Sigh.

Making New Friends

Yesterday I had to leave a session to make a phone call. I do that on a fairly regular basis, when the session is a bit boring or to call my friends to brag about the rarity of the condition my patient has. This time, I ducked into an exam room to call a lab to check the cost of a test. I was transferred from the lab to the billing department and put on hold, and during the transfer I heard what might have been a bizarre, strangled scream. I have no more information about that nor does it lead to anything else later in the story; it just weirded me out.

I waited for an indeterminate amount of time. Bored, I looked to my surroundings for entertainment. Sitting on the desk in front of me was a stack of two Tupperware containers. The top one appeared to contain a clump of hair submerged in a bit of water. "Well that's werid," I thought, absently picking up the container. "Who cleans out their shower comb and saves it for the doctor?"

I checked the label. "[Patient's name]'s pin worms with eggs attached. Keep in water." Oh. Holy. Jebus. Picture me, sitting in an exam room on the phone, stuck on hold with a lab and a handful of presumably still living parasitic intestinal worms. "Quick" is an understatement describing the speed with which I set that Tupperware down. The one beneath the original nightmare contained what at first glance, still in my parasite-crazed mind, appeared to be folds of infested intestinal tissue. I soon realized that it was actually paper towels. Shut up, I was bracing myself for the worst. This one was just some pinworm eggs from the same patient. Just some parasite eggs.

Holy crap, who is this chick?! Where is she?! Did she sit in this chair?! Okay, done. Put the phone down, holding or not, and went to wash my hands. Up to the elbows. Several times. By the time I got back to the phone it was making a weird beeping noise, so I hung up and called back, only to be put back on hold. Very good phone system they have down at Baylor. At this point, the infectious disease doctor popped in to the room.

"Are you hanging out with my worms?" he asked, grabbing the disgusting containers.

"Yeah, then I had to wash my hands," I replied, then realizing that information was totally unnecessary, that now this doctor knew I was touching the worm containers, freaking out about touching the worm containers and worrying that worms could transmit their eggs through plastic to my skin. He didn't need to know that.

Broken.

Here is an amazing list of the things that I own that have broken recently.

1. My DVD player's sound amplifies the music and sound effects and minimizes the dialogue. This happened a while ago actually but I recently got Netflix so it's come up again.

2. Driving back to Chicago I realized a little door on the dashboard of my car won't stay closed. Some stupid plastic part of the hinge is broken. The corner of it digs right into my knee while I drive. It's great.

3. Got new headphones in the mail courtesy of a lifetime warranty! Whee! One of the earbuds exploded the other day (less than a month after receiving them) and I am now forced to half-listen to idiots on the bus and train. Thanks a pantload, Koss.

4. Took my necklace off today and the chain broke. Wonderful.

5. Had an allergic reaction to something on my legs that resulted in some extremely broken skin. Yeah, that's probably reaching. But it was AWFUL. Itching to the point where my legs were twitching involuntarily, it hurt to touch and my only option for sleeping was pounding a few Benadryl. Wow, when I put it it like that maybe I should have sought medical attention. Eh, it's clearing up now.

6. Laptop. This one's painful. The screen had been pink for a while, but thanks to the store I bought it from going out of business, my warranty couldn't be extended like I had planned. I put up with the pink for about four months (after a while you don't even notice it, I swear! Just don't put it near anything that's actually white) and then one morning the poor little guy flickered and went black. If I shined a flashlight on the screen I can see the icons, (what, this wouldn't be your first instinct?) but it's utterly unusable. Like trying to play a first generation Gameboy at night. Not gonna happen. I Frankenstein-ed it up to another monitor to extract my precious, precious data and sent it off and was hopeful. I got the call today with the estimate. $978.36. Nine hundred and seventy-eight dollars and thirty-six cents. So that's not going to happen anymore. I am no longer a mobile computer-er.

7. The cat's sinus infection is back so she's kind of broken too.

Hopefully my old computer won't explode when I hit publish. Also, I just remembered how bright and shiny and happy my last post was... Fancy New Kinsley, the Fancy New Manic Depressive.