Joan's Busy Day
Today was such a wacky day that I felt the need to chronicle it in full detail...But first we need some background.
Background info #1: My post from last week about Ruthie's defective DreamLite toy and my attempts to get a replacement.
Background info #2: I guess I haven't mentioned here that we are moving. I'm buying a new, bigger condo, in the same town where we currently live. After we've finished the purchase and moved, I'll be selling the condo where we live now. I shall refer to the woman who is selling me her condo as EH.
Background info #3: Yesterday when I was dropping the kids off at winter vacation camp, I saw a cat meowing outside the door of a house. Thinking to knock on the door and alert the residents that their cat wanted in, I went up to the porch and opened the screen door, and when I put my hand down to nudge the cat out of the way, it bit me. Not a very bad bite, two small spots that barely broke the skin -- but did break the skin, and bled a little bit. The people in the house weren't home, not then, not that evening, and not this morning either.
Okay, so today! It was pouring with torrential rain this morning, which was ridiculous, but from hearing about the crazy amounts of snow that this same storm has brought/is bringing to other regions, I'm grateful that we just had rain.
I get the kids up and dressed and fed, pack lunches, out the door. They're supposed to be going on field trips to indoor playgrounds and roller rinks and such today, with their vacation camp, so they're fairly chipper. I drop them off in the pouring rain and try again to knock on the door of the house where the cat bit me, but no answer. So I set off for work. I have bandages on my two little bite wounds; they really aren't that bad, but since they're on my hand, they keep brushing against things and getting irritated, so I covered them up.
I get to the office and even before I have my morning cup of tea, I see a set of emails between my lawyer, EH's lawyer, my real-estate agent, and EH's agent. We've been exchanging emails about scheduling the closing, which was supposed to take place tomorrow. Then my lawyer emails that by the way, the Registry of Deeds is very backed up since it's the end of the month and the year, so if we hold the closing at 1:30 tomorrow as planned, it might not be possible to get it recorded until Monday. This would DEFINITELY suck for me, considering that I have already made all kinds of plans for work that needs to be done on the place, items that need picking up from hither and yon and delivering to the new place, etc.
So I get up and go make myself a cup of tea and come back to my desk and re-read the email. Then my temper gets the best of me and I fire off a reply saying that it would have been nice if someone had mentioned this, oh, about six weeks ago when we first agreed on the closing date. The seller, EH, really pushed for Dec 28th as the closing date because she clearly really wanted to finish the deal before the end of the year. And I was fine with that. Anyway, my reply was probably overly snarky and I regretted it almost immediately, but oh well.
Then EH's agent emails that EH could come and sign the papers today, if that would speed things along. The lawyer's assistant/paralegal emails that this is doable, and by the way I should confirm to everyone that I have the cashier's check in the amount of *mumblemumble* an enormous sum that I borrowed from my mom for the down payment. I hadn't gotten the cashier's check yet; I was planning to do it this afternoon. But having seen the string of emails, I start to think maybe I should get it sooner. I go out into the hallway and over to the window to see whether it's still pouring with rain. This takes me past my boss's office, and he calls out, "I thought you were moving this week." I explain that that's next week, and tell him about the Registry of Deeds issue. He is appropriately outraged/sympathetic.
I call my bank to ask what is involved in getting a cashier's check, and how long it will take, etc. The woman on the phone seems to think I'm an idiot. She tells me it will take five minutes, "depending on how long the line is." Okay lady, so it was a dumb question, so sue me. I ask whether I need to bring any ID other than my driver's license. She says just my license will be fine. So I put on my coat and walk to my bank (fortunately there is a branch two minutes' walk from my office). I give the teller my account number and the amount for the check, and my license. She asks for another form of ID. I think nasty thoughts about the woman on the phone, but the teller accepts my debit card as the second ID. Then she asks me whether I have my checkbook with me because they need a check. I think more nasty thoughts about phone woman. The teller says they can print up what they need. I fill out everything she needs. While I'm waiting for the teller, I look at the TV in the bank lobby and notice that MSNBC is showing a headline saying something like "experts blame fiscal cliff hype for drop in consumer confidence." A moment later, it switches to the stock ticker and I see that they're showing a "Fiscal Cliff Countdown" in large digits counting off the seconds. Hype? Naaah!
I get my cashier's check and am just leaving the bank when my mom calls to say that the winter camp people called her (because she is listed as emergency contact, I guess) and said that they're closing early at 3:30, because not very many kids showed up. But I shouldn't worry (mom says) because mom can pick the kids up, it's no problem. I cannot focus on this at this time, so I just take in that I don't have to do anything about it right now.
I go back to the office and see that EH has arranged to come to my lawyer's office this afternoon and sign the papers. The paralegal asks whether I can do the same. I email back that I can, and that I have the check. Meanwhile, I post about all of this on Facebook, and one of my FB friends asks whether it's safe to sign the papers before doing the walkthrough. (Before finalizing the purchase, you walk through the home and verify that it is in basically the same condition as it was when you agreed to buy it, and that the seller has fixed the things you asked her to fix.)
So I call the paralegal on the phone and ask her this, and she says that although we can sign the papers today, she would hold onto them and not file/record them with the Registry until she gets the go-ahead. So this means we should schedule the walkthrough as early as possible. I email the agents and suggest 9am tomorrow. I tell the paralegal that I can come at 3 today.
At some point in all of this, I remember that I'm supposed to call the doctor about the cat bites, so I do that. A nurse calls me back and we discuss it and she offers me an appointment at 11:40. It is 10:50 now. I say okay.
I don't want to get into all the details of the cat bite thing with my boss, so I just tell him that my closing got moved to today (not a lie) and that I have to leave now. He is fine with it. I thank my lucky stars for having such a flexible and understanding boss. I pack up all my stuff (including my work laptop, because tomorrow is my work-from-home day) and head out.
I take the subway to Davis Square and go into the doctor's office with all of my crap. The doctor, who is not my usual doctor but is filling in, comes in and glances at my hand (the bites are really not that bad so he doesn't need to look closely) and listens to my story and says that he wants me on antibiotics right away. He feels more concerned about the risk of the bite getting infected than about rabies. However, he wants to ask Somerville Animal Control for advice about rabies. So he puts in a call to them, and tells me that I can leave. He'll call me if Animal Control thinks I should get the rabies shots.
Rabies, by the way, is fatal in humans approximately 100% of the time. But the treatment is extremely effective, so if you get bitten by a rabid animal and you get treated promptly, you will survive something like 95% of the time. It's only if you don't treat it and you develop rabies that you are basically guaranteed to die. And it has a fairly long incubation period, so you have some leeway for starting treatment.
Anyway, so I leave. It's now lunchtime and I'm hungry, so I get a tofu wrap from my favorite cafe. I take it into the subway station and eat it while I wait for the train. I go one stop to Porter Square and walk to where I left my car. I stop off to knock on the door of the cat's house yet again, but still no answer. I get in my car and go home.
I have about an hour before I have to leave for the lawyer's office, so I change out of my work clothes and relax for a few minutes. Then, as I'm stepping out the door, I discover a box on the porch. It has the Pillow Pets logo, so I know it's Ruthie's new DreamLite. I'm tempted to open it immediately and see if it works, but I figure Ruthie would enjoy helping to open it, so I just bring it inside and leave it.
I go to CVS and pick up the antibiotic prescription. The woman tells me to take it with food. It's at least an hour since my wrap, and I don't have anything much else in the car to eat except the leftover bag of Doritos from Xmas. I swallow one of the enormous pills and snack on Doritos while driving out to the lawyer's office in Lexington.
As I'm getting off the highway at the exit, my phone rings. It's the mom of one of Isaac's friends. I send it to voicemail because I need to concentrate on navigating. I get to the correct office building and am way early for my appointment. I check my phone and have a voicemail from the doctor. I listen to it and he says that Animal Control said I should get the shots. Then I listen to the message from the other mom, who wants to invite Isaac to hang out with her kid tonight. I call her back and say that my mom is picking up Isaac at 3:30. She suggests that mom could bring him to her house at that time and they can hang out with her husband (she won't be home yet) and eat pizza and then she'll bring Isaac home. I say that sounds great. I call my mom and tell her this and give her their address and say that I'll text her the other kid's dad's phone number.
Then I call the doctor back and we discuss the rabies shots. He says I'll need four shots spread out over a period of two weeks. I should come back today and get the first one. I say that I can probably come around 4:30 or 5:00. He says the nurse will have all the info and can give me the shots.
Now it's time for me to go into the lawyer's office, so I do. She comes right out and has all the paperwork ready and tells me that she just finished minutes ago with EH, the seller. "Such a nice woman." The lawyer doesn't exactly apologize for the thing with the Registry, but says in apologetic tone that they just found out the other day how busy it is, so I guess that counts. I sign lots and lots of papers, and give her the cashier's check. She goes to make me copies of everything and I realize that I never sent the dad's phone number to my mom. I pull it up on my phone and text it to mom. The lawyer comes back in, gives me the papers, says "congratulations" and shakes my hand.
I leave the lawyer's office and drive back to Davis Square. Parking at a meter, I put in an hour's worth of money, figuring, how long can it possibly take to give me a shot? I go inside and, as the doctor instructed, bypass the check-in desk and go directly to the Internal Medicine desk where I say to the woman, "I'm here for a shot as ordered by Dr. Johnson" and she says "Do you have an appointment?" and I say "no, the doctor said I didn't need one," and she taps on her computer and then says "go over there and talk to Maria." I go over there and ask the two nurses behind another desk where Maria is. They look at each other and look around and go, "gee, where is Maria?" Then one of them says "Can I help you with something?" me: "I'm here for a shot." nurse: "Do you have an appointment?" For pete's sake. I say again that the doctor said I didn't need one.
Then my regular doctor (not the one I saw earlier today) goes by and says "oh hi, are you here for your blood pressure check?" Huh? I say, no I'm here for a rabies shot, etc., etc. The nurse is tap-tapping on her computer and then says that I should sit over there. I sit over there. I listen to another pair of nurses discussing how to spell "convenient." Is it i-e-n-t or i-a-n-t? "It just feels wrong when you type it that way," says one. Haven't they heard of dictionary.com? Heck, if you put "conveniant" into Google it would probably say "did you mean convenient" so come on.
Finally Maria, the physician's assistant, goes by and gives me a funny look. A moment later I see her coming down the hall with Dr. Johnson, and he says to me, "are you all set with the shot?" and I say "no, I'm waiting," so he sends Maria off to find Jean or Jody or someone. She comes back and leads me to an exam room all the way at the other end of the floor. She tells me the nurse will be there in a moment to do the shot.
I wait and wait and wait. I reach the point where I wonder whether they forgot about me. I've almost decided to open the door and call out, when finally the nurse comes in. She is a big Indian woman who loves to talk. I have to tell the whole story again and then she tells me how she got her cat because he was a stray whom she started feeding and eventually took in. Meanwhile, she starts preparing the medicine for the shots. Shots? Yes, she tells me I'm going to have several. Hmm.
Then Maria comes back in to ask the nurse if she can *mumblemumble* with another patient. Nurse K says that it will have to wait, because this is very complicated and going to take quite a while. I think to myself, uh what? But Maria is persistent. Nurse K apologizes to me and goes to check on the situation. I text my mom, who has dropped off Isaac with his friend and now is at home with Ruthie. I say that we should do something special with Ruthie so she doesn't feel left out, and I suggest a particular favorite restaurant. Mom texts back, "Great minds!" She had just suggested the same thing to Ruthie.
Nurse K comes back and says that the other patient is elderly and unstable and needs an IV, and she, the nurse, is the only one here right now, so do I mind waiting some more? Well, what can you do? Of course I say yes. I wait and wait. Nurse K comes back and says that she couldn't get the IV in, so they are sending the elderly man to the ER.
Now if you're like me, you've probably heard that when you're exposed to rabies you have to get a billion shots in your stomach and it hurts like hell. I am here to tell you that this is not the case any more. The rabies vaccine itself is four shots, spaced 3, 7, and 14 days apart. However, on the first day they also give you a bunch of immunoglobulin, whose purpose is to strengthen your immune system. This is dosed by weight, and for adults the dose is so large that it has to be split up into several injections at different sites on the body, because it's too much to inject into a single site. So, the exact number of injections will depend on your weight, but it will be multiple on the first day. You only do the immunoglobulins the first time, so the other three treatments are just one shot each.
The previous paragraph is a much more coherent and well-organized version of the explanation that I got out of Nurse K by dint of much repetitive questioning, interspersed liberally with her random chatter, questions, observations, stories about other patients, etc....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I got 7 shots. One for the rabies vaccine, and six for the immunoglobulin. And in case you're wondering, that's one in each arm, two in the right buttock, and three in the left buttock. Yes, the dreaded rabies shots in the belly have been replaced by rabies shots in the ass. An improvement? You be the judge.
Nurse K is very impressed with how calmly I took the whole thing. I mean, after seven tattoos I can't really claim to be scared of needles. I think I threw her off at the beginning when I asked how much it was going to hurt -- because I was somehow under the impression that rabies shots hurt more than other types of shots. But I think that gave her the impression that I was anxious about the shots, which I really wasn't. I was just nervous that the sites might be very painful afterward. (For the record, they were not. A little sore but no big deal.) She tells me a story about a woman who needed even more injections than me and was so terrified of needles that she had to stop for 5-10 minutes after each one to calm herself down. Oy.
Anyway, shots done AT LAST. I suddenly realize that it has been more than an hour and I sure hope I don't have a parking ticket. I call mom while rushing downstairs. Hooray! No ticket! Mom and I agree to meet at the restaurant. Ruthie comes on the phone to tell me how funny it was that grandma and I both had the same idea.
I drive to the restaurant and park at another meter. This time I set an alarm on my phone to warn me when the meter is up. Mom and Ruthie meet me at the restaurant (which happens to be the place where we were eating dinner when I went into labor with Ruthie) and we have a nice dinner. Then mom goes home and Ruthie and I go to pick up Isaac from his friend's house. They had a good time. We go home and Ruthie is very excited to open her new DreamLite. We quickly put some batteries in it and test it -- hooray!!! It works perfectly. Ruthie is thrilled. She immediately takes both of the DreamLites to bed and declares that the old one's name is Dreamie and the new one's name is...Dreamie.
Then the kids watch some tv and I eventually get them to bed. And now I had better get to bed myself before anything else happens. ;)
Phew! What a day!
Background info #1: My post from last week about Ruthie's defective DreamLite toy and my attempts to get a replacement.
Background info #2: I guess I haven't mentioned here that we are moving. I'm buying a new, bigger condo, in the same town where we currently live. After we've finished the purchase and moved, I'll be selling the condo where we live now. I shall refer to the woman who is selling me her condo as EH.
Background info #3: Yesterday when I was dropping the kids off at winter vacation camp, I saw a cat meowing outside the door of a house. Thinking to knock on the door and alert the residents that their cat wanted in, I went up to the porch and opened the screen door, and when I put my hand down to nudge the cat out of the way, it bit me. Not a very bad bite, two small spots that barely broke the skin -- but did break the skin, and bled a little bit. The people in the house weren't home, not then, not that evening, and not this morning either.
Okay, so today! It was pouring with torrential rain this morning, which was ridiculous, but from hearing about the crazy amounts of snow that this same storm has brought/is bringing to other regions, I'm grateful that we just had rain.
I get the kids up and dressed and fed, pack lunches, out the door. They're supposed to be going on field trips to indoor playgrounds and roller rinks and such today, with their vacation camp, so they're fairly chipper. I drop them off in the pouring rain and try again to knock on the door of the house where the cat bit me, but no answer. So I set off for work. I have bandages on my two little bite wounds; they really aren't that bad, but since they're on my hand, they keep brushing against things and getting irritated, so I covered them up.
I get to the office and even before I have my morning cup of tea, I see a set of emails between my lawyer, EH's lawyer, my real-estate agent, and EH's agent. We've been exchanging emails about scheduling the closing, which was supposed to take place tomorrow. Then my lawyer emails that by the way, the Registry of Deeds is very backed up since it's the end of the month and the year, so if we hold the closing at 1:30 tomorrow as planned, it might not be possible to get it recorded until Monday. This would DEFINITELY suck for me, considering that I have already made all kinds of plans for work that needs to be done on the place, items that need picking up from hither and yon and delivering to the new place, etc.
So I get up and go make myself a cup of tea and come back to my desk and re-read the email. Then my temper gets the best of me and I fire off a reply saying that it would have been nice if someone had mentioned this, oh, about six weeks ago when we first agreed on the closing date. The seller, EH, really pushed for Dec 28th as the closing date because she clearly really wanted to finish the deal before the end of the year. And I was fine with that. Anyway, my reply was probably overly snarky and I regretted it almost immediately, but oh well.
Then EH's agent emails that EH could come and sign the papers today, if that would speed things along. The lawyer's assistant/paralegal emails that this is doable, and by the way I should confirm to everyone that I have the cashier's check in the amount of *mumblemumble* an enormous sum that I borrowed from my mom for the down payment. I hadn't gotten the cashier's check yet; I was planning to do it this afternoon. But having seen the string of emails, I start to think maybe I should get it sooner. I go out into the hallway and over to the window to see whether it's still pouring with rain. This takes me past my boss's office, and he calls out, "I thought you were moving this week." I explain that that's next week, and tell him about the Registry of Deeds issue. He is appropriately outraged/sympathetic.
I call my bank to ask what is involved in getting a cashier's check, and how long it will take, etc. The woman on the phone seems to think I'm an idiot. She tells me it will take five minutes, "depending on how long the line is." Okay lady, so it was a dumb question, so sue me. I ask whether I need to bring any ID other than my driver's license. She says just my license will be fine. So I put on my coat and walk to my bank (fortunately there is a branch two minutes' walk from my office). I give the teller my account number and the amount for the check, and my license. She asks for another form of ID. I think nasty thoughts about the woman on the phone, but the teller accepts my debit card as the second ID. Then she asks me whether I have my checkbook with me because they need a check. I think more nasty thoughts about phone woman. The teller says they can print up what they need. I fill out everything she needs. While I'm waiting for the teller, I look at the TV in the bank lobby and notice that MSNBC is showing a headline saying something like "experts blame fiscal cliff hype for drop in consumer confidence." A moment later, it switches to the stock ticker and I see that they're showing a "Fiscal Cliff Countdown" in large digits counting off the seconds. Hype? Naaah!
I get my cashier's check and am just leaving the bank when my mom calls to say that the winter camp people called her (because she is listed as emergency contact, I guess) and said that they're closing early at 3:30, because not very many kids showed up. But I shouldn't worry (mom says) because mom can pick the kids up, it's no problem. I cannot focus on this at this time, so I just take in that I don't have to do anything about it right now.
I go back to the office and see that EH has arranged to come to my lawyer's office this afternoon and sign the papers. The paralegal asks whether I can do the same. I email back that I can, and that I have the check. Meanwhile, I post about all of this on Facebook, and one of my FB friends asks whether it's safe to sign the papers before doing the walkthrough. (Before finalizing the purchase, you walk through the home and verify that it is in basically the same condition as it was when you agreed to buy it, and that the seller has fixed the things you asked her to fix.)
So I call the paralegal on the phone and ask her this, and she says that although we can sign the papers today, she would hold onto them and not file/record them with the Registry until she gets the go-ahead. So this means we should schedule the walkthrough as early as possible. I email the agents and suggest 9am tomorrow. I tell the paralegal that I can come at 3 today.
At some point in all of this, I remember that I'm supposed to call the doctor about the cat bites, so I do that. A nurse calls me back and we discuss it and she offers me an appointment at 11:40. It is 10:50 now. I say okay.
I don't want to get into all the details of the cat bite thing with my boss, so I just tell him that my closing got moved to today (not a lie) and that I have to leave now. He is fine with it. I thank my lucky stars for having such a flexible and understanding boss. I pack up all my stuff (including my work laptop, because tomorrow is my work-from-home day) and head out.
I take the subway to Davis Square and go into the doctor's office with all of my crap. The doctor, who is not my usual doctor but is filling in, comes in and glances at my hand (the bites are really not that bad so he doesn't need to look closely) and listens to my story and says that he wants me on antibiotics right away. He feels more concerned about the risk of the bite getting infected than about rabies. However, he wants to ask Somerville Animal Control for advice about rabies. So he puts in a call to them, and tells me that I can leave. He'll call me if Animal Control thinks I should get the rabies shots.
Rabies, by the way, is fatal in humans approximately 100% of the time. But the treatment is extremely effective, so if you get bitten by a rabid animal and you get treated promptly, you will survive something like 95% of the time. It's only if you don't treat it and you develop rabies that you are basically guaranteed to die. And it has a fairly long incubation period, so you have some leeway for starting treatment.
Anyway, so I leave. It's now lunchtime and I'm hungry, so I get a tofu wrap from my favorite cafe. I take it into the subway station and eat it while I wait for the train. I go one stop to Porter Square and walk to where I left my car. I stop off to knock on the door of the cat's house yet again, but still no answer. I get in my car and go home.
I have about an hour before I have to leave for the lawyer's office, so I change out of my work clothes and relax for a few minutes. Then, as I'm stepping out the door, I discover a box on the porch. It has the Pillow Pets logo, so I know it's Ruthie's new DreamLite. I'm tempted to open it immediately and see if it works, but I figure Ruthie would enjoy helping to open it, so I just bring it inside and leave it.
I go to CVS and pick up the antibiotic prescription. The woman tells me to take it with food. It's at least an hour since my wrap, and I don't have anything much else in the car to eat except the leftover bag of Doritos from Xmas. I swallow one of the enormous pills and snack on Doritos while driving out to the lawyer's office in Lexington.
As I'm getting off the highway at the exit, my phone rings. It's the mom of one of Isaac's friends. I send it to voicemail because I need to concentrate on navigating. I get to the correct office building and am way early for my appointment. I check my phone and have a voicemail from the doctor. I listen to it and he says that Animal Control said I should get the shots. Then I listen to the message from the other mom, who wants to invite Isaac to hang out with her kid tonight. I call her back and say that my mom is picking up Isaac at 3:30. She suggests that mom could bring him to her house at that time and they can hang out with her husband (she won't be home yet) and eat pizza and then she'll bring Isaac home. I say that sounds great. I call my mom and tell her this and give her their address and say that I'll text her the other kid's dad's phone number.
Then I call the doctor back and we discuss the rabies shots. He says I'll need four shots spread out over a period of two weeks. I should come back today and get the first one. I say that I can probably come around 4:30 or 5:00. He says the nurse will have all the info and can give me the shots.
Now it's time for me to go into the lawyer's office, so I do. She comes right out and has all the paperwork ready and tells me that she just finished minutes ago with EH, the seller. "Such a nice woman." The lawyer doesn't exactly apologize for the thing with the Registry, but says in apologetic tone that they just found out the other day how busy it is, so I guess that counts. I sign lots and lots of papers, and give her the cashier's check. She goes to make me copies of everything and I realize that I never sent the dad's phone number to my mom. I pull it up on my phone and text it to mom. The lawyer comes back in, gives me the papers, says "congratulations" and shakes my hand.
I leave the lawyer's office and drive back to Davis Square. Parking at a meter, I put in an hour's worth of money, figuring, how long can it possibly take to give me a shot? I go inside and, as the doctor instructed, bypass the check-in desk and go directly to the Internal Medicine desk where I say to the woman, "I'm here for a shot as ordered by Dr. Johnson" and she says "Do you have an appointment?" and I say "no, the doctor said I didn't need one," and she taps on her computer and then says "go over there and talk to Maria." I go over there and ask the two nurses behind another desk where Maria is. They look at each other and look around and go, "gee, where is Maria?" Then one of them says "Can I help you with something?" me: "I'm here for a shot." nurse: "Do you have an appointment?" For pete's sake. I say again that the doctor said I didn't need one.
Then my regular doctor (not the one I saw earlier today) goes by and says "oh hi, are you here for your blood pressure check?" Huh? I say, no I'm here for a rabies shot, etc., etc. The nurse is tap-tapping on her computer and then says that I should sit over there. I sit over there. I listen to another pair of nurses discussing how to spell "convenient." Is it i-e-n-t or i-a-n-t? "It just feels wrong when you type it that way," says one. Haven't they heard of dictionary.com? Heck, if you put "conveniant" into Google it would probably say "did you mean convenient" so come on.
Finally Maria, the physician's assistant, goes by and gives me a funny look. A moment later I see her coming down the hall with Dr. Johnson, and he says to me, "are you all set with the shot?" and I say "no, I'm waiting," so he sends Maria off to find Jean or Jody or someone. She comes back and leads me to an exam room all the way at the other end of the floor. She tells me the nurse will be there in a moment to do the shot.
I wait and wait and wait. I reach the point where I wonder whether they forgot about me. I've almost decided to open the door and call out, when finally the nurse comes in. She is a big Indian woman who loves to talk. I have to tell the whole story again and then she tells me how she got her cat because he was a stray whom she started feeding and eventually took in. Meanwhile, she starts preparing the medicine for the shots. Shots? Yes, she tells me I'm going to have several. Hmm.
Then Maria comes back in to ask the nurse if she can *mumblemumble* with another patient. Nurse K says that it will have to wait, because this is very complicated and going to take quite a while. I think to myself, uh what? But Maria is persistent. Nurse K apologizes to me and goes to check on the situation. I text my mom, who has dropped off Isaac with his friend and now is at home with Ruthie. I say that we should do something special with Ruthie so she doesn't feel left out, and I suggest a particular favorite restaurant. Mom texts back, "Great minds!" She had just suggested the same thing to Ruthie.
Nurse K comes back and says that the other patient is elderly and unstable and needs an IV, and she, the nurse, is the only one here right now, so do I mind waiting some more? Well, what can you do? Of course I say yes. I wait and wait. Nurse K comes back and says that she couldn't get the IV in, so they are sending the elderly man to the ER.
Now if you're like me, you've probably heard that when you're exposed to rabies you have to get a billion shots in your stomach and it hurts like hell. I am here to tell you that this is not the case any more. The rabies vaccine itself is four shots, spaced 3, 7, and 14 days apart. However, on the first day they also give you a bunch of immunoglobulin, whose purpose is to strengthen your immune system. This is dosed by weight, and for adults the dose is so large that it has to be split up into several injections at different sites on the body, because it's too much to inject into a single site. So, the exact number of injections will depend on your weight, but it will be multiple on the first day. You only do the immunoglobulins the first time, so the other three treatments are just one shot each.
The previous paragraph is a much more coherent and well-organized version of the explanation that I got out of Nurse K by dint of much repetitive questioning, interspersed liberally with her random chatter, questions, observations, stories about other patients, etc....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I got 7 shots. One for the rabies vaccine, and six for the immunoglobulin. And in case you're wondering, that's one in each arm, two in the right buttock, and three in the left buttock. Yes, the dreaded rabies shots in the belly have been replaced by rabies shots in the ass. An improvement? You be the judge.
Nurse K is very impressed with how calmly I took the whole thing. I mean, after seven tattoos I can't really claim to be scared of needles. I think I threw her off at the beginning when I asked how much it was going to hurt -- because I was somehow under the impression that rabies shots hurt more than other types of shots. But I think that gave her the impression that I was anxious about the shots, which I really wasn't. I was just nervous that the sites might be very painful afterward. (For the record, they were not. A little sore but no big deal.) She tells me a story about a woman who needed even more injections than me and was so terrified of needles that she had to stop for 5-10 minutes after each one to calm herself down. Oy.
Anyway, shots done AT LAST. I suddenly realize that it has been more than an hour and I sure hope I don't have a parking ticket. I call mom while rushing downstairs. Hooray! No ticket! Mom and I agree to meet at the restaurant. Ruthie comes on the phone to tell me how funny it was that grandma and I both had the same idea.
I drive to the restaurant and park at another meter. This time I set an alarm on my phone to warn me when the meter is up. Mom and Ruthie meet me at the restaurant (which happens to be the place where we were eating dinner when I went into labor with Ruthie) and we have a nice dinner. Then mom goes home and Ruthie and I go to pick up Isaac from his friend's house. They had a good time. We go home and Ruthie is very excited to open her new DreamLite. We quickly put some batteries in it and test it -- hooray!!! It works perfectly. Ruthie is thrilled. She immediately takes both of the DreamLites to bed and declares that the old one's name is Dreamie and the new one's name is...Dreamie.
Then the kids watch some tv and I eventually get them to bed. And now I had better get to bed myself before anything else happens. ;)
Phew! What a day!