Hospital Hiatus

Once upon a time there was a woman who in her mind, thought she was younger than her actual age. While her mind was willing, her body was not!

She thought the container full of Canadian educational materials was even better than Christmas morning. She saw sand coloured boxes of every size and shape, every weight and dimension; just sitting waiting to be opened to discover the contents. The woman knew this would be a mammoth task and invited her supportive strong husband to help her.

1/2 of the order

Three younger men were also summoned to help sort and move the boxes to the woman’s Kindergarten school. After four solid hours with only a sip of water for all, the woman’s wise husband said, “Hallas, enough, I’m done. Tomorrow we will come and finish the sorting.”

The next day the couple arrived at the scheduled time and began, with less enthusiasm, to complete the task. Like an artist’s palette, they sorting 70 packages of each colour of construction paper. Multiple sets of play trucks, dolls, doll’s cribs and highchairs, complete kitchen play centers, pompoms, many coloured rolls of paper, poster board, jungle, seashore, farm animals, dinosaurs, wiggly eyes, pipe cleaners, puppets, puppet stages, water and sand tables and the list went on for 8 more pages.

Finished they were; in more ways than one! Unfortunately for the couple, it was the holy day and no taxis were in sight. They hiked 2 km in the mid-day sun to hail a cab. They treated themselves to lovely lunch at Chili’s.

The very next morning, the mature lady went off to work. About 15 minutes after arriving, she bent over to pick up a piece of paper and her back went snap! Oh how she wished that piece of paper wasn’t so heavy!

With the excruciating pain increasing, she relented and went to the hospital. After filling out the paperwork and paying the required SR14. she dragged her hunched body over the elevator and rode to the fourth floor where she was to see a physiotherapist. Unfortunately, only optimologists occupied the fourth floor. Down to reception she shuffled. Again she repeated, “Physiotherapist” to the gentleman who had ‘helped’ her. He informed her physiotherapy service was in another building. She asked her helper to carry her bag and off they went on their trek.

In the other building her translator and helper took her to the front reception. After greeting all his mates (shaking hands, hugging, chatting), he pointed to the desk down the corridor. She was told that was physiotherapy. Whew she thought, almost there! Holding her breath and gritting her teeth, the woman hobbled to the next section. While there, the head doctor explained in very good English, that unlike Canada, one had to see a doctor before being given service in his department. Back to the front reception the woman shuffled.

Paying her SR14 again, her helper took her to another section in the hospital. At that reception desk she recognized a few words. Her helper told the ladies at the desk, “Urgent, Canadian, and Doctor.” Once the paper work was done at that desk, her helper showed her the next waiting room.  The dilapidated woman sat on a metal chair and rested her head on the wall. She closed her eyes and that squeezed out the pain tears that were so close to the surface.

Gathering her emotions, her brain started to have a very interesting conversation! Calm and patient ½ was debating with fight and flight ½.

“Get me out of here!”

“Just be patient, you have finally made it to the right section, let’s just wait to see the doctor.”

“The doc could be hours, you’ve heard how you can get grey hair waiting for doctors here. Maybe the doc is doing surgery and we could be here when the sun goes down!”

“OK, let’s just set a time. Can we agree on waiting ½ hour more?”

“I just want to be home in bed, off this hard metal chair, lying on my soft coil spring mattress. That’s the medicine I need!”

The woman did wait for the doctor for the ‘agreed upon time’. Shuffling back to the main reception, she informed them she would need to leave and would not need to have an appointment today. They insisted upon giving her the SR14 back. Dragging her feet she found a pharmacy in another section of the hospital, bought some Advil, called the bus driver and headed home.

Indeed fight or flight was right! Bed rest on the coil spring mattress with lots of Advil allowed her to slide out of bed six hours later.

The boxes sat perfectly still the following day. A true doctor’s visit will have to wait, and the woman will need to act her age!