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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Scared of the known and unknown

Yesterday, I saw Raabiah and Janan for the first time since Monday's surgery. When they came through the door after Jeyda's graduation, all I could see was speed and grime. They were just excited to see me, and moving a bit less cautiously that would have made me comfortable. They were actually pretty clean (for them), but new-found germophobia led me to see stickiness and dirt where there was probably just brown skin and a little ash. Someone had prepared them, though, and they dutifully went straight upstairs, changed their clothes and washed their hands. Bless their hearts! The hugs turned out to be gentle and safe.

Last night, I went to the one place I'd hoped to avoid in all of this... the Johns Hopkins Emergency Department. OMG! They are SO not set up to help the walk-in citizens of Baltimore City! To the contrary, it seems like there just might be a concerted effort to be as ineffectual with emergencies as the hospital is known to be great for the rich and rare problem coming from all ends of the earth.

So, all day long, I'd been feeling like my head was swelling. The ringing in my ears (a regular sound pre-surgery) came back briefly, I felt a bit wobbly when I stood, and my head was feeling numb and throbbing simultaneously. Tannaz had come over in the morning and encouraged me to call the doctor. When they finally got back to me, they said they would have to take a look in order to tell me whether or not things were okay. They said if I went to Emergency, they would call for the neuro doc. Somehow, that memo was delayed by several hours, however. Nevertheless, four hours, a crackhead meltdown, several germy coughs, a face mask and a pint of hand sanitizer later, I was sent home with that ever so blessed and welcome label: normal.


1 comment:

  1. We all love Tannaz and her excellent advice/bullying.

    ReplyDelete