Today was a pleasant surprise as far as hospital visits go. Typically I'll have a visit scheduled in the middle of a perfectly good day which will suck up the middle three-and-a-half hours therefore ruining the day in total. And you know what percentage of those 210 minutes are actual diagnosis?? The same percentage you tip a waitress, a whopping 15%, and that's on good days. But I've seen those medical bills and I'll be damned if they don't get paid for having me breathe the air in their waiting room as well.
Typical procedure: arrive in the parking garage and purchase a two dollar token on the way to the endocrinologist office of Dr. Sotos (it means he's a gland disorder expert, and my thyroid is the gland in question). Sit in the waiting room ankle-deep in plastic trucks and puzzles of ducks with 3 pieces missing, occasionally tossed around by the odd 4-year-old with their surly middle school sibling sulking in the corner. And you wait. That's why it's called the waiting room.
Then, in a moment of glorious triumph, you hear your name called. In a mad scramble to get to the back before they close the door in your face and you're left in the first big waiting room for another 40 minutes, you cram through the door and the resident family patient(s) stands on the scale, your weight is read aloud in front of all present by the smiling senior nurse you've known since you were the tender age of 12, Rhonda, who puts you into an even smaller waiting room. But they try and trick you, they don't tell you that it's a waiting room even though in reality it is one. Then Rhonda takes your blood pressure (they take it right as they put you into the smaller waiting room - if they did it when the real examination started it would be much more elevated than it is normally due to impatience) and ducks out with a beatific smile, saying that Dr. Sotos will be in a moment. Record time for the elderly Venezuela-born doctor reentering the room is 30 minutes, give or take 20 more. Never a moment. Not once.
So the patient sits on an elevated bench covered in crinkly paper for sanitation purposes; now that I know the secret to sanitation you can bet that all the surfaces in my house are now covered in fashionable germ-free paper. We change it after every time we have the guests over - even the carpet. Makes it easier when the dog makes a mess if nothing else.
Did you catch the sarcasm? Anyways, you become desperately bored, and once you've realized that the freshest magazine on the table is at least 3 months old you resort to desperate measures to entertain yourself. Once I brought a frisbee with me and my diabetic sister and I resorted to banging it off the walls in attempt to ricochet it to each other. My mother scolded us to stop in the midst of hers and our giggling. It felt perfectly inappropriate, and I still wonder what would have happened if we hadn't put it away and bounced the little disc right off the forehead of our elderly doctor.
Last time, however, Dave had the pleasure of being Heather's hospital buddy for the day and right on cue, just as we dozed off in the chairs, the door opens back up and there's Dr. Sotos shuffling in with his gutteral "Hullo Hullo. How are you doing?" My sister and I have had countless appointments with this man and there has never been a single one where these weren't the first words out of his mouth. With a sideways glance at this unknown boy, Dave introduces himself and Dr. Sotos teases me, to which I stick out my tongue in response to his great delight and amusement. Then, as usual, he gropes my throat, takes my pulse with deep concentration radiating from his bifocals, and then tells me to "lie down there" and places his stethoscope on random various spots on my body. Then he parrots what Rhonda has already told me nearly an hour before about my condition and medication, and then Rhonda, senior nurse extraordinaire, hands me my lab slip and after I reschedule another appointment 3 months down the road, but not before the doctor shakes Dave's hand one last time with a wink and instructions to take care of me.
Then the trek down to the basement which includes, who could've guessed, MORE waiting. The time Dave came, to my horror, I had to give the lab vampires not only my blood but a sample. Is there a bathroom in the back? Oh ho, no no, that would make it easy. I have to walk through the waiting room with an empty pee cup and a grimace, then a few minutes later a full cup held at arm's length and a stubborn refusal to look anywhere but straight at that lab door on the other end of the waiting room.
These visits are long. And they happen pretty often. There's adjustments to my medication, there's waiting in three different rooms, and a bunch of random tweaking due to whatever my "condition" is doing whenever I see these miscellaneous hospital staff members. But, with a little luck, hopefully the procedure I've started today can change all of that. Take my meds down to one pill a day, make random tweaking almost obsolete, and change the frequency of tedious days like these from 4 or 5 times a year down to ONE. Count 'em, ONE, that's IT. After years of this tedium I'm trying this procedure called an iodine thyroid oblation where, in essence, they spend a week rigging my body a certain way so that I can swallow a very small and very mildy radioactive pill in order to kill off my thyroid. It's a gradual year-long fading if the procedure works, which is good for my body, and not nearly the risks that come from surgerically removing it nor the shock to my body. This is the second time I've attempted this, but Dr. Sotos has assured me, in his gutteral Venezuelan fashion, that the second time's a charm. Here's me crossing my fingers, because this week is gonna be a giant hassle.
But today...I was in shock. Last time we went through this we had the standard percentage of waiting time and got charged not just for breathing but for blinking and thinking in the waiting room (the price of this procedure makes my dad's insurance cry). But today, the first day of the proceedings, I had two separate appointments, one for swallowing pills of iodine, the next 6 hours later to make sure the iodine was gathering in the right place, because wouldn't it be funny if I oblationed a vital organ instead, what a laugh that would be. The first I was out in under half an hour, my rear not even having time to leave an indent on the chair cushion in the waiting room, the second my mother and I were back in the parking garage 45 minutes later, only taking longer because they had more constructive things to do. Carrie, my technician nurse, was friendly and made the time pass quickly.
With any luck these time-related "pleasant surprises" will continue over the span of the next three days. Prayers welcome, even though it's not really a big deal, and I promise to try and update more on here. Tricia is starting to pass me up in blogging frequency, and that just isn't allowed. Period. :)
Typical procedure: arrive in the parking garage and purchase a two dollar token on the way to the endocrinologist office of Dr. Sotos (it means he's a gland disorder expert, and my thyroid is the gland in question). Sit in the waiting room ankle-deep in plastic trucks and puzzles of ducks with 3 pieces missing, occasionally tossed around by the odd 4-year-old with their surly middle school sibling sulking in the corner. And you wait. That's why it's called the waiting room.
Then, in a moment of glorious triumph, you hear your name called. In a mad scramble to get to the back before they close the door in your face and you're left in the first big waiting room for another 40 minutes, you cram through the door and the resident family patient(s) stands on the scale, your weight is read aloud in front of all present by the smiling senior nurse you've known since you were the tender age of 12, Rhonda, who puts you into an even smaller waiting room. But they try and trick you, they don't tell you that it's a waiting room even though in reality it is one. Then Rhonda takes your blood pressure (they take it right as they put you into the smaller waiting room - if they did it when the real examination started it would be much more elevated than it is normally due to impatience) and ducks out with a beatific smile, saying that Dr. Sotos will be in a moment. Record time for the elderly Venezuela-born doctor reentering the room is 30 minutes, give or take 20 more. Never a moment. Not once.
So the patient sits on an elevated bench covered in crinkly paper for sanitation purposes; now that I know the secret to sanitation you can bet that all the surfaces in my house are now covered in fashionable germ-free paper. We change it after every time we have the guests over - even the carpet. Makes it easier when the dog makes a mess if nothing else.
Did you catch the sarcasm? Anyways, you become desperately bored, and once you've realized that the freshest magazine on the table is at least 3 months old you resort to desperate measures to entertain yourself. Once I brought a frisbee with me and my diabetic sister and I resorted to banging it off the walls in attempt to ricochet it to each other. My mother scolded us to stop in the midst of hers and our giggling. It felt perfectly inappropriate, and I still wonder what would have happened if we hadn't put it away and bounced the little disc right off the forehead of our elderly doctor.
Last time, however, Dave had the pleasure of being Heather's hospital buddy for the day and right on cue, just as we dozed off in the chairs, the door opens back up and there's Dr. Sotos shuffling in with his gutteral "Hullo Hullo. How are you doing?" My sister and I have had countless appointments with this man and there has never been a single one where these weren't the first words out of his mouth. With a sideways glance at this unknown boy, Dave introduces himself and Dr. Sotos teases me, to which I stick out my tongue in response to his great delight and amusement. Then, as usual, he gropes my throat, takes my pulse with deep concentration radiating from his bifocals, and then tells me to "lie down there" and places his stethoscope on random various spots on my body. Then he parrots what Rhonda has already told me nearly an hour before about my condition and medication, and then Rhonda, senior nurse extraordinaire, hands me my lab slip and after I reschedule another appointment 3 months down the road, but not before the doctor shakes Dave's hand one last time with a wink and instructions to take care of me.
Then the trek down to the basement which includes, who could've guessed, MORE waiting. The time Dave came, to my horror, I had to give the lab vampires not only my blood but a sample. Is there a bathroom in the back? Oh ho, no no, that would make it easy. I have to walk through the waiting room with an empty pee cup and a grimace, then a few minutes later a full cup held at arm's length and a stubborn refusal to look anywhere but straight at that lab door on the other end of the waiting room.
These visits are long. And they happen pretty often. There's adjustments to my medication, there's waiting in three different rooms, and a bunch of random tweaking due to whatever my "condition" is doing whenever I see these miscellaneous hospital staff members. But, with a little luck, hopefully the procedure I've started today can change all of that. Take my meds down to one pill a day, make random tweaking almost obsolete, and change the frequency of tedious days like these from 4 or 5 times a year down to ONE. Count 'em, ONE, that's IT. After years of this tedium I'm trying this procedure called an iodine thyroid oblation where, in essence, they spend a week rigging my body a certain way so that I can swallow a very small and very mildy radioactive pill in order to kill off my thyroid. It's a gradual year-long fading if the procedure works, which is good for my body, and not nearly the risks that come from surgerically removing it nor the shock to my body. This is the second time I've attempted this, but Dr. Sotos has assured me, in his gutteral Venezuelan fashion, that the second time's a charm. Here's me crossing my fingers, because this week is gonna be a giant hassle.
But today...I was in shock. Last time we went through this we had the standard percentage of waiting time and got charged not just for breathing but for blinking and thinking in the waiting room (the price of this procedure makes my dad's insurance cry). But today, the first day of the proceedings, I had two separate appointments, one for swallowing pills of iodine, the next 6 hours later to make sure the iodine was gathering in the right place, because wouldn't it be funny if I oblationed a vital organ instead, what a laugh that would be. The first I was out in under half an hour, my rear not even having time to leave an indent on the chair cushion in the waiting room, the second my mother and I were back in the parking garage 45 minutes later, only taking longer because they had more constructive things to do. Carrie, my technician nurse, was friendly and made the time pass quickly.
With any luck these time-related "pleasant surprises" will continue over the span of the next three days. Prayers welcome, even though it's not really a big deal, and I promise to try and update more on here. Tricia is starting to pass me up in blogging frequency, and that just isn't allowed. Period. :)
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