(no subject)
Rolled in two days ago, the car was packed to its full capacity. Hard corners of books poking against plastic bags and bored little holes that grew as I hefted them inside. So now the contents of my room at college are swallowing the already somewhat cluttered spaces of the living room. But home, it's about like I remembered. Except of course the bathroom. My parents' ambition has transformed this house several times over the 21 years I've been coming in and out of this place. This time, they decided to rearrange the contents of the bathroom upstairs, new wallpaper, cabinets, change the tub, new floors, etc. They discovered however that the structural absurdity of the floor (after they tore it up, of course) is such that there plans for restructure are all but impossible. What does this mean to me? There is no shower in my house, and I'm growing irreconcilably greasier by the minute.
I had the whole Chicago thing to do today, only my first test was scheduled at 6 IN THE GODDAMN MORNING. Which is no good for, besides the obvious reasons, I have a stupid sore throat/cold that I'm trying to sleep into submission, and I suppose last night didn't help that cause. I drove to Steve's place the night before for the sake of sleeping in until 5:30, but we ended up going out and drinking, of course, so I'm not sure if my going there helped or hindered my cause. We totally played bingo at the bar we go to, and I came SO FUCKING CLOSE on SO MANY OCCASIONS, but never did walk away a winner. It was terrible. Fuck you, "I 55," you weren't there when I needed you. I also watched Dodgeball with Steve's goofy roommate Patrick. This was after watching David Blaine try to drown himself on primetime. Apparently ABC is one of the only stations their antenna picks up well.
So hospital. I drove myself over to old CMH at 5:30 am, and remembered how much I like the city. The reception areas in that place are odd, I wish I could just tell them "same insurance, same billing address, same everything" and get on with it, but I have to tell three different people behind there different desks what my info is, and of course there's always a snag with the insurance that requires them to phone up the main office and verify that I am indeed covered. CIGNA healthcare, man. They're very elusive people. But, all the waiting gave me time to crack open Pride and Prejudice, my mom's favorite novel of all time. And with my recent graddom, I have the time to read a shit ton of literature and remember why I like studying English.
Test 1: Cardiac MRI. A fucking TERRIBLE test when you're as exhausted as I was. It involves getting an IV in your arm, laying down on a narrow strip of bed, getting strapped in, and then sliding slowly into a suffocatingly close tube. Kinda like a CAT scan that scans your chest instead of your head. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the technician kept coming over the intercom and telling me to manipulate my breath so my lungs would get out of the way of the picture. "Take a deep breath, breathe out, take another deep breathe, let it out, and hold it, don't breathe." He was consistent with that line, and gave it to me over and over again. During the lulls when he was making adjustments, I hovered between realms of consciousness, seeping into weird states of sleep but never forsaking waking life entirely. And then in that tranquil, lucid little half-sleep: bam! "Take a deep breath, breathe out..." It was very disruptive. The whole thing took like 2 hours, and halfway through I started to think of that scene from Kill Bill where she gets buried alive. It didn't do much to calm me down, crammed up in that tube as I was.
Then came the echo, test 2, a procedure which I have historically found to be unpleasant over the past 10 years. CMH, for some reason, does them very well and expediantly, however. I was only lying on that table for an episode of MASH and a few minutes of Cheers (they had a TV, which was a nice touch). For echos, (echocardiograms,) you lie on a table while a technician rubs a wandish thing covered in goo on your chest and tries to pick up sounds and pictures of the heart. It looks a little like a sonogram, actually. It was much better by comparrison to the MRI: quiet, brief, and with plenty of breathing room.
And that was that. I don't know what the results are, I'll find out later, but I'm guessing that the status quo is in order here, and that no real changes have occurred. After that, it was grab a deep dish from Gino's, pop in some mix cds, and drive on home. Largely uneventful drive. I made it back here and napped like it was my goddamn job. Now, refreshed and greasier than ever, it's time to hang out with Scottie at his last improv show of his ISU career. We're all of us getting so old, man.
I had the whole Chicago thing to do today, only my first test was scheduled at 6 IN THE GODDAMN MORNING. Which is no good for, besides the obvious reasons, I have a stupid sore throat/cold that I'm trying to sleep into submission, and I suppose last night didn't help that cause. I drove to Steve's place the night before for the sake of sleeping in until 5:30, but we ended up going out and drinking, of course, so I'm not sure if my going there helped or hindered my cause. We totally played bingo at the bar we go to, and I came SO FUCKING CLOSE on SO MANY OCCASIONS, but never did walk away a winner. It was terrible. Fuck you, "I 55," you weren't there when I needed you. I also watched Dodgeball with Steve's goofy roommate Patrick. This was after watching David Blaine try to drown himself on primetime. Apparently ABC is one of the only stations their antenna picks up well.
So hospital. I drove myself over to old CMH at 5:30 am, and remembered how much I like the city. The reception areas in that place are odd, I wish I could just tell them "same insurance, same billing address, same everything" and get on with it, but I have to tell three different people behind there different desks what my info is, and of course there's always a snag with the insurance that requires them to phone up the main office and verify that I am indeed covered. CIGNA healthcare, man. They're very elusive people. But, all the waiting gave me time to crack open Pride and Prejudice, my mom's favorite novel of all time. And with my recent graddom, I have the time to read a shit ton of literature and remember why I like studying English.
Test 1: Cardiac MRI. A fucking TERRIBLE test when you're as exhausted as I was. It involves getting an IV in your arm, laying down on a narrow strip of bed, getting strapped in, and then sliding slowly into a suffocatingly close tube. Kinda like a CAT scan that scans your chest instead of your head. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the technician kept coming over the intercom and telling me to manipulate my breath so my lungs would get out of the way of the picture. "Take a deep breath, breathe out, take another deep breathe, let it out, and hold it, don't breathe." He was consistent with that line, and gave it to me over and over again. During the lulls when he was making adjustments, I hovered between realms of consciousness, seeping into weird states of sleep but never forsaking waking life entirely. And then in that tranquil, lucid little half-sleep: bam! "Take a deep breath, breathe out..." It was very disruptive. The whole thing took like 2 hours, and halfway through I started to think of that scene from Kill Bill where she gets buried alive. It didn't do much to calm me down, crammed up in that tube as I was.
Then came the echo, test 2, a procedure which I have historically found to be unpleasant over the past 10 years. CMH, for some reason, does them very well and expediantly, however. I was only lying on that table for an episode of MASH and a few minutes of Cheers (they had a TV, which was a nice touch). For echos, (echocardiograms,) you lie on a table while a technician rubs a wandish thing covered in goo on your chest and tries to pick up sounds and pictures of the heart. It looks a little like a sonogram, actually. It was much better by comparrison to the MRI: quiet, brief, and with plenty of breathing room.
And that was that. I don't know what the results are, I'll find out later, but I'm guessing that the status quo is in order here, and that no real changes have occurred. After that, it was grab a deep dish from Gino's, pop in some mix cds, and drive on home. Largely uneventful drive. I made it back here and napped like it was my goddamn job. Now, refreshed and greasier than ever, it's time to hang out with Scottie at his last improv show of his ISU career. We're all of us getting so old, man.