I finally had the appointment with my shoulder doc, and my insurance company gave the green light for surgery. Since this is a preexisting condition my doc was worried I’d get socked with a $30,000 hospital bill if the insurance company denied my claim, but it turns out my firm’s group policy has no exclusions for preexisting conditions. If they did, I wouldn’t have been able to have surgery until October at the earliest. I call the surgical coordinator tomorrow to schedule the surgery, which will probably happen in about 4-6 weeks.

One of my parents will be making the trip up from North Carolina for the occasion… My mom has never been to NYC before, and my dad was here once the late 60’s. So, in addition to dealing with the surgery, I’ll be playing host and teaching mom or dad how to ride the subway, etc.

After the surgery, I’ll be in a sling for about six weeks, and then I’ll have about six months of physical therapy. And when all that is done, they’ll take a look at my left shoulder and see what’s wrong, if it’s still bothering me then. Looks like I’m in for an interesting few months.

My deadline to apply for degree conferral is tomorrow. In order to graduate in June, I’d have to pay the school $100 and submit tons of paperwork tomorrow, and commit myself to doing lots of schoolwork between now and the end of May. With this surgery business (along with BMCC dragging their feet in processing my application), that simply isn’t going to happen.

My BA degree has already been 14 years in the making… What’s another few months? As long as I don’t get too far behind, it shouldn’t impact my plans to start my M.Arch. in fall 2009.