I am Not Going to Die Today

So I went back to the hospital again today to see the doctor standing in for my doctor. Weeks ago, before my doc went on vacay I asked her "Do you think this could be giardia? I mean I've drank lake water, rolled my kayak in lakes, etc." "I doubt it," she said. Today I saw her stand-in. "Do you think this could be giardia?" he asked me. Argh.

Down to the labs I went where first a spunky woman in an excellent mohawk missed my vein, then bruised me taking four vials of blood. She also brought up the tv show House, which is just not allowed when a person is sick in the hospital. Then her boss had no idea what the code meant for needing several stool samples or why that would be. I explained it to her, because lucky me, I've had this done before. (Ask Me About Salmonella!) She nodded and thanked me and said she would have really screwed that up if I hadn't told her. How comforting. But we all knew I know how to give people shit, right?

Then I was off to radiology where I drank two containers of barium shake crap. It didn't taste nearly as bad as I expected but labeling them as "smoothies" is really a stretch. I sent glenn off to eat real food in the cafeteria while I let the shake boil my already tormented guts into a frenzy. I then hoola hooped with the CAT scan and was off to get stuck in traffic because between our house and the hospital is this funny little attraction called Fenway Park. The game was just starting.

I got home and relaxed for about half an hour before I got a call from someone at the hospital. Apparently there was a "lab accident" with my blood. They "tried to recover it but the techs wouldn't take it." (were they scraping it off the floor?) If I could come back in they'd let me park for free. I came back in. Mohawk girl looked stupid in her mohawk this time. I got her to confide in me what happened and she sounded like she was lying. She put four tubes in the Pneumatic tube but only three arrived. Now her boss has gotten her in trouble officially. While I waited for the parking sticker, her boss said "whose urine is this?" and the girl lied again. She then put the vial of my blood, that she told me she was going to hand deliver, into the pneumatic tube. I waited ten minutes for the parking sticker, then the parking lot attendant was gone and parking was free anyway.

I left and was just about clear to go around the proper rotary exit to make my way past the streams of people coming from the just ended game at Fenway and the cops did one of their brilliant traffic control moves. They put cones across that exit taking me away from the area and toward Cambridge and instead routed me down Brookline Ave., which if you're not familiar with Boston, is the street Fenway is on: traffic ground zero. I finally managed to turn around so I could take my turn and one hour and a half later was home. I mentioned that barium shakes bubble your guts right?

My lessons in asking for help are really not the ones I was hoping to learn. And yet... there is good news. The phone just rang. My doctor literally said to me "You are not going to die. Today." My CAT scan looked perfectly normal. My white blood cells are kicking ass, my body shows no inflammation. However. . . you knew there was a however after all those weeks of pain...that pesky bacteria H. Pylori has made shop in my guts. This is what is responsible for uclers, particularly duodenal ulcers. Two kinds of antibiotics and more Prilosec for a couple of weeks for me. Even better, one of the antibiotics is the same one they'd prescribe if I turn out to have giardia, which they don't know yet, because I still have to give Mohawk girl more shit.