Numb Butts and Frostbite.

Fun: Taking yourself to a movie on your day off. Hanging with a friend. Shopping. Reading the blogs I follow. Splurging your precious pennies for a pizza and salad.

Not Fun: Waiting around in a doctor's office for 3 hours. 'Nuf said.

Guess which of those happened today? Obviously not "taking yourself to a movie", as I'm waiting for the new Harry Potter. (One more week baby!) Definitely not "hanging with a friend". Not enough money to do damage for "shopping". However, after my not fun incident, I decided to splurge on my first Round Table Pizza in two months. My God. It never tasted so good. After gorging myself with pizza and salad I was able to catch up some recent blogs. And now this.

Some of you may have read my post about eczema, well, I finally went to my boss regarding my little skin irritation. It got to the point where my hands were just itching constantly, and more spots of this crap kept popping up. My hands look diseased at this point. I filled out an incident report, and talked to our gal in our headquarters for health services and she told me where I could go to see a doctor if I felt I needed to. I said I did, and she called ahead and informed them one of their employees would be coming in and had forwarded the necessary paperwork.

I finally find the clinic buried in some building. I walk inside and I swear to God I could see my breath. I mean, it was probably like 50-55 degrees outside. It was much colder inside. I fill out my paperwork and then promptly sit for over an hour in the waiting room. Freezing. My. Ass. Off. Luckily I'd brought a book, so I was semi-entertained. However, at some point I lost feeling in my feet due to the cold. I thought my nose fell off. And I swore I saw the beginnings of frostbite on my fingertips. Plus, to make matters worse, my butt was numb. Not from cold. But because the of the stupid chairs. I worried how I'd look when they finally did call my name. Falling flat on my face would have been embarrassing.

Luckily that didn't happen. After what seemed like an eternity, a guy opened the door and called my name and took me to a tiny room and took my vitals and asked me a ton of questions. Now, I've never had a male M.A. before, so it was only slightly weird when this strange man asked me some of the standard questions like, "How much do you weigh?" and "Are you pregnant?" and "When was your last menstrual period?". No man ever actually wants know the answer to of those questions - unless you and he are staring at a pregnancy test. Otherwise, nope. Never. And it's not something I ever just tell a guy. Not even guys I'm dating. Seriously. There are somethings they never need to know. After asking said standard questions, he finally turns to me to take my temperature and my pulse. Would you like to know my body temp? It was 87 degrees. He kind of looked at me funny when he told me and I simply said, "Um, you're waiting area is kind of freezing." He should know how cold I was considering he touched my freezing arm to take my pulse. Then of course came the super fun blood pressure cuff.

He leaves and I'm left contemplating my freaking navel. For a good 20 minutes or so. At some point, I see this on the back of the door.


Suddenly there's a loud knock on the door and it whips open and in blows this tall, lanky, blonde doctor with aquamarine colored glasses, and tan Velcro shoes on. She came across as the human equivalent to a tornado. She immediately introduces herself and hesitates before shaking my hand. I politely said, "Don't worry, I'm not contagious." She laughed and muttered something about not wanting to hurt me. Riiiight. So then we enter the next freaking 45 minutes of my life. She badgers me with questions about my little "lesions" as she calls them. Makes me sound like I have Ebola or something. It's freaking dermatitis folks. It's not like it's going to kill me. I tell her how long I've worked for my job, what type of gloves I use (which is what I think caused my "lesions"), and what I've used to try to treat it.

Once we got past the basics and I had to actually describe what she can physically see on my hands. My irritation, which is technically a form of eczema, beautifully stops where my gloves stop. She then says that she's basically stumped. She figures it for an allergic reaction, and she was quite surprised to find I was having an allergic reaction to Nitrile gloves. For those that don't have to wear gloves for their jobs, let me explain. We all know about latex and that there are a lot of people who are allergic to it. I am one of those people. I don't have a horribly bad reaction to latex, but if I wear gloves for awhile, my hands itch. So, I use Nitrile gloves, which are latex free. However, those are not completely devoid of giving people allergic reactions. Not to mention my job over the summer decided to find cheaper gloves and so we changed brands of Nitrile gloves about 4 times before they found one cheap enough to suit them. So I told her my boss as of last night switched me to Vinyl gloves and the health services gal in Maine is having someone ship me an extra special kind of glove that no one can remember the name of.

After the doctor flew out of the room to get a dermatitis book and flew back into the room, she still wasn't sure exactly what was going on with my hands nor exactly how to go about treating it. She flung herself out of the room once more leaving me once more to contemplate my navel - which by then had been contemplated on enough. Awhile later I hear this light knock on the door and a hesitation, so I say, "Yes?". Some random M.A. comes in with two bottles of meds and sets them on the counter saying the doctor will talk to me about them. Again I'm left to contemplate . . . the Earth's axis. The doctor flings herself back into the room, sees the meds on the counter and says, "Oh good! They set them in here - I was looking all over for those!" Um. Isn't that why you have the M.A.'s? So they can do that stuff for you?

So she hands me two bottles of meds - they are prescription strength Benadryl (for bed time, because it'll make me sleepy) and Claritin (for when I'm at work, because it's not supposed to make me sleepy). And wrote a prescription in some of the worst doctor handwriting ever for some topical cream. The best part? When I put the cream on my hands at night she'd like me to then wrap my hands in saran wrap.

Yes. You read that right.

Here's my problem. I live alone. I get one hand wrapped, then what the fuck do I do? Use my teeth?! I don't know a single neighbor and I'm pretty sure that it would not be a great way to meet them. "Oh hi, I'm your neighbor. It's so nice to meet you. Would you wrap me in saran wrap? Ohhh. You must be his girlfriend . . . " I don't think so, Tim.

After all that, I wait patiently for the poor over-worked receptionist to type up my report whilst answering phones and helping the folks in the waiting area. And she can't even read the doctor's handwriting. Eventually, with the help of another receptionist, they finally figure it out. Although I nearly ended up with "must provide cabbage" or "must provide garbage" on my report to give to my boss. That is how bad the doctor's handwriting was. I'm finally given everything I need, and they make an appointment for me on Friday morning to make sure the medications aren't killing me.

I then hop in my car and run off to the local pharmacy. Which was so conveniently located next to a Round Table Pizza. And I was starving. You do the math. So I walk in to the store only to be hit over the head with the strongest cinnamon smell on Earth. Seriously. I had to hold my breath it was that strong. And I love the smell of cinnamon. Anyway, I get to the pharmacy and this older lady comes over to help me. I said I needed to drop off a prescription and handed it to her. She saw the "worker's comp" box checked and asked if they'd filled anything for me for workers come before. I said that "No I hadn't used their pharmacy before." She then asks if they've ever filled anything for me before. Um. No. Didn't I just answer that? She then asks how to pronounce my name and proceeds to say it American style and then Spanish style. Um. I'm sorry. Do I look Hispanic to you? I'm about as white as they get! But I guess you just never know anymore. I fill out some paperwork and she says it'll be 15 minutes.

So I sauntered over to Round Table. I hadn't purchased a pizza in over two months. My mouth was watering at the mere thought of a tasty Ulti-Meat pizza and a salad drenched in Bleu Cheese dressing. I sauntered back over to the pharmacy, and the lady gave me my meds and had the pharmacist go over the meds with me. Dude. It's prescription cortisone basically - as long as I don't eat it or stick it in my eyes, I'm pretty much good to go. But thanks for spitting in my general direction. I went back to get my pizza and the guy there was a moron. I said I had ordered it about 15 minutes prior so I wasn't sure if it was ready yet. I gave him my name, then he asked if I had called it in. I held up my receipt and said, no I came inside to order it a few minutes ago. He asked me two more times if I had called it in. I nearly slammed my head onto their counter. Really?! I finally get my pizza and make my salad and go home.

I got out of my car, and walked around to the passenger side to grab my pizza and salad from the floor. Where I notice my baby's first scratch. I nearly fell over. My new car finally got a scratch. All down the side of the rear passenger door. My stomach lurched. I tried to take a picture, but the sun glared on it wrong so all I got was my reflection and no scratch. I get upstairs to my apartment and dig in. My pizza . . . I'm pretty sure it tasted good. I sort of devoured three pieces. However, before I started devouring, I did notice something.



So, that is how I got to spend my day off today. All I can say is that the only good thing about seeing a tornado of a doctor on worker's comp. is that it's free. Otherwise it's a lot of hoopla and a lot of numb asses sitting around contemplating their navel.