Entering the little steril room - I'm instantly hooked up to little electric machines by a nurse void of character. A clamp on my finger, a rod under my tongue, and velcro around my arm. I notice how the room's scent is even void of character. Truly! I tried taking deep breaths in and could pick out nothing. I didn't know that was possible. My alienation is hightened to a new level.
The personality lacking nurse asks me questions about my "health and lifestyle". Suddenly I'm a school kid wanting to give the right answer.
"Do you smoke?"
No! I mean, well, I'm around people that smoke... sometimes....sometimes I have one when I'm having a beer....actually I smoke cloves once in awhile....or a cigar.....but it's not a habbit or anything!
The anwser floating somewhere between the truth and what I wish to be true
I can't tell by the numbers she reads off the little machines hooked up to me if I'm healthy or almost dead. For all I know she could be giving me the winning lottery numbers or thinks she's in the Bingo hall. Your 73 over 100 and your level is at B-9. Bingo!
Is that good? Am I dying? Or just average? I want to be better than average. Is there such a thing as super healthy? The nurse leaves me in the little room of weirdness.
Out in the hall I hear the nurses and doctors talk. Personality seems to have re-emerged as they walk out of these steril sucktions of a room.
"What idiot schedualed a 4 o'clock!?! I'm schedualed to leave at 4:15"
I'm hoping that is not my doctor. I look at my watch....it's 4 o'clock.
I wait for awhile. Then I hear scratching at my door. Right about where that clip board of all my bingo and lottery numbers are. Then silence. I have to wait longer. I think they just do it to tease us waiting in that uncomfortable room. Every now and then a nurse walkes by your door, picks up the clip board then puts it back and walks off. You hear that clawing as soon as you start looking around the room and start picking up things and playing with the tongue compressors and checking your myspace on their computer. So you have to rush back to your seat and look like you haven't moved.
I try reading the pamphlets covering the wall, but five minutes of that leads me to believe I have a new problem.
"Do you have asthma?"
I don't know, sometimes I have a hard time breathing after I run up a flight of stairs.
"Do you have irregular shaped moles?"
No, they all look pretty circular to me...except this one is a bit wonky...actually it kind of looks like a turtle....with 5 legs...maybe that's a head....uh.....nurse?!
On top of having the pamphelts of paranoia hell there are pictures of the fugliest things happening to body parts.
By the time the doctor comes in I'm convinced I have a new disease.
It's like when I watch House too much and just an ordinary cough throws me into a panick. "What if this isn't just a cough, but a symptom of some rare infection!"
I always seem to get the doctors from some eastern European country. It's like haveing a stern aunt that just seems to say "What's wrong with you".
Suddenly 13 year awkwardness comes over me and I stammer what I came in for.
"My eye hurts. It's really red and watery and itchy....and I'm sensitive to light....I feel like there is a fire in my eye that's trying to be put out by a flood...."
She shines a light into my eye and then goes to her computer. You can't go to work till Monday. You have pink eye.
Yes! no work! Wait...pink eye? What? No, that's so not cute!
She tells me I should maybe where a patch over my eye for the next few days.
Oh hells no I'm no pirate. "Ok" I say.
I figured since I was there and the doctor was there I'd ask about my face breaking out still. She perscribed some kind of lotion along with my eye drops and was out of the room.
Why do you always feel you spend more time waiting than actually being with the doctor? She didn't seem concerned or care that my eye was on fire. Just that I was an idiot freaking out about pink eye.
So, I have a little vacation now. Poor, pinke-eyed, and pained.
Quarantined to my room.
Yippe freakin do da.
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