Had a very positive meeting with a client, six years to the day from the 'car thing' - when I failed to cross the street. I'm thinking there's some Karma payback! It's all going great! Foreshadowing by the unsaid...
In the afternoon, I go by the doctor's, to get a look at a muscle spasm thing that's been bugging me for a couple days. Six years to the hour, of the 'car thing', The Doctor tells me I've got a black spot on my left lung, the size of a loonie. Karma? What was I in a previous life?...
So sitting in hospital, falling into a very familiar routine. Wake up, have someone come and ask you to confirm your name and take your vital signs, then stab with with something sharp. They will generally ask for details about bowel movements or BM's at this point. They will ask again, at least five times during the day. There must have been some amazing consequences of constipation, they teach in health care school.
I then have food delivered to my bed, get up, clean up a bit in a shower with a shower head that comes just above my navel, and get dressed. It's an interesting challenge, trying to keep your bits covered by those colorful gowns they supply, and get on with my day.
It's almost like I'd been here before! Huge deja vu all over again. My limited mobility is enforced this time around, by an episode of severe muscle spasming in the back and chest, triggered by the intersection of draining a bunch of fluid from the lung wall, and the spasms that brought me here in the first place. It's yet another thing I've tried, so I can tell others to strike that off their bucket list. Not worth the set up time.
My writhing in pain ended, after an hour, with me curled up whimpering on a bed, and I may have cracked a rib - I certainly pulled and strained a bunch of other muscles in my back. Still, hospital is like coming back to a really horrible vacation spot, that is saved by the cool people.
We really don't spend enough in taxes and stuff in Alberta, to let these people do the jobs they should, could, and want to be doing. Says I, who is now adding up new bills on the medical system tab. Even if I get really rich, I'll never pay as much in taxes, as I've received in care. So of course I'm going to feel that way! But it's true too!
They make do, with 'not first class' equipment, and that making of due is very well done. They're special people, maybe even some of the doctors! But clearly the nurses and orderlies. Even if you end up whimpering in a ball, after an hour of back spasms, sometimes. Broken eggs and all that. That's the costs you sometimes have to pay for progress (but not again, please, please, please, not again).
It was a bit surreal, when I came in to Emergency, the department was full of beautiful people, it was like a soap opera, for real. I was hoping not to be a plot point, just an extra. And not an extra like the red shirted, anonymous guy on Star Trek, who so rarely survived the first five minutes. I was sure it was a dream for the first couple of hours.
So, with encouragement from others (or some of the voices in my head, whatev...), I've decided to keep on with updates in the style of old serial radio shows. The Hero, is the Knight of Health, valiantly fighting to save the residents of Skellytown from evil members of the gang of Illness, injury, and pain. So on with the show!
Last time on {booming voice} Medical Monsters {end voice} the valiant knight was following the tracks of the interlopers who had stolen Joy from Tuesday's party...
"I don't know Squire Intervention, we need to find some good tracks, so we can be sure of the identities of the miscreants, before meeting them in battle." The Knight of Health said, while poking through some bushes with his cane, while mounted high in the seat of the hard done by, three legged steed, named Steed.
"Drat and Darn it, Knight, I thought we'd catch them by surprise last night, when they wouldn't be prepared for pursuit. Of course that would only happen, if they were amateurs, so our limited numbers wouldn't have mattered. That they avoided us shows they are a tougher breed, than simple rogue muscle cramps." the scarred Squire said. "I was looking forward to an easy battle."
"Don't despair, Squire. We have the Anti-Bioticus birds, searching ahead of us, but with this overgrowth they can only find obvious opponents. Closer to ground level, I have an answer to our problem of poorly planted footprints.
This dry June has hampered out pursuit of Joy, with the dry, hard, ground, hiding footsteps, in what would usually be mud, but it's not a total loss. I know just what help we need" The Health Knight proclaimed, while rearing up on his 3 legged Charger and blowing sequence of notes to the song, 'The Seeker' by the Who.
'Crickey Knight, do we really need that much help here? I may just be one of the Dread Pneumonia, we don't need the Seeker's help to catch up to that. The Anti-bioticus alone are enough to defeat them."
The Knights steed had settled back on it's wobbly legs, and the Knight said, looking down at Intervention, "Bringing Biopsy into the hunt, has little downside, Squire. The Anti-Bioticus will keep searching from the air, and if it's a Pneumonia, they deal with it."
"You know they say Biopsy is bad luck bringer, Knight. And he's sort of smelly. I'm still thinking it's one of the Dread Pneumonia and we should press ahead."
"But Squire, that is why you are still a Squire, and me and the trusted Steed had missing and broken body parts. You don't usually get to be a Knight, without learning in bodily damage, some hard lessons. We'd be better of to know what it is we truly face than following hope blindly into an ambush."
Join us next time, when we find out...is it one of the Dread Pneumonia? Is Biopsy really smelly? Will they find out who the perpetrator really was? Will Joy be found and released? Tune in here, the global exclusive archive of Knight of Health's stories.