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January 22, 2003-10:22 p.m. Warning! Rantage Ahead! Abort Now Before It�s Too Late! You Have Been Warned! I am just about to explode, y�all. My head�s just fixin� to blast off my body and go into orbit alongside one them spy satellites. First, let me tell you about the trying people I mentioned yesterday: The Podunk hospital that my brother was in before he was transferred to Dallas has an ICU waiting room consisting of two attached rooms. There is a phone in each of these rooms and they each have separate phone numbers. My sister-in-law was ensconced in the back room with windows and a TV. It was the larger of the two rooms. Some seriously holy-roller women were in the front room with the view of the hall and a coffee machine. SERIOUSLY holy-roller women, complete with visions of saints who would tell them that the reason for their patient�s elevated blood pressure was that they weren�t praying at his bedside thus causing them to run out of the room in the middle of a completely unrelated conversation. When someone would call the switchboard and ask for the ICU waiting room they were usually put through to the phone in the room with coffee machine. These �Christian� women would tell the people who reached their phone looking for my sister-in-law to �Call back at the number to the back room. It�s closer.� Some of these people were calling long distance. What Would Jesus Do? From 8am to 6pm everyday they were visited by other like-minded women who would engage them in conversations about the Holy Trinity, the suitors they spurned in their youth and the funeral arrangements of their late husbands in voices loud enough to be heard in Oklahoma. It was like being locked in a room with a flock of magpies. Somehow, I resisted the urge to go out there and ask them if they could lower their din. One day, I overheard one of the ladies asking one of the magpies if she had any instrumental Christian music. In my mind, this query begs the question: �If it�s instrumental, how do you differentiate between secular and Christian music?� Are you with me on this? Is it just me? Can I get a witness? The final straw was yesterday evening when we found out my brother was being transferred to Dallas. My sister-in-law gathered all of her stuff together and put it on one couch so it would be all together when she got ready to leave. The Jesus-people took this as a signal to start moving all of their stuff into that room and getting themselves all set up. They were dragging suitcases and all kinds of stuff in there in such a hurry you�d think people were lined up to get into the ICU waiting room like nerds waiting for the next Star Wars installment. What Would Jesus Do? I thought this was just the tackiest thing ever. They didn�t even let my sister-in-law get out before they started piling in there. I positioned myself in front of the couch with my sister-in-law�s belongings and if they had put anything on that couch with her stuff, I was coiled and ready to strike. Here�s what Sa did: I prevailed upon friends to call the waiting room phone number the Jesus-people had been so eager to give out only yesterday and ask for my sister-in-law. Repeatedly. Yeah, I know. I�m evil. Blah, blah, blah. Another thing that raised my ire happened this morning as I was sitting in the waiting room during my brother�s heart catheterization:
Yesterday, I checked my voice mails at work and called Whiny to tell her to call someone and let them know I was out of the office. Whiny told my neighbor, who knowing Whiny was not the most reliable source for information, called my lunch partner and asked what she knew. She knew nothing because I hadn�t called her. Oh dear! How embarrassing! Lunch partner emails our friend who is now working from home and asks for my phone number because she's lost it. Somehow Lunch Partner finds out that I have been in contact with Friend Who Works from Home but doesn�t get the story from her. Instead, she calls me in the hospital waiting room and proceeds to try and lay on the guilt because I told FWWFH what was going on but not her. Then in the course of the conversation, she finds out that I talked to Whiny but not to her. *gasp* You�d think she�d been mortally wounded. Sheesh, people! My brother is in another room with a camera in his heart! I�m not thinking about you and your petty feelings! Okay? End O� Rant The test results found that my brother�s arteries around his heart are 80% to 95% clogged. The blockage is throughout the arteries, rather than being localized in one region, making both the angioplasty and bypass surgery impractical. They are doing another test tomorrow afternoon, the results of which we should have tomorrow evening, to determine whether a bypass would lessen the weakness in his heart. If the results are negative, they will treat him with drugs to strengthen his heart. The doctor made a point of telling us this morning that �people with weak hearts don�t live as long as other people.� Today I cried. **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
