so many hospitals, so little time

i, like the bighorn sheep in the foto above, have come to love my thick skull from time to time.

take for instance this week. yesterday i logged approximately two hours at the hospital of the university of pennsylvania. this is my favorite hospital, though the surgical consultation rooms have nothing on the ones in the oncology department. perhaps i should make some contributions to the surgical side of things in hopes they update their rooms, or at least turn on the heat when it is below freezing outside.

following my two hour appointment i headed home, tried to do some work for a hour and a half, then headed to chester county hospital for the better part of six and a half hours. luckily i was not the patient, i was accompanying mom, who has been there so steadfastly for me this fall, for some outpatient surgery. ah, chester county, my old haunt. the cozy ambulatory care department is so nice, i wish i could have all my preop stuff for my lung surgery done there. they could then package me up and send me on a nice speedy ambulance to penn, where i could fufill the rest of the plan, ie. cutting out big chunks (or all) of my lung and then five or so joyous days of recovery with a chest tube (ooh! it collects grody fluids leaking out of my chest cavity!) and morphine (ooh! i don't care about the chest tube because i am numb from my belly up!).

anyway. i like nurses and have grown to like doctors and wholeheartedly appreciate every last thing they do for me and my loved ones, and your loved ones too. i love the people who work there and don't have big fancy degrees framed on their walls, like the sweetest, kindest guy who rolled my mom to surgery yesterday. i just wanted to hug him, he was softspoken and caring and nice. just what everyone needs.

but then, there is the dreaded family waiting room, where even though everyone else there is there with at least one other person holding a conversation at normal levels, i cannot sit by myself and speak on the cell phone. it has been an abnormally long day, i very obviously have something going on with me medically (it was hot in there and i removed my hat) and all i wanted to do was sit and talk quietly to a couple of people. nope, no can do, conversations with real people, in person, are ok but no cell phones. to the hall with you. so i go, and make the mistake of sitting in the wrong place. yesterday was one of those days, i should have just taped a sign to me telling the library-rule-enforcing people of the world just what was going on. i think then it would not have been such a big important deal to enforce the no cell phone rule when i was talking much more quietly than the people sitting across from me. not to mention they smelled like cigarette smoke, so they must have been fundementally flawed to begin with.

anyway, all went well, i was relieved from my duty by dad and i headed home from a long and draining day.

good news for me, i get to have lung surgery AND go skiing in utah. all my dreams are coming true.

i went for a run today. i didn't want to do it in the cold, but i am forcing myself to do it in preparation for the lack of running that will soon face me. not for long, but for a bit.

and finally, the thick skull of mine, the one that allows me to sit for hours on end in waiting rooms for the opportunity to be poked by needles and strapped to machines and all that garbage, well, i have another go at it tomorrow. blood tests and ekg in prep for surgery at penn. last time i had a blood test there prior to surgery i waited three hours. thick skull and sudoku. thank goodness.