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I had a thrilling visit to the doctor today. I've been sick for two weeks, avidly trying to delay the inevitable, probably pointless, visit. Sure, I am a person who after a week of insisting my throat didn't hurt that bad but it was possible I might have a minor ear infection found out I had tonsillitis. Yes, I am a person who after getting all my weight catapulted onto my elbow at a pretty hefty speed on a skateboard, carried said board to school with that arm and spent five hours insisting to at least fifty different people it wasn't broken until realising I had completely cracked the shit out of it in three places. Of course, we remember when a 200 pound kid landed on my head from half a story above and I subsequentially yelled "I do not have a fucking concussion," (completely slurred into itself and barely distinguishable as a sentence) and tried to punch Kate in the face, missed, did a 180 and went face into a bathroom stall door. Sure, I've gotten a terrible reputation at being able to judge my own physical condition (does anyone wanna hang around me for life and tell me when I really need to go to the hospital? 'Cause I really am an idiot about this shit most of the time) this time I know it is not a big deal. Okay, you can see my lymph nodes from a block away. Cool. I don't have AIDS, I don't have cancer, I don't have mono. I mean, sure, I don't know that for a fact, but I would be a lot more worse-off if it was, right? Right.
But, of course, at the recommendation of about seven people, I finally caved and let my dad set a doctor's appointment. My doctor's okay, but the thermostat in her office is busted and after about five minutes nothing I said was making sense and it took me forever to actually get a point across 'cause I already had a fever of about 102 and I started hallucinating. After I finally explained half the shit that was going on and gave up on the rest she started talking about chest x-rays and blood tests and sent me on my merry way to the Oakland Kaiser Permanente hospital maze two blocks away.
The radiology room was easy to find, but formidable. It was freezing and dark, there was one magazine and it was a copy of "Mother Jones"; Nirvana was playing quietly. There were two other people in there and they both looked like they were on their death bed. A lady about the shape an colour of a plum screeched my name awkwardly and my trendy hospital wristband kept moving up and down my arm when I walked. Plum lady threw a hospital gown ad my face and just said "Clothes off, this on" and pointed to a sterile public-pool style changing booth - like row of public bathroom stalls without toilets. Despite knowing, deep in the back of my mind all of this was in vain, the dark chill of the room and the guy in the lab coat's grim look at my disheveled, haggard presence and quiet "I am trying so hard to console you" voice as he told me to put my arms around the formidable-looking metal plate in front of me like I was giving it "a big hug" sent a really weird chill down the back of my lumpy neck. This was incredibly hard to shake for some reason. It's like when you have the most hilarious assortment of illegal items in your bag and you walk past a group of five bored-looking police officers. You know you're doing nothing wrong, but, well, fuck, it's scary anyway through some weird procession of human logic. Anyway, after that weird encounter with becoming super aware of my mortality, I got lost. I was wandering up and down the stairs of this place for about ten minutes, looking at the directory and getting confused and roaming until I realised the lab is literally right across the hallway from the radiology room.
This was essentially the polar opposite of the radiology room. It was fast-paced and colourful. There was a giant sign that said "take a number!" next to one of those ticket dispensers you find at a grocery store deli. The receptionist called numbers like an auctioneer; I clutched my little pink B45 in avid anticipation, knowing I wouldn't let her quick yelps get the best of me. I was mostly right. It was only an event of mild confusion, seeing as she had called three numbers in rapid succession without stopping as I was taking the four steps it took for me to get to the desk. I watched people walk up to the desk ranting about stool samples, and there was some nurse really overzealously talking to a two-year old about Fig Newtons. There was a retired lady next to me who apparently just comes by to sit there and watch people all the time and made weird witty commentary to no one next to me. I got called in to a small desk-area with a little Asian woman wearing safety goggles. Before I knew what was happening I had a rubber band tied around my arm and a needle shoved into some arbitrary vein. Everything turned white. I feel like I probably fainted, because I was propped up well enough for no one to notice and when I turned back around I was really dizzy and somehow in what I perceived to be roughly a second and a half, there were five test-tubes of my blood filled on the desk, with one half full that she was jiggling madly to try and milk the last drops that would come out of me into that goddamn tube.
I almost fell over when I walked out and don't really remember much until I ate. The rest of my day was kindof loopy and floppy. Robby, Grant, Forest and I all got to see the unpleasant display of Ethan half-feeding a dying snail to my landlord's dog Lucy. It was, however, a textbook example of human nature's interaction with animals.
The x-rays already came back clean; still waiting for the blood work.
Looks like this time I might have actually been right.
( Cut for gross indulgence in stupid survey. )
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