No Yoga Today. Urgent Care Instead.

My alarm went off for yoga. When I had problems rolling over to shut it off and then had to use the bedpost to stand up in order to get to the bathroom, I figured I probably couldn't make it from the car to the door of the yoga studio, so I went back to bed, hoping to rest it off a bit more.

When I got up later, I realized that finishing the house for our party was NOT going to happen with me in the state I was in. I called Kaiser to set up an appointment.

They don't take appointments on New Year's Eve. They only offer urgent care.

Here's how much fun it is to have Kaiser (don't get me wrong, I'm grateful I HAVE insurance, but still this is ridiculous).

10:00am Urgent care opens
10:15am I arrive at Urgent Care and take a number.

My number is 40. They are on 10.

The number determines the order that you get to speak to the triage nurse, who determines who needs to be treated first and if there are any labs that can be done in the meanwhile.

11:20am My number is called to speak to the triage nurse (note: this is 65 minutes after I arrived--thank goodness I wasn't puking).

11:22am Triage nurse sends me to the receptionist, where I have to make a $35 copay, since it's Urgent Care instead of my regular $15 copay when it's not. Argh.

11:55am Physician's Assistant calls me back, weighs me, blood pressure, and asks, to my surprise, if I'm still not smoking. I tell her I don't smoke at all, and she says, "Good for you sticking with it." I then tell her I've never smoked ANYTHING in my life (since inhaling fumes from the kitchen fire doesn't count in my book). She told me my health record indicates that I'm a "former" smoker. I again stress that I have NEVER smoked anything, EVER. She said she'd update my record, but I have to say it concerns me as to how that got there in the first place.

12:00pm Doctor visits me. Actually really liked her as she was very sympathetic and flat out said, "What medication will help you most?" (I'd explained that neither Tramadol, which gave me headaches, or Vicodin, which doesn't help me, don't work). I told her I didn't like the idea of asking for medication, but Percoset helped in the past to get me over the wall when I'm acute like this.

12:02pm Take prescription to pharmacy then go over to the lab for overdue bloodwork.

12:05pm Get bloodwork done

12:15pm Get prescription and leave.

Grand total of 2 hours, of which 100 minutes were spent waiting--the first 65 of which probably could have been avoided if they'd had an efficient triage nurse. (She was very nice, just VERY slow.)

Came home, took drugs, laid down. At 4:00 my husband woke me and asked if I was going to work on the house.

Went into panic mode. This means that instead of cleaning, I bulldozed junk into a couple of rooms we decided to close off.

House looked better than it has in ages (with the exception of the bulldoze pits) and we had a great time.