duck-shaped pain

Z. was over here pretty late last night (I didn't think it was late, but it was. I kept telling myself, let's wrap this thing up early, but when he left, it was nearly 1 a.m. Oh well), so I ended up sleeping in later than I had planned. Originally, I was going to go to work in the morning, and then go to my appointment, but I soon figured out that was not going to work.

I called A., the other person working this week while everyone else is out in the field to tell her she would be all alone for awhile. "Oh, that's okay. I don't have anything to do, anyway, so I'm just messing around on the Internet." Which is the same thing I would be doing were I there, having finished off my to-do list for the week yesterday afternoon.

No breakfast -- the receptionist from the clinic had called me the day before to explain that they might run this full gauntlet of tests on me, and that one of them (I have no idea which one) required me to not eat for 12 hours before the test. I didn't have anything for breakfast laying around the house anyway, so no big deal.

Going to the doctor means that I am faced with well-meaning receptionists, lab technicians, and others, all being perfectly polite but inciting secret wrath inside me because they call me by my first name. It doesn't matter how many times I correct people, it doesn't matter how many times I've asked them to change the records, The First Name sticks around where it isn't wanted. Some of these people have needles in their hands, so I let it go after awhile, but it always feels like they're talking to someone else, some ghost figure who happens to have the same symptoms as I do.

(Maybe I should finally get around to getting the thing legally changed. I have a suspicion that that would be an even bigger pain in the ass, though.)

I disrobed. People who come here must have a bigger fear of being nekkid in front of others than I do, because the nurse gave me about seven or eight sheets along with my robe, "in case you want to cover up or something." One would do the job nicely. The rest would just become swaddling clothes. Or maybe she was giving me a hint.

I got a different doctor than I'd ever had before, on my request. She was clad in a earth-toned jumper made out of hemp and wore Dansko clogs on her feet. She spoke in a really low voice and seemed to be toeing the thin line between mellow and comatose. I liked her a lot better than my normal guy, who laughed really loudly, slapped you on the back in the name of Fun whenever he told a joke, and kept leaving the room during consultations to ask the real doctors questions.

I told her the symptoms that I was having, and, as expected, she started grilling me ("grilling" is a relative term -- hard-nosed questions from this woman were equivalent to someone else gently tapping your shoulder and whispering in your ear) about my family history of diabetes. Of which there is a lot. Several novels' worth. Not good novels, but long, earnest ones at the minimum. On both sides of my family.

The sheet-happy nurse was called in to give me a blood sugar test, which turned out to be fairly normal (96 -- of course, I hadn't eaten in 12 hours). That done with, the doctor began to ask me all sorts of other questions. Did I work in an office? (Regrettably, yes.) Any new sexual partners in the last few months? (Regrettably, no.) Do I have any hobbies? (This made me pause, because when I think of the word "hobbies," I think of model airplane making, scrapbooking [blech] or anything that involves a trip down to Hobby Lobby. I thought about it for a minute, and said, "Oh, I um�write." The doctor expressed what I took to be mild excitement and asked "What do you write? Poetry? Stories?" "No," I replied. "I write a journal�a journal on the Internet." She looked puzzled, digesting this, and said, "That's not a hobby." Hmmm.)

I actually didn't end up getting a lot of the tests they wanted to have done. I was going to get a full physical, including all sorts of fun prods and pokes (including the ultimate prod and poke -- a Pap smear) but then the doctor noticed the thing written on my chart: DOES NOT HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE.

So we decided to just have the blood work done, instead of the full battery of tests. She explained to me what each test was supposed to do, that a lot of them were just standard with the full physical, and how much each of them costs to someone paying for them out of pocket (the Pap smear, for example, costs anywhere from around $300 to $600 -- a lot to pay for anything that involves a speculum). The blood tests were what was relevant to what seems to be currently wrong with me, but they still cost $200. [1]

"Oh yeah," the doctor said. "Are you sure you're not just depressed?"

Yes. I. Am. Sure. Depression does not make you thirsty.

I went down to the lab to get my blood taken. I am okay with getting blood drawn as long as I don't have to watch it -- I have a serious creepy ju ju thing going with needles, and I can't even look at one without becoming queasy. I explained this to the lab assistant, who seemed sympathetic. So I closed my eyes and waited. Then she decided to narrate. "Okay, I'm going to poke you now!" No, wait, don't you see -- the whole point here is that the poke will be a surprise, so that I don't get all tense and nervous and have to smack you out of self-defense? Bad, bad lab assistant.

They took a lot of blood out. When I opened my eyes, there were six or seven little vials of me laying about. "Okay, time to go," the lab assistant said, hurrying me out the door as someone else came in ("don't believe what she says," I whispered to the incoming patient).

Blood test + no food for 12 hours = something. Something that I forgot in my disorientation.

I am an idiot. I actually drove myself to work after that, instead of ferrying myself straight home, where I should be. But work is where there was food, food I didn't have to think about, stand in line for, or order off a big board. Blessed sandwiches, blessed Wheat Thins, blessed string cheese. [2] A. thought I looked sort of out of it, and I had to agree. I got in a whopping hour and a half of work and then went home.

I'm supposed to get the results of the blood work later this week. I'll be more surprised if they do find something than if they don't -- such is my experience with doctors.

When I got home, I had a message from this travel agency I contacted the other day. They had found a reasonably priced fare for me ($790) from here to Bangkok later this year. Normally, I would have been excited. This is right in the range I was hoping for (less would be better, obviously), and it's from here (here-Salt Lake City-San Francisco-Taipei-Bangkok), meaning I don't have to stow my car in Denver or wherever for a month and a half or patch together flights by myself.

But I hesitated. What if there's really something wrong with me? I thought. What if I'm really sick and I won�t be able to go? There's no point in even buying this ticket, since I won't even be able to use it. My small moment of elation vanished, and I sat down, further spiraling into doom.

[1] As she was explaining to me what they were going to test for (anemia, liver disease, thyroid problems, diabetes) I realized that these were the exact same blood tests we had run on my dog a few weeks ago. His blood tests only cost $75, though. Maybe I should have driven myself down to the veterinary lab.

[2] And you thought I ate well all the time. Ha!

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