Friday
El Milagro: I am driving thru the dark at 5 am to get to my dialysis session this morning cause, even though I was just in dialysis last night, I have scheduled myself this morning too so I can miss Saturday to be in Dallas for Liz's dad's yartzeit. I awakened before the alarm went off at 4:45 and got up and got dressed quickly, thinking I would forgo coffee and my morning meds and just get over there fast and go back to sleep. Aside from the dog's need to play I pretty much rushed thru my routine coffee-less, which kept me in a haze... kinda like what I think of as a brain fog... not as bad a condition as a "brain cloud"* but real hazy none-the-less... and it makes my mind wander thru old Tom Hanks movies, Loretta Lynn lyrics, and speakerless Matt's Dancing** around in my head... and meaningless meandering sentences tambien. Okay. So, I let the dog out, call her in when she starts barking in the night and don't take my meds (thinking some you shouldn't take and then have them dialyzed out... and since I don't remember which those are, I can save some $ by not taking any until afterwards). And I think about making coffee but worry that it would be terrible to coffee up and lay wide-eyed thru morning dialysis... so, I rush out before my addled brain makes me make coffee.
I am zipping thru the neighborhood thinking I am also hungary so I curl around the underpass at Industrial and hit my taco / donut joint and am the first person there... wait at the locked door until they see me and grab a bacon and egg taco and 6 donut holes for a pre-dialysis snack-o. Since no one is on the road this early I can weeve around on the freeway while poring salsa on my taco and wolfing it without spilling or flipping the truck. The donut holes are much easier.
I get to El Milagro and remember Rosie the Tech's advice about coming in the morning: "Weigh yourself and then just sit down in the waiting room cause they'll call you in when they're ready for you.... no just walking in like you usually do when you are the last person of the day to come in and your chair is always ready. In the morning they don't like that walking in business... they come find you when your chair is ready."
So, I do it the Rosie weigh and sit down and wait for 12.5 minutes... when two older black women come in in beautiful Caribbean moo moos and brighten the whole room, weighing in and walking thru to the treatment room. I still sit there... thinking things like, "will they come out here to get me?... do they know I'm here?... what if the don't come out?... what if I fall asleep out here and no one comes?..." until I finally just get up and walk in too. I see Jackie the Tech and she startles and says, "What're you doing here... we're not set up for you...(etc.) and I am about to be upset that even tho I am "on the board" they didn't look at "the board" again (which has happened in the past)... and I am about to fizzle... when someone (Margaret the Nurse?) informs Jackie that they have me set up on side 'A' and are ready for me. Jackie comes around to that side and goes to work cannulating me and I'm connected and running by 6 am... meaning I'll get outa here by 10.
I stick in my earplug-type ear phones and listen lightly to NPR's Morning Edition. I pull my hat down over my eyes and go back to sleep...
I wake up at 9:20 or so, to see Dr. Moritz's smiling face (remembering the recent report I heard that he is acting more friendly to folks over here) in my waking brain and focusing on his Hawaiian shirt... he is doing rounds with the new dietician whose name escapes my waking brain...
He does stop at my station even tho they don't have my file... asking me what I am doing here and I reply about the trip to Dallas and he asks if I have scheduled my MRI yet and I say No but I will and he admonishes me for neglecting his orders... before moving on around the corner...
By 10 a newish Tech comes over to de-stick me and without much ado I am outa there, and on my way to my office for a few last minute work tasks before meeting the girls at the house and driving up to Lake Belton to pick up Shayna from GS Camp Kachina and then on up to Dallas.
Notes: In at 75.2 and out at 74.2
*"Brain Cloud" defined online by Wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/joe_Versus_the_Vocano
** Matt's Dance found online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4
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