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Friday, March 6. 2009
Waiting Impatiently
Okay, I’ve been goofing off for far too long. Almost a week. Monday (March 2, 2009) I had the angiogram, spending the entire day in the friendly and gentle care of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in La Jolla. We have to give props to the employees of the V.A. medical system. They are over-worked and under-staffed and yet they give everyone in their care plenty of attention and diligence.Ever been to Hooters? When you stop for a meal (or whatever) at Hooters, every waitress in the place stops by your table, says hi, asks if you need anything, leaves her scribble on that little card and if you ask for something, makes sure it gets delivered to your table.
Same thing at the V.A. Medical Center — except the nurses can be male and they don’t wear skimpy orange shorts and tight tank tops accentuating their cleavage. At each stage of the process, as I lay nekkid on a gurney waiting for something to happen, a medical person would stop by, ask how I was doing and answer every question with a smile.
Just the day before I had been at Hooters in Pacific Beach, my favorite of the Hooters I’ve visited in Sandy Eggo.
It was a pleasant experience, considering the task of the day was to cut open my femoral artery, stick a sheaf into it with a camera on a tube snaking up to the arteries around my heart. And then, if the doctors thought it appropriate, place stents in those arteries to keep them from clogging. They gave me great drugs! I didn’t even know they were actually doing the procedure until they were nearly done!
The worst part came afterward when I had to lay flat on a hospital bed for five hours while the incision in my artery closed sufficiently to allow me to walk just enough to get to and from a wheel chair, then down to my friend Dan’s pickup truck and then home.
Here’s props to Dan, as well as John, Eric, Mike, Mike and everyone who has kept in touch through FaceBook and on the phone: their love knows no bounds! If by some chance my appreciation and gratitude equals that love, my life will have achieved some measure of purpose.
So, back to Monday’s procedure. The fine doctors of the V.A. and UCSD medical centers decided, after viewing all the photos taken inside my arteries, that stents wouldn’t be a prudent choice. I would need open-heart surgery to replace the existing coronary plumbing with new. Damn! Not the news I was hoping to hear.
That led to a whole ’nother reason to worry and inflict anxiety on myself: the wait for them to schedule the procedure. It’s the V.A. and they have their own pace. In most respects, I prefer the V.A. medical system over the private sector, mainly because the V.A. is motivated by the quality of health of its patients, whereas when it comes to health insurance, their motivation is the bottom line for their stockholders.
The one area where the V.A. lags though is in areas like scheduling procedures, such as my upcoming heart fixer-upper. You have to call and let them know you are still waiting to be scheduled. Much of this is due because during the time the government was under total control of the Republican Party, the budget for the Veterans Administration was being cut and because of Bush’s war in Iraq, the number of patients was increasing exponentially. So, it isn’t really the staff falling down on the job, they’re just under-staffed.
And, as I found out nearly four years ago, with the number of veterans coming home from the war in Iraq in need of medical care, I am no longer a priority. But enough of the politics of it all.
These days, while waiting to find out when this procedure will take place, I spend my time watching television and cruising around the Internets, all the usual sites and features you might imagine I view, plus a few that might surprise you.
There is of course FaceBook and Twitter, plus three forums that shall remain anonymous here and the odd political forum that requires registration from me so my sarcasm can be duly recorded.
Sarcasm … ever have someone reply to your sarcasm with the rejoinder: “Sarcasm is the resort of those who lack the perspicacity required for offering something of an intelligent nature.” It’s funny and I had to ask the writer how long it took to find the word “perspicacity” and if he knew what the word meant. He never replied.
Quickly defining, “perspicacity” means: Acuteness of perception, discernment, or understanding.
No, sarcasm, at least in the context of this particular exchange, was the resort of someone (me) having to read yet again people whining about women who choose to get tattoos, piercings and — horror of horrors — breast implants!Funnier still, this person’s online handle is Starshadow. Really? This adult then wrote he was leaving the forum to devote his time to playing a video game called Spore. His online signature was a quote from Hans Solo from Star Wars: going into hyper drive wasn’t like crop-dusting or some such utterance. That pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the person.
The forum is based on what some would consider prurient matters, so it is open to adults only. Nudity and sex are often discussed. Sounds like MySpace actually … but it isn’t. This particular thread was started by someone who bemoaned women with tattoos, and the inference was that Playboy sought out women with tattoos over women without body art.
The logical reason for so many Playboy models having tats was either over-looked or just not obvious enough to the whiners: Many, if not most, of the women who aspire to be in Playboy have body art. Tattoos and exotic piercings — along with bare pubic skin — are the current fashion so many women, whether they choose to model nude or not, have them. But, it’s an Internet forum so logic isn’t a common virtue.
There’s another poster in this forum that believes he looks like a stalker. This is funny because he’s a Disney fan and often has Mickey Mouse in pirate garb as his avatar. I kid you not.
Then there’s the guy who goes by the moniker of Rapax! His avatar is someone wearing a gas mask. Rapax, for those who don’t know, is Latin for Predator. The Rapax Legion in ancient Rome was famous for it’s nearly insane bravery and was one of those most heralded legions of all. Mr. Predator, as I like to call him, obviously has self-esteem issues and needs a name, an obscure moniker to be sure, to compensate for his “real” life inadequacies. My online moniker is Timinator. I have my friend Pete to thank for that. About ten years ago when we worked at a software company he tagged me with that nickname and it’s stuck ever since. I don’t recall why he gave me that name, other than it sounds quite familiar to the Arnold Schwarzenegger character, but I don’t look a bit like the Governator at any age.
I still think it’s funny, although about eight years ago when I e-mailed a popular radio program here in San Diego (Dave, Shelley and Chainsaw) Dave made fun of it. On the air.
Oh jeez, 1,200 words and I’ve gotten so far off topic I’ve forgotten what it was in the first place. Oh yeah, waiting for my heart operation. So, I’m filling the time uselessly in some cases, goofing off in fact, but now it’s time to be a writer again.
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