it could have been worse…
It’s true that I don’t really start functioning properly until I’ve had my 1.5 cups of steaming hot coffee in the morning, preferably brought to my bedside by Nog so I can stay snuggled under the duvet with my laptop until I have to get up and face the day. But yesterday wasn’t a typical day because I had the dreaded CT scan scheduled and so, even after the usual amount of morning coffee, I decided to stay in bed awhile longer, snuggle cats, and try to forget what was going to happen.
As it turned out, and compared to previous “scan days”, it could have been much worse…
Especially if Pip hadn’t saved me by asking me to save her. She called late morning and said she needed to get out of the office for awhile and asked if I wanted to go to Ikea with her. I’d just finished my toast and was looking down the barrel at a very long day of tedium and dread, so an impromptu trip to Ikea worked out well for both of us. Even though I have a serious love/hate relationship with that place I always love the kitchen section. It almost makes the rest of the whole Ikea experience worthwhile.
Of course, going to Ikea was just an excuse to get out and drive around and talk a lot and so, after purchasing a couple of “I didn’t know I needed them till I saw them” items, we drove around a bit more and finally got back to Sevilla at lunchtime. But no lunch for us. Pip had to get back to work and I wasn’t allowed to eat until after my CT scan. And so, after doing some work on the tapa blog and watching Nog eat his lunch, I decided I would just get on The Bike and do stuff like take biz notes, send some text messages and watch tv … ended up staying on the damn thing for an hour (at a ‘walking pace’, but what the heck).
I also started drinking the awful gacky barfium – a whole litre of it – and somehow managed to get most of it down before I had to meet up with Pip again to go to the hospital. And that was the part I’d really been dreading because the previous time I’d been painfully poked and prodded with a needle five times in my hand and arm veins before they finally got it right. So I told the guy in the CT room that I hoped he’d have better luck and he guaranteed a one-poke deal. And he was so sweet and funny and charming that I didn’t even mind that it took two pokes. He also let Pip stay with me during the prep, which helped a lot. She is so great at providing chatty distraction therapy and making weird and scary situations feel almost normal (well, normal for us). Here’s a shot of the Machine…
After the scan was finally over I was feeling extremely weak and shaky and Pip deduced that this was because it was almost 8 o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything since the morning, so we went off in search of sustenance. Ended up at a nice little place near Pip’s house call El Aceite and had a snack of toasted country bread with olive oil & jamón serrano, and a plate of manchego cheese. It was perfect.
After I got home again I called Ricardo and Pilar (from The Team) to confirm our classes for next week – they are both finally coming back to English classes! I also told them I’d just had the CT scan and Ricardo said he’d call down for the results on Monday, so I won’t have to wait long. He also knows Manu – the “one-poke” guy – and said he would tell him how pleased I was with my treatment there.
Capped off the day with an episode of Boston Legal series 4 (you’re right Puddock – it’s great!) and did my best to finish off a 1.5 litre bottle of mineral water before bed. So yeah, it could have been a lot worse. In fact, it has been a lot worse. I just hope that that’ll be it now for three months so I can concentrate on my projects.
Thanks again for yesterday, Pip.
Oh, yay, it’s over! You managed to make it sound not so terrible, even though I’m sure it was completely gross. Two pokes is better than 5 or 6, for sure. I’m sure glad Pip was there to help you through it. She sounds like a wonderful person and I hope I get to meet her in June.
I did my long drive to Mountain View and made it in record time. Now I’m sitting in the motel room, happy to have nothing to do except surf, twitter, maybe take a bath, and just let my hair down. Ahhhhh. If you were here we could split a nice bottle of red and find something good on HBO.
This is the time for a “one poke guy”… (wink, wink)…
“Barfium” bleccccchhhh…
Ooooo, I am so envious of you right now Beth. The “She’s Geeky” weekend sounds like it’s going to be wonderful. And hanging out in your motel room drinking wine and watching HBO would be fabulous. Ah well, June isn’t that far away. If I get an “all clear” from this scan and the next one (end of April) then I’ll be good to go until the end of July, so I’ll be able to seriously consider the Greece trip then. But I also think you should make a side trip here, meet Pip (if I can’t convince her to come to Greece), and try out some amazing tapas.
“She sounds like a wonderful person”
Yep. She most certainly is.
“This is the time for a “one poke guy”… (wink, wink)…”
Yeah I know, mudhooks, but I’ve had you-know-what on the brain a lot recently. Which I reckon is another sign that I’m feeling better.
A day that includes IKEA and manchego cheese sounds pretty good!
You cannot imagine the restraint I am exercising over here to NOT make remarks about one-poke guy… about multiple pokes… and such. (and you probably thought I exhausted all the bad poking-related puns in the car ride after the hospital, but nyet.)
Do they make gags for fingers? I need finger gags over here.
I hope this is nothing serious… I have some sort of problem with the vision in my left eye…
I am hoping my eye doctor will see me without an appointment. I hope to GOD it isn’t something like a torn retina…. I have a black blob in the middle of my left eye and every time I move my eye, I see flashing lights…
This started last night….
FUCK!
DON’T PANIC, mudhooks. If your eye doctor won’t see you then go to emergency. STAT. As in – GO NOW. Let us know what happens. *hug*
Yeah, manchego cheese and IKEA ain’t bad, Bea. The sour cream & onion Ikea crisps weren’t bad either (Boston Legal snack). Though Pip very evilishly opened and ate her bag of Ikea crisps in the car knowing full well that I was hungry and couldn’t eat anything…
“You cannot imagine the restraint I am exercising over here”
I just got back.
I normally have plenty of floaters but this was sudden and BIG.
Apparently, in “people my age”, the gel inside the eyeball starts to liquefy and the film around the inside of the eye starts to come away from the surface of the eyeball… Hence, the blobs.
Occasionally, however, the film will stick in a spot on the inside and when it pulls away, it tears and the fluid inside the eye gets in behind…. causing a detached retina. She said that if the flashing lights get worse or I start seeing a “curtain” or persistent shadows, to get in to the emergency room or in to see her ASAP.
The good thing was that, aside from giving my eyeballs a really good going over to check and see if there was a detachment, she also gave me a regular eye check-up and I have ordered swish new frames.
Since the cost of new frames is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the lenses, I could order solid platinum frames and they would still be less expensive than the lenses…. PLUS I have vision care through my company medical insurance.
az, you make the grossest of medical procedures sound like fun – But being around that age, I am worried now about detached retinas and stuff – I could lose and arm or a leg and cope but to lose my eyesight! Or even have it at risk. No Way! Hope it works for you mudhooks.
Strangely enough, despite the fact that I am an artist and a photographer, I would be more comfortable losing my eyesight than my hearing…
I went deaf in my right ear for a year and the hearing is still not 100 per cent. I just about went mad during that time.
I have worked in a darkroom and find myself very at ease in complete blackness. It may seem strange but I have sometimes been lying in bed in the dark room and “seen” my room around me or “watched” my hand moving over the railing on my bed and then realized I actually had my eyes shut. My brain was making up what it was feeling from what I was feeling and remembering.
Not having the slightest sound would be more terrifying than not being able to see. As well, when you are deaf, you aren’t hearing the sounds coming in from outside but you DO hear a high-pitched sound made up by your brain… I have lived with tinnitus from the second my hearing went and to have THAT with nothing to drown it out was almost enough to kill myself.
I “see” in my head and find so much beauty in the tiny sounds and not to be able to hear the sound of the wind in the trees or the crickets in the night or the million other sounds would be the end of me.
For me, hearing allows me to “see” so much more than I do with my eyes.
Not that I want either to happen, I would prefer to lose my sight than my hearing.
I made it sound like I “just” lost the hearing in my right ear recently. I was 20 when I lost my hearing and it would have been another 20 years before my hearing was even close to being “normal”. It still isn’t 100 percent. In crowded rooms I often just nod knowingly when someone is talking to me, having not heard a word they said.
And the ringing!…. Sort of like what you hear in an aircraft cabin while flying…. but really loud and with the added sound of a constant ringing… A tinny static noise 24-7…
I love the cinnamon buns at IKEA… as well as their Cloudberry jam, their ginger wafers (which I use to make my ginger ice cream pie), and a number of other things that I pick up at their food kiosk.
I was less happy with their fish roe paste which was incredibly salty… way saltier than it needed to be.
I’ve never even heard of detached retinas until now. I sometimes get a black blob in the corner of my left eye if I inadvertently rub it too hard. Eep!
I can’t even sleep in a totally dark bedroom – going blind would be terrifying for me.
Can’t wait to see the swish frames, mudhooks. And glad to hear that you got your eyes checked out.
My mother had a detached retina a couple of years ago and it was sorted with one quick session of laser treatment – so, ‘keep an eye on it’ as the saying goes, but DON’T PANIC (in true Douglas Adams style!)
And Azahar, I’m so glad the scan day didn’t turn out to be as horrible as the others. Go Pip and ‘One-Poke’ man!!!!
Mudhooks, I’ve got a detached retina in my left (bad) eye; they won’t even do anything about it unless it encroaches into the macula at the center of my vision. I’m almost legally blind in that eye, anyway, so no panic here.
However, if the flashes I see in my right eye increase, I will be running to the ER…
IKEA — love/hate, yeah that about covers it. If I stay in there too long I get very disoriented and have to sit for a while with my eyes closed. BTW, the inside of your Seville IKEA looks remarkably like the three IKEAs I’ve been to here in California. Have you ever seen the IKEAhacker blog? People take their IKEA stuff and personalize it, or make some new thing from the bits in the store “As Is” dept.
You mean like alejna’s IKEA Rat Launcher?