Pre-Op Bee-Bop

I asked a friend to program my GSA (is that right? That thing with the lady's patient voice??) - - so I could find St. Anthony's Hospital in Gig Harbor. Another friend Googled a map that was focused in on the hospital. I forgot the map at home and didn't realize I had to turn the GSA ON. So. Blind, blind as always, I took off towards Gig Harbor. I grew up around here. I know Gig Harbor. I have a cousin who lives close by, on Fox Island.

I found the hospital Approximately, as they say, five minutes before my appointment time. It's a lovely hospital, all new and sparkly and clean feeling. Like not too many people have died there yet. Like sticks and stones can't break its bones. I get my blood pressure checked (again)....it's ten points higher on my right side than on my left. So why am I not a "right-winger"? And, yes, my heart. "Sounds like you have a heart murmur," said the lab tech. "We've been together since birth," I said, making myself comfortable in the loungish padded chair. She smiled. "Together since birth," she mumbled, "that's rich".

The lady with all the papers to be signed ("MORE?" I groaned, "More," she said, but with a nice smile on her face - - knew how to read lab results. She looked at my blood pressure from "that time". "Oh my God," she said, "you really crashed." "I really did," I agreed. She padded my hand. "It's good that you're here," she said, "you'll have a private room." "Oh, baby," I said, "that's what I like to hear."

A private room. Perhaps with a view. Watch out, E.M. Forster, watch out, Virginia Woolf.

I passed everything. She called Bainbridge Safeway to find out the exact milograms each of my three medications contained. Precise, very. She called the clinic and asked more questions. I sat there, quietly. 'Ask more, ask more,' I demanded of her from my deepest Self. She was a large young woman who seemed fearless. She was my warrior. She stood up for me. Why HADN'T the anesthesiologist been shown the results of my last surgery? Couldn't they SEE something was WRONG?

Oh, baby, baby, I think ah'm fallin' in love again.

"You'll be getting a refund tomorrow," she said to me. "They promised me." She smiled. "Spend it frivolously. You could have died."

Oh, that outpatient Clinic is in the merde, I thought to myself. They really DID screw up.

There's really not very much to say. When things go well, writing something interesting is a cozy armchair in France and there just is not much to write about a cozy armchair in France, unless you are contorting yourself while making wild, passionate love - - or dying - - and I was doing neither. I was just sitting there, happy to be anywhere and especially to be happy to be amongst a hospital staff who wasn't treating me like one of those fainting goats.

Poor fainting goats.

So I drove home, home to more phone calls and e-mails, home to more episodes of "NIP AND TUCK" which I am now thoroughly hooked on even though it isn't near as good as The Soopranos or Carnival or any of those other HBO greats.

Safe (hopefully). A private room. Body and mind. Mind is that which thinks but cannot move. Matter is that which moves but cannot think. The mind and body interacting through some gland or other, maybe the pineal gland. Yeah, the pineal. That's how to get things accomplished.