but a last minute culture showed that the bug we were treating was resistant to the drug we were treating it with. Now, on a new antibiotic, feeling symptoms may be better, I am wondering when and how this will all work out.

The disappointment I had on Friday with the phone call telling me that I had not been cleared for surgery on Monday was pretty significant. Partly due to the whole emotional readying to have my body cut open and bones sawed off and replaced with synthetic parts but also due to the fact that the UTI has been a five-year challenge that I thought I had whipped.

I allowed myself a moment of sadness. It was a hard one… preparing for surgery takes some mental stamina. I felt it sucked right out of me.

Oh, well… life goes on, right?  Even though no one is calling with definitive information about rescheduling, I know that eventually, I will get a new hip, I will be able to go back to working out, and I won’t have to keep taking the NSAIDs I don’t like taking. I trust that this is a minor hiccup in the larger plan and that there just may be a better way as it turns out.

Disappointment happens. 

The year 2020 certainly highlighted that for all of us.

            Postponed weddings.

                         Delayed vacations.

                                    No hugs from grandkids.

Restaurants closed, businesses shuttered, plans shattered.

So, in the scope of things, a minor scheduling change of when a hip is replaced is manageable.

I have had plenty of disappointments in my life even excluding the year of the pandemic.

Big disappointments like a miscarriage, a child addicted to drugs, the diagnosis of a neuromuscular disease, the death of my father when there were things we had not yet worked out.    

Small disappointments like realizing I cannot digest gluten, three grandkids living too far to see often, most of my coaching clients didn’t really want to change themselves after all when it came down to making choices.

I have not only lived through these and other disappointments but I’ve learned from them.  After the miscarriage came my only, much loved daughter. That son with addiction has been clean for 20 years and is a caring, responsible husband and father I have learned a lot from. Neuromuscular disease is in remission. I’m at peace knowing and accepting that my father loved me as much and as best he could.

A popular book published in 2002, “The Purpose Driven Life,” began with one sentence. 

            It is not about you.

What a freeing statement!  I don’t have to focus on my life, what makes me happy, what gives me comfort, what feels best to me. I can focus on living a life that is full of purpose that will contribute to others and that will reflect the unconditional acceptance I have grown to understand. Life requires adjustments. Always. So disappointments are just that… an appointment that was dis’ed.  Edited, changed, missed, avoided.

One thing I have learned after living almost 70 years is that it is rarely worth it to expend precious emotional energy on things you cannot change.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other as steadily as you can and see what happens. 

With a day scheduled to be unavailable, I have made bread, taken the dog on a walk, written this, edited 4 articles to be published soon. I will start a new book, enjoy the remarkable weather today, and let myself relax.  Surgery will interrupt my life soon enough so no need to be distracted from living life to the fullest today.