Unfortunately, There Isn't...

Thistihos, oles i thesis tis protis thesios ina piazmenes. Roughly transliterated from the one Greek phrase I remember 6 years later, that means, "unfortunately, all the first class seats are sold out". Yet somehow I still paid $75 for a not totally uncomfortable berth for the last 3 hours. Which was lots better than the schmoes who showed up at the ER, in droves, with various contusions and woes but came later than me.

I'll stand by my first aid training where they tell you that the person making the most noise is probably the least injured; look at the quiet sufferers closely. You would not believe the amount of sympathy a guy with a lousy sprained ankle wants. He did get an ice pack finally, which was just work saved. Word to the wise - if you sprain something, stop at a restaurant on the way to the ER and get them to give you some ice in a bag. Even though they should hand out ice packs at the door, they don't.

My plans for the evening had been to call enormous man and set up a date. I did send out more messages of pleading and hope and got 2 responses this time. I'm not at all sure that either is the one for me, but I'm game to try. And after all my bitching about short guys, 6'7" boy is intriguing. But about the time I was trying to see if I wanted to run just one more experiment, before going home to place the call, my body said, "No! you must leave now!" When I tried to reason with it, my body repeated the message with added emphasis on the NOW!

If personal bodily functions bother you, stop reading now and come back for the next post, should you be so inclined.

So I left the cleanroom, went to the bathroom, did some stuff at my desk, went to the bathroom, drove home, went to the bathroom, started looking up "urgent care" in the yellow pages (it's under "Hospitals"), went to the bathroom, called the hospital (and the lady said, "come in earlier rather than later to beat the rush"), went to the bathroom, and decided I was going to find out where our local ER happened to be. As it turns out, I can also find 3 bathrooms in and near the local ER.

Hey! That last paragraph wasn't so bad. I can take it. - well ok, but it gets worse.

Given that I drink 60-90 oz of water a day, I'm no stranger to the loo. But this was excessive, I thought. And it turned out that I wasn't getting my period again, but was losing more blood than I was comfortable with in the space of two hours. Enough that the blood itself was sufficient to make me think I had to go again. I couldn't apply pressure, and I was still bleeding, so I chugged some water and a multivitamin with the thought that the iron would enhance oxygen carrying ability of my remaining blood, and drove over to the ER. Where I peed. Then again in a cup. And again in a cup. You might have guessed that giving up two urine samples back to back posed no challenge for me this evening. And they were the color I last saw in this little quiz on disgust.

The process went faster than I expected, at first. I would barely get my book out when someone would call my name. On the third interruption, the doctor looked at me, made sure I didn't have other symptoms TB or something, and sent off my sample to tell him what he already knew. I had joked with him that they weren't letting me read, and he laughed and said, "That I can fix, I'll be back in an hour." I think there is some rule that you can't go for more than 2 hours in a hospital without getting your blood pressure checked. The nice assistanty type person who addressed me as "Miss UTI" came over to let me know I hadn't been forgotten, and for good measure slapped a cuff on me.

I'm not sure I like blood pressure measurements any more than the BMI. They seem a little made up. My first one was either 124 or 136 over 70. My second reading was 113/90. I pretty much never have the diastolic go over 70 unless I've been free.bas.ing sud.afed. Maybe it was because my arm was nearly asleep from my reading position and the blood was rushing back in. I did get to see the oxygen level in that appendage go from 80% to 100% during the course of the measurement. At any rate, I made good inroads into the very long "The Red Lion's Daughter" by Loretta Chase, and it was engrossing enough to take my mind off my troubles at least a little. Long enough for the assistanty lady to come back with a prescription, a horse pill that seems to have taken the edge off, and some discharge papers.

So that was 3 hours of my life for $25/hour out of pocket, but it was reassuring to know that I had something they could give a generic treatment for without hardly thinking about it. I just don't know how I got it, certainly not from my sex life. I'm glad I went. Because as much as I'm into making my own medicine, Listerine wasn't up to the task this time. I know when to call in the big guns.