Monday, March 6, 2023

broken toe

...and this was how it went...a disappointment a week before, as an invitation to a party was thwarted by a no showing friend. Thus, I decided to make it up to the birthday boy the next week, which was Saturday.My daughter wanted a reasonably lasy morning and we never got going until after lunch. It was during our literally running around to get out of the house at a reasonable time that I thought that I had stubbed my toe on an unusual construction of her bed. Mainly a metal bar that sits midway down the length of the frame. My pinky toe went one way and the rest of my foot went the next. Right away when the pain would not stop, I realised that something was amiss. However I still ventured out on the foot. We went into town and then to the friend, and I realised that I was not feeling any better. By the time we returned home I knew that I had to seek medical help. My daughter and I got the the hospital after five and the system is a three part process. Walk in, sit and wait for someone to ask you what your condition is. You then step over to another cubicle where the person behind it gives you a clip board with a questionaire to fill out if you've never been to the hospital before, or you hand over a form of id to help them type your name, dob and address. They then give you a piece of paper that you hold on to and you sit again waiting for your name to be called and then you are ushered in to the hospital proper. You are asked to be seated again and they take your vitals. You are also given a cup for your urine to be tested. Then you are told to walk down the corridor filled with people on state of the art bed carts and nurses and doctors milling about with anxious relatives and their loved ones with occassional wheelchair patients doing their best to get by. It isn't like a thoroughfare, so it isn't that bad.A nurse attends to you, checking your chart, asking you more questions and administering any drug that will help you. In my instance I needed to have an x-ray done, so off I hobbled off with my dutiful daughter in toe ... pun intended...we then waited again to be called and I was then taken into a room with a metal door making me think of Chernobyl. The technician reminded me of my sisters boyfriend. He had me lie on a wider than two suntan beds in a room filled with red light and the sound of the machine as it took my foot reading sounded like an iron lung. It took only seconds and then I was told it would take an hour for the results. Everything had gone relatively smoothly and I was optimistically expecting us to leave by 8;30 and not the 12;30 that did actually happen, meaning that we decided to walk home. In my condition it felt both near and damnably far. My daughter had waxed romantic that one of the things she has wanted to do is to walk late at noght with her friends in some part of the city. Now she was definately getting her wish right on schedule but with me. When we finally reached our apartment complex she suggested that we sit on the recently discovered metal garden chairs at the front of the compund that is nestled on top of furry festuka grass. grass o so familiar to our house that my dad cultivated lovingly. W e looked up at the stars and considered our vry eventful time before finally getting to the house.

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