Went to the wound care clinic today.
They made me take of my foxy mask and put on a cheap disposable one they provided, just like in the ER.
Apparently that’s the rule now in medical facilities. Dammit.
I just bought my foxy mask and it’s really cute! Anyhow.
Oh, and the new Coastal Health Center is freaking amazing. Everything seems professional without seeming oppressive or clinical or both. The hallways are carpeted and the color scheme is soothing and friendly. Everything seems fresh and clean and neat and tidy without seeming harsh or hostile or “antiseptic”.
I mean, obviously, I want medical facilities to be literally antiseptic. I want them to be as antiseptic as possible.
I mean antiseptic in a bad way. Like, hostile to life.
You get the idea.
After finding the place (which was NOT labeled Wound Care Clinic anywhere… good thing I met a nurse who told me where it was!), I waited in the “waiting room” (read : random bit of hallway with some chairs in it) for a few minutes before a nice nurse named Shirley came out and told me to follow her.
Once in the…. let’s say multi-purpose health facility, she had me wash my hands (with actual soap and water… what a luxury!) and then follow her into an exam room. She looked at my foot, and concluded, unsurprisingly, that there was nothing she could due with the problem area of my foot because it was not, technically, a wound.
Well duh. It’s currently a very calloused area with maybe a little bleeding underneath. It hurts to walk on it and it is definitely not healthy, but it ain’t a wound.
I was already wondering why the heck Young Doctor Jenssen sent me there in the first place. I think he was just nervous and unsure of himself so he was throwing stuff at me just in case.
Obviously, should it become a wound, I will be back there pronto. Possibly via another trip to the ER if it is painful and/or scary enough.
I told Shirley I was going to get an appointment with a podiatrist. And I am. The one that shares an office with my GP.
I think his name is Doctor Lu.
I figure it’s time to have a specialist look at it.
I just hope I don’t end up accidentally kicking him. My feet are very sensitive and I have kicked the air a few times when self-examining and I would hate to end up booting this poor person in the head when they are palpating my tender tootsies.
Besides, until I get my diabetes under control, it’s probably good to have a podiatrist in my coven of specialists because more foot nastiness is sure to come.
Still working on the diabetes thing. Right now, I have all my components for injecting my insulin like I am supposed to, but I have a lot of mindless aversion to hack my way through before I can actually act sensibly.
Man I hate that stuff.
More after the break,
The story continues
After the wound care clinic, Julian drove me to my bank. And miracle of miracles, there was almost no lineup. So I got to go in and cashez le cheque.
If, like previous times, there had been a line going out of the door and around the side of the building, I would have said fuck it and cashed my cheque another day.
With my sore foot and how the cold air hurts my lungs, there was no way I was going to wait in a long line out in the cold of winter.
Or what passes for it here.
After that. I had my Sunday shopping to do. The shopping I didn’t get done yesterday because I was too sick to go out.
So we did that at Pricemart, which is across two parking lots from my bank.
We drove there. I’m not making THAT mistake again. Walking that route damn near killed me and is how I discovered how fucking feeble I am now.
Shopping went well. Very tiring for me, but that’s no longer a surprise. Whatever.
I’m fading away and I can’t even make myself care. Not really.
But I got my usual stuff. Trail mixes, Smartfood popcorn, my diet sodas, and my sugar free cookies from good ol’ Voortman.
Being diabetic has made me almost pathetically grateful to any company that makes a decent sugar free dessert type thing.
Once I had my stuff, I went hunting for a pre-cooked turkey for our Xmas dinner. What with the Covid stalking the land, we won’t be going to Joe’s family’s house for Xmas dinner, so we will have to make it happen on our own.
Sadly, Pricemart not only did not have pre-cooked turkeys, they seemed entirely unfamiliar with the basic concepts involved.
You’d think we’d asked where to find the cat’s milk.
In fact, they didn’t have many turkeys at all. Just one medium bin of them.
And, weirdly, they all said “Fresh young turkey” on them. Like, I get the “fresh” part but it seems very odd to insist they be young.
It’s a tad suspect, if you ask me.
And I have to confess, as the Asian man behind the butcher’s counter was disbelieving the existence of pre-cooked turkeys and I was standing in an area marked “Asian frozen foods” in enormous letters on the wall, I felt a touch of cultural isolation.
I am used to seeing enormous bins of turkeys of all sizes when I go to the supermarket this time of year.
Anyhow, no turkey for us. Then, when I got home, I get this phone call from the head nurse from the wound care clinic, who proceeded to explain to me everything Shirley had explained to me back at the damn clinic, only even slower.
That’s the thing about explaining things in a language that is not your native tongue. You have a much smaller vocabulary than a native speaking of said language, and so you have to use a lot more words to explain things.
Reminds me of the Simple English Wikipedia.
And that’s it for the medical portion of my day.
Tune in tomorrow for whatever the fuck is going to go wrong next. Because, as is always the case,
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,