The raccoons stared at me. I stared at the raccoons. Although there was a porch between us, their disdain for me was palpable. After a couple of seconds, one of the raccoons said to itself, "Aww, screw this action. I'm going to find an establishment where I'm more welcome!" and turned and walked down the porch steps. The other raccoon, stuck between its desire to eat at its first choice and be with its companion glowered at me for several more seconds before finally turning and following. It stopped and glared at me for a few more seconds from the driveway just to make sure that its displeasure at my presence was fully appreciated, then waddled off.
The raccoon sliding down the trunk of the tree in the front yard momentarily took me by surprise. But, what the hell. If you're going to have a picnic, you may as well let the children play.
It was a little after midnight. I was waiting for a taxi. I saw headlights down the street; when I walked to the end of the driveway, I saw that they did, indeed, belong to a cab. It stopped four doors down. After a couple of seconds, it crept up the street and started going into the driveway of that house. No problem. I wasn't in nearly as much pain as I had been earlier in the afternoon. However... At this point, I waved my arms, in the time-honoured tradition of animals on the veldt making themselves appear bigger than they are to scare away potential predators. Fortunately, it got the cabbie's attention (and probably had the side benefit of scaring the raccoons further away from the house for a few...minutes).
I had been having stabbing pains in my side for a day and a half. I have a complex relationship with pain. On the one hand, my father will go to the emergency department of the hospital for a hangnail. On the other hand, my mother will avoid doctors for anything less than a limb falling off. Being a good Canadian, I'll live with pain for a couple of days hoping that it will go away on its own, but, given an incentive, I'll go see a doctor. A friend of mine wrote me an email that said, "If it wasn't so late, I would phone and yell at you for not going to emergency."
This is how my friends show they care.
Being psychically yelled at was incentive enough.
After being processed at North York General (why has there never been a medical show on TV about the lab technician who has to conduct the tests on people's blood and urine? Oh, yeah - YUCK!), I sat down to wait for results.
There were many things to occupy my attention while I waited. There was the television on the wall of one side of the room in the Yellow Zone, which competed for attention with the television on the wall on the opposite side of the room in the Yellow Zone. There were old magazines (with titles like Horse & Buggy Monthly and Scientific Thirteen Colonies); unfortunately, I knew where they had been, and wasn't moved to read them. Or, even pick them up.
Fortunately, I had brought a book. I had a feeling.
Also for our entertainment, a baby was screaming behind the curtains of one of the examining rooms, a necessary part of the early morning ambience of emergency rooms in hospitals. I'm sure that they have an MP3 of a child screaming that they play on slow nights. Although, come to think of it, I don't remember seeing a child while I was there... After a few minutes, somebody in the examination room started running water, which grabbed the baby's attention and quieted it down. Of course, I didn't see the water, either...
As I sat there, the pain, which had peaked that afternoon, slowly abated. This always happens to me: the moment I decide to seek medical help, my symptoms start to go away. This is more proof, as if more proof was needed, that my brain is not always my friend; it also strongly indicates that my body willingly colludes with that stubborn grey matter.
The blood and urine tests proved inconclusive, so, at 4:00 in the morning, the doctor suggested that I get an ultrasound. Visuals get my attention, so I agreed. Alas, the ultrasound department didn't open until 8:30, so I would have to wait until at least then. I say at least, because in-patients get precedence over emergency patients; I would be given an ultrasound whenever a spot became available. Umm, okay. A few minutes later, a nurse suggested that I could make an appointment to have an ultrasound; I figured this could give me a chance to go home and get some sleep, so I said I would consider it. Unfortunately, the only slot they had available to give me was 10:10 in the morning; factoring in travel time, this would give me about 37 seconds of sleep before I had to return. I asked if I could take the time slot and stay in emergency, but was told that it didn't work that way (if I left, I would be an out-patient, which would make it okay). I asked if I could just sit outside the front doors of the emergency wing of the hospital, but, apparently, this was not in the spirit of the ultrasound department. And, hospital administrators are really cranky in the middle of the night.
I decided to take my chances, and was escorted to the ultrasound waiting area at 9:15; the test started around 9:40. Ha! Take that, arcane hospital rules!
The urgency that others felt on my behalf was that my pain may have had something to do with my appendix, the ugly stepchild of internal medicine. The ultrasound showed that this was not the case - I actually have gall stones. Woo hoo!
But, then, you already knew that from the title of this article, didn't you?