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stoopbeckI had a bad day today.
Yesterday I felt all flu-y, and then I found a deer tick on my leg. Deer ticks are most popularly known for their ability to carry all kinds of nasty diseases like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, all of which have flu-like symptoms. I once went on a camping trip and came back with over fifty of them all over me (and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever! Best camping trip ever!!), and if there's one thing that experience has taught us, it's that deer tick = immediate precautionary trip to the doctor.
Going to PriMed is always an enterprise fraught with peril. But my family was making me go and I had workman's comp to pay for the visit. What could go wrong, right?
The world's angriest nurse showed me to the examining room farthest from the front. We may have had to take a dog sled to get there; I was too busy focusing on not falling on my face.
"What's wrong with you," she snapped, and when I explained that A) I was experiencing flu-like symptoms and B) I'd found a deer tick on my leg, she started slamming open cabinets and pulling out syringes and vials. Then she grabs my arm, snaps, "We'll need to take some blood-- short sting!" and then she jams the needle into my vein.
I have a high tolerance for pain and needles. I have no problem giving blood or getting shots. But she jammed the needle in, and then wobbled her hand around while she fumbled for the vials, which wobbled the needle around IN MY VEIN, and then she jammed the vials hard into the needle, and I was almost crying by the end of it. Five painfully-obtained vials of blood later, and she jerks the needle out and slaps a band-aide on my arm and leaves.
I'm all, "OW," and Mom's all, "Nice bedside manner, NURSE RATCHED," and after a wait, the doctor comes in.
I didn't realize it at the time, but in the car later it came to me that he was the same doctor who misdiagnosed my pneumonia as a cold my senior year of college, which is why I had to go through a month of misery and take all my exams while in the grips of full-blown double pneumonia. FUN TIMES.
Anyway, so he's like, "Your last name, what is it from?" And I tell him, "Oh, it's originally Portuguese," and before I can go into the whole lengthy background of my name he brightens up and says, "OMG DID YOU WATCH THE PORTUGAL GAME LAST NIGHT," and I shook my head, and he was all, "OMG HOW YOU BE PORTUGUESE AND NOT WATCH SOCCER" with this look like I'd kicked his puppy, and then ignored anything I said to him after that. I'M SORRY I DON'T WATCH SOCCER ON TV! IT'S JUST NOT AS FUN AS WATCHING IT LIVE! PLEASE COME BACK AND DIAGNOSE MY ILLNESSES!
And then he looks at my deer tick (I had brought it in a baggy!) and he squints at for a moment, and says that my deer tick was not in fact a deer tick, because it was too small, that the deer ticks are the big ones and that maybe, just maybe this was a baby deer tick, but that it totally wasn't. A deer tick. At all. (Which, no, because later Mom took it to work and had it independently confirmed that it was TOTALLY a deer tick. What was my doctor's name? Doctor FAIL.)
Then he stares intently at my mole. And says, "What is THIS?!" in an AHA sort of voice. I told him it was a mole He snaps, "Does it ever change?"
"Um, sometimes?"
"I SUGGEST YOU SEE A DOCTOR ABOUT IT IMMEDIATELY!!." And I'm all, "Um," and he basically intimates that my face is about to fall off from cancer or something because my mole had a split in it, and OMG.
And then he prescribes some mild antibiotics, making sure to tell me it was more to calm down any fears or misgivings I might personally have than to treat any illnesses I most definitely did not have, because it was NOT a deer tick. By the way.
So then Mom and I wait until he's gone, and whisper "OMG WHAT" and "UM THAT IS A DEER TICK WAS HE ON THE CRACK" and then another nurse came in with the prescription and a receipt for my workman's comp for me to sign, and she saw my bandaged arm and started stammering, "Did-- did the doctor-- did he draw blood? Or was that-- from-- before, before you came here, before you came in today?"
Mom was like, "UM NURSE RATCHED TOOK HER BLOOD EARLIER, TO RUN TESTS ON IT" and the girl turned pale and when Mom asked her if they were running tests on the blood or not, the girl ran out.
And Mom looked at the door, and hissed in an aggrieved tone, "They didn't even TEST it?" And I whispered creepily, "It's for Nurse Ratched's private collection," and then we laughed until I realized I was getting hysterical and began to cry, and that is when the girl came back in, Mom and I gasping and wheezing, tears streaming down my face, and she sort of pushed the form at me to sign and ran out again.
Turns out they didn't even send the blood out to be tested. They ran "in-house" tests on them. I call bullshit, because the only in-house tests they have are for like drugs and stuff. And there's no way they ran blood tests for Lyme or RMSF in thirty minutes, because last time they had to ship it out and we had to wait a week to find out.
So! To recap. I felt like crap, the nurse butchered my arm and took spurious blood samples (maybe she was a vampire!), the doctor insinuated that I was crazy and a hypochondriac AND suggested that my mole was a teeming seething hotbed of skin disease, and they didn't even send my blood out to be tested.
Then I had a mini break down in the car.
Then we stopped by Popeye's, because GOD I had a craving for some red beans, and when we got in and tried to figure out what we wanted, we were swamped by some large intimidating men who kept shouting about how they "JUST WANTED THEIR CHICKEN LEGS" and basically tried to intimidate us into leaving. Ha. Mom and I have been intimidated by experts, bitches. We had no problem ignoring them.
Then, as soon as we ordered, the guy behind the cash register handed them some pieces of fried chicken WITHOUT PLATES OR NAPKINS OR UTENSILS OR ANYTHING and they just laid into them and gnawed on them right there. Yeah.
And then we stopped by AutoZone or some similar establishment, and when we got to the register, the guy was like, "Your last name-- there was a famous fight doctor with that last name." And Mom looked at me, and asked, "Did he play soccer?" and I almost lost it.
So that was my day. It was the best day ever.
Yesterday I felt all flu-y, and then I found a deer tick on my leg. Deer ticks are most popularly known for their ability to carry all kinds of nasty diseases like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, all of which have flu-like symptoms. I once went on a camping trip and came back with over fifty of them all over me (and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever! Best camping trip ever!!), and if there's one thing that experience has taught us, it's that deer tick = immediate precautionary trip to the doctor.
Going to PriMed is always an enterprise fraught with peril. But my family was making me go and I had workman's comp to pay for the visit. What could go wrong, right?
The world's angriest nurse showed me to the examining room farthest from the front. We may have had to take a dog sled to get there; I was too busy focusing on not falling on my face.
"What's wrong with you," she snapped, and when I explained that A) I was experiencing flu-like symptoms and B) I'd found a deer tick on my leg, she started slamming open cabinets and pulling out syringes and vials. Then she grabs my arm, snaps, "We'll need to take some blood-- short sting!" and then she jams the needle into my vein.
I have a high tolerance for pain and needles. I have no problem giving blood or getting shots. But she jammed the needle in, and then wobbled her hand around while she fumbled for the vials, which wobbled the needle around IN MY VEIN, and then she jammed the vials hard into the needle, and I was almost crying by the end of it. Five painfully-obtained vials of blood later, and she jerks the needle out and slaps a band-aide on my arm and leaves.
I'm all, "OW," and Mom's all, "Nice bedside manner, NURSE RATCHED," and after a wait, the doctor comes in.
I didn't realize it at the time, but in the car later it came to me that he was the same doctor who misdiagnosed my pneumonia as a cold my senior year of college, which is why I had to go through a month of misery and take all my exams while in the grips of full-blown double pneumonia. FUN TIMES.
Anyway, so he's like, "Your last name, what is it from?" And I tell him, "Oh, it's originally Portuguese," and before I can go into the whole lengthy background of my name he brightens up and says, "OMG DID YOU WATCH THE PORTUGAL GAME LAST NIGHT," and I shook my head, and he was all, "OMG HOW YOU BE PORTUGUESE AND NOT WATCH SOCCER" with this look like I'd kicked his puppy, and then ignored anything I said to him after that. I'M SORRY I DON'T WATCH SOCCER ON TV! IT'S JUST NOT AS FUN AS WATCHING IT LIVE! PLEASE COME BACK AND DIAGNOSE MY ILLNESSES!
And then he looks at my deer tick (I had brought it in a baggy!) and he squints at for a moment, and says that my deer tick was not in fact a deer tick, because it was too small, that the deer ticks are the big ones and that maybe, just maybe this was a baby deer tick, but that it totally wasn't. A deer tick. At all. (Which, no, because later Mom took it to work and had it independently confirmed that it was TOTALLY a deer tick. What was my doctor's name? Doctor FAIL.)
Then he stares intently at my mole. And says, "What is THIS?!" in an AHA sort of voice. I told him it was a mole He snaps, "Does it ever change?"
"Um, sometimes?"
"I SUGGEST YOU SEE A DOCTOR ABOUT IT IMMEDIATELY!!." And I'm all, "Um," and he basically intimates that my face is about to fall off from cancer or something because my mole had a split in it, and OMG.
And then he prescribes some mild antibiotics, making sure to tell me it was more to calm down any fears or misgivings I might personally have than to treat any illnesses I most definitely did not have, because it was NOT a deer tick. By the way.
So then Mom and I wait until he's gone, and whisper "OMG WHAT" and "UM THAT IS A DEER TICK WAS HE ON THE CRACK" and then another nurse came in with the prescription and a receipt for my workman's comp for me to sign, and she saw my bandaged arm and started stammering, "Did-- did the doctor-- did he draw blood? Or was that-- from-- before, before you came here, before you came in today?"
Mom was like, "UM NURSE RATCHED TOOK HER BLOOD EARLIER, TO RUN TESTS ON IT" and the girl turned pale and when Mom asked her if they were running tests on the blood or not, the girl ran out.
And Mom looked at the door, and hissed in an aggrieved tone, "They didn't even TEST it?" And I whispered creepily, "It's for Nurse Ratched's private collection," and then we laughed until I realized I was getting hysterical and began to cry, and that is when the girl came back in, Mom and I gasping and wheezing, tears streaming down my face, and she sort of pushed the form at me to sign and ran out again.
Turns out they didn't even send the blood out to be tested. They ran "in-house" tests on them. I call bullshit, because the only in-house tests they have are for like drugs and stuff. And there's no way they ran blood tests for Lyme or RMSF in thirty minutes, because last time they had to ship it out and we had to wait a week to find out.
So! To recap. I felt like crap, the nurse butchered my arm and took spurious blood samples (maybe she was a vampire!), the doctor insinuated that I was crazy and a hypochondriac AND suggested that my mole was a teeming seething hotbed of skin disease, and they didn't even send my blood out to be tested.
Then I had a mini break down in the car.
Then we stopped by Popeye's, because GOD I had a craving for some red beans, and when we got in and tried to figure out what we wanted, we were swamped by some large intimidating men who kept shouting about how they "JUST WANTED THEIR CHICKEN LEGS" and basically tried to intimidate us into leaving. Ha. Mom and I have been intimidated by experts, bitches. We had no problem ignoring them.
Then, as soon as we ordered, the guy behind the cash register handed them some pieces of fried chicken WITHOUT PLATES OR NAPKINS OR UTENSILS OR ANYTHING and they just laid into them and gnawed on them right there. Yeah.
And then we stopped by AutoZone or some similar establishment, and when we got to the register, the guy was like, "Your last name-- there was a famous fight doctor with that last name." And Mom looked at me, and asked, "Did he play soccer?" and I almost lost it.
So that was my day. It was the best day ever.
