Hospital Round-Up

Well, that was not pleasant! Rob and I drove over to the UCSF hospital on Parnassus at 9:00 in the rain. I signed into the radiology lab, got my hospital bracelet and was pretty quickly taken back to a tiny x-ray room full of four young doctors and nurses. Two preliminary x-rays before the handsome doctor came in to administer six ounces of dye.

Much…more…painful…than…expected. Even the novocaine shots were surprisingly deep and I felt the needle when it hit bone. The only good thing was that it was over pretty quickly and I managed not to faint.

Back into my clothes and back to the tiny waiting room with Rob. For two hours, we read magazines and waited. To make matters worse, we were sitting right next to this Armenian mother and daughter who were tweezing their eyebrows and mustaches while waiting for someone to come out of surgery. They would pause every few minutes to weep dramatically and then return to their plucking. Totally bizarre.

Finally, at 12:30 me and my dyed hip went down to the MRI room. I had to tromp all over the hospital in an ensemble of hospital pj bottoms, a brown ruffled tuxedo shirt, a hospital gown and black ballet flats! A half hour of boredom and clanging before I was finally released. Rob had carrot cake waiting for me when I finally emerged.

We inflated the air mattress in the living room and I spent the rest of the day watching videos and recovering. So much for the theory that these injections provide pain relief, my hip feels terrible. All of this trouble had better produce some damn fine diagnostics on Tuesday!