![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thursday morning, still no sleep in sight, I call my doctor to whine. Leave message on his machine. He calls back, we discuss plans, he asks me to go get a chest x-ray before seeing him on Monday. I leave work, drive to a branch of his hospital, get the x-ray, drive back to work. I'm back about 20 minutes and he calls me. There's an abnormality in the x-ray and he wants me to go to the ER right away and get a CAT scan. I left work early, and got to Brigham & Women's hospital at around 5pm.
I'm coughing when I get there, of course, so they make me wear a plague mask:
Every time I cough, ever other person in the waiting room is looking at me like I'm a baby killer, and I'm thinking, fuck y'all, I'm wearing a fucking mask. You probably have ebola and just don't SHOW yet. Some girl who had been puking into a container right near me (who I assumed was either suffering from massive head trauma or a wicked overdose) falls right out of her wheelchair and hits the floor. Everyone's all excited, then they wheel her off on a stretcher and everything goes back to normal, with me as plague central.
Two hours of evil stares later, I get taken into the back. I have to share a cubby with some 'slip and fall' scammer and her friend. Apparently she'd fallen two days ago at a Stop & Shop. Her biggest concern was that she got paperwork 1. for missing work and 2. to prove to Stop & Shop that something happened. [I was pleased at the end to hear that she had nothing broken and the most they could call her "injury" was bursitis. Probably not the biggest payday there. Aw.]
So anyway, I get seen right away by young hot doctor #1. (An aside, this hospital is STACKED with hot doctors. Excellent!) He's very charming, attentive, asking me all kinds of questions about myself. I felt like I was on a first date. He says he'll see if he can get a copy of my x-ray, and consult with his boss. Time goes by. My nurse, fairly attentive, brings me a blankie, tells me it's ok to use my phone, and sticks an I.V. in my hand. Young hot doc comes back and says he's seen my x-ray now, and I have "a pneumonia" in my right lung, and there are a couple of masses in my upper chest that they don't know what they are yet. O...kay. So now we definitely need the CAT scan because it will help them narrow down what's going on.
Around 9pm I get wheeled in to the scan. I am slightly nervous because I am claustrophobic, but the donut-shaped CAT scan doesn't end up bothering me at all. They take a couple of pictures, then inject me with some kind of glowy-irradiated-whatever stuff and take a couple more. Done in less than five minutes. Cool! So can I go home now? Not yet....
I am starving by now. I ate lunch around 1:30 and now it's around 9:30. I want something to drink, but they keep using terms like "biopsy" and they don't know if it's ok for me to eat or drink or not. I am both stressed and chronically bored by now, as my delightful Kindle is being delightful in my bedroom instead of in my bag and there's no tv in the ER. Very happy to have iPhone with me. Surf web a bit, read blogs, papers. Realize don't have phone charger with me. Stop doing that so as to preserve battery for phone calls. Sit. Stare. Sit. Try to eavesdrop on roommates, but they are speaking mostly Spanish so out of luck. Try to doze. See prev. re: speaking roommates. LOUD.
Nurse arrives, says I probably will get to leave soon. Really? Yay! And yes, you can have some food now, do you want a sandwich? DO I!! In the meantime, older hot doctor #2 arrives. "So how are you doing with all of this? I know it's a lot to process!" UM, wait, was I diagnosed with something?? There are still too many hypotheticals, he says. What we really need to do is admit you. You could run all these tests outpatient, but it would be much faster if we admit you.
Admit me?
I'm coughing when I get there, of course, so they make me wear a plague mask:
Every time I cough, ever other person in the waiting room is looking at me like I'm a baby killer, and I'm thinking, fuck y'all, I'm wearing a fucking mask. You probably have ebola and just don't SHOW yet. Some girl who had been puking into a container right near me (who I assumed was either suffering from massive head trauma or a wicked overdose) falls right out of her wheelchair and hits the floor. Everyone's all excited, then they wheel her off on a stretcher and everything goes back to normal, with me as plague central.
Two hours of evil stares later, I get taken into the back. I have to share a cubby with some 'slip and fall' scammer and her friend. Apparently she'd fallen two days ago at a Stop & Shop. Her biggest concern was that she got paperwork 1. for missing work and 2. to prove to Stop & Shop that something happened. [I was pleased at the end to hear that she had nothing broken and the most they could call her "injury" was bursitis. Probably not the biggest payday there. Aw.]
So anyway, I get seen right away by young hot doctor #1. (An aside, this hospital is STACKED with hot doctors. Excellent!) He's very charming, attentive, asking me all kinds of questions about myself. I felt like I was on a first date. He says he'll see if he can get a copy of my x-ray, and consult with his boss. Time goes by. My nurse, fairly attentive, brings me a blankie, tells me it's ok to use my phone, and sticks an I.V. in my hand. Young hot doc comes back and says he's seen my x-ray now, and I have "a pneumonia" in my right lung, and there are a couple of masses in my upper chest that they don't know what they are yet. O...kay. So now we definitely need the CAT scan because it will help them narrow down what's going on.
Around 9pm I get wheeled in to the scan. I am slightly nervous because I am claustrophobic, but the donut-shaped CAT scan doesn't end up bothering me at all. They take a couple of pictures, then inject me with some kind of glowy-irradiated-whatever stuff and take a couple more. Done in less than five minutes. Cool! So can I go home now? Not yet....
I am starving by now. I ate lunch around 1:30 and now it's around 9:30. I want something to drink, but they keep using terms like "biopsy" and they don't know if it's ok for me to eat or drink or not. I am both stressed and chronically bored by now, as my delightful Kindle is being delightful in my bedroom instead of in my bag and there's no tv in the ER. Very happy to have iPhone with me. Surf web a bit, read blogs, papers. Realize don't have phone charger with me. Stop doing that so as to preserve battery for phone calls. Sit. Stare. Sit. Try to eavesdrop on roommates, but they are speaking mostly Spanish so out of luck. Try to doze. See prev. re: speaking roommates. LOUD.
Nurse arrives, says I probably will get to leave soon. Really? Yay! And yes, you can have some food now, do you want a sandwich? DO I!! In the meantime, older hot doctor #2 arrives. "So how are you doing with all of this? I know it's a lot to process!" UM, wait, was I diagnosed with something?? There are still too many hypotheticals, he says. What we really need to do is admit you. You could run all these tests outpatient, but it would be much faster if we admit you.
Admit me?
