SEPTEMBER 16, 2009 4:18PM
Crippled and Crazy or Maintenance Time at the VA
Thursday was time for CC to go to Dublin VA Hospital to see his primary care giver on the Blue Team. CC had taken a twenty year break from using the VA services, but about a year ago decided to give it another try. Dublin is about an hour from our home via I16. We left at sunrise, as soon as our granddaughter boarded the bus for school. At one point we got behind and then in front of and behind again of a van with Freedom is Not Free bumper sticker, a DV tag (disabled veteran) and a rather disagreeable man about sixty with at least forty buttons on his hat telling us exactly who he is. Only I can't read them because I am passing him at about seventy miles an hour. He has an ancient man riding with him.
We got there right as the fellow in the van unloaded a wheelchair at the main entrance and is lifting the much older vet into the seat. I let CC out at there too because we are 22 minutes late for the lab. I drive around, park in our usual spot (we have a date at the VA hospital in Dublin about twice a month). It's my pay day. I get to keep the travel cash and it's about all the salary I get these days. I sit in the car for a few minutes fiddling with my Iphone, checking email, Open Salon, Facebook, Huffington report.
Then I head down the narrow parking lot into a door sitting in the junction of two buildings. The hospital is a series of two story, long connected buildings. You pass through a range of about ten buildings per visit. I need an internal GPS device to navigate through these parts, but I don't have one. I blindly rely on CC while we are here. Sometimes he sends me on errands though. So I am having to slowly put together these mole-like tunnels in my mind to get from one place to another.
I made my way to the Blue Team's lab waiting room. There were too many people to sit next to CC so I take an empty spot a few seats away. Shortly thereafter, some loud man sits near me. He wants to talk about killing dogs or something equally repelling. I like to be a compassionate listener around there, but I wasn't in much mood for this fellow so I stuck myself further into the book I am reading and made more yellow marks on the page. We moved right on into the Blue Team waiting room after they took four tubes of blood from CC. An earthy, happy looking woman who was also a veteran was making fun with CC about how they were moving from one station to another. She seemed a lot more alive then the usual partner-in-waiting. She got called right away. We had a long wait.
CC got involved in a conversation with the man next to him. He tells CC how they gave him twelve pills instead of one hundred and twenty. CC tells him that a few years ago they fired everybody working here after a man laid out in the hall on gurney for over twenty four hours, finally dying. Now the service is much better. The geezer said his heart problems stemmed from Agent Orange. After about two hours of waiting the doctor was ready to see CC. I tagged on in. I opt out when it comes to lab work and needle pokes, but I usually go and listen to most of his doctors' visits. I heard once that it is good to have a witness cause some really crazy shit can go down in a doctor's office. Somebody might remember what was said if you have somebody with you.
CC sat near the door, Dr. Damn Meanie (a phonic spelling) sat at her desk and computer between CC and me. It was a little narrow room. She asked CC lots of questions and typed all the answers. She has a privacy screen on her computer and it looked black to me. The black screen raised my anxiety level a little. I mean she was typing about him, very intently and all I could see is a black screen. No glowing box. I even start thinking of writing a short story about journeling into a black computer that makes things happen in a parallel universe.
CC's cholesterol was down about 45 points from six months ago from diet alone. Dr. Damn Meanie was amazed. She had a paper on the table beside me with an article about opioids for non cancer pain. Damn, that is very much what CC's quest into the VA is all about - pain management on opoids. He even has a pain management doctor, Dr. Bad.
Two weeks ago when we were here for a teeth cleaning and a mental health consult; CC sent me to get his pain medication refilled from Dr. Bad. I traveled through the twisty turny long straight passages and found my way. I walked through the big swingy doors that had Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation written over them into the urniney smelling Corridor of Pain Management. I stuck my head into the secretary's office. She was about 60, really prim with a very smooth complexion and a less than modern hair do and outfit. "Dr. Bad is out today. No RX's. He's on emergency. Left yesterday. Won't be back tomorrow either." (Get the hell out of my office was what her quiet disproving demeanor was saying).
"You could go by Dr Damn Meanie's office and get her to write it." I took this news unhappily, CC was barely walking this week. His shoe connected to the leg brace had torn up and the tore up shoe bruised his foot. Since he doesn't have much feeling in the foot, he hadn't realized it until the foot hurt really, really badly. He was on crutches, but two days ago had not been able to walk at all. And he really did need more pain medicine. And when he's on crutches, that throws out his shoulder. His whole right side was blown the fuck up in Vietnam and he is damn near sixty and it had been a bad week. But I was nice to the lady. I promised we would go see Dr Damn Meanie.
When I told CC, he said that Dr. Bad had told him the nurse would fill his RX if he needed it. So we make our way back down to the Pain Clinic, through those cavernous doors into the hot and rarefied air back to see the Pain Secretary. She was resistant. CC was insistent. Both stayed pleasant. But CC mentioned a patient advocate and she decided she knew who she could call, but it would just depend on who answered the phone. Seems like she got it all straightened out and we would receive the RX in the mail in a few days. So she said. And it actually really happened. So on this trip, with CC up and about so much better then he had been previously - he wanted to go thank Ms Get 'er Done Pain Secretary. She was his new favorite person in the bowels of the VA hospital. But she wasn't there to receive his gratitude. Next we walked up to Mental Health. This is a new place to us. We have only been here once,when he saw a psychiatrist and she said he could have a PTSD diagnosis and she made him an appointment with her for a month later. But nobody seemed to have known a thing about the appointment a month later. CC started wondering if he was crazy.
On this fine day, we journeyed to where ever in the hell they hide the Mental Health Clinic to see about when he would ever have another appointment. The Clinic had been changed around since we were last there. Now it was crowded all together, the space abbreviated.
As CC negotiated a new appointment, I noticed a big wide wheelchair full of shoes. Shoes? Then I saw this little bitty old black man come to it and pull two big bottles of pills out of something under the shoes. I am interested. He trotted on back to the back from whence he had come and left the wheelchair behind. I began imagining he was a homeless dude with an over-attachment to shoes that he wheels around with him everywhere he goes. CC said he probably has a foot problem and had to bring all of his shoes for the check up.
As we were leaving Mental Health, a fellow in his early twenties was wheeled by. He didn't have on a shirt, Angry looking, he was blondewith a plethora of tattoos. Across his shoulders widely spaced scrolley letters proclaimed USMC.
CC got his travel money and then one last errand. Find the Prosthesis wing of this place and get another one of those soft knee braces he wears every day. We went in there. I had a phone call and decided to step outside to take it. CC pointed twenty feet away from the door I exited and said, "there is the car, just wait there for me!" And damn if the car wasn't right there across from us.
CC made it out to the car about twenty minutes later. We had been here for four hours. Driving off we spotted the blue van with the Freedom is Not Free sticker leaving as well.
