E.R.

I always go back and forth on how personal I should be in my blog. Sometimes I think it's ok and people appriciate it, perhaps thinking something like "good for Heather for being able to put it out there and not be afraid of admitting her feelings and all her personal shit!" Another part of me thinks people must think, "Jesus Heather, get a god damn diary already! ( I suppose the exclamation points are unnecissary. Whatever people's opinion of my blog are, I'm sure they aren't yelling them.) Blogging is only to be used stricklty for bragging about one's life and adventures, their hilarious wit, pretentious music library, and impressive vocabulary." If thats the case, I suppose I should just be occassionaly telling stories of the silly things that happen to me using the little wit I own, because as of right now my life and vocabulary, well suck. And even if I wanted to be pretentious about anything, I'm quite certain I couldn't pull it off-especially concerning music.

I had to go to the E.R. yesterday. My foot has been hurting me on and off for awhile now. There wasn't a specific thing that happened to it. It just hurts sometimes. I don't have health insurance so I wasn't doing anything about it. This last week though it has really been hurting. I should mention that I work as a dog walker and I walk a lot. So this whole foot hurting thing is a bigger problem then if I had a sit down job or something. Its the top of my foot that hurts, a few days ago I looked that up on the internet-never a good idea by the way. This time wasn't so bad though and it looked like I could possibly have a stress fracture. So since I have no insurance, I did what any person who is Heather Sapp would do-I went to Cook County E.R. The end.

JUST KIDDING!

I wasn't looking forward to going per se, but was curious and interested to see how this would go. I have been to many emergency rooms for various things, including once when I accidently swallowed glass and once in one of the scarier parts of Oakland, CA. where I was mugged right after I left, so I figured this couldn't be much worse then those situations. I got there and went up to the desk and this was my first conversation,

Me: "I need to see a doctor. There is something wrong with my left foot."
Lady: "What's wrong with it?"
Me: "I don't know. It hurts."
Lady: "What happened?"
Me: "I don't know."
Lady: "How do you know there is something wrong with it?"
Me: "Because it hurts and I don't think it is supposed to do that."
Lady: "But you didn't do anything to it?"
Me: "Well it hurts a lot so I obviously did something I just don't know what."
Lady: "Can you belive how much it's snowing out?"
Me: "WHAT?"
Lady? " It's really coming down out there. I need to pick up my husband, he's a doctor at Rush."
Me: "Cool. Can he look at my foot? IT FUCKING HURTS! "( sometimes I think I go from zero to pissed pretty quick)

She seemed pretty unfazed by my attitude though and went about slowly getting my information while she made small talk with a security guard who kept making lottery ticket jokes that only he laughed at. She then sent me to door 3. I walked through and some woman yelled right away "HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, YOUNG LADY! You need to stop here first for me to get your vitals. You can't just go where you want when you want." I should mention I was walking slowly and limping so I hadn't even reached a point where "hold it right there" was needed. Also "young lady"? I'm 30. Well, I guess I am actually ok with that. I certainly didn't have an "I can go where I want when I want" attitude going on. Does anybody when they are limping in pain? I was just walking through a door someone told me to walk through. So I took off my 300 layers of clothing and she took my blood preasure, temp, and I dont know, whatever else they take. Then she gave me a yellow card with my name, info, and the number 119 on it and sent me to some chairs with a bunch of people, most of whom looked in much worse shape then me. I sat down and heard Mike something followed by the number 74 called. Awesome. I sat in those chairs for a long time. Without getting too much into it, I've been going through a hard time with the whole being single thing. Everyone in this waiting room was very strange and odd looking for all kinds of reasons, but the thing was, not a single one of them was alone. For every weird looking, crazy, drunk, totally fucked up or whatever person that was in there, they all had an equivalent parner next to them to support, comfort, hold a throw up bowl, or whatever. I did not. I couldn't help but think, OH COME THE FUCK ON!??! Oh well. So I got bored after a bit and starting texting friends hypothetical questions. It was a good idea at first and I got a few funny replies. But then I texted a handful of them "If you had to go to an island and could only take 5 people with you, who would you take? It seemed like a fun question, but everyone was texting back their boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, wives, kids, parents, and family (and rightly so) and then they all asked me who I would take. I didn't know. I still don't. I've never had much in the family department and as mentioned above, am single. So again, without getting to into it, the questions ended up makeing me sad. The point is, when you are alone and hurt in a weird ER, (weird ER? that might be an oxymoron...) self reflecting about your own life is a TERRIBLE idea. HORRIBLE! Don't do it. So at this point I was hurting, impatient, and very sad. Well done, Heather. On the other hand, the ER can be great for perspective. I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself and someone was rushed by on a gurney after being hit by a car. It looked scary. So that temporarily put a stop to the sad thing.

So I was still sitting and waiting, going back and forth between feeling sad and lucky when a drunk polish man threw up at my feet. Then he looked up at me, said something in ploish, winked at me, and stumbled away. I think he was flirting with me. Sigh. The strange two dudes to my left kept telling each other the lottery ticket jokes they clearly heard from the security guard. Then they called my name and number! I went to the window and the lady asked me all the same questions the other lady who was super concerned about the snow and her husband asked me. Then she sent me to a different waiting room where she said they would register me. What?! What can you do though, so I went and sat and waited, again. As I was waiting there, I watched a 50 year old past herion using lady flirt with a sexy young dude that was taking her blood. I know she was a heroin user because she told me all about it when I was waiting in the first room. That part was kind of fun because I bet that guy gets flirted with by all kinds of people. Also her way of flirtng was pretty great. She said all of the following, "You sure are handsome! You have stong hands!" Oh lordy, look at those eyes! I could ride that smile for days!" and my personal favorite, "Will you buy me a sandwich?"

I didn't have to wait as long this time, they asked me questions pertaining to how or whether I could pay for this, to which I said, "I have no money, no insurance, and I'm at Cook County. Back to being sad. She sent me to another waiting room. Sweet Jesus! This one was huge and full of people. There was a vending machine though. I bought a mountain dew that came in a blue can. It was gross. Some guy got mad at me randomly at one point, called me a cunt, and then told the security guard that I stole his back pack. The security guard, who seemed irritated to have to deal with this, as would I, asked if I stole it. I said no, it was mine. So this old weird dude was insistant that this back pack was his. The guard asked what was in it, to which he replied "all my shit man!" I said, "a binder, a ridiculous amount of of keys, a laptop with a sticker that says Claifornia is overrated, a purple broken MP3 player, a paycheck for $12.73 cents made out to me from a vet hospital, a cell phone with too many pictures of cats on it, birth control, and a random amount of M&Ms because I spilled them in there earlier. I opened it and showed it to him. Then the weird dude actually said, "Bitch must of taken my stuff out and put her stuff in! Check the trash cans!" The security guard just walked away after that. The weird dude sat down and just kept staring at me really creepy like. Now I'm scared. Then they called my name! I was actually taken to an exam room this time. At this point I was starting to forget why I was there. So I sat in there for a pretty long time and almost or maybe fell sleep. While in there though I was able to overhear a lot of the staff conversation. I heard one doctor say "Hey! I come here and you ladies put me to work and then I go home and my wife puts me to work!" Everyone chuckled loudly. I don't know why but I always get uncomfortable when cliche or corny joks go over well. I suppose it is because I'm thinking , "where the hell am I?" They also talked about how they have to stay if the snow keeps their replacemnts from coming in. One nurse said, "Oh hell no! I'm done taking care of these fools!" Then a doctor finally came in my room! Our conversation,

Doctor: "What brings you in today?"
Me: "My foot has been bothering me for a few months off and on."
Doctor: "What happened? Did you fall or have an accident?"
Me: "No, I don't know what started it."
Doctor: "It just started hurting one day?" (skeptical)
Me: "Yep."
Doctor: "Why didn't you come in sooner?"
Me: "Well it wasn't this bad at first and it kept coming and going, also I have no money or insurance so I was hoping it would go away. But this last week it really started to hurt and I couldn't really walk correctly."
Doctor: "And nothing happend to trigger it. No falls or accidents?"
Me: "Nope, nothing" (confidently)
Doctor: Ok, well lets have a look.

He looked at both of my feet, to compare them. He said the foot did look a little swollen but he didn't think anything was broke. He wanted to get some Xrays though to be sure and gave me a gown to change into and left. I don't know why the gown was necissary. He came back in to tell me where to go and this is when he noticed a bunch of tiny little bruises on my legs.

Doctor: "What are those from?"
Me: "Oh, I went skiing last weekend and it was my first time and sucked at it, so I fell down a bunch. The mountain won!" trying to make a joke that he did not laugh at.
Doctor: Afer a moment of silence and just staring at me, "and you don't think that had anything to do with this?"
Me: "Well I had this foot problem before that though."
Doctor: "Probably worth mentioning. Why would you go skiing if you had a foot problem?"
Me: "I had never been before, plus It wasn't bothering me at all the few days before. Well it was that day we left, but I think that is because I fell down the stairs in my apartment that morning."
Doctor: "Are you in an abusive relationship?"
Me: "Who me?!" I have no idea why I said who me? He was obviously talking to me, but I was so shocked. I think it came across like I was trying to hide something though. He gave me what I assume is their standard battered women your safe, we can help speech. Or part of it, but I interupted him to say "I swear I'm not being abused. I'm just clumsy and I didn't mention these things because the foot thing had already been an issue so I didn't think they were related. "
Doctor: Ok, well let's go a head and get it xrayed. But to be clear, nothing ELSE has happened in the last few months or so that you can think of that could could be related?"
Me: "Nope. Oh wait! I was hit by a car a few months ago on my bike. I forgot about that. That might be when this started." Sooooooo, do you ever have moments when you're talking out loud and you listen to yourself like it's someone else and you're thinking "what the hell is wrong with you, moron?!" You're trying to justify yourself to someone, but you realize you've lost credibility? You also realize you can't justify it anyway so you should just shut up. So now I feel dumb. He was looking at me with a certain kind of face at this point. Now I was feeling, stupid, (obviously) emotional, stressed, etc. and I basically lost the small filter that I have and words just fell out of my mouth, "I don't kow. I fall down a lot. I get hit by cars. Yes,cars, not car. I have bad luck. It's not fair. Things hit me on the head or sometimes my head hits things-maybe why I'm an idiot. My foot really hurts. My life blows. I've been in this ER for what feels like days. Do you have a crying room or something? Can I just go in there? " I don't want to be here any more . All I've had today is a lot of coffee and part of a blue mountain dew. I lost it somewhere in all the waiting rooms. I didn't like it that much anyway. I'm hungry. I'm tired. That nurse was right, I am a fool! I don't have anybody to take to an island with me! Someone who was hit by a car was rushed by me and I still didn't consider that that's why my foot is hurt. Apparently I can't connect dots! Some guy threw up at my feet and then winked at me and that's the most flirting I've seen a while and I don't even know for sure he was flirting. I WANT TO GO HOME!"
Doctor: "Hey hey, it's all right," pause, looks at chart, "Heather." Let's just go ahead and xray your foot and go from there. Hands me a tissue and leaves. Even though I am completely alone in this room, it's an awkward silence.

I found the xray room and was seen pretty fast. The xray part kind of cheered me up. It seemed so easy. I say that because I used to work at a vet hospital and when I worked there they had this old xray machine from, I don't 1920. It was so fickle and, well just shitty. So yeah, I was comparing my foot xray that took a couple seconds to this time that me and my friend Sean were trying to xray a 90 pound yellow lab's abdomen-which means you have to hold them completely still on the table on their back, and it took over an hour. That's a whole story on it's own though. So as silly as it sounds, comparing the two situations cheered me up somehow.

The doctor came back. At this point I was much more composed, not that it matters anymore. When you act that ridiculous in front of someone, there is no comeback. You're done. He said there were no breaks in the foot and he believes I sprained it and keep reinjuring it with all the accidents. I guess that makes sence. He gave me a wrap thing and told me to stay off it when I can, ice it, take a few days off work, and maybe don't be clumsy. Oh! The doctor thinks he's funny. I was discharged and sent on my way. I know this sounds a little weird, but after all that, I sort of wished the diagnosis would have been something more. Not that I want a broken anything, but the entire trip seemed pretty much like nothing but an emotional rollercoaster of crap, embarrassment, vomit, and gross mountain dew.

I want something different then this.

I think this banana had a better day then I did.