The Curse of the Jajs

Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up. Gotcha!

Here's the story of a man named Husband, who was busy and then something happened to his eyes. They were all red, itchy and watery, and they looked soo gross.

Okay, now I can't get the Brady Bunch song out of my head.

So last week Husband's eyes started itching and watering. It didn't happen every day and it would alternate eyes. The day before yesterday he said there was something in his eye (his left one) other than his eyeball, and I was able to get some goop out. He said it felt a lot better. Yesterday, his right eye was really red and watery and he said there was something in it and it was really sore. I took a look and the lower left quadrant of his eye was bulging. BULGING. As in protuberant. And it was distorting his iris. Gross. So I called the doctors office, and of course our doctor is on holidays. We are part of the Family Network meaning if our doctor is unable to see us, another doctor who is in this network will see us. Ya right. That doctor was booked solid because all the other doctors were away for the afternoon. So since it was approaching 3:00 in the afternoon, I made the judgement call that Husband should go to the ER to have his eye checked out because the walk-in clinic didn't open until 6:00. Off we go to the ER. Our hospital has rebuilt the ER and it's really nice now. Not at all efficient, but really nice. Two hours into our wait, I asked Husband how his eye was feeling; he took off his sunglasses and his eye was oozing puss. But the portoberance was gone and it was feeling better. At 6:00 we are called back into the eye room, and at 7:00 Husband was finally seen by a doctor. By this time, his eye had stopped oozing and was just red like it normally is. Doctor O came in and said Husband, tell me your tale of woe (of course the doctor didn't call Husband Husband, that's really not actually his name). I love a doctor with a sense of humor. So the doctor put drops in Husband's which apparently really stung, and then put an orange dye in them. Freaky to say the least. The orange dye made the green of Husband's iris really prominent. I told him he would be a good character in a horror show. I also asked if I could take his picture for my blog, but he looked at me with his demon eyes and said no. Doctor O looked in Husband's eyes with the eye-looker-inner-machiney-thing and said that the dye didn't go into the pattern that it normally would if it was a corneal infection. So while the doctor thinks it's allergey related, he's treating it as an infection.

Off we go to the pharmacy. Our tale of woe is not over yet. At the pharmacy, the pharmacist and pharmacist-in-training could not read Dr. O's handwriting. Did it say Polysporin drops or Polytrim drops? A call was made to the ER to check; meanwhile the pharmacist-in-training-in-training was making calls to their other store to see if they had Polytrim drops in stock because the one I was at did not. The pharmacist discovered it was indeedy Polytrim that was prescribed and both stores did not have it in stock. Apparantly, since Dr. O is an older doctor he likes to use older medications. The pharmacist made a phone call to another drugstore and yes, they did have Polytrim in stock. So off I went (I made Husband stay in the van) to the other drugstore to get the drops. And I stood in line for minutes...a lot of them. When we finally got home it was 8:30. What a fun way to spend 5 1/2 hours.

You know what I learned?

• People get really aggitated when they have to wait for medical treatment
• People named Darryl who look like giant biker dudes have zero patience
• People named Darryl who look like giant biker dudes should really take the nurse's advice and just go buy some benedryl instead of waiting around for 4 hours to get a shot...if your bee sting was really an allergic reaction I think you should have come in sooner than 24 hours after being stung, but I'm not in the medical field so what do I know
• Old people who can hardly walk and look so frail and ill suddenly perk up and start talking when the news comes on and when it's finally something others around them are interested in watching
• Volunteers should not dis the nurses and call them crusty
• I don't like men (or doctors) whose fingernails are longer than mine. It must be a jealousy thing I guess
• For the people in our small community who keep having fundraisers for new equipment for the new ER - maybe you should have fundraisers to hire another ER doctor so that two doctors are actually working at the same time and then maybe you wouldn't have crabby sick people agitatedly pacing around looking menacingly at everyone who makes eye contact with them
• If you wait until 8:30 at night to wolf down a burger and fries, you're still hungry...at least me
• Sometimes when people wear sunglasses indoors, there's a reason

Another interesting little tidbit - a new employee was hired yesterday - just for 2 weeks for now to see how he works out. He mentioned that he's been taking care of his Father who has cancer. So while we were patiently waiting in the ER, we saw this guy...lets call him Rick. Rick didn't see us, but he came and went a few times without going through the nurses so I mentioned to Husband that I hoped everything was okay with his father. This morning at 5:30 the dogs woke us up barking. Odd. I was thinking maybe they saw a mouse or something. Husband checked things out, turned on the office light because it was almost time for him to get up, and then he came back to bed. At 5:45 the doorbell started ringing and the dogs started barking again. It was Rick. His father was in the hospital and they were calling all the family because his dad wasn't expected to last through the day, and Rick was stopping by to say he wouldn't be able to show up for his first day of work. Honestly if we hadn't seen Rick at the hospital yesterday, we might not have believed his story. So another lesson:

• Give people the benefit of the doubt

So is this the Curse of the Jajs or the Curse of Smalltown Living? Or maybe it's just what you get for trying to deal with medical bureaucracy.