One of my friends told me that she’d never been in a hospital apart from the time she was born. This awed me. I’ve been in and out of hospital randomly for not very serious reasons over the years, so that awed her.
Anyway, today was one of those days so I thought I would share. Having run out of cough syrup, I went down to the Village clinic on Saturday to get more, and the doctor instructed me to get a chest x-ray done if my cough persists over the next few days. Well, I’ve had bronchitis for two weeks now, finished my antibiotics yesterday and am as bad as ever, so I trotted off to the Hospital.
I tried to take a shortcut through the science-y buildings — you know, Woodward, those places — which I figured were close by the Hospital, but that didn’t work out so well. There are disadvantages to being a completely Arts-y Arts student: you don’t know the secret shortcuts in non-Arts areas. I ended up wandering around in a circle back to the main road and found the Hospital that way.
The Hospital is a very nice, quiet place that firmly tells you to switch your phone off before you enter the building. Understandable, as this can be very disruptive. I obeyed, and followed the signs to the Radiology department, introduced myself, gave my requisition form, my Care Card and my photo identification, and was given two hospital gowns in return with instructions to remove all clothes and jewellery that might contain metal.
The gowns were really rather confusing and I had to ask a second time which one was the inner garment and which was the outer. I’m sure Scrubs fans would have got it down pat in the first go. The inner garment was the blue patient gown that you see on TV sometimes, and it’s tied from the back. The outer garment was a regular jacket-like thing worn the normal way around. It was too big for me, of course, which was what caused the confusion, but I eventually dressed properly. Within a few minutes of emerging from the changing room, I was called to do my x-ray.
It was very anti-climatic. I hugged this board, took a deep breath, held it, and then stood profile to the board and repeated the breath-holding. I spent more time changing into my clothes than I did taking the x-ray.
My results will be sent to the clinic in about a week’s time. In the meantime, I’m debating whether to go down to the clinic tomorrow or not. I really, really need to do work on some papers, but I’m also really, really tired of coughing. The problem is that they may not be able to do anything until they get my results (or they would’ve done something else by now), in which case I will waste several hours. On the other hand, I don’t want to get worse.
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