Tuesday, April 26

Some Pie while you wait?

Ahem... can you all hear me? Great. Let me right off and started with my presentation here. As you can clearly see from the above chart that in the last five days the time it has taken to actually GET my Neumega (or the generic version thereof) injection has been 99% waiting. The past five days has been 975 minutes of waiting which comes down to three hours and fifteen minutes per shot. Some things, like driving to MDA, I feel can't really be avoided. (Which is why I have counted it separately in the above graph.) The other time though, the time marked as "waiting"? That is time AFTER my appointment time that I have sat in the lobby watching the hours tick by. I am thinking, perhaps, there is a problem with the system. 

Most stays in the waiting room are mostly the same: The TV blares loudly, often something I don't want to be hearing (Fox News is popular, Golf and Dancing with the Stars have also tried to force their way into my head). Then there are the people who are semi clueless about how loud they are being, this can either be via a cell phone, a video game of some sort, knitting needles, OR (the kicker) the personal device that is beeping JUST quietly enough that they can't hear it but the rest of the waiting room can. And last, but certainly not least there are the types that don't really realize there is a private line that shouldn't be crossed in the waiting room. This one is kind of rare, but can be spotted if you visit enough waiting rooms at enough hours. This is the person who: needs to blow their nose constantly, cough up mucus, clear out some line coming from some place in their body (I wish I was kidding), or any combination of the above. (EX: A really wet wracking cough and when you look up at them you see they are doing it from their neck. Bring the kids round here, that'll put them off even looking at cigarettes FOREVER.) Have you considered the bathroom might be the better place for such things? And of course on top of it all apathetic not-nurses (they wear scrubs anyway) who are just receptionists that really don't care that it's 2.25 hours past your appointment and dinner was the same time as your appointment. "You're up next" is often slang which means, "You're up next, AFTER we call four other people."

It's been a long five days, and part of me almost wishes they HAD given me the opportunity to stab myself with the needle. That experience is over for now though and we are going to see if it did any good and move on from here.

A prayer request: (besides the effectiveness of drugs on/in my body) Lisa and I have been kicking around the idea that if/ when (Lord willing) our house in Colorado sells, that we might be able to use that income to move potentially a lot closer to MDA and reduce the amount of time we do, and can, spend in traffic. However the cost goes up to about, if not more, than we are paying now with both locations and so we really need to consider if it is worth it all around. (The idea would also to be to get another room so people could visit us more comfortably, and keep the cost down.) Something we need to keep in our prayers.

Thanks Team for allowing me some time to vent a bit. I hope you found it funny. I'm suffering for your enjoyment here.




~B.
[ Prayer request? Contact me and let me pray for you! (All requests are private) ]

3 comments:

  1. It's like you're stuck in the former USSR, and I guess all of their divided countries now - you get there and you just wait for hours on end...I feel your pain!!!
    Doesn't it make you wonder WHY they make appointments, if you're going to wait for that long?
    Blessings to you. Hope you and Erik have fun in a couple of weeks.
    Natasha

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  2. Years ago I did a whole series of drawings about waiting. I spent a lot of time thinking about it (while waiting). Time is a troubling part of life. Trying to fill all of it with meaning seems like a useless compulsion, and yet wasting it seems well, so wasteful.

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  3. SO excited that Erik is coming to visit you! That's great!

    Something happened to my heart while at M.D. Anderson. To be in a hospital where EVERY patient is a cancer patient is overwhelming. My heart really broke for everyone there. I just wanted to know all of their stories. Now my heart just needs to break for all of the souls there that don't know where they might be spending eternity.

    Praying for positive results from your shots soon.

    Love,
    Mom

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