~Wednesday~ First thing this morning, I called my doctor’s office to get an appointment to have another look at this cough. The inhaler therapy has been a total bust, doing nothing but instigating an asthma attack last Wednesday. I wanted to see Amy Hird, my regular doctor whom you know I love, but she wasn’t working today, so I was scheduled with Hita Abrams again, which was fine. I got an appointment for 11:30. My lovable sister—via Facebook—insisted that I ask for a chest x-ray while I’m there, so I’ll do that. Another $25 co-pay coming up. Bastards.
Today’s visit consisted of a lot of questions asked, a good listen to my breathing with a stethoscope on my back, and blowing into some gadget to see how far I could move a meter with one big exhale. I did it three times. The first time it measured 650, and the second two times 625, which meant nothing to me, but obviously did to Darcy (the nurse) because after each one she said, “That’s very good!”
Appeasing me (or perhaps my sister), because she really didn’t think it was necessary, Hita ordered chest x-rays for me. “I feel very confident these will be negative. Don’t prove me wrong on this.” She also prescribed: Symbicort (dispensed as an inhaler and containing steroids), Tussionex (a cough syrup with an antihistamine and a narcotic in it), Zithromax (about which she said, “Although I’m quite sure this isn’t infectious at this point, I’m just going to cover all bases so you don’t have to come back a third time”), and Sudafed, which she warned me I’d have to ask the pharmacist for even though it’s not a prescription medicine, and then I’ll have to sign my life away to get it, just so they can be sure I’m not using it to stock my stay-at-home meth lab.
From there, I stopped by Raleigh Radiology, where as the technician asked me to assume the position for my x-ray, I said, “I’m already sterile1, so no need to cover up my ‘nads with that protector.” There were two (female) technicians in the room and they both got a kick out of that.
From there, I stopped by K-Mart and had my prescriptions filled, and indeed signed my life away for the meth mess. (Thounds like I’m lithsping don’t it.)
1I had a vasectomy when I was 29 years old.
She warned me that that cough syrup would knock me out, and at 6:00, it dragged my drowsy ass to the bed, where I slept until time for dancing.
Dancing was fun enough tonight. We worked on the crossword puzzle and got it about three-fourths done, before it got too hard. At about 9:45, I walked from around the pool table over to the dance floor and wet footprints followed me. “WTF?” I thought. No one had spilled anything as far as I knew.
I should note that it rained like a son-of-a-bitch all day today, enough for the weather centers to put out potential flood warnings. Well, at about 10:30, something must have given way in the ceiling of Flex, and water was bubbling out from under the door to Brigner’s (the manager’s) office, and by the time I left at 11:00, there was about an inch of water on the floor in the pool table area right in front of Brigner’s office.
Here’s a “Tweet Cloud”—the most common words in my tweets over the past year—the larger the word, the more it was used. The words “entry” and “blog” are so big, because every day I tweet the title of my blog entry followed by the words, “[X]day’s blog entry.”
