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There’s a really good chance that once I’m off the Dayquil, this won’t seem nearly so hilarious to me. Because, ya know, I have standards and class and shit.
Hmm, nope, I’ll probably still think it’s damned funny.
Okay, my happy dance at the moment looks more like a shuffle-sniff-moan, but once I ditch this cold I am absolutely going to dance!
The day before my birthday I was randomly Stumbling on the internet and I landed on a clothing store website in Sweden. I saw a jacket that I immediately fell in love with, and because my husband is amazing, I ended up ordering it – something I’ve never done before. I can count on one hand the articles of clothing I’ve spent $100 or more on in my life: my graduation dress, my wedding gown, a leather coat, and now this jacket. I consider it a huge gamble to buy clothes without trying them on first, so I was sweating about it ever since I hit the “Complete Checkout” button.
It arrived today.
In hindsight, trying it on over a coffee-stained oversized T shirt and blue plaid, shrunken pajama pants (my “I want to curl up under a rock and die” uniform) probably wasn’t the most flattering way to first view and assess my new purchase, but… damn… even if I look like an idiot wearing it and it never leaves my closet in the future, it’s still the coolest looking jacket I’ve ever owned.
Check it out…
If you’re a regular Joe (or Jill) Schmuck Public, trying to find a family doctor in this city is virtually impossible. We’re extremely fortunate that our family is above average healthy (knock on wood!) and very rarely ever needs medical attention.
The local health department posts a list on their website every so often of doctors who are accepting new patients, but unless you speak Punjabi, are pregnant, or need a specialist in sports medicine, good luck finding a female physician who hasn’t been inundated with calls the same day the list is updated and is still booking new appointments.
For more than six years, ever since we moved to this ‘burg, I’ve tried to find a female GP. I visit the site and run through the newest list every three months or so, making phone calls and being told the same thing: practice is full, and no they don’t know anyone else taking patients. And to be honest, that works for me – I console myself with the knowledge that at least I tried. I have had mostly shit luck with the medical profession my entire life, and the effort of psyching myself up to think positive and to work to establish a healthy, mutually respectful relationship with a new doctor is more than I can find the strength for most days.
But a couple of things have happened lately:
- I might have some perimenopausal stuff going on. Whee. And…
- I did the usual list-phoning a week ago, and two – holy crap, TWO!! – female doctors who don’t have special requirements for accepting patients were willing to book new appointments
Yaaaaay!!!
and
DamnshitcrapcrapcrapIdon’twannadothisaarrrgh!!!!
They’re located at opposite ends of the city from each other, and a good jaunt away from me, but beggars/choosers, and all that. I ended up booking an initial consultation appointment with each of them. I figure that gives me twice the chances of finding one I can actually move forward with. The whole thing is quite tricky for me – I’m not what you would call a “typical” kind of patient. I don’t want attention, I don’t want narcotics, and I don’t want to have to come see a doctor unless it’s time for an annual checkup or something has fallen off. Otherwise, I just want them to write me the prescriptions for the slightly unorthodox but ultimately effective treatment plan I’ve had for the last decade, and leave me the fuck alone.
In my experience, few doctors are willing to go with even slightly unorthodox treatments, no matter how beneficial they’ve been. That’s because to do so requires actually doctoring, and not just following Med School 101 protocol based on lab results spit out in bold red ink.
Since those rare, true doctors are all either retiring or are overworked because people know how priceless they are, none of them are accepting new patients. So I have to try to decide in advance how much to gamble and say right out of the gate to a new doctor, how much to shut up about, and most of all how much of THEIR comfort zone and attitude I’m willing to deal with while I hope they come to recognize that I happen to know my own body better than they do after five minutes.
I had my appointment with one of the doctors already. She only works on Fridays, in a walk-in clinic in the heaviest drug addict and violence areas of town. I filled out a form at the front desk, and sat in the over-crowded waiting room for over an hour and a half while she saw other patients in between scheduled appointments. I passed the time trying to talk myself out of chickening out and unconsciously fiddling with a piece of dry, chapped skin on my lip.
Fiddled with my lip using my right hand. The same hand I had had resting on the armrest of the waiting room chair, and the same hand I had used to hold the pen that a gazillion sick people had used.
What a damned idiot.
When I finally got to see the doctor, she was… ehh… okay. She didn’t seem to be overly hurried, which is always a good sign, but she did totally and patronizingly wave off my comment about my skin being considerably drier lately than normal, saying that she has really dry skin, too, and she only washes her hands three times a day.
Uh….
Hmm. Somewhat disturbing. I’m hoping the second doctor meet & greet turns out better, but I can probably make do with this one, if I have to. What a fucking depressing thought to have to have about a primary care physician.
That was two days ago. And after seeing a doctor for the first time in two years, I am now sick as a damned dog with a horrendous sinus cold and cough. The only notable cold I’ve had in… uh… hmm… a couple of years??
I spend a large chunk of my daily energy trying to employ mind-over-matter along with a positive attitude because I believe that it counts a tremendous amount toward any outcome, but I can’t help shaking my head over the black humour of this.
And shaking my head is not fun right now.
Anyone who points out that it’s my own damned fault is going to get coughed on.
My day started with a breakfast of Junior Mints and Mars Bars. Hey, there’s *one* advantage to being born on Halloween. Then I was off to get stoned.
I’d never had a hot stone massage before – hell, I’ve had only a handful of massages in total – so this was a lovely birthday gift from my daughter, Jan. The heat and pressure of being massaged with the stones felt great, but in the future I’d rather a traditional massage. Normally with massages, there is constant hands-on contact from the first touch to the end, but with hot stone the cooling stones have to keep getting swapped out for heated ones. I don’t know if it was just this girl’s method or not, but that made for a lot of distracting interruptions and delays, and not nearly as much actual massage time as I’d hoped.
After a great lunch with the aforementioned daughter and some girl talk, I headed home on a route that took me across the river, and on a last minute impulse I veered into a parking lot and walked down by the water. It was a gorgeous, warm autumn day – the kind that, when you stop for a second and truly notice, makes your heart realize, “Huh. Life is actually pretty damned good. Okay. I can do this.” Whatever “this” is at the moment.
A man who was stopped on his bike struck up a conversation with me as we watched a black squirrel take an inordinately long time drinking at the edge of a side stream. I’m still not convinced that the little bugger hadn’t frozen his tongue to the thin skiff of ice. (Er, the squirrel, not the dude.) Having discussed the weather, the local fauna, and people who are rude to cyclists, the fellow then asked, “Are you an engineer?”
I’ve been asked a lot of bizarre questions by strangers, but this was a new one for me.
“No….” I stammered, puzzled. “Why?”
“The ring you’re wearing on your little finger – engineers wear rings like that, so I thought maybe you were.”
We had never gotten closer than ten feet away from each other (deliberately on my part), and had met only five minutes before. Guys, here’s a hint: women aren’t keen to discover that you’re looking at them in that much detail, that early on. Stare at our chests or ogle our legs, fine. Look at my left hand and note the wedding ring. But don’t be cataloguing and commenting on something like an incredibly thin pinkie ring on my right hand, which was half-stuffed into my pocket. That, my dears, is the line between observant and creepy.
When he commented on the iPod I was wearing and asked if I was able to hear people and cyclists come up behind me when I wore the earbuds, I assured him that I deliberately keep the volume low for just that purpose, and ended the conversation.
Poor guy. He reminded me of a socially awkward geeky birdwatcher. No offense to birdwatchers, (or geeks, for that matter) but that’s the image that struck me. My instincts clocked him as no threat, but he was painfully clueless about the things you should never say to a woman alone on a park path if you want to keep talking.
On the upside, did you know about the Engineer Ring? I’d never heard of it before. Apparently there’s a long and meaningful tradition of civil engineers wearing a steel pinkie ring.
Learning a random interesting thing just made an already great day even better. As it always does.
When I got home, the phone rang and musician friends sang “Happy Birthday” to me, all three kids and their father worked together to cook a great steak supper, we ate the cake Jan had baked and decorated, and I got to open presents perfectly matched to my warped personality in between the doorbell ringing every five minutes with little begging spooks and witches.
I concede that I have the worst memory for events and conversations, and I’m frequently guilty of forgetting when I’ve said or done something before, but I can say for a fact that this was the best birthday I have ever had.
(And, ya know, the beauty of having such a faulty, in-the-moment memory is that it won’t take anything away from this one and it will be just as genuine if I come to say the same thing next year, too.)
