Why Visiting the Doctor is Among my Favorite Activities

The cackling latin lady in the next office was going berzerk. Then she told us all how funny it was. According to her she couldn't breath.

Wish that were true.

I'm pretty sure if she wasn't breathing then that sound wouldn't have been there.

Anyway I better explain my doctor's visit just now.

I got there ten minutes late. The shady kid in front of me wearing a camouflage shoplifting coat says he's here for the same doctor I'm seeing. The receptionist twinkles a happy, "I'll get you checked in." and the kid skulks to a chair. 

I walk up to say I'm also here for that doctor.

She doesn't twinkle. I can sit over there. Preferably in the garbage can.

I don't know if there's a lot of paperwork that has to be done, or if someone has to drive to his house and remind him he's seeing patients today but it always takes a long time. I thought maybe by getting there late, they'd be waiting for me and I could just get rushed in since they were planning on seeing me ten minutes ago.

no.

I pick up a magazine to thumb some pages and find out there are people out there making horse magazines. Kind of interesting if you want to know which splint to buy this season in case one of your thoroughbreds gets a sprain. I put it down to entertain myself with the wallpaper and ceiling tiles.

After another twenty minutes, the nurse comes out and asks for the shady character. He shuffles back with her with a suspicious look on his face as if he might have some of the magazines packed away in that coat. I sit for an arcane amount of time before she finally returns for me. Then its the weigh-in, and the temperature, and the blood pressure and the pulse oximeter. Finally she finishes and leaves me in the little exam room to wait another half hour or so by myself while the doctor gets a cappuccino or something.

My doctor is from Israel. But leave the joy stained imagery of Fiddler on the Roof out of it. This particular visit is one of the last two I will have to endure.

As a sidenote, I'd better backstory this a little. I was in a big accident three months ago. Broke my neck. Had a post op infection and got re operated on and the fun of having a PICC Line installed. If you're a doctor and I used the wrong number of letters somewhere in there, don't correct me, I don't care. I know more about PICC lines than you will ever know even though you went to school for umpteen years so you could do something frivolous like save lives.

No. A PICC line simply means you get the joy of playing hospital every eight hours for the rest of your life or until they take it out, whichever comes first. The way mine was going I thought it might be the first choice. Anyway, during the ten weeks I'm playing hospital I get to meet with this doctor every week to bolster my confidence and cheer me along the way. Oh and get stabbed weekly by a nursing student.

Enough background.

I'm sitting there somewhat elated that before too much longer I won't be seeing this doctor again or get stabbed, when he tells me once I'm done taking antibiotics, I'll still have a high risk of the infection coming back because all they really do is suppress infection. Since I have permanent hardware in my neck, "It has maybe..." he wrinkles his face trying for optimism,

"fifty fifty chance of returning with hardware."

He grins.

"In that case, if spine has fused, we take hardware out and repeat treatment." His eyes glint hopefully.

"If it hasn't fused then you'll be in a cast for..." he pauses to soak up the joy of conveying such news, "six months... sometimes longer." I stare back blankly, unwilling to give him the shock and amazement he's hoping for.

"A full body cast then?" I ask.

He nods vigorously. I feel my neck.

"That'd be inconvenient."

"Oh yes! I remember I was finishing medical school back in the late 70's. I used to moonlight as a... a nurse."

I nod.

"Two schoolmates of mine; they were from my high school in Israel, got into a car crash and both had to wear spine casts in the ward I was working."

He smiles, deeply satisfied by the memory and the thought that one day soon he might relish the same satisfaction seeing me in such a cast.

"Was very embarrassing for them." He chuckles. "They shouldn't have crashed their car."

Wise man. I bet they never thought of that.

Reassured that my weekly doctor visits might not actually be coming to an end, I skipped happily to the lab to get stabbed once more by a young lady of almost steady-handedness who I assumed knew what she was doing.

After-all, she was wearing pink pajamas. 

the reason my car now looks like this take 2

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/08/15/1302691/tacoma-men-hurt-in-crash-near.html

there's a little news report. not sure how accurate that all is. I don't remember the accident or the couple days after. By Tuesday I think I'd realized from repetition that I wasn't dreaming we'd gotten in a car wreck on the way to Washington.

We'd actually done it.

I was at harborview medical center in Seattle where they moved me because of my condition Saturday night. The news piece says they took me to Yakima but my neck had been hammered down into my shoulders hard enough to dislocate my cervical vertebrae from my thoracic. So I arrived in Seattle a couple hours later where surgeons cleaned up my broken hand and set in a splint for a later surgery. They stretched my spine back into position, and fused my neck vertebrae to my chest vertebrae.

I was on heavy narcotics for the next couple of days till Mom informed them that I didn't use any stimulants at all. so they switched me to Tylenol and oxycodone which brought my mind back around just in time to prove to psychiatric evaluation that I hadn't sustained any brain damage. Which was good. Cuz nobody seemed to like the idea of brain damage.

So I've been sleeping a lot. And I got some new teeth which incidentally taste like bullets. I wanted to make sure if anyone else has teeth repaired that they pay close attention to taste. Course, you won't recognize the flavor if you've never had bullets in your mouth. Don't ask me how I do, its just one of those tastes you know from childhood like quarters and door knobs.

Anyway, the car is done. And I almost was. But I'm improving.

bouncing off things on the freeway

Now as you might expect, the action described in the title isn't one most of us prefer to experience on our summer journeys. However, judging by the number of TV shows out there that think they're bringing us something we can't see already on YouTube, its something most of us will watch for fun. 


 I don't know how often you've noticed, but those concrete dividers they put on the freeway to separate the two sides are covered with scuffs. I've always wanted to see a car slide along the thing, but naturally, I've also not wanted to see it  since it could end with a pile-up in which I'd be a main participant. 

Yesterday I was privileged to finally see what I'd been wanting to see ever since I was old enough to breathe. 


And it happened safely.
 BEHIND me!


 I was driving along mindlessly when I happened to glance in my rear view mirror. At that precise moment the mini van behind me drifted up against the concrete to relax for a while. A minivan's construction and seating arrangement is such that the occupants are clearly visible from the front whilst being completely ignorant of outside forces from within. It was like watching a short play on a little mobile stage.


 As the people inside rocked violently around, the driver appeared calm, in fact unaware of anything unusual going on. The loud scraping noise that no doubt accompanied this adventure  also seemed to go unnoticed. His wife apparently felt differently judging by the way she frantically started looking around and opening her mouth a lot. This was more than likely accompanied by some screaming.


 The van swerved away from the wall and into the other lane where to everyone's relief, no one was driving. The wife continued to flail and gesture whilst looking around, opening and closing her mouth. The van swerved back, but a little too hard and that darn scraping noise was back. 


 The minivan eventually settled back to a natural normal course the way a golf ball bounces to a gentle roll. The husband remained calm, almost comatose through the entire ordeal. They might have  pulled off the freeway to inspect the damage, but I'm not sure they even noticed since they continued on driving behind us for several more miles as if nothing had happened. What a surprise to arrive at your destination later that night and realize someone's violently keyed your car... While you were driving. incredible.