POST 39

Thought for the day:
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of anything.
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Man!! This has been a busy week. Strange, too, because Grandma’s calendar didn’t have much of anything marked on it so we thought we’d have the whole week to kind of lay back and relax. Ha! We should have seen it coming, I guess, when Monday morning I got an e-mail with a batch of new names, all of which needed name tags for our upcoming 65th high school reunion. Soon after that e-mail, we got a call from Dr. Guisado’s office, the neurosurgeon my primary care physician had referred me to. That referral was on the advice of the doctor who had done my recent back surgery. Dr. Guisado’s people were calling to tell us that he had had a cancellation so could see me at 11:30 Tuesday morning. Grandma and I gathered together all of the x-rays and other documentation amassed at the time of the back surgery and went to see this new doctor. He did some preliminary tests and said he needed more information—a multi-level blood test and an MRI—then he set up a follow-up appointment for Thursday. As soon as we had left the doctor’s office we went to Quest Laboratories to have blood drawn. When we walked in there was nobody in the waiting room. “This is great,” I said, “we’ll be out of here really fast.” Guess again. The technician took our papers, shook her head and said she couldn’t read what tests the doctor wanted taken so she had to check with him. She called his office but he couldn’t come to the phone, so they told her she should call back later. Rather than stand around waiting, Grandma and I went to lunch then returned later in the afternoon. In the meantime, the technician had tried again to get the doctor but discovered that the office was closed and wouldn’t be open until Wednesday morning. Do you see where this is going? That pretty well shot Monday and Tuesday; but wait!! There’s more. Wednesday mid-morning we went back to Quest only to discover that the doctor didn’t get into the office until noon on Wednesdays. At this point we’re beginning to feel like steel balls in a pinball machine. So Grandma and I went to lunch and didn’t come back until later in the afternoon. Of course, when we got to the Quest office this time, the waiting room was jam-packed so we had a long wait ahead of us. I suggested that we go have lunch again, or supper, or anything to kill the time, but I couldn’t convince Grandma. When my name was finally called it took them only four or five minutes to draw the seven test tubes needed for what the doctor wanted. Then, just to round out the busy-ness of the day, we called and got a Friday morning appointment for an MRI at O’Connor Hospital. Well, that took care of Wednesday. Three down and two to go. Thursday afternoon we saw the doctor and he ran me through a pretty thorough set of tests for neurological response. After that, he told me to go ahead and get the MRI then come back to see him in two weeks (Hey! A doctor has to earn a living.) Friday’s MRI was relatively easy and speedy—to the outpatient check-in desk at 8:15 a.m., into the MRI itself at 9:30, and twenty minutes later, on our way home.
Well, that’s a typical “quiet” day in Grandpa’s household. It does make life kind of exciting trying to guess what’s going to happen next. Next week’s calendar is completely filled out so it looks like it won’t be any more relaxed than this one has been. But that’s another episode in life’s ongoing saga which may, or may not, be covered in a future posting.