Sometimes I think I was made by Microsoft
Because I'm always in pain: it's not a bug, it's a feature!
Remember how I fell down the stairs a few weeks ago? It's actually over a month now. Anyway, since then my hip has been hurting, getting steadily and steadily worse to the point that I could barely sit or stand at work on Friday without feeling like I was going to cry.
(I saw a doctor like a week and a half after it happened and she said it was probably an inflamed bursa in the hip joing that was causing the pain, and prescribed me a steroid. I really wish I'd talked to someone else before I started taking it, because apparently that's the exact wrong thing to do and I should have gotten an x-ray or at least an orthopedic referral first.)
So Saturday when I got home from work (almost an hour late, explanation at end of post) I went to sleep and as soon as I woke up I went to see Mike's dad. He is a dermatologist, yes, but still an MD and still knows more than the lady I saw originally--I should have just talked to him to begin with. He basically said exactly what my work friends with orthopedic injuries said: should have got a referral, an x-ray, etc., and that on a Saturday there wasn't much I could do besides sit around uncomfortably in the ER waiting for an x-ray that might not even be of the right thing.
So he prescribed me some Percocets so I could sleep away the weekend in relative comfort, told me to stay in bed and drink hot tea (as a palliative, not an acute cure for anything :) and to call his friend the orthopod on Monday morning. Dropping his name ("this is Dr. Pollack's daughter-in-law" ha! Mike was a little miffed to hear him say that, I think it scared him a little!) should get me an appointment without too much fuss. I hope it happens that way, anyway, since I have another translating gig in the city at 3 pm and I'd really rather not miss it--it's tons of money for so little work, and I called in sick last night as a result of being completely doped up.
As for coming home late: my friend and coworker was bitten pretty badly by one of the patients around 5am on Saturday. This is a cat that does not have any front claws, so he carefully made sure he had hold of her hand by way of his back claws and shunted it towards his mouth, where he inserted a tooth under the cuticle and into the deep part of the finger UNDER her nail. This all happened very quickly and I think she was in a little bit of shock at how bad it actually was.
Anyway, I took her to the ER (on the clock for both of us--yay worker's comp!) and she was seen pretty fast considering there was no one there. We only spent about a half-hour waiting, and the whole thing was over in about 2 hours. But they didn't actually do much besides an x-ray (no tooth embedded, nothing fractured) and give her some pain meds and antibiotics (Toritol (?) and Augmentin--nothing IV, nothing really helpful) and a prescription for Vicodin for later. Then a nurse bandaged it up and managed to put all of the really helpful stuff on a random scratch on her arm instead of the actual bite wound.
Needless to say she was pretty pissed off; we came back to work to fill out paperwork and get her to her car, and she re-bandaged it and got some cleaning solution from work to soak her hand in every couple of hours, which the doctor said was only an "option" and not a necessity. It makes me wonder how the hell any cat bites normal people sustain get healed without severe sepsis--those damn mouths are FULL of bacteria and the claws are a whole 'nother story.
I hope she feels better a lot sooner than I do--she can't afford to take time off work like I can.
Remember how I fell down the stairs a few weeks ago? It's actually over a month now. Anyway, since then my hip has been hurting, getting steadily and steadily worse to the point that I could barely sit or stand at work on Friday without feeling like I was going to cry.
(I saw a doctor like a week and a half after it happened and she said it was probably an inflamed bursa in the hip joing that was causing the pain, and prescribed me a steroid. I really wish I'd talked to someone else before I started taking it, because apparently that's the exact wrong thing to do and I should have gotten an x-ray or at least an orthopedic referral first.)
So Saturday when I got home from work (almost an hour late, explanation at end of post) I went to sleep and as soon as I woke up I went to see Mike's dad. He is a dermatologist, yes, but still an MD and still knows more than the lady I saw originally--I should have just talked to him to begin with. He basically said exactly what my work friends with orthopedic injuries said: should have got a referral, an x-ray, etc., and that on a Saturday there wasn't much I could do besides sit around uncomfortably in the ER waiting for an x-ray that might not even be of the right thing.
So he prescribed me some Percocets so I could sleep away the weekend in relative comfort, told me to stay in bed and drink hot tea (as a palliative, not an acute cure for anything :) and to call his friend the orthopod on Monday morning. Dropping his name ("this is Dr. Pollack's daughter-in-law" ha! Mike was a little miffed to hear him say that, I think it scared him a little!) should get me an appointment without too much fuss. I hope it happens that way, anyway, since I have another translating gig in the city at 3 pm and I'd really rather not miss it--it's tons of money for so little work, and I called in sick last night as a result of being completely doped up.
As for coming home late: my friend and coworker was bitten pretty badly by one of the patients around 5am on Saturday. This is a cat that does not have any front claws, so he carefully made sure he had hold of her hand by way of his back claws and shunted it towards his mouth, where he inserted a tooth under the cuticle and into the deep part of the finger UNDER her nail. This all happened very quickly and I think she was in a little bit of shock at how bad it actually was.
Anyway, I took her to the ER (on the clock for both of us--yay worker's comp!) and she was seen pretty fast considering there was no one there. We only spent about a half-hour waiting, and the whole thing was over in about 2 hours. But they didn't actually do much besides an x-ray (no tooth embedded, nothing fractured) and give her some pain meds and antibiotics (Toritol (?) and Augmentin--nothing IV, nothing really helpful) and a prescription for Vicodin for later. Then a nurse bandaged it up and managed to put all of the really helpful stuff on a random scratch on her arm instead of the actual bite wound.
Needless to say she was pretty pissed off; we came back to work to fill out paperwork and get her to her car, and she re-bandaged it and got some cleaning solution from work to soak her hand in every couple of hours, which the doctor said was only an "option" and not a necessity. It makes me wonder how the hell any cat bites normal people sustain get healed without severe sepsis--those damn mouths are FULL of bacteria and the claws are a whole 'nother story.
I hope she feels better a lot sooner than I do--she can't afford to take time off work like I can.