Maybe it’s Obama’s fault or capitalism or something, but my retiree health care is garbage. I don’t know, maybe it’s fine, but being a public school teacher, I never had to pay for much. Paying the first $8000 doesn’t sound like good coverage.
While I was waiting for my brother to come by, I looked up what systems were part of my network. Cleveland Clinic is.
Davy arrived, and I explained what I could. We went to Brecksville and found the Cleveland Clinic Express Care. You are supposed to know that express care isn’t as good as urgent care and urgent care isn’t as good as an emergency room. All the Cleveland Clinic Express Care could do is give us directions to the MetroHealth emergency room and call ahead to let them know we were coming.
I like going to Brecksville for health care because rich people live there. Everybody is nice and they never have any work to do. While Davy was waiting for a couple of hours, he saw maybe three other patients.
The doctor took blood for a bunch of tests, then put me on an IV drip with an antibiotic and painkiller.
She sent me for a CAT scan, and looked over the results. Everything came back as “unremarkable”, which is what you’d want from your innards, but after viewing the images, I’m not so sure.
This is a side shot. My spine is on the right, and my belly on the left. I don’t remember eating a baby, but that is obviously a skull. That doesn’t look normal, so it must be paranormal. Or a a twin that I devoured in the womb. That wouldn’t surprise me.
From the same position. Perhaps the doctor is so jaded, that a militarized belly rat isn’t considered remarkable, but it’s news to me. My mom wouldn’t consider it remarkable that I have a belly rat.
She’s the doctor. My symptoms weren’t consistent with a haunted skull and a belly rat, so she sent me for an ultrasound. Those images look like a tornado on Jupiter, so I couldn’t make sense of them. It convinced the doctor that I have gallstones and gallbladder sludge. After hearing about gall sludge, I don’t even want that thing.
The doctor thought we could clear up the infection, and wait for another episode before removing the gallbladder, presumably leaving me with antiseptic sludge until it goes sour again. Or, the surgeons may want to remove it now.
I asked the doctor what the gallbladder does and what changes I’d have to make to my diet. I thought that bile is used to digest fat, so I’d need to lower the fat in my diet. This is when I noticed that doctors have changed since Covid.
The doctor said that the gallbladder stores bile, but other organs produce it. I would not have to change my eating habits. My entire life, doctors took every opportunity to tell people to eat less red meat, ground turkey instead of ground beef, and always more green vegetables. I toss a softball to the doctor, and she doesn’t swing.
The doctor offered to “transport me to the MetroHealth main campus at their expense” to be checked out by the fancy doctors. I thought that was nice.
I sent Davy off to deal with my affairs as they buckled me up and put me in an ambulance. I must have been pretty juiced, because this is where I started to sleep a lot and lose any interest in my own fate. I have no idea where MetroHealth main campus is, if anyone was riding in back with me or if was even an ambulance instead of a panel van. It could have been a spaceship.
Everyone was relaxed and helpful. Even the transportation guys wheeling me into the hospital were chatty and casual. As they were getting me to the right spot, they were kind enough to say, “if you have to go, walk down that hallway. The bathroom is farther away, but it’s the cleanest.” That’s news I can use.
They put me in a ward room. More of an alcove with four patients, separated by curtains. I liked it.
I’m not sure what they were squirting into my IV line. I knew the ward room wasn’t private or quiet, and I should be irritated, but it occurred to me that life in a Mars Colony would be like this. Crowded, people bustling about and purpose-built equipment all over the place.
I am currently listening to The New World on Mars by Robert Zubrin, so that’s where that came from. No idea why I found the idea so comforting.
The adjacent patient, separated by a curtain, was an old battle axe. The salty bus driver type. When my delightful niece Courtney called, the salty dog thought I was talking to her. When I was done talking to Courtney, the battle axe was well into her introductory conversation. To be polite, I figured I should say something, and she was talking about what she was in for. I asked about that.
“I should never have let that bitch near my butt with a needle. They are trying to make me diabetic.”
I got her to agree to a nice conversation if she promised not to talk about butt stuff anymore. After decades of conversations with my mother, and chats with some of my favorite people at NRHS, we had a delightful time.
I wish I could recall more of the conversation, but I was sleepy and relaxed from the pain killers. Since there were no windows or clocks, and I fell back into a deep sleep anytime a nurse wasn’t asking or injecting something. Doctors stopped in a few times. I don’t recall ever deciding to have my gallbladder removed, but it seemed like a consensus. I have no idea how long I was there, probably more than a half-day.
They moved me upstairs to a two-person room. I wasn’t in any pain or nauseous. My roommate was a dick, apparently in considerable pain. He has to moan and groan, I get that, but don’t be an arse about it. There is no reason to add, “Holy fucking shit” to the beginning or end of a groan. If that was a conversational gambit, I am not taking the bait.
Also, there is no excuse for having the volume turned up on the TV. The speaker in the handset can be put right next to his head. Any guy who is being rude and disrespectful to nurses will be no friend of mine.
I didn’t care too much. He was background noise. Those rough cotton sheet-blankets seemed so warm and snuggly, I went back to sleep when nobody needed me. I was still wearing my basketball shorts and a t-shirt, so it was comfortable. I still had my bucket. To avoid restarting the nausea, I still wasn’t eating or drinking anything.
I was getting pretty dehydrated. When nurses came to draw blood, they had a difficult time finding a vein. Both my inner elbows look like they have been assaulted. I kept suggesting they get me more saline, but that didn’t happen. It seemed like a communication issue. Whoever prescribes the IV drip may not have known that I wasn’t eating or drinking anything.
It was fine. The nurses are very kind and have a mildly patronizing dialogue they go through when jabbing. I knew that life on a Mars colony wasn’t going to be easy, so get on with your needle rape.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, a doctor came by. The surgery was planned for early the next day, but that “depends on the street.” Okay Officer Starsky, what does that mean? Urgent trauma patients that come in overnight have priority over my surgery. This new, casual medical care was interesting. It wouldn’t change anything if doctors were stern and earnest. I’d still get the surgery, and since I wasn’t in pain or danger, would be after patients who were.
I asked about food. Since I was on deck for surgery, clear liquids only. The doctor said I could have jello, so the nurse rounded up all the jello she could find.
The next day, I was getting bored of the drama queen in the next bed, so thought to investigate my insurance status. Cleveland Clinic was in-network, but I knew nothing about MetroHealth. That could be the difference between an $8000 bill or an $80,000 bill. Anyone I talked to said, “MetroHealth takes anything.” I called Aetna and asked. The insurance rep said that MetroHealth was in my plan, but he didn’t sound certain. I think he was just reading a pamphlet. After the lunch I wasn’t offered, I was collected for surgery.
In pre-surgery, the doctors involved in the procedure come by. This was the first time I met doctors who seemed like adults. All the rest were too young and chatty to have much gravitas. Even the surgeons were relaxed and casual. Then I woke up in my bed.
By 5 pm on Thursday, I was alert when the doctor came in. There was the normal blah-blah. The important stuff was that I couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds for a month, the pharmacy had my prescription for oxycodone and don’t drive for at least 12 hours after taking one.
When the doctor left, the nurse came in to show me how to order dinner. There wasn’t much of a discharge procedure. I was done eating by the time Davy arrived. I gave him a cookie, I took my bucket and we went home.
Davy asked how it felt. I told him my belly felt like I’d been stung by four yellow jackets this morning. The incisions hurt enough to know they were there, hurt more if you pressed on one, and there was swelling. I would have said a 1 or 2 on the pain scale.
Monica had decreed that Davy would be spending the night at my house. It’s the authoritarianism that comes from kindness and concern, and shouldn’t be argued with. We had a nice time watching the movie Hot Fuzz and a couple of episodes of a Progressive climate disaster propaganda TV show called Extrapolations.