Live from the medical center at Travis AFB...my favorite (=cough cough=) thing in the whole wide world to do. I show up every 3 months (roughly) to say “see, I’m still alive” and tell the story of the brain tumor to yet another endocrinology resident, who will ooh and awe in all the appropriate places, then ask me about current symptoms (“Um, when the DDAVP wears off I drink a lot and pee like a fiend...”) He will take copious notes—because I am so interesting, after all—and then he’ll go get the Real Doctor, to whom I will have to repeat it all. Well, minus the whole tumor story, ’cause he wrote it down the first time I saw him, and he, too, took 650 pages of notes. He’s mostly interested in seeing if I’m still among the breathing, and how my meds are.
He’ll order blood work—for which I will have to come back in the morning, because it needs to be fasting blood work and I treated myself to a donut for lunch (yes, a donut. Hush…)—and in a week or two I’ll have to call back and see if there will be any changes...it would make a heck of a lot more sense if I got the blood work a week or so before the appointment, so he would have the most current results right there in front of him, but this is the military, after all. I keep meaning to call a couple weeks before these appointments to ask him to put the order for lab work in, but somehow I always forget. Conveniently.
Funny how that works, eh? Someone who hates the phone forgets to call.
Oooh, and something that has improved the whole sit here and wait thing...my iPod. I can still hear the people around me talking (I love to eavesdrop, dammit, and I admit it) but I don’t look like I’m listening. In fact, I look like I’m working. Tap tap tapping away on my spiffy PDA...I could be writing the next Great American Novel.
I should be writing the next Great American Novel.
Instead, I’m listening to Chris Botti and coughing up a play by play of this wonderful medical experience.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait...
This’ll teach me to get here half an hour early...
~ ~ ~
Yay, now I get to wait in the exam room. I just heard my doc introduce himself to someone in the next room, so I know it’ll be awhile...
Wow, there’s NOTHING to look at in this room. Usually there are posters of the inside of the body, all the bones or the intestines...SOMETHING. Even the doc’s personal stuff. But this room has bare walls. Not a thing to look at.
I want to be amused while I wait.
Oh, wait...there’s a pamphlet on bone health I could be reading. But that’s not nearly as enthralling as staring at a poster of my innards. I want to examine where my xyphoid process is, dammit! I want to look at L4 and L5 on the spine and see why my back hurts. I want to count ribs.
Ok, I don’t want to do any of that, really, but this is a freakishly boring exam room.
And hush, it’s not nice to mutter “so is this blog entry...” I’m SHARING, for Pete’s sake. (Who is Pete, anyway, and why do we do things for his sake? Is he offering some kind of prize at the end of it all? Like a car, or chocolate?)
I think they forgot about me. I’ve been here a while now, and people keep walking past, and my records—I just now noticed—are not in the little thingy on the door. But at least they HAVE my records, which took forever to get here from Ohio...
Um, yeah, that was my fault...
~ ~ ~
Well now, complain and ye shall receive. Less than a minute after saying I was forgotten, the resident walked through the door (as opposed to walking through the wall?), and I got to spin my tale of medical woe for him, and he got to enter it all into the new computer system. He was very good; friendly, knowledgeable, thorough. And he was kinda cute. And he (=snort=) touched my boobie (:::insert immature laughter:::) when he was listening to my heart.
Long and short, after seeing the regular doc, too, it was determined that I am stable (shut up, I am!) and he wants to see me the end of November (AND get the lab work EARLY!) and after that I’ll go to seeing him every 6 months instead of every 3. Yay. I’m graduating. AND I don’t have to get any blood drawn tomorrow.
Nope, tomorrow I get to go pick up my spiffy new glasses.
The bifocals.
On one hand, I’m excited because I want to read books again. On the other…bifocals.
Thus endeth my medical adventures for today. I survived and no blood was lost. Plus, I got to have a donut while I was on base.
Hurray.
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