Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2015-08-26 12:24 am
azurelunatic) wrote2015-08-26 12:24 am
Entry tags:
Fuckin' bodies, man
So I get ingrown hairs/blocked pores/assorted woe, in and around my upper thigh area, generally as a herald that menstrual woe is about to rain down out of my very angry uterus. I have "adjusted", in that I generally no longer hit the ceiling and curse audibly when I notice this, I merely get cranky.
One of these had been causing woe over the weekend, which was notable because I slept more than I thought I could sleep and then I slept some more, and when I did sit up I felt achey in a way that simply having slept too much in the wrong position could explain.
And then the heretofore marble-sized thingy exceeded stress ball size, and thus instead of heading to work come this morning, I was continuing the panic attack from Monday night and headed to what I fondly believed to be an in-network facility with urgent care. I parked in what seemed to be the right ballpark, then started wandering around trying to find the entrance. Someone in a little security vehicle stopped, asked where I was headed, clarified whether I needed urgent care or the ER, and offered me a ride. At the right side of the correct building (I'd been wrong on both) the person posted there asked if I needed urgent care or the ER. She pointed me down the path with the arrows and signs saying Urgent Care.
I got in the queue. Turns out they do not actually do walk-in urgent care, you're supposed to call and then they will figure out if they need to make you an appointment or if you have to go to the ER. When the nice lady at the front desk asked me who my primary care doctor was and then looked at my records and asked me if I needed an appointment at the other end of the Bay, I burst into tears, because the other major Adult thing that I've been trying to cope with and utterly failing at has been moving, and I'd picked my doctors in anticipation of moving closer to work and the place I toured that fell through and I hadn't been up to picking new ones and it was a Much Bigger Woe than such a question ought to have unearthed so then there was the shame at having burst into unwarranted tears in public which made me cry harder--
She treated the situation with slightly brusque efficiency, saying that we didn't have to deal with any of that now, and here let me have the card again, and sent me upstairs with a sheet of paper and instructions. I had stopped crying, but burst into tears as soon as I found the bathroom, because everything was terrible and also it hurt.
There were two little bays of reception area with locked doors facing each other, and I went into the indicated one and placed the paper in the tray as instructed. I looked at my watch, nearly noon, looked at the posted lunch hour (12:30-1:30) and gloomily concluded that I would be there all afternoon and my workday would be destroyed.
Not actually all that long later, someone came out of the door and called my name. I explained the basic situation, that I had had a small explicable lump get alarmingly large alarmingly fast. She brought me back to triage, and seemed impressed by the lump. (I was wearing one of my flouncy skirts which is easier to maneuver around to show the relevant bits of my leg and still retain some modicum of modesty, although around medical people who are behaving in a trustworthy manner, I'm not even bovvered.) She determined that yes I needed an appointment and asked me who my primary care was, my record said in the South Bay? Predictably, I burst into tears. She asked if I wanted to try for something here and today, and in fact there was one in three minutes, let's try for that.
She did the thing and I went downstairs and checked in and paid and got some paper saying that I paid and got sent back upstairs across to the other waiting area, which fronted another little pod of medical offices. I put my card in the tray (which was labeled to put your card in if you needed help). After several very tense minutes, someone stuck their face out and asked what was up. Apparently I was supposed to stick one of the papers in the tray, which the instructions on the tray didn't mention and the person downstairs didn't mention.
I got hustled in and got my various things measured and poked. Weight was actually about 5 pounds under my current running generously-low estimate; and I should unpack my Feelings about that in a later entry, possibly locked , temperature, oxygenation, and blood pressure. The last had the medtech grumbling and then she had me stand up; the unbent arm gave her some better numbers. She sent me off to wait for the doctor.
The doctor asked me some routine questions and took a look. She was very apologetic about having to touch the area as she knew I had to be in substantial discomfort. Happily(?) it was less uncomfortable to have her poke about gently than it was to sit down to pee, as that was exactly the wrong angle. She let me know that she was requesting some tests for the future, and that I would be having a pap smear also. She contemplated the best antibiotics to give me, and asked for my last period. I mentioned the PCOS, and looked up the date on my phone. She asked if there was a chance I could be pregnant.
It is really awkward to talk your way out of some ambiguity around how many years ago the last time you had sex was, due to some technicalities about "what counts as sex" (genital contact? orgasms?) because the last thing which would have totally counted on a purity test was really sort of lesbian (gender identities may have shifted during flight; be careful when opening the overhead bins) but your last time near any unchaperoned sperm was definitely in 2004. But I got my antibiotic prescription without any need for a pregnancy test.
She told me to take ibuprofen to help with the pain and the swelling, and asked if she needed to give me any. I had some, and demonstrated by immediately taking one. "Good girl."
She had a second thought, and gloved up again to swab it to see what kind of culture it had. Then she made sure that I got my shorts back on and sent me out to talk to another medtech to get my pap smear scheduled.
I textednorabombay while waiting for my prescription in the pharmacy downstairs.
By the time I got to work (via a few turns around a cloverleaf that confused the shit out of my poor GPS, and then a detour) the cafeteria had closed, but that was okay because I'd not been super hungry at lunch the day before, and I still had about 1/3 of a lunch in the refrigerator. Score! I supplemented it with chips and cheese and as I was figuring out how to get it actually in my mouth, Madam Standards popped by.
Sometime tomorrow, I plan to apologize for having to say "please go away now" to Madam Standards when the conversation was over due to me being unable to even and really needing food immediately. I am not actually sorry that I said this to her, because it was the politest possible expression of a genuine and urgent need, but it is the sort of thing where you follow up to put fray-lock on the edge before the social contract unravels.
(I like Madam Standards. She is also a People. I will cheerfully unwind with her and tell her stuff. At that particular moment, further interaction would have been at the "you are touching my eye" level, not the "you are touching my shoulder" level.)
Without much context, Purple offered hugs over IM. I was actually feeling too vulnerable to send my first uncensored reaction, so something like *gratefully snuggles in* became something like *gratefully leans in*.
Between the well-timed virtual hugs and lunch, I became usefully human, and set about stampeding through my inbox. Whee, work.
We'd been going to meet up with The Other Guy for happy hour or something, but it turned out too many of the assorted other dudes could not make it today. Therefore it was bumped to Friday, and Purple and I left at a not-terrible hour and chatted in the parking lot. A car pulled up; it was Mr. Tux, asking why we were here so late. We redefined "late" for him.
One of these had been causing woe over the weekend, which was notable because I slept more than I thought I could sleep and then I slept some more, and when I did sit up I felt achey in a way that simply having slept too much in the wrong position could explain.
And then the heretofore marble-sized thingy exceeded stress ball size, and thus instead of heading to work come this morning, I was continuing the panic attack from Monday night and headed to what I fondly believed to be an in-network facility with urgent care. I parked in what seemed to be the right ballpark, then started wandering around trying to find the entrance. Someone in a little security vehicle stopped, asked where I was headed, clarified whether I needed urgent care or the ER, and offered me a ride. At the right side of the correct building (I'd been wrong on both) the person posted there asked if I needed urgent care or the ER. She pointed me down the path with the arrows and signs saying Urgent Care.
I got in the queue. Turns out they do not actually do walk-in urgent care, you're supposed to call and then they will figure out if they need to make you an appointment or if you have to go to the ER. When the nice lady at the front desk asked me who my primary care doctor was and then looked at my records and asked me if I needed an appointment at the other end of the Bay, I burst into tears, because the other major Adult thing that I've been trying to cope with and utterly failing at has been moving, and I'd picked my doctors in anticipation of moving closer to work and the place I toured that fell through and I hadn't been up to picking new ones and it was a Much Bigger Woe than such a question ought to have unearthed so then there was the shame at having burst into unwarranted tears in public which made me cry harder--
She treated the situation with slightly brusque efficiency, saying that we didn't have to deal with any of that now, and here let me have the card again, and sent me upstairs with a sheet of paper and instructions. I had stopped crying, but burst into tears as soon as I found the bathroom, because everything was terrible and also it hurt.
There were two little bays of reception area with locked doors facing each other, and I went into the indicated one and placed the paper in the tray as instructed. I looked at my watch, nearly noon, looked at the posted lunch hour (12:30-1:30) and gloomily concluded that I would be there all afternoon and my workday would be destroyed.
Not actually all that long later, someone came out of the door and called my name. I explained the basic situation, that I had had a small explicable lump get alarmingly large alarmingly fast. She brought me back to triage, and seemed impressed by the lump. (I was wearing one of my flouncy skirts which is easier to maneuver around to show the relevant bits of my leg and still retain some modicum of modesty, although around medical people who are behaving in a trustworthy manner, I'm not even bovvered.) She determined that yes I needed an appointment and asked me who my primary care was, my record said in the South Bay? Predictably, I burst into tears. She asked if I wanted to try for something here and today, and in fact there was one in three minutes, let's try for that.
She did the thing and I went downstairs and checked in and paid and got some paper saying that I paid and got sent back upstairs across to the other waiting area, which fronted another little pod of medical offices. I put my card in the tray (which was labeled to put your card in if you needed help). After several very tense minutes, someone stuck their face out and asked what was up. Apparently I was supposed to stick one of the papers in the tray, which the instructions on the tray didn't mention and the person downstairs didn't mention.
I got hustled in and got my various things measured and poked. Weight was actually about 5 pounds under my current running generously-low estimate; and I should unpack my Feelings about that in a later entry, possibly locked , temperature, oxygenation, and blood pressure. The last had the medtech grumbling and then she had me stand up; the unbent arm gave her some better numbers. She sent me off to wait for the doctor.
The doctor asked me some routine questions and took a look. She was very apologetic about having to touch the area as she knew I had to be in substantial discomfort. Happily(?) it was less uncomfortable to have her poke about gently than it was to sit down to pee, as that was exactly the wrong angle. She let me know that she was requesting some tests for the future, and that I would be having a pap smear also. She contemplated the best antibiotics to give me, and asked for my last period. I mentioned the PCOS, and looked up the date on my phone. She asked if there was a chance I could be pregnant.
It is really awkward to talk your way out of some ambiguity around how many years ago the last time you had sex was, due to some technicalities about "what counts as sex" (genital contact? orgasms?) because the last thing which would have totally counted on a purity test was really sort of lesbian (gender identities may have shifted during flight; be careful when opening the overhead bins) but your last time near any unchaperoned sperm was definitely in 2004. But I got my antibiotic prescription without any need for a pregnancy test.
She told me to take ibuprofen to help with the pain and the swelling, and asked if she needed to give me any. I had some, and demonstrated by immediately taking one. "Good girl."
She had a second thought, and gloved up again to swab it to see what kind of culture it had. Then she made sure that I got my shorts back on and sent me out to talk to another medtech to get my pap smear scheduled.
I texted
norabombay while waiting for my prescription in the pharmacy downstairs. By the time I got to work (via a few turns around a cloverleaf that confused the shit out of my poor GPS, and then a detour) the cafeteria had closed, but that was okay because I'd not been super hungry at lunch the day before, and I still had about 1/3 of a lunch in the refrigerator. Score! I supplemented it with chips and cheese and as I was figuring out how to get it actually in my mouth, Madam Standards popped by.
Sometime tomorrow, I plan to apologize for having to say "please go away now" to Madam Standards when the conversation was over due to me being unable to even and really needing food immediately. I am not actually sorry that I said this to her, because it was the politest possible expression of a genuine and urgent need, but it is the sort of thing where you follow up to put fray-lock on the edge before the social contract unravels.
(I like Madam Standards. She is also a People. I will cheerfully unwind with her and tell her stuff. At that particular moment, further interaction would have been at the "you are touching my eye" level, not the "you are touching my shoulder" level.)
Without much context, Purple offered hugs over IM. I was actually feeling too vulnerable to send my first uncensored reaction, so something like *gratefully snuggles in* became something like *gratefully leans in*.
Between the well-timed virtual hugs and lunch, I became usefully human, and set about stampeding through my inbox. Whee, work.
We'd been going to meet up with The Other Guy for happy hour or something, but it turned out too many of the assorted other dudes could not make it today. Therefore it was bumped to Friday, and Purple and I left at a not-terrible hour and chatted in the parking lot. A car pulled up; it was Mr. Tux, asking why we were here so late. We redefined "late" for him.
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Sorry, that sounds really hard and unpleasant! :(
I have PCOS as well, and get blocked/infected hair follicles on pubic mound, inner thighs, outer labia much more often than the average bear.
You have my profound sympathy.
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My appointment with the uterus inspector is Thursday. Thankfully I don't have specific trauma that would make uterus inspection an Ordeal.
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Also I put a second pad on the outside of my underpants today, since it's a terrible location to put a bandage on and it's been draining vigorously.
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I'm glad that you got good care, and I'm going to have to steal the construction of a conversation being like having my eyeball touched for future use. :D
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Swelling has gone down! I am pleased.
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> I went downstairs and checked in and paid
That will never not be weird to me.
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