While at the Saint Paul Media office the next day I missed a call from my NP. She left a message asking me to call her back, so I did. She, of course, wasn't available. I did not, however, hold this against her. Clinics are busy places. I did, however, leave a message for her to call me back, which she did. I, of course, wasn't available, so she left a message. She wanted me to come in so we could talk about my cholesterol. So I called the clinic back, and much to my great surprise, she wasn't available. So I set up an appointment for the following Monday at 8:30am (it was currently Thursday), was told I couldn't drink for 72 hours before my appointment and I couldn't eat for 12 hours before it. That's when I started to freak out.
I knew what I had to do in preparation this time, but they gave me very little information in regards to my health, and it seemed important to them that I came back in. Quickly. So yeah, I was a little freaked. Was I in immediate danger? Was my heart actually that ticking time bomb we always hear about? I had no way to know, so I called them back again. No luck. My NP was in a meeting and the best thing we could do was to leave her a message and have her call me back, which she did, but not until the next day, which means I had to go over 24 hours wondering if I was gonna expire if I looked at a piece of bacon wrong.
When the call came on Friday, I was informed that my cholesterol was indeed high, but that I was not about to die. And that, as you may have guessed, was quite a relief. All I had to do, then, was wait until Monday to find out what horridly expensive cholesterol medication I was about to get put on. I also, unfortunately, had to go through my weekend without enjoying a single drop of beer. Bummer.
When my beerless weekend came to an end and Monday morning came truckin' around, I roused myself from bed with just barely enough time to get dressed, brush my teeth, and get to my appointment. I planned it this way so as to minimize the length of time I would have to be awake without having any coffee.
Upon arrival to the clinic, things progressed much as they had the first time I was there. Too much. I checked in, sat down, stared at fish, got called, got up, got weighed…….Weighed? Yeah, weighed. Again. I thought it seemed odd, seeing as this had been done just a few days earlier, but I went with it. And, wouldn't you know it, I gained my couple pounds back (note to self: stop drinking water). After my weigh-in, I got back together with the European ice princess, lost a little more of my blood, and went to the exam room where the nurse (the same one I had just a few days earlier) was waiting for me. She immediately instructed me to take off my jacket so she could check my blood pressure.
Me: ""Do we need to do this? I was just here like three days ago."
Nurse: "You don't want me to check you over?"
Me: "If you need to, that's fine, but we really did just do this a few days ago."
Nurse: "OK. Let me go check with your doctor."
And that was the last I ever saw of her; yet one more example of the severe lack of communication that the various branches of that clinic suffer from.
The post Explosions of the Heart, Part 2 appeared first on How to Get Rid of Things™.
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