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I had settled into my new daily routine by the third full week of
November, Nineteen Eighty-Nine. Each day I'd wake up and shower and
pull on fresh clothes. I'd boot up the computer and do a little work
on either writing, desktop publishing, online chatter, or computer
programming while listening to cable news or music. I'd get up and
make my obligatory walk to the 7-Eleven for my soda, otherwise
drinking ice tea which I made at home. I'd warm up the stove and
make myself a skillet of Hamburger Helper and space out eating it
into a few meals over the course of the day, sometimes I'd just boil
up some pasta, but I could never make it as flavorful as Hamburger
Helper. I'd pick up my mail at the apartment mailbox which, as it
turned out, was straight across from my door so I only had to walk
ten feet for that one. I'd end up flipping through the prime time
shows and picking out my favorites to watch, or go back to cable news
and computer work. And then I'd close up my day by watching the
Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and sometimes Late Night
with David Letterman while sitting on the couch.
Each week this routine was punctuated with a few trips downtown,
about two trips to the grocery store, around three times in the
bathroom having bowel bouts with me praying to God to 'please let me
die', a couple of trips to visit my friend Jeff at his home and watch
'The Other Show' with him, his girlfriend and other friends that
might drop by. With some exceptions I was very happy with my life
versus how it had been when compared to the previous two years since
I was no longer able to work at the big grocery store.
But this week of Thanksgiving was a bit different, my chest started
to hurt all around and breathing only made it worse. The lungs
themselves didn't seem to hurt from the breathing, it was the
expansion of the chest as air came in. Given my lack of health
insurance and poor experiences with the community health clinic in
town, I just thought I'd wait until the next day for it to go away
and continued with my daily routine as best I could. By the second
day it occurred to me it might be one of those pinched nerves in the
back problems I'd heard about other people having and placed a towel
on the tiled portion of my apartment's kitchen floor and lay flat on
my back for a few hours listening to the news. But it clearly wasn't
helping. By Wednesday I called the community health clinic to see if
I could get a short notice appointment but, as it was the day before
Thanksgiving they were closing early and had no slots available. She
said they did have a special arrangement with another hospital's
emergency room if I felt I needed to go there; with their permission
the visit would be covered with their low income sliding scale. I
debated that option but decided to make an appointment with the
clinic for the following week, instead.
By the afternoon of Thanksgiving day, though, the pain was much worse
and I was down to just taking little panting breathes so my breathing
wouldn't peak the pain level into the profound range. I called up
the clinic's answering service to get their permission to go the
emergency room. I was told I had to talk to one of the clinic's
staff to be evaluated before permission could be given, she took my
name and phone number and the call was ended. I sat there crouched
over as that staff member was contacted at home and called me back.
As bad luck would have it, it was Michael the nurse practitioner and
he was already yelling at me over the phone when I answered, then
finally asked me what my symptoms were. I told him that ''I have
severe chest pain that gets worse when I breathe in, but my lungs
aren't congested.''
''WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING THAT FROM!'' he barked back at me.
I took a moment, stunned, before I replied that I wasn't reading any
book.
''I CAN TELL YOU ARE, YOU AREN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT WORDS
LIKE THAT MEAN!'' I thought over the words I had said to him
trying to fathom what it was that had offended him. Chest?
Lungs?
Congested was the longest word but it was commonly used in
television commercials to sell cold products so I couldn't believe it
was that. He continued, ''YOU'RE JUST MAKING THIS UP BECAUSE
YOU'RE LONELY ON THANKSGIVING DAY! WELL GET OVER IT AND DON'T WASTE
MY TIME!''
''So I won't get permission to visit the emergency room?'' it dawned
on me.
''OF COURSE NOT, YOU WILL NEVER GET IT!'' he snapped and hung
up the phone.
I spent another twenty minutes at the apartment wondering what I
should do but as the pain wasn't letting up, I decided to call Suzi,
the lady who hosted the writers' group at her home, and ask if she or
her husband could pick me up and drive me to the emergency room. I
could have called Daina, but as she was at the south end of town, it
didn't make sense to have her drive north to get me, then back south
to this other emergency room. Thankfully, Suzi did pick me up and
take me there. She asked if she should wait but given that I didn't
know how long I'd be there I thanked her and said I'd find another
way home once I was done.
Checking into the emergency room took a bit of time and I noted I was
a patient with the community health clinic as I didn't have
insurance. I was taken to an exam room where I could lie down on a
table and the emergency room doctor examined me and listened to my
lungs, blood work was taken and when it came back he concluded that I
had a viral chest infection and sent the nurse down to the pharmacy
to get a heavy duty pain pill. When she returned and I took it, it
was another hour before it kicked in and started to melt the pain
away. The emergency room doctor returned less than an hour after
that to confirm that I was now able to take full breathes without
pain and then ordered a full bottle of the pain pills for me to take
home and continue using, as through the hospital it would be covered
by the community health clinic rather than me buying them at a local
pharmacy, if any were even open on the holiday. It turned
out, as a viral infection, my original plan of just waiting it out
was the best one so the pills were just to reduce the pain until the
infection took its course and my immune system cleared it out.
Discharge papers in hand as well as the bottle of pills, it was now a
question of how to get back home. Being late at night, I called Jeff
as he was always up at this time of day and asked if he could give me
a ride back to my apartment. He could and when he arrived he told me
this other hospital was the one he had been born in. He asked what
had brought me here and I told him of the chest infection but not of
the phone call. He dropped me off and I was able to crawl into bed
and have a comfortable night's sleep for the first time in days.
When I arrived to the clinic for my appointment the following week,
it effectively became a follow-up to my E.R. visit. I had been
assigned to a new doctor, 'Betsey', and we talked about my symptoms
leading up to the E.R. visit and how the pain pills had been helping
since. She would become my new primary doctor and given how well
this appointment went, I planned to return and see if I could get her
to look into my weight loss issues...
A few months later, after receiving no bill, I called up the
emergency room to discover that my visit had been covered by the
community health clinic's partnership with them and I didn't have to
worry about a bill. I guess once they reviewed the blood work and
the E.R. doctor's findings it was concluded I would get
approval for the visit after the fact.
Given how well my first visit with Michael had started earlier in
the year, I was broken hearted with how our last interaction had
gone. I only hope it has equally haunted him in the years since, but
I doubt it...
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