a breather from the heavy stuff

Wow, I totally feel wrapped in a hug from the comments you all left on my last post. Who needs a casserole when you have a community like this? Thanks for all your kind words, hugs, tears, acknowledgement, and understanding. I am overwhelmed (in a very good way) to see others show up from links on your own blogs too. Thank you. Really, thank you. The balloon release was a good step forward for us and feeling the blog love really made it all feel so much more "real" and accepted.

Because I don't want to keep everything so emotional here all the time, I thought I would lighten the mood and share a quick (who am I kidding?) story about a doctor appointment I had while I was out on my blogosphere break.

Apologies to those of you who have already heard this...



The date: June 25, 2009

The time: ~3:20PM

The location: U.CLA Medical Center (downtown LA)

The really really old background: The office I go to is a hodge-podge of ob/gyn specialties including infertility and urogynocology (why I'm now there). It is the same office (and by office I mean, the exact same office staff and waiting room) we started our infertility treatments in and where we did our lone disaster of an IUI. Going there somewhat takes my breath away sometimes on those really "off" days and I have haphazardly run into my old RE 3 times now and gotten that "Don't I know you look?" each time (to which I completely ignore).

The way too much information long term background: My bladder is screwed up...apparently really screwed up I'm learning. The medical term for it is Interstitial Cystitis (or Painful Bladder Syndrome). The result is chronic bladder pain (feels like a fire breathing inferno in my pelvic region) with frequency and urgency (because the pain wasn't fun enough on it's own). My "choice" was to treat it naturally (physical therapy and diet modification - neither of which were effective) until we were done attempting to make babies. Now, I am able to take pain meds (9 little nerve pain pills a day) along with receiving bladder instillations (a cocktail of meds mixed in an IV bag and delivered to my bladder by way of a catheter).

The appointment before background: My previous appointment was a horrifying experience of being taught to self-catheterize myself (when we still thought my insurance was even remotely worth a shit and I could do these treatments in the privacy of my own home). I brought the hubby for moral support which meant there were 3 people (M, doctor, nurse) staring at my lady bits. Okay so this part was nothing new. The horrifying part was that they made me look too. Ewww. Then 2 of those people played "director" by holding a mirror to all my glory and telling me exactly where to touch myself while pointing out which hole this tube should go in. OMG, so not fun. I will never complain about being on the hidden side of the paper cover-up again after this. Seriously, this was a whole new level of humiliation.

The weekend before background: I went kayaking with a girlfriend and sunburned the hell out of my legs. In fact, I think hell might be cooler. Layers upon layers continued to peel for 3 weeks, my feet were so swollen that I could only wear flip-flops, and my right front calf had blisters so bad it was considered a "major" second degree burn which "they" recommend seeking immediate medical attention for. Right. Apparently one of the very rare side effects to my pain med is sun sensitivity. On that crap side of statistics again I guess. Really that would have been a nice warning BEFOREHAND. Yes, I was wearing (and reapplying) SPF 30...

The urogyno doctor: HAWT (In no way shape or form is this important for the story, but damn...)

The story (finally, huh?): I arrived outside U.CLA after escaping work early (feat #1), trekking 10 min out to the parking lot in 100+ degree heat with my nasty sunburn (feat #2), and battling 45+min of traffic to get downtown (feat #3). The right-hand turning lanes around U.CLA were walls of news and radio vans with giant satellites. There were crowds of people and media forming on the grass, helicopters flying overhead, and traffic directors in full force.

The extra hiccup of all the commotion already had me late for my appointment and I could tell from all the nervous excitement from everyone inside that "something big" was going on. Duh, obviously. I asked the receptionist what all the hub-bub was about and she whispered, "xxx Jackson died."

"Who?" as I missed the first name.

"Michael Jackson had a heart attack and died here today."

"Oh. Wow." Fuck, I am never going to get out of this place now.

His time of death was 2:29PM, less than an hour before I arrived.

I got called back for vitals and to drain my bladder (on my own thank you very much). I headed into the examining room and felt so nice and proud of myself for wearing a comfy dress (mandatory attire for leg blisters) requiring just a drop of the duds and a kick-off of the flip flops.

I hopped up on the table, covered up with the paper blanket, and waited...

Thirty short seconds into my wait, the fire alarm goes off.

La La La La. This isn't happening. Just sit here.

I hear 2 nurses outside saying that we need to go. "Well I have a patient in here."

You tell her, Lissa. We're just going to do this procedure real quick-like and I'll be on my way.

Door opens. "Sorry, Brenda, but we need to evacuate. Please get dressed."

Fuck.

In my effort to quickly get the duds back in place I managed to tear open a couple of those leg blisters which caused the release of enough expletives to make even the most seasoned of sailors blush.

Of course the elevator was off limits so I hobbled down the stairwell in all my leg oozing glory with the masses of people and into the grassy knoll of lunatics MJ fans and cameras galore. I try to call M because "Really?", but he was stuck in a meeting and couldn't talk. I notice one too many little camcorders scanning the area and found a place out of the beaten path trying to avoid ending up on You Tube.

After 20 minutes of firetruck fiasco added to the mix, we were allowed back inside.

Re-empty bladder. (Don't judge. Those dribbles are necessary.) Undress attempt #2. Back on table. Here we go.

Nurse and doctor enter. Doctor looks at the catheter the nurse chose and asked her to get the much smaller red one instead. As she left, he motioned with outstretched hands and wide eyes how large the monster was that she wanted to insert.

To get the solution from the IV bag into the catheter, a giant 60cc syringe is placed into the top of the catheter to act as a funnel, a cap on the bag is cut open, and the solution is dumped in. Easy peasy.

Nurse cut the cap, proceeded to spill part of the solution on my lady bits and subsequently up my butt crack.

My cell phone was now ringing from inside my purse over on the chair. I know it is M trying to figure out what is going on, but I am clearly in no position to answer.

The solution wasn't draining so she used the syringe plunger to push it in while I bit my tongue wanting to expain this wonderful thing called gravity. Because the syringe is only 60ccs and the bag o' meds is 100ccs, there was more to go. Instead of removing the entire syringe, she tried to just pull out the plunger. Doctor so patiently and kindly (but a bit excitedly) tells her to stop because she is about to suction all the solution that just went into my bladder right back out.

Despite the voices in my head telling me to just take over the part of the nurse because they showed me how to do this part already and I am certain I am more competent, I kept quiet and managed not to kick anyone in the teeth. Major accomplishment for me at this stage of the game.

I arrived in the parking garage, paid my $11 crackhead fee, and proceeded to sit in line for 45 minutes to move 1 level up to the street. Of course, now I had no cell phone reception and was left to amuse myself watching a few nut jobs in the garage.

Case #1 involved a guy just entering the garage. He stopped opposite me and asked if there was another way out of here, road raging off when I said "I don't know". Ummmm, sure buddy. I know all the secret passageways, but chose to sit in this line anyway for "fun".

Case #2 involved a woman getting out of her car to scream at the man who she claimed didn't let her in. We were barely moving AT ALL. I highly doubt being one car earlier in the lineup was going to help. I rolled my window up after this one.

Case #3 involved a man trying to enter the line from the spot his car had been parked in. Crazy lady #2 refused to let him in and began screaming out her window that she didn't care and had been waiting too damn long already.

Ahhh yes, lovely downtown LA.

When I finally arrived back to the masses of people, there were morons MJ fans everywhere, wandering across the streets despite the attempts of traffic directors to keep them at bay.

I rolled my windows down a bit to listen to people dramatically exclaiming they "couldn't believe Michael was really gone..." while hugging one another.

Windows went back up to mute my uncontrollable laughter because I'm sure you all were so close prior to his death. Come on, people.

In the drama of it all, I managed to miss my on ramp and had to turn around in the midst of rush hour traffic all while trying to find a radio station that was not doing an MJ tribute. I was so over this day already.

Finally 1.5 hours and many rocking ipod tunes later I pulled into our driveway suddenly feeling the most sane I had in months.