Perspectives

I am not entirely sure what I am doing here. I only know that something is, or more precisely was, an issue. I am feeling just fine right now. Or at least as fine as you can after having successfully battled a several hours long uninterrupted session of damage threatening fever. I guess it all depends on the perspective.

So, I am probably miserable by all standards, but perceive it much as feeling much better compared to my state just couple hours prior. Then again, the funny thing is, really high fevers don’t really feel like anything. It just feels like having your head wrapped up in cotton and being pressed down by a worryingly strong, but strangely tranquil weight. It’s the low-grade fevers that are insufferable. You feel like shit, but you are kept just conscious and well enough to be able to fully evaluate and savour just how awful you are.

Technically, what I am here for right now is a gentle sting to my finger. Few seconds after, my doctor’s face started resembling an actor warming up. A wide array of conflicting expressions shot through her face. My CRP levels were going through the roof. Yet there were no other indicators pointing to a definite diagnosis whatsoever. I felt fine right then and made a slight attempt at bargaining to go home and come back the next day. It is not so much me seeing it unnecessary, it’s more my fear of the ER. Understandably, she couldn’t let someone with such high levels just go on their merry way and risk them being a liability.  

I don’t think any word crosses my mind more than “perspective” when I enter ER. Firstly, you’ve got a sorry bunch of uncomfortable people and to each their own pain and their own time seems to be of most value. They do not know why they just know that they need help and they need it now. A neutral agent deciding on the value is a group of individuals just trying to do their best, but in the end always being deprecated for anything they decide to do.

It is an odd power-dynamic, when they call you up and you see old people with broken limbs just sitting there, while you, with your meagre issue, are strutting your way inside. And then you find yourself in an opposite situation, unable to help yourself, but curiously eye the person going in sooner than you, questioning their state and credibility.

I am guessing we’ve all done it at some point. We start to make up stories about the others around us. Based on our perspective, our very first impressions, assign various levels of odd occurrences to how their day is going. I don’t think there is a better room to do that than the ER. Being stuck in a silent room filled with worry, the knowledge of everyone having a story as to why they are there, is sure to get your imagination going.

Especially this ER. Everything is painted in odd, way too aggressive colours. There are no windows, since it is in the basement, but the choice of very weak yellow lightning does not compliment the colours in any way either. It gives off a very sickly greenish hue. And then, there is the anti-slip squeaky rubber floor. Had some of the lights been flickering, it would be a pretty fine set for a horror movie. The patients with their worried and tired faces being illuminated by the sickly hue would make great extras even without training.  

The beauty of medical care is, that no matter your social or educational level, we all need it. You meet characters from all walks of life and they better have a reason to be here. Only I don’t think I should be here right now, at least I look way healthier and less worried than most people in this waiting room. Seeing us here, you’d think my pale stickman of a father, who drove me here, would be the one who is sick, not this plum vivid girl. Therefore, I am clutching the paper my GP gave me, as if a flag to explain and assert my importance of being here. Of having a reason to be here.

Lots of people often do not. But it kind of depends on the perspective. The government decided to battle that with instilling a small fee whenever you bother the medical staff without a proper reason. I paid one recently, when I had my knee pop in and out. I was in excruciating pain, the swelling on one side made it look as if I had it poking out and I couldn’t walk at all. I was honestly afraid of it being something serious. It does sound like that from my perspective, doesn’t it? The medical staff laughed at me, offered to give me a sedative and rewarded me with the fine I had to pay.

Because my perspective was much different than the one of the medical staff.  

And it seems very different today too. Here we are, I am feeling quite well, looking healthy. I get a whiff of the perception of others as I walk in. Afraid of receiving dirty looks, I start my explanation by heavily relying on the argument of authority: “That is what my GP said”. My CRP levels come in even more booming than at my GP’s office. Two doctors in the room make a synchronized “not bad” face, as they look at the paper, then at me and then back to the paper.  

Another round of more-or-less forceful extraction of various bodily liquids follows. And then sitting around, waiting, being awarded the time to think about my concurrent occupants, since I didn’t think about packing up some entertainment nor charging my phone up for a short trip to the GP’s office.  

So, who do we have here. I might get a bit of imagination exercises while I am at it. Only trouble is, I was not prepared for the shock awaiting my atrophying imagination.

A corpulent lady of rather low manners did not strike me as too good of an inspiration as I heard her hysterically laughing into the phone. But still, she might be she might be the most interesting person in this room, but my perspective shuns me from being able to read that.

I find temporary solace in analysing a classically dysfunctional couple. She is hysterical and bossing him around, he just does not give a damn. However, that gets too easy too fast. A very nervous man in his 40s seems interesting for a bit, but then he walks up to the nurse and blows all mystery away by trying to discretely tell here, that he has the head of a tick stuck on the helmet of his purple soldier. Of course, me and my father heard it and tried our best to stray from laughing until he is taken inside.

Finally, a woman of no distinct character. Someone new and not easily readable. She is very pretty and well put together, but most of all, seems perfectly healthy and in a good mood, only a bit irritated at best. Through short phone calls I find that she had to be escorted by police. She started driving erratically and picked an odd place to stop at the side of the road. The police, accidentally in the neighbourhood, picked up on it, coming in hot expecting a drunk driver only to find someone with serious health issues. She had a bout of pain and now says she feels fine. She is generally laughing it off, thinking it to be a good story over drinks. And that is her perspective.

I am forced to stop my eavesdropping, since I am being called in once again. Still nothing, they send me to a different hall for follow-up tests.  As I get back with my results from sonography, I get immediately called in.

Nothing. Off I go, to force out another urine sample. Successfully delivering my strenuously extracted bit of produce, I enjoy a few comments along the lines of: “Couldn’t you give us a bit more?”

As I sit back down, an overtly confident man in his late 30s, dressed in expensive outdoorsy clothing stumbles in, his knee all bandaged. He stands right in the middle of the hall. Eyeing the occupants of the room and he does not do it in a secret way either. He just stands there with this accomplished wide grin. Amongst the geriatric overweight party, he carefully singles out me and the pretty woman with the police incident. He heroically stumbles right between us and ask a question I do not quite catch. He is switching between looking directly at her and me.

I scare him off by making eye-contact with my father. She makes the mistake of responding. He sits right down beside her and starts his lengthy explanation. It was a freak downhill bike accident. He goes to such excruciating details you can almost taste the dirt. All of it seems to cover up, that the actual accident wasn’t anything to write home about. After making the whole room basically listen to his life story, he finally asks her why she is there.

As she starts to answer, he immediately jumps in, realizing he forgot to say what has actually happened to him. His knee popped in and out. “Ka-ching” I tell myself with a stupid grin on my face. This prick is going to pay up for the injury he thinks to be so incredible, just as I have. I wallow in my pride, knowing I am not the only one bothering the staff with a dislocated knee. But then I get humbled, because after all, I did and from my perspective, the pain was really awful.

She finally gets the word and she keeps it very brief. There is a great contrast between their perspectives. I am honestly starting to believe, that she does not have a reason to be here either. Her irritation about having to sit there is very convincing, alongside her laughter about the whole issue.     

As she gets called into the room, the self-proclaimed entrepreneur with love for extreme sports immediately starts calling up his friends and begins the cycle of his storytelling once again.

Right as she gets out, I get called in the fourth time. Me and my surprising collection of medical slips which I’ve been squeezing in my hands. I exchange a slight “hope it’s the last time” nod with my dad.

The doctor begins by going over their findings. A little into the conversation, the phone rings and the doctor picks it up. I listen to him railing up the person on the other side of the phone. Calling them a lab rat, discussing plans for lunch tomorrow. Then the doctor becomes sombre.

“Wait, what is the name again?”

The doctor scrambles around the table for a bit. He seems to be reading my insurance card, but there is one right next to it.

“Yes. She’s right here.”

Wait. Me? I am right here, in this office. What does ‘right here’ mean?

“Shit, I thought you sent the results back negative.”

In my mind I am screaming questions. Who? Me?

“You ran it trough the gyno? And they are sure? Well, damn.”

There I am, being specifically told by the nurses it might be a gynaecological problem just half an hour earlier. Me solemnly confessing I have not ever been to a gyno office yet, despite being 23 and having had several sexual partners.   

“So you are one hundred percent positive it…? Alright.” The doctor says as he rests his forehead on his palm.

Everything around me shuts down. I am hung on every word from the doctor. I expect being told I either have cancer or a very gnarly STD at least.  

“Yeah, you too.” He finally says and hangs up.

I can’t take it and so with a nervous laughter I ask: ”Was that call about me? You know, you said she is right here.”

“No, don’t worry.”

He then proceeded to tell me, that they have finally found some protein in my urine. Combining it with my saying I had moderate internal pain in lower back area, they diagnosed me with a particular type of kidney infection. With my prescription for antibiotics, I was on my merry way. No particular pain, no fever. All I felt was tired after spending several hours there and revealed it was over.

As I went out, the doctor followed me. I heard him call out a female name. Out of curiosity I turned to see the super nice police chase woman, who was in right before me. Was there something else my perspective didn’t reveal? Was she supposed to be called on so soon after for a very uninteresting reason? A quick glance revealed, she was the only other woman left in the waiting room at that point.

The only other who was “right here”. And I can’t stop thinking about her. And about how her perspective probably couldn’t have been further away from the truth.