m o o d g a r d e n

Just your average 48 year old tattooed woman

A week of eventfulness, right heah!

We started off the week by having a four-day weekend.  Always nice.  When I returned to work on Tuesday, May 26, I had a bit of a headache and the remains of a sore throat.  Meh.  I shrugged it off as being some leftovers from the flu bug of two weeks ago.

By Wednesday, I had the most amazing roaring sensation in my left ear, some loss of hearing and some vague nausea.  Meh.  Probably just the weather.  By Thursday, the roaring had turned into some brightly tuned tinnitus, the nausea left its vague state, and I was dizzy.  Great.  I came in to work late, after taking a couple of Guaifen pills to see if it wasn’t some sort of fluid in my ears.  The dizzyness eased enough for me to drive (drive!) the 25 miles to work.  After trying to sit through a readmittance meeting for students wanting to return to school, I realized that I was awash in a soupy mire of sickness.  Sweating, head hurting, dizzy and vomiting, I asked the Director if I could scoot out early and hit the after hours clinic at my doctor’s office.

Driving carefully toward home, with my head held at the angle that produced no dizzyness, I fould myself in front of a State Trooper.  I didn’t think much of it, as I knew I wasn’t speeding and ever since the head-on collision I had back in 1986, I always wore my seat belt.  But as fate would have it, he hit his lights anyway and over I pulled.

Now I am running various scenarios through my very dizzy head as I pulled over–none ended with me driving away without at the very least a field sobriety test.  I mentally checked the contents of my trunk.  Those of you who know me well will know why.  Nope, I was good there.

Naturally, I pulled off on a one-way street–going the wrong way.  Great.  I briefly wondered if I could use my credit card to post bail for myself after I got thrown into the pokey.  He turned his speaker on and told me to move forward, as we were on a one-way street.  Three minutes later I am thinking, ‘where the  fuck AM I?’, because I am still driving and looking for a place to pull over where I wouldn’t be bass ackwards.

I eventually came to the parking lot of a hospital, pulled in and cut the engine.  I rolled down the window and tried not to look dizzy.  That is not easy to do when you are actually dizzy.  Ran through my mind what one is supposed to do when one is pulled over by one of Our State’s Finest, and decided that I would leave my hands on the steering wheel and wait.  He got out and as he walked up to my car, I was struck by how pasty he looked.  I mean, doesn’t the State require their troopers to be decidedly non-pasty at all times when on duty?  Officer Pasty didn’t ask me if I knew why he pulled me over.  That was a good thing, because there is NO way to answer that question without sounding like a smartass.  And there is nothing worse than a dizzy smartass.  He asked for my license, registration and insurance, and I dug them out for him.  He took them back to his cruiser and ran my plate.  He must have ran it several times in disbelief at how sparkling clean my driving record was.  In fact, if my driving record was a dinner plate, one would be able to eat off it.  After about five minutes, he came back, handed me my license and registration and told me that the reason he pulled me over was for a tint violation.  I must have looked perplexed in only a way that a 48 year old woman can look, because he then explained that it is illegal to have tinted windows on the driver and passenger windows.

Blink.  Blink.

“Really?  I didn’t know that.  I wonder why the guy who did it didn’t mention it to me?”

Officer Pasty said, “Well, it was probably all about the money.”

Huh.  Well, he handed me something called a fix-it ticket, and told me that I have fifteen days to get the tint off and call the number on the ticket to set up an appointment with him so he could come in and check to make sure I had removed the tint.  He said if I did so, there would be no points or fines.

At this point, some blond twat in a SUV drove past with her driver’s side window half-way down and a big ‘you got pulled over, you LOSER’  grin on her mush.  I resisted the urge to flip her off.

Looked to me like she had tinted windows, too.

So, off I go with my fix-it ticket and arrive at the after-hours clinic just as they were opening for business.  I only had to wait about twenty minutes or so.  The doctor’s office I have been going to for about 26 years now has more than one doctor, and normally one can see whomever one wishes to.  There is no choice, however, when one is after-hours.  Luck of the draw.

As it turned out, the doctor on duty that evening was Dr. Jurasek.  I had seen her name countless times on receipts at prior visits,  as well as on the business cards around the office.  I had never before been examined by her, but kept my heart light in hopes she was not going to rush in, thrust a prescription for antibiotics and Guiafen at me and rush out.

Her MA was named Julie, and as she was taking my vitals, I told her she would need the long cuff if she wanted to get my blood pressure.  She surprised me though, because she wrapped the regular cuff around my forearm and was able to accurately take a reading.  She asked me who my regular doctor was, and I told her that I had been under the express care of the office Physician’s Assistant for about seven months.  My regular doctor there had moved out of state (yet again–what is it with me and doctors?) and the PA had somehow taken up the slack.  Julie asked if I had been having trouble getting a doctor to see me there.  I was impressed at this, as I had not had much good luck with some of the other MA’s in the office, but had never had one ask me that question before.  No one had ever noticed before that I was having my newly diagnosed hypothyroidism treated primarily by a PA.

So, already set at ease by Julie, she leaves only after telling me that I was next and that Dr. Jurasek would be right in to see me.

Two minutes later, she came in.  She was dressed for summer, in capri pants, sandals and a short sleeved t-shirt.  Breezing in, she immediately went over to the sink and washed her hands while introducing herself to me.  I liked her already.  She asked about why I was there, having already read over my chart before coming in.  She sat for a moment while I described the symptoms I was experiencing and then asked if the dizzyness was accompanied by a headache and nausea.  After answering yes to those questions, she asked if the room was currently spinning.  I told her it was not, it was more like a boat rocking violently.  She immediately gave me a basic head-to-toe neurological exam (push against her hands on my shoulders, make faces, reciting my abc’s while tilting my head up to stare at the ceiling, testing my reflexes, etc.)  She looked into my ears once before the neuro exam and once after.  She asked if I had had the flu recently.  Yes I had and quite a good case of it, too.  Asked if I had had any head injuries recently, or fallen at any time.  Nope.

She sat down and said that she believes I have labyrinthitis, and then told me why.  She explained what it was in great detail (the labyrinth system of semicircular canals in the ears and such that deal with our balance in space and how they can get fluid in them when one is coming out of a cold, or the flu) and then told me that she was going to take me off of work for the next three days, because most times labyrinthitis resolves in that time.  She gave me a prescription for Antivert, an anti-vertigo drug that would help me with the dizzyness and told me to drink lots and lots of fluids and don’t drive.  She told me that most people get very sleepy on the drug, and that was actually a good thing–to just sleep through the worst of it.

Julie came back in and told me I was all set and I went to the front desk to settle my co-pay.  They actually charged me the correct amount (ten bucks) and I mentioned to one of the ladies behind the desk that Dr. Jurasek was a lovely woman and that it was a pleasure to have been seen by her.  The taller and more mature of the two ladies there said that she was going to tell Dr. Jurasek that, and in fact, would I please write her a note she could put on her desk because she believes that doctors need to hear these types of things from their patients.  I did so, even though all I wanted to do was get out of there and go home home home.

After writing the note I made my way out to my zippy little (dark windowed) blue car and drove off (VERY carefully) to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled.

After I got there and dropped it off, I had to use the facilities.  I made the mistake of walking too fast back there, and a huge wave of dizzyness and nausea was my reward.  I slowly wandered over to the pop aisle and grabbed a two-liter of Vernors ginger ale and gimped back to the pharmacy to sit and wait for the nausea to pass.  I had one bad moment when I believed I was going to make quite a mess on their nice clean floor, but I was able to contain myself.

Even though they told me it was going to take twenty minutes to fill, they had it done less than three minutes after I sat down.  I thanked them profusely for that honor–especially after seeing that it was only going to cost $2.65 for the medication.

Back home again, I crawled into bed with three-quarters of my cat population and was asleep ten minutes after the first Antivert hit my stomach.  I slept for four hours, woke up and stumbled into the frontroom to see my husband.  I sat and told him about my day and he brought me crackers to eat, since I hadn’t eaten at all.

He told me that the guy who did my tinting DID tell me it was illegal before he did it.

Well, damn.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 11:20 pm and is filed under A Weird Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.