What are people supposed to do if... [View all]

... they have no family or close friends to accompany them for a surgical procedure? Are there businesses that can transport the patient from the hospital after the surgery is done?

I'm supposedly required to have someone at the hospital with me the entire time, to drive me home, and thankfully my retired brother and his wife have agreed to do it. But I've lived alone for over 22 years now (which I prefer if a potential companion gives the slightest hint of a domineering personality), and most of my siblings are much older than me. A 76 year-old sister is 21 years older than me, for example, because I was an unexpected "pill baby" when our parents were in their 40's.

So does anyone know what I might do in the future, if I'm still alone and all of my older siblings are dead? (There's some nieces and nephews, but they live far away or they're somewhat nearby but focused on their own immediate families.)

By the way, it's reconstructive surgery of my lower eyelid at Ohio State's hospital. I'm cancer-free now, thanks to their treatments! So it's now just a matter of replacing the lower eyelid that withered away because of the skin cancer, since what little remains of that eyelid rolls up on itself whenever I blink -- causing the outer skin below to rub my eyeball. The ophthalmologist/surgeon says my eyeball will always be inflamed unless that eyelid is fixed.

Far better than what a local oculofacial surgeon wanted to do months ago! He planned to remove the cancerous lower eyelid, plus the entire contents of the eye socket and part of the upper eyelid! Then he'd permanently stitch what was left of the upper and lower eyelids! He also confidently declared that the cancer was also on my eyeball, without doing any tests.

I soon thereafter (months ago) scheduled an appointment at The James Cancer Hospital (Ohio State) to get a second opinion. Glad that I did! Their doctors said the eyeball only had a blister on the conjunctiva, called chemosis, caused by the rubbing of the lower eyelid tumors against it. Then they ordered a PET scan to verify it, and there was indeed no cancer detected anywhere else except the lower eyelid!

April 2022:


January 2023: