Vista, Dial-up and Other Frustrating Things
I don’t know how I tricked myself into thinking that 2 weeks was enough time to get everything together. I should have known that the universe would find a way to thwart my efforts to be productive.
My dad recently bought a new computer for the house. It’s a Dell Inspiron desktop running Vista. Vista is the Devil. The computer is not even a month old and Vista has been giving me trouble since I started using it. When I saw that Apple commercial spoofing Vista’s tendency to ask you to allow it to do every little thing, I thought it was an exaggeration. It is actually the truth. I kinda feel bad about trashing Vista like this but honestly, I’d rather run XP any day.
To make matters worse, Daddy’s still got us using dial-up to access the internet (he’s a no-frills kind of guy, one might say). Nothing is more agonizing and pitiful than having Gmail tell you that it can’t open your mailbox because your connection is too slow. “Would you like to open the HTML version instead?” it asked me. I suppose even Daddy realized how pathetic that was because he tasked me with researching broadband providers in our area and preparing data on which was the best, most affordable package. This is how things work at my house, folks.
The biggest hindrance to my efficiency in preparing has been the trials I’ve had to endure to complete my visa application. I’d liken it to the twelve labours but after today, I think Hercules got off easy. After procuring a Letter of Good Conduct from the Somerville Police Department (to prove that I’m not a crazy ex-con or something), I thought I’d be able to put the application in the mail on Monday but of course, things weren’t that simple. First of all, I wasn’t able to have the six required medical forms completed because I couldn’t schedule a doctor’s appointment while I was in Boston. When I tried to schedule one with my general practitioner in Queens, I learned that my doctor was no longer practicing (which explained my inability to reach anyone who actually worked in his office for over a week. The answering service finally took pity on me). I scrambled to make an appointment with a new doctor and was able to get one on Monday afternoon but when I went to the office to check in, I discovered that my health insurance provider was listing my coverage as inactive because they’d entered the wrong date of birth! At this point, I was desperate enough to pay out of pocket for the appointment ($165!!) but after an hour of calling the insurance company, their data center and the doctor, I was finally given the okay by the billing station and thus proceeded to wait an hour to meet my new doctor.
Dr. New was pretty nice, if a touch impersonal, but he perked up when I mentioned that I too was about to join the brotherhood of healthcare providers. I showed him my ream of medical forms and gave a sheepish smile, saying that I’d probably be able to avoid this sort of ridiculous paperwork in my future speciality (because babies don’t go to school). Dr. New assured me that it was no trouble at all to fill out the forms, but that I’d have to go to the lab for all the blood work and vaccinations. “Oh, okay,” I said. “Where’s the lab?”
“Right at the other side of the office. But they’re closed for the day.”
!!!!!!!
However, I learned that they would re-open bright and early at 7:30 the next morning. Dr. New gave me a referral and I took my stack of forms and went home, praying that visa applications could be rush-processed. This morning, I got up at 7:00 and reached the lab at 7:45, thinking that there couldn’t be too many people who desperately needed like, six shots for a medical form. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The waiting room was packed. I went up to the check-in counter and wrote my name, handing the medical assistant my referral. She looked at the form and in the loudest, most obnoxious New-York accent ever uttered, announced to the room, “HIV? Hepatitis? We don’t do those here. You need to go to the nurses’ station.” Embarrassed to the very roots of my hair, I pointed to the form, showing where the doctor had written instructions for having blood work done and the HIV test (required for the visa application), next to the word “lab”.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, take a seat.”
I was in the waiting room long enough to watch Good Morning America and half of Regis and Kelly. No one sat next to me.
When my name was finally called, I followed a phlebotomist to a small office in the back. Usually, getting blood drawn amounts to torture because apparently, I have “flat” “rolling” veins that are hard to find and avoid needles at all costs. After they thump the undersides of my elbows until I’m black and blue, they tie off my forearms and stab the veins in the back of my hands which hurts approximately 10 times more than regular blood-drawing. So when I sat down at the chair and the phlebotomist started wiping my arm with an alcohol square, I braced myself for the worst. To my surprise, it wasn’t bad at all. Minimal thumping, a quick stick, and my blood was flowing into the first tube. “Wow,” I marveled, “You’re good at this.” She smiled, removed the first vial of blood and quickly clicked another into place. The second of six.
By the time the fifth one was full, she’d started to frown. “It’s getting slow…” After some fiddling with the butterfly and feeling around for more plump veins (they’d probably all rolled away in fear), she collected the sixth vial, which was only half-full. “I hope that’s enough.”
Slightly dizzy, I asked where the nurses’ station was, gathered my things, and headed in that direction. When I didn’t see anyone there, I stopped by the billing station to ask. Perhaps I’d misheard the directions (or failed to comprehend them in my woozy state)? “Oh, we don’t have nurses,” the woman at the desk told me. I was ready to vomit with frustration. Upon seeing my expression, she quickly added that I could wait to see the doctor and have him do the vaccinations. I trudged to the other side of the office and sat, suffering through the last quarter of Regis and Kelly. Midway through Rachel Ray, my name was called again.
I was ushered to an examination room where an assistant took my weight and blood pressure and told me to wait. I waited. And waited. Dr. New came in and I explained about the situation and he nonchalantly remarked, “Yeah, I heard that two nurses quit at the same time.” He looked again at my chart and at the medical forms, noting that I needed to have four different shots: Hep A, Hep B, tetanus and PPD. He then looked at the bare counter. Apparently, the assistants were supposed to have left the vaccinations out for him. He disappeared and I sat and waited some more. After about a quarter of an hour, the assistant came in with vials and pre-dosed vaccinations and laid them out on the counter. After another 15 minutes, Dr. New came back in, took a look at the needles and gasped. “Do they want these to go through bone?!” The needles were too long, so I sat for another 10 minutes while they searched for shorter, more delicate needles. When the correct supplies were finally assembled, Dr. New looked again at the vaccinations and then at me. “Four in one day, huh? Are you right handed?” I am, so my left arm got 3 shots and my right received only 1. I was instructed to come back on Thursday and have them look at my arm to check the PPD site and again on Monday for the results of my blood work. When I got home, it was noon.
So now, with sore arms, I’m hoping that one can pay to have visa processing expedited. If not, I guess I’ll be here a bit longer…
Tags: blood work, dial-up, healthcare, Vista
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