So, why the heck did I go back there? Because I had an infected finger, and it was $30 to walk in there, and $75 just to go into urgent care. Besides… what could happen?
Me In waiting room: What the heck are you doing here, you’re getting nauseous, this is not good, this is a scary experience, this is not good for you. Your heart is about to leap out of your chest.
Rational Me in waiting room: Play a game on your iPhone, you need medical attention. Oh, and calm down, or they’ll stick you on blood pressure meds, or you’ll trigger a Migraine. Now wouldn’t that be irony.
Me in waiting room: Shut up, rational one. You know what happened here. Rational one: Yep. And you’re the one who made the appointment.
Me: I have no money.
Change scene.
Move to triage.
Nurse:On a scale of 1- 10 how much does it hurt
Me: 1. (Thinking- will I be taken seriously? But it doesn’t hurt that much. It did last night, but it doesn’t now.)
Nurse: Oh. (takes my blood pressure- it’s about 10 points over normal on both systolic and diastolic.) That’s a fine blood pressure. (I can barely look- it’s technically borderline hypertension, at least on the bottom. Not that I’m going to say anything.)
She leads me into a new room, where I type the following, knowing I’ve got time before I’m seen. Figure maybe I can get a blog post off.
So, I’m sitting here, just about 20 feet from where the incident happened. ( breathe, jamie) Found out already that I’d gained weight. Not a good feeling. Need to drop 7 lbs What do you do when it’s hot outside and exercise isn’t a possibility? I guess that’s purely hypothetical, as I could lift weights during the day Stop distracting yourself! You know that’s not the real problem right now, I mean, it is„, but it’s not.
At that moment, I have to shut off the phone, as the sweetest looking doctor comes in the room. She asks what’s wrong, takes a look at my finger, (OH YEAH, it’s infected.) and asks how long this has been going on. I shrug, mentioning that it’s been an ongoing source of potential infection for a while, but this go-around has been about 2 weeks, and that I couldn’t sleep the night before. (true.)
She looks at my meds. (OY. Here we go again. All of my muscles tense up.)
I quickly say “a lot of them are PRN.” She nods, and says something like “I kind of figured that when a few of them were triptans- including frova and amerge.” (My turn to blink.)
I had to. “You know about Migraine Meds- and triptans?” (I figure that she has a friend/cousin/someone) with Migraine disease.)
She nods. “There was an incident around here some years ago with a person with Migraines and now all of us have to know something about them and the basics of treatment.” (I paraphrase, ‘cause I almost didn’t hear past the first part of the sentence, as my head drowned her out with a ‘That was me. That was me, that was me that was me.’” I smiled. I know I did. Although, my heart was beating rapidly, and my head doing cartwheels, singing disney songs.)
She gave me an Rx for my finger, and said that I should make a follow up appointment for the next week. I almost didn’t hear her.
At checkout, they gave me an appointment for an hour that’s not normally in my day, save for painsomnia. I barely cared.
I walked out of there with gooseflesh. My fingers didn’t hurt for the minute. It felt like I had a superhero cape on that no one could see. The incident…. Yes. It was much more than an incident.
I knew it was my experience and tenacity that had created the change. And I was even more happy that she didn’t know that I had been “That Patient,” as she and I were able to talk without any hostility, or carefulness on her part towards how she treated me. And now I know that what was promised to me- the fact that all people coming through there would have training, was indeed true.
And I felt good.
