My day yesterday began with a routine checkup at my doctor's office, took a side trip to the hospital after I fainted at the sight of blood being drawn, and, after a brief interlude, ended with actual blood.
My employer gives me a discount on my health care premium if I get a yearly checkup from my doctor. It's enough to motivate those not sensible enough to do it anyway. I was in the examination room, a nurse drawing blood, while my doctor for some incomprehensible reason told me what happens to a baby boy's testicles during birth. (I think we had been talking about hernias.) But I had a rather brutal vasectomy in my history and I have a general aversion to needles. I passed out.
Doctors, in my experience, take it very seriously when you pass out in their offices. My general practitioner, bless his malpractice-insured heart, called 911.
I spent the next several hours in the emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic, my ass getting sore from their Buddhist-spec beds, my phone gradually dying, hungry and dehydrated because I'd fasted for the blood tests. Eventually they decided that they (or the paint) had observed me long enough and they let me go.
I tried to have a normal day. I worked, ate dinner, cleaned up the kitchen. My hands were waterlogged and slippery with lotion.
Alice wanted me to grate some cheese. Have you ever heard of a microplane?
Thankfully, the corner of my thumb that it dislodged went into the sink, not the cheese. I gave up on the day and retired upstairs with a quarter inch of tape on my digit.
My employer gives me a discount on my health care premium if I get a yearly checkup from my doctor. It's enough to motivate those not sensible enough to do it anyway. I was in the examination room, a nurse drawing blood, while my doctor for some incomprehensible reason told me what happens to a baby boy's testicles during birth. (I think we had been talking about hernias.) But I had a rather brutal vasectomy in my history and I have a general aversion to needles. I passed out.
Doctors, in my experience, take it very seriously when you pass out in their offices. My general practitioner, bless his malpractice-insured heart, called 911.
I spent the next several hours in the emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic, my ass getting sore from their Buddhist-spec beds, my phone gradually dying, hungry and dehydrated because I'd fasted for the blood tests. Eventually they decided that they (or the paint) had observed me long enough and they let me go.
I tried to have a normal day. I worked, ate dinner, cleaned up the kitchen. My hands were waterlogged and slippery with lotion.
Alice wanted me to grate some cheese. Have you ever heard of a microplane?
Thankfully, the corner of my thumb that it dislodged went into the sink, not the cheese. I gave up on the day and retired upstairs with a quarter inch of tape on my digit.
