Medical Bureaucracy Exists!

I realize now why I originally shied away from having this damn blog. It's so easy to pop in, scribble some terribly thought out rant on yourself, and then feel secure in being a published author.

This really is some of the worst writing of my life.

Visit to grandma postponed. Pennsylvania called off--far too ambitious. What matters is that I have bacteria injected into my blood, ASAP! And that I find someone with a needle who works for free!

(With such selective criteria I am bound for success)

My morning passed like a bloody stool: two and a half hours reading about Paris Hilton's miraculous reformation, there from my stagnant perch at the walk-in clinic. My failed attempt at inoculation before teatime.

I wound up having to cough up almost a hundred smackers just so that a doctor I don't know could hand me a printout of information from the CDC's website. My consultation mainly revolved around how much each shot would cost because, oh yeah, vaccines on short notice apparently equal the price of the actual ticket to your disease-ridden destination.

Am I being vague?

Apparently Piedmont Minor Emergency Clinic doesn't take health insurance, which I do still and now have thanks to my dad's wild financial success--another reason that Ms. Hilton and I are kindred spirits, I suppose, this unrestrained nepotism... They don't take health insurance in the case of TRAVEL VACCINATIONS; for everything else, yes.

So the doctor advised me to just get the vaccines that I would "really need." Like Yellow Fever as opposed to Tetanus. Which I distinctly remember getting--the shot, that is. And which will make my arm fall off if I get another too soon. Curse this failing memory! Curse this failing health care system!

At least it allowed me the fascinating conversation with a teacher from Guyana who shared my annoyance. For her summer of separation from the middle school math minions, she had received a grant to do research in Singapore.

I mentioned that my roommate had been living there with her family and was now working on a PhD in "some kind of physics." I wish I could have offered more about Sandhya; it's sad to have completely ignored the details about someone I have lived with for a year.

The professor--whose name I immediately forgot, a reprehensible habit of mine--said that her son was a student at Emory, too, noticeably disappointed when I answered that, no, my Oxford University shirt was my boyfriend's--and he studied for two months there, over the summer.

"He would never study at UGA or Georgia Tech," she said with a sigh. "He says he's too smart and doesn't want people thinking he's there just 'cause he's black." The nurse wisked her away and the hallway was empty once more.

No matter. Voluntary Duke-beaching on the horizon. Second trip to Florida ever. I say goodbye to my children tomorrow, marking a surreal end to a week which saw my return to freshman year--chatting till all hours with the Marco, Gabi, Lauren contingent at Java Monkey as the stormy winds gave an impish allusion to autumn.

Now I return to a bedroom filled with boxes, themselves filled with high school, college, papers that need to be thrown out but prove impossible to let go.

- Lex