A guy walked in with an ace bandage wrapped around his calf. He's mexican, and had hair down to his ears. I thought he might be someone I know, but not really. He had x-ray's under his arm. The receptionist lady was nice. I say lady, but she was only a few years older than me. I imagine if I made the same mistake I did countless times while in Kentucky and said, "ma'am" to her, she would have been pissed. But she was nice, and seemed comfortable at her desk. Except for not speaking spanish. It took a few exchanges for me to gauge that his english was about as good as my spanish. It was weird, because he didn't have a thick accent or anything, so it was hard to tell how much was nerves, and how much he just couldn't understand.
"Hey man, puedo ayudar un poco."
"Ahh thanks bro, no se que ella quiere."
"Creo que necessitas el seguro, tienes la tarjeta?"
"No, no la tengo."
"Can you tell him that it's going to cost 146 dollars if he's not covered by insurance.?"
"Uhm, I think he understands that number. Tienes dinero? (ahh man, I suck at numbers)cien cuarenta y seis?"
"Sh-, no tengo dinero."
At this point I wondered how many times this exchange was occuring in California today. He had x-rays, so I'm thinking he'd seen a doctor pretty recently. Problem is this was Sutter, and odds are he got those done at Dominican.
"Should I tell him to talk to the business office?"
"Yeah can you do that? They should be able to sort out whether or not we can see him, or if he needs to go to another provider."
She drew a map on a piece of a paper, and I did my best to explain the instructions. Totally reminded me of all those direction exercises from Spanish II...a la izquierda. Good luck, bro.
Dr. Blakeslee was pretty cool. He went to Cal, so we had the mandatory schmoozing about all the wackos there. That schmoozing comes after I tell him that I take ROTC there, to explain injuries. From there he assumes I go to Cal, but I dislike wackos cause I'm in the army. Okies, I'm familiar with this. Schmoozing goes fine.
After a brief history of my ankles covering the last 3 years, and a synapse on the myriad of things my mom thought the chronic swelling could be a symptom of, Blakeslee was ready to go to work. He wanted to tap my ankle joints in several spots to get a good idea of what was going on down there. Yipee.
First he freezes the spots to numb them before the needle. I decided to watch for the first one to see how far the needle was going in. Yeah, a good few inches. There's not any real pain at first since everything's numb, but you get that weird feeling knowing that much needle is in your ankle joint. We were doing a good job keeping my mind off things with conversation, but then it just went dead. He was having difficulty pulling a good amount at one spot so he had to push a little deeper. Oh great, now I'm thinking about the needle in my joint. Think about something else:pine trees, car freshners, dorm rooms, katyana in san diego, pan de sal, pan de sal, pan de sal.
Every few minutes he would look at me and tilt the bed back to make sure I wouldn't pass out. I would've said I was fine, but I didn't want to be one of those macho guys that says that right before they faint.
After that it was time to hobble over to the santa cruz medical clinic lab to get a blood panel. The medical assistant brought a fistful of vials over, and just had to pick the smallest vein. It took forever.
That was like $1,000 worth of tests. So don't worry guys, I'm sticking it to the insurance companies.
Tomorrow is ankle squeeze and track time.
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