ID Doctors and A Fake Baby

Here we go again. Monner’s foot saga is not over. (I just started talking about myself in third-person. I’ll stop.) We will get to the fun stuff, but the foot is first.

This past week, I had my first, last and hopefully only appointment with my infectious disease doctor. Until last Tuesday, my contact with this doctor is from his nurse calling me on the phone.

The infectious disease doctor is the guy that analyzes my blood tests and prescribes the antibiotics to fight my infection. He might have been the most important member of my “team”.

For some reason, still unknown to me, the doctor asked to see me in his office. The day before the appointment, the doctor’s receptionist called to inform me the doctor had a family emergency and my appointment would be with the doctor’s partner.

Elaine looked up the address of the doctor’s office and drove me to his office (sort of). When we arrived at the correct address, Elaine drove around the parking lot a couple times looking for the doctor’s name on a sign. Unable to find a sign, Elaine and I decided to take a chance and go into the office in front of us.

Once inside, I noticed the office was clean, bleak and boring. I asked the receptionist about the lack of signage. She replied, “Oh, we have a sign. Did you see the Blankety-Blank ID sign? That’s us. We need to keep low key here. People don’t like infectious disease doctor’s offices near them.”

Oh-oh, when I heard that, I started looking around. I could feel the Ebola in the air. The receptionist went on to inform Elaine and I that most of their practice is dealing with people like myself, but occasionally they deal with some bad stuff, however those people are treated in hospitals. I felt a little better after hearing that, but I didn’t touch any of the magazines.

Soon a nurse came into the waiting room to escort me back to an examination room. I don’t know what I expected, but the room looked just like an examination room.

The doctor enter the room. He looked like an infectious disease doctor. Short, maybe slightly chubby, plaid shirt, three days of beard, he shook my hand. I looked for hand sanitizer. Hey, he was an infectious disease doctor!

The doctor stared at a computer for a while. He finally said, “Your kidney function is good, liver enzymes #s are, we like to see ##, so you can see that’s fine.” When he was finished telling me numbers that I didn’t understand, he said, “I’ll get the nurse to pull your pickline.”

A nurse arrived, brought out hand sanitizer, removed my bandages and said, “This is painless and quick. When I say now, take a deep breath and bear down like you are having a bowel movement. Don’t have a bowel movement, just bear down.” I’m glad she cleared that up, I had only brought the clothes I was wearing.

“Now!” I took a breath. “Done!” I didn’t even get to bear down. She was holding a blue plastic tube about two feet long. I asked to take the tube home. The nurse said it was classified as a bio-hazard and needed to be destroyed.

My appointment at the podiatrist was not as entertaining. “Your wound is healing nicely. Keep it dry, wear your wooden shoe, and come see me in two weeks.”

Let’s talk about Girl Twin.

One of Girl Twin’s high school classes is titled “Teen Choices”.She was so excited at the beginning of the year to have this class. “Monner, in this class we get to take a doll home for the weekend. The doll is computerized and cries, wets and eats, just like a real baby.”

Me: Why is this going to be good? Girl Twin: It will teach us that having a baby is a lot of work and not all fun. Me: Can’t you just watch your brother? Girl Twin: It is going to be fun. Me: Girl Twin, there is NOTHING fun about babies. They cry all the time, diapers need to be changed and worst of all they grow and become teenagers. Get out of that class.

Well, just like every other teenager, she didn’t listen to the adults and the “baby” came home this weekend. Luckily the doll did not function properly the first night. Unfortunately, it functioned properly the second night.

Girl Twin named her offspring Rose Mary. Every two hours Rose Mary woke crying. Girl Twin panicked, the dogs would growl and I turned up the volume on the television. Girl Twin learned what the rest of the world knew anyway. Girl Twin has no patience for children. She doesn’t like babies in restaurants, stores and especially in her bedroom.

Oh well, it was just one weekend. Here we go again.

Our crazy lives!

Monner