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muckefuckJust spent at least half-an-hour trying to get a hold of a doctor at UIC to tell me that I probably wasn't going to die as a consequence of my outpatient procedure yesterday. That was reassuring. What wasn't reassuring was that:
I'm still not 100% but the doc's assurance that I probably just overexerted myself ("Usually I walk a mile during my lunch break." "You didn't do that today, did you?" "Nothing in my discharge instructions said to avoid physical activity.") has at least quieted my anxiety. I guess it's just as well that I'm not meeting Pasillero tonight. Despite our best intentions, I don't think we're at the point that we could limit ourselves to just cuddling.
The prep went better this time. Knowing how slow my body was to react, I started it two hours earlier than instructed with the result that I was actually able to be in bed by 11 p.m. My procedure wasn't scheduled until 11 a.m. which meant I could actually sleep in and take my time heading down to the hospital. I still decided to Lyft there instead of taking CTA, which proved...interesting.
Everything started well. I had a beardy Hispanic driver. His English was weak enough that I considered switching to Spanish, but then I thought that maybe he wanted the practice. I discovered that he was a former hairdresser from Buenos Aires who came here to work at the family restaurant but only did that on weekends. Around the time that I started to feel comfortable with him, he had a contretemps with another driver, who very aggressively prevented him from merging on Lower Wacker.
He rolled down his window at the next stoplight to ask why and they guy accused him of cutting him off. (Maybe he did; I didn't notice.) He kept his cool and seemed earnest about understanding what he did wrong. And if he'd stopped there, I still would have given him a good review. Instead he turned to me afterwards and said, "I don't want to seem racist, but Black people in the US..." I sat there thinking, Goddammit, I was starting to like you. Under different circumstances, I might have challenged him, but I just wanted to get to the hospital and get the day over with, so I left that to Lyft.
(To their credit, they responded to my comments within hours, promising to follow up with the driver and giving me a $15 credit. In fact, that's how I noticed they'd responded at all: The trip from hospital to Nuphy's was gratis and I poked around the app to figure out why.)
I was glad I insisted on having Nuphy meet up with me before the procedure since it made the two-hour wait time much more bearable. The SCM breezed in about 1 p.m., at which point I'd met just about the entire rest of the team: an assisting, a resident, two medical students, the anaesthesiology nurse and doctor, and two OR nurses. (Apparently there was yet another doc present that I don't remember but who talked to me on the phone today.) I was in a good enough mood to joke with them; the pre-op nurse deserves a lot of credit for that.
Waking up was heinous. I didn't expect so much pain and was pounding my fist on the arm of the chair waiting for the Norco to kick in. (Somehow the propofol, Versed, and Fentanyl they'd given me in the OR weren't covering it.) They'd rammed a gauze plug up my bum and I threatened to remove it myself, going so far as to glove up before the nurse begged me to wait for the doctor. It fell out on its own back at Nuphy's, where I took a bath before changing into the fresh underwear I'd brought and heading north for game night.
I was woozy enough to give everyone cause for concern, which made them extra solicitous in a way I found genuinely touching. Big Red asked if I wanted anything to eat so I told him "toast" and requested he bring some of his smoked butter, which he did. Fortuitously, one of the other players baked bread and his boyfriend offered himself up "as a donut cushion". I was totally exhausted before the end of the evening but I still didn't regret joining them.
- The first operator didn't know what to do with my call and forwarded me to the ER, which couldn't help either.
- The numbers for the surgical team and anaesthesiology went to voicemail and no one got back to me.
- The pager number for the surgical team rang for minutes without ever being answered.
I'm still not 100% but the doc's assurance that I probably just overexerted myself ("Usually I walk a mile during my lunch break." "You didn't do that today, did you?" "Nothing in my discharge instructions said to avoid physical activity.") has at least quieted my anxiety. I guess it's just as well that I'm not meeting Pasillero tonight. Despite our best intentions, I don't think we're at the point that we could limit ourselves to just cuddling.
The prep went better this time. Knowing how slow my body was to react, I started it two hours earlier than instructed with the result that I was actually able to be in bed by 11 p.m. My procedure wasn't scheduled until 11 a.m. which meant I could actually sleep in and take my time heading down to the hospital. I still decided to Lyft there instead of taking CTA, which proved...interesting.
Everything started well. I had a beardy Hispanic driver. His English was weak enough that I considered switching to Spanish, but then I thought that maybe he wanted the practice. I discovered that he was a former hairdresser from Buenos Aires who came here to work at the family restaurant but only did that on weekends. Around the time that I started to feel comfortable with him, he had a contretemps with another driver, who very aggressively prevented him from merging on Lower Wacker.
He rolled down his window at the next stoplight to ask why and they guy accused him of cutting him off. (Maybe he did; I didn't notice.) He kept his cool and seemed earnest about understanding what he did wrong. And if he'd stopped there, I still would have given him a good review. Instead he turned to me afterwards and said, "I don't want to seem racist, but Black people in the US..." I sat there thinking, Goddammit, I was starting to like you. Under different circumstances, I might have challenged him, but I just wanted to get to the hospital and get the day over with, so I left that to Lyft.
(To their credit, they responded to my comments within hours, promising to follow up with the driver and giving me a $15 credit. In fact, that's how I noticed they'd responded at all: The trip from hospital to Nuphy's was gratis and I poked around the app to figure out why.)
I was glad I insisted on having Nuphy meet up with me before the procedure since it made the two-hour wait time much more bearable. The SCM breezed in about 1 p.m., at which point I'd met just about the entire rest of the team: an assisting, a resident, two medical students, the anaesthesiology nurse and doctor, and two OR nurses. (Apparently there was yet another doc present that I don't remember but who talked to me on the phone today.) I was in a good enough mood to joke with them; the pre-op nurse deserves a lot of credit for that.
Waking up was heinous. I didn't expect so much pain and was pounding my fist on the arm of the chair waiting for the Norco to kick in. (Somehow the propofol, Versed, and Fentanyl they'd given me in the OR weren't covering it.) They'd rammed a gauze plug up my bum and I threatened to remove it myself, going so far as to glove up before the nurse begged me to wait for the doctor. It fell out on its own back at Nuphy's, where I took a bath before changing into the fresh underwear I'd brought and heading north for game night.
I was woozy enough to give everyone cause for concern, which made them extra solicitous in a way I found genuinely touching. Big Red asked if I wanted anything to eat so I told him "toast" and requested he bring some of his smoked butter, which he did. Fortuitously, one of the other players baked bread and his boyfriend offered himself up "as a donut cushion". I was totally exhausted before the end of the evening but I still didn't regret joining them.
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