STICKING IT OUT

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I woke up with a headache from sleeping awkwardly, one that will stay with me all day as I prepared to go for an Ultra-Sound to determine if there are any more stones in my kidneys.

This test requires that I drink 32 ounces of water and have it in me for at least one hour before the test.  Taking two bottles of Poland Springs water from the refrigerator, I start drinking. My test is scheduled for 8:00 am, so I don’t take my coffee or breakfast, and drink down the two bottles of water that I suppose is healthy first thing in the morning. It is disgusting! I need coffee to start my day!

The day promises to be a bad one, with a blizzard due in afternoon (Friday, February 8^th) and the weather already cranky with snow and rain mixing in and creating issues with traffic. So folks, we had bad weather, water without scotch in my system and no breakfast, plus a nagging headache. Fortunately seeing my wife in the morning was the only saving grace I had.

I arrive at the BAB lab (Big And Bad) early and have a book with me. I start t read and can’t concentrate at the beginning but suddenly find myself deep into it when “Honey” arrives. Honey is the receptionist, and has a rather large oral cavity for first thing in the morning! Shattering my calm, my serenity and peace, she starts on me.

“Why are you here, Honey?”

“A ultra sound, Sweetheart.”

She looks at me cross. (She started it.)

“Do you have a prescription Hon?”

“Here you go sweet.” Handing her the prescription.

“You’ll need paper work.” Handing me a clipboard and pen with a form on it.

I fill it out and hand it in and then as the first patient, scheduled for 8:00 am, I wait until 8:20 to be called! (And people wonder why I’m getting cranky.)

In I go and this middle-aged woman tells me to take off my shirt and lie down on the examining table, and to (once again) “open your belt and undo your pants.”

It seems lately whenever I go some place; I am opening my belt and lowering my pants! What the hell is this? Complying I wait for the torture to begin. She’s on schedule for that. As I lay next to a monitor, with a very elaborate keyboard, she takes out a probe that is about the size of a deodorant stick, flat and blunt, attached to a cable that leads to the keyboard and begins. Smearing me with a gel of some kind she sticks the probe into my chest and starts digging for gold, for over an hour! Deep, deep into my chest, scraping my spine she is so far in, then sticks it into my ribs with equal vengeance, all the time telling me to take a deep breath ad then when My head is about to explode, telling me to let it out.

So two new things are added to the mix of; no coffee yet, hunger, water without scotch, headache and lousy weather that I am worried about, and that is having to take a bodacious pee and pain from the probe! I start thinking about the Wendy’s that is located next door and the toilet, as she asks me to turn on my right side with my arm near my head. Now she tries to touch my left side ribs by digging through the right side, maybe having to move a few organs around to do so! And while we are at it, let’s turn over to the left side and see if we can put the organs back after touching the ribs form the right side?

“OK Mr. Del Bloggolo, go to the toilet and try to pass as much water as possible and return here and we will finish the test.” Hitching up the pants and bare-chested I go off to the toilet, return and one more stab and she is done!

I am so happy! I can now get the hell out of there and go eat and have some coffee, and please, NO WATER! I get out to my car and the rain and ice is now sleet, and then ice and then rain, not being able to make its mind up, I trudge to my breakfast.

There are better things I could do to spend a rainy, snowy and icy day. I could have stayed in bed, had breakfast, and even gone back to bed, or my favorite when I get these kinds of weather days: put the TV traffic channel on with a cup of coffee and enjoyed the poor souls do what I did all too often when I worked.

Getting home, I sat in my chair, put on the TV and watched a black and white movie, just like my mood!