Ha ha ha. I am so clever with these blog post titles and things.

So today, I went to the X-ray place to get my bum knee (side effects may include literal bum knee) x-rayed, and let me tell you, it was good that Joe was with me.

See, I knew I would need my CareCard (for you out of towners, it’s the ID you use to get free health care in this province) in order to get the X-raying done, but I thought, no problem, I got my CareCard reissued a while back and it is right here in my wallet. I don’t even have to bother checking before we left for the radiology clinic.

And it was there! Wow, what a lame anecdote.

Seriously though, no, it was not there. I can’t fucking believe it, but somehow I have managed to lose another CareCard. I went through my entire wallet three times looking for the fucking thing, and it just ain’t there.

So I immediately began to panic. When my number was called, I went up to the intake window with my best ingratiatingly vulnerable smile and explained that I could not find my CareCard.

The intake lady said that they just could not take my x-rays without my CareCard or at least my CareCard number, and I went off in a huff and said to Joe “Well, we came here for no fucking reason, because they won’t do it. ”

But Joe had also heard my conversation with the intake lady, and had kept a cool and calm head about him, and so he realized that I had phoned his cell numerous times from my GP’s office, and had done so as recently as last Friday, and so his cell phone would retain my GP’s number.

So he called my GP and got the number, even doing a little acting so he could sound like he was making an official inquiry. I thought I was going to have to talk to my GP’s receptionist myself, and was not looking forward to it given the mood I was in, but Joe handled the whole thing for me, smooth as glass.

He even went over the number several times with the receptionist, something I would have lacked the assertion to do. Number now written on my intake form (the one I got from my GP), and after playing a little 20 Questions with the intake lady so she could be sure I was who I said I was, I finally got in.

Of course, before the actual x-raying, I had to go into a changing booth, drop trou, and don the Garment of Shame that they have making hospital patients wear ever since, back in the early days of modern medicine, they realized how hilarious it was.

You know the one. With the opening in the back? It’s a garment scientifically designed to cover as much of your body as it can while still leaving you feeling naked. One of the many joys of getting out of the hospital after having my gall bladder removed was being able to wear normal clothes and not feel so damned exposed all the time.

A lot of bad, bad shit happened to me during that hospital stay. Some day, I will write it all down for this blog.

I wasn’t in the Garment of Shame for long, though. The very nice Asian lady who was my radiologist was quite quick and professional but still very gentle about it all, something I appreciate perhaps a little more than your average patron.

See, my first exposure to the wonderful world of medical imagining was when I broke my arm as a little boy. The radiologist was a gruff, impatient man and I was a shy and hesitant child, and I guess I was not following his instructions fast enough, so instead he just grabbed my arm… the broken one… and shoved and twisted it around as he pleased.

This, needless to say, traumatized me for life, so that every time I have had to have dealings with radiology ever since, I get all tense and scared and anxious because I feel like someone is going to hurt me.

But no, the Asian lady was quite nice, and was gentle in positioning me this way and that in order to get the x-rays of both of my knees that my GP ordered.

All in all, the whole thing, from them calling my name to my returning to Joe in the waiting room, was probably 20 mins, tops.

So yay for private-public partnerships! The province, in its medical capacity, wants people x-rayed, and the privately owned, for-profit radiology clinics and labs want to get patients through the system as smoothly as possible because they are paid per patient, and it all works out to the patient’s benefit.

And they are gentle and patient-oriented both because that makes everything run more smoothly and because the last thing a privately owned business with a big government contract wants is a lot of complaints.

To me, that is how you do business right. The government is there to pay, to vet service providers, and to set the standards for patient care (and set them high). But by going through a private business, they get the efficiencies created by the profit motive. Best of both worlds.

So now those X-rays exist in the world, and they will make it to my GP’s office, and I will make an appointment to see him after my therapy session on Friday so that my dear friend and emotional saviour Joe does not have to make an extra trip.

After all, this knee thing is not good, but it’s not so acute that it absolutely has to be treated ASAP. It’s not like a toothache or an infection that will torment me until it is fixed.

In fact, to be honest, because of my extremely sedentary lifestyle, I can go hours without even noticing the issue.

It’s when I have to get up to pee, or eat, or whatever that I remember I got a busted peg.

Oh well. It will be fixed in the near future.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!