Anniversary?!?!?!

It was a year ago today that 3 good people with whom I work urged me to leave the office mid-afternoon and go to the emergency room of the hospital located nearby the office. My hesitation was due to having called my primary care physician earlier and telling him that my symptoms from the week before were still uncomfortable and that maybe I needed to see a GI specialist. He scheduled me for a CT scan 2 days out and said that we would proceed based on that scan. In addition, I seriously did believe that I was feeling better, but was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Finally, I had concern knowing that I if I stepped into the emergency room, I would be facing a significant co-pay on my insurance that I would have rather spent on more "high priority" items on my list.

Had you told me a year ago that a year later, I would still be under the care of a doctor for whatever was ailing me at the time, I would have told you to stay out of the medical profession as a career. When I wrap my head around the fact that it is now a year later, that's when my empathy grows for others who have fought their own fights for several years. Wow, I can't imagine.

I will share you a story of how I misbehaved the next morning after I was admitted the night before. I was in a semi-private room and the gentleman in the other bed was nice enough, but he wanted to talk ALL NIGHT LONG and also wanted to complain about how hot the room was. Needless to say, there wasn't much sleep that night. I wasn't feeling too benevolent to him by the next morning. I was on a no food or drink restriction due to my pending biopsy. Even though I hadn't wanted to eat much the week or two prior to being admitted, I had been stabilized by the staff to the point that when they brought him his breakfast, the smell of his breakfast let me know my appetite had returned. He began "taunting" me about what was on the menu and how good it was.

Later on in the morning, a friend of mine came to visit. Since it was a semi-private room, we drew the curtain between my bed and the other gentleman so we could have some privacy as we talked. He and I also shared a TV and we each had our own TV remote control. As my friend and I talked, he was watching TV, but would randomly interject comments into our conversation. As he did so, my friend and I would look at each other and shrug our shoulders. However, his interjections became a little too intrusive. At this point, I will explain that the TV remotes were of the such that if you changed the channel forward, you couldn't get back to the channel you were previously watching unless you cycled through the entire channel line up. After an interjection that finally plucked my last nerve, I used my control to change the channel on him. I heard him comment that the TV must be acting up and I watched the TV as he cycled back to the channel he was watching. I turned it into a Pavlovian type of experiment, i.e. each interjection yielded a channel change. Needless to say, I redirected his attention.

It's only the doctors and nurses that have to abide by, "Primum Non Nocere."