Medical Report...

One of my unfavoritest places to spend any time, is any kind of a medical waiting room. In my humble opinion, aside from airplanes, they are the worst germ laden places on Earth. If I find that I must spend some time in one, as occurred today, then it is always my choice to stay as far away from other people as possible and I try not to touch any of the common magazines or newspapers.

Today, I not only had to have iron infusion, but I also had to have blood drawn. As I entered Senora West's waiting room, there at the desk in front of me was a poor soul. She was a woman that was about 80 plus years old, about 4' 6" tall with a walker. She was bent over from arthritis and could not straighten up. Her poor crippled hands looked like a tangled mangle of fingers from her debilitating disease. A rather large African/American woman with a Jamaican accent handed me a clip board over the poor woman's head to sign in. I did and searched for a seat. Now try to imagine this long narrow waiting room along with it's clients. On my right were 3 empty seats, then a young healthy looking guy about 22 years old, no one past him. On the opposite side of the room was a woman with an infant in a big over-sized deluxe baby buggy and a 3 year old that was busy carrying water from the cooler to her Mom, that really didn't want it, but kept the child occupied. Way farther down, all alone in the far end of the room was a pregnant girl intently reading. The chair of least obstacle was to sit in the nearest one, which was on my right and one seat over from the kid aged 22. That left one seat between us to keep germs from just jumping onto me.

Now here comes the little poor old lady and where do you suppose she chooses to plunk her skinny ass? Right, exactly between the kid and me, creating 3 in a row. What in the world was she thinking? She instantly went from a poor little old lady to the ENEMY! I've already told you about how I hate to touch anything in a waiting room, but not as much as I detest a sickly looking woman sitting practically on me. My defense was to get up, choose a magazine and sit my healthy ass somewhere close to the magazine rack.

About 30 minutes goes by and I notice that everyone is gone but me and people that arrived after me were being asked in to have their blood drawn. Pretty soon Jamaica calls my name and I approach her. She doesn't want to tell me that they've lost my standing order, but that's whats happened. So she asks me if I know what tests are to be done to me. I say, "CBC". Then I announce this is ridiculous and give her the telephone number of my doctor's office from memory and tell her to ask for Harris and ask him to fax a new one immediately. She does and about 7 minutes later the vampire lady calls my name and starts drawing blood and even found my vein on her first try. As I sit here tonight, I'm waiting for an assortment of symptoms to begin their attack on me from the other patron of Sonora West's waiting room.

I got an emergency call from the Lovely Jules tonight. She'd eaten all of her pain pills for her broken arm and didn't know what to do. I suggested she call the ER that she had gone to to ask for refills. She tried that and called me back to say that they were not only not helpful, but downright rude. I had a few pain pills leftover from the bout with my renegade dentist and asked her if she wanted me to drop them off. She said, no. That's way too much trouble and she couldn't ask me to drive all the way over for pills. I asked if she wanted them or not and she said, YES! I took the ride and guess what? She really did break her arm! That sucker was all twisted up and locked up in a bandage that looked really professional. The swelling made her finger look like sausages, black sausages and they go in the wrong directions. Not pretty. She took a couple of the pink pills and I stayed for an hour and wouldn't let her talk. I opened a few bottles of bottled water for her and peeled the backs off of 4 sticks of string cheese. She said she was good to go and I headed home to wait for my symptoms. Tomorrow she's supposed to have a little minor surgery to get it set properly. I'll keep you posted, she can't type!