I’m not really a “Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am” kind of guy.
Me? I’m more of a “No Whammy! No Bammy! No thank you, Nurse Cami!” fella…
Editor’s note: you have found yourself in the thick of the epic, the one, the only, The Long Tale of COVID. If you need to catch up, you can find all the posts here. Enjoy!
“The Doctor will see you now…”
Good golly, it felt like I waited an entire lifetime just to hear those words! After my case of COVID took a turn for weird, and I had rushed from my hotel to the nearby Urgent Care, only to find that I would have to wait my dang turn–just like everybody else that was about to die up in that place.
And now, 75 minutes, 1 incredibly personal conversation, and 9 digits later, I was finally getting to see a true medical professional. You know, one who would be able to use the latest technology to either put my mind at ease–“you are not about to die of an aneurysm!”–or verify that I needed immediate medical intervention–“holy, sh*t, I’ve never seen somebody with so many blood clots in my life!” Because, as you can imagine, not dying at age 41 was pretty much all I could think about in that moment.
Well, almost. There was the tiny issue of my overly-friendly nurse, Cami, who had somehow weaseled my phone number out of me, and had sent me way too messages with a very suspicious number of gratuitous emojis along with them. I was starting to wonder if Cami’s interest in me went beyond the meditative practices I had been preaching in that ‘incredibly personal conversation’ I just referenced above–or if some ‘not-so-innocent’ intentions were afoot.
“Good luck, Bee-yhay!”
I looked across the nurse’s station as I walked to my examination room to see Cami casually waving at me.
“Thanks…” I responded quietly while returning a polite half-wave.
“You bet!” Cami said with a wink.
“Mierda.” I muttered to myself, not realizing that I had unknowingly transitioned to thinking in Cami’s native tongue, Spanish.
“Can’t wait to get out of this clinic and disappear forever…” I reassured myself.
After waiting (to suddenly die) for another good 10 minutes, the door to my exam room finally opened.
“Hi! I’m Alex, and Cami has told me that you have some grave concerns related to your case of COVID. Well, don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you…you know, get you straightened out.”
“Well, I, for one, am pleased to finally get to meet you, Dr. Alex–“
“Oh, sorry, it’s not ‘Dr. Alex’, just ‘Nurse Practitioner Alex’–but don’t worry, I’m even better than ‘M.D.’ because we ‘N.P.’s aren’t mentally slogged down by all the student loans like those other guys.”
Dammit, what does I guy gotta do1Note here how I am refraining from using the phrase many of you are thinking “who does a guy have to blow around here…” See how I didn’t use that vulgar phrasing? to see a real doctor in this place…
“Oh, and on top of all that, I got stung by a possessed wasp!”
“Oh, no! Well, better take off your shirt and let me take a look at your back.”
Boy, I was sure showing off all sorts of skin this fine day, wasn’t I?
“Yeah, I figured I would include that, because who knows what all factors might be causing my Tremors–I mean, ‘suspected blood clots’. Between that and my vasectomy, you can’t be too sure who the culprit really is.”
“Uh…where is the sting?” I could sense N.P. Alex was indubitably standing in awe at the constellations dotting my back. “You really have a lot of moles back here. You might want to get them checked out.”
“Don’t worry, I see a dermatologist regularly. And the sting is right between my shoulder blades.”
“Ah, there it is. Well, it doesn’t look too serious…” Alex commented while gently caressing it. “Let’s focus on ruling out blood clots now if we can. You said it was your calves were the symptoms seemed to be focused? They do look unusually swole…”
“Yes, my calves, particularly my left one.”
“Welp, let me have a feel. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to compare their sizes be wrapping my hands around each…”
Again, with the touching. What was the people around here always getting their paws up in people’s business anyways?
“Oh, by the way, you should know that my calves are naturally huge. I apologize that you can’t get your hands all away around them,” I chuckled.
“No worries, I was still able to tell that, though gigantic, they are both about the same size. Why don’t you tell me more about your experience…”
So I proceeded to tell Not-A-Dr. Alex everything, including my experiences as a drug-addict and with homelessness.
Twenty minutes later–who am I kidding? It was more like 45 minutes later–and Look-At-Me-I’m-Debt-Free Alex was going over my prognosis.
“While I suspect that you are just suffering from inflammation in various parts of your body–especially where you have had injuries or surgeries, like, say *ahem* vasectomies–I can see you are still worried about the slim possibility that it really is blood clots. After all, you are literally losing sleep over it, so what I can do for you is run what’s called a ‘D-dimer test’. The bad news is that it almost always comes back positive if you have COVID. Which…uh…we already know you kinda do.”
“So…what about an ultrasound, though? I read that was the way to definitely tell for sure.”
I-Wish-Was-An-MD Alex chuckled, “We’re an Urgent Care–we’re built to treat coughs and colds and maybe a nose bleed. We don’t have ultrasound. If you feel like you really need that so you can get some rest, well, you’ll have to go to the Emergency Department of a real hospital.”
“Ugh! Good god! Nobody wants that! Tell me more about the ‘D-dimer test.”
“Well, it’s a pretty quick test, so it’s worth running in the off-chance that it comes back negative. We’ll just have a nurse come draw your blood in a few minutes, and then we should have your results another 15 minutes after that!”
“Okay. Sounds good enough. So I suppose I’ll just sit here and wait for the nurse…”
“Wait, what was your birth date again?”
I repeated my birth date again, being sure not mumble this time.
“Yup! You’re my guy!”
I really don’t know who, exactly, I thought would come draw my blood, but wouldn’t you have guessed it, there was Nurse Cami, standing in front of me and not-so-subtlety delighted to see me again.
‘My guy’?!? Are you kidding me? Oh, please oh please don’t make this any more awkward. But maybe–just maybe–there’s still a chance that whatever the ----- is happening here is purely platonic.
“So, how old are your…two daughters? Did I get it right?” Cami inquired while feeling up my arm in search of a bulging vein.
“Oh, those two little squirts are 4 & 9, and I love the living shit out of ’em. Man, I want nothing more right now than to give them big hugs…you know, on account of possibly dying any moment and what-not.”
“You’re so lucky…I’ve always wanted to have a daughter–now, if you’ll hold still for one second I’m gonna jab you with this huge needle…”
“Mmrmph.” I slightly winced. Despite once upon a time supporting myself by donating plasma, get stuck like a pig never gets easier.
“There ya go! Oh, I forgot to ask: so did Alex get you taken care of?”
“Mostly…I even managed to tell the ‘doctor’ everything–well, you know, not everything, everything *nervous chuckle*…but yeah, I think we got me mostly squared away.”
I thought maybe I could diffuse the situation with a little humorous reference to our previous conversation that featured a notably amount of TMI2TMI: Too Much Information content.
“Of course not everything. As for me, I’m very discrete and very private.”
I couldn’t help think to myself, “Well, I sure the hell ain’t ‘discrete’ nor ‘private’! You better believe I’m gonna blog about every last detail of this fustercluck…”
Oh, but Cami wasn’t done.
“You know sometimes when I hook up with a married guy–they freak out afterwards. But, I tell them, ‘Shh…shh…it’ll be fine–I’ll keep it on the down low.’ So, don’t worry, this will stay between you and me, and ‘a tree’, as they say.”
My jaw about dropped to the floor–man, I couldn’t believe what was hearing!
In my mind I was screaming:
“Are you ----- kidding me?!? Not only 30 minutes ago you were #HumbleBragging about how loose you were–hooking up with men! With women! With men and women at the same time!”
Cami just gave me another wink as my thought-rampage continued.
“Yeah, not really selling yourself very well here, Cami, given that I know how much you get around. It’d be more like keeping things ‘between you, me, a tree–and the ----- CDC!'3CDC: Center for Disease Control”
Oh, to have had the [blue]balls to say what I really wanted to say in that moment:
“Yeah, um…no thanks. I already got all the viruses I boy could ever wish…”
Content created on: 18/19 November 2022 (Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
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