A long wait

Right now I am sitting in the waiting room of the surgical admissions unit at our local hospital. I have been waiting here for 5 hours. Five minutes ago I was finally told that I have been booked in for an ultrasound, in 2 hours and 20 minutes. By that time I will have been waiting here for 7 and a half hours.
To make things worse, I have been instructed to be nil by mouth since midnight last night, so I have had nothing to eat or drink for over 13 hours. This particularly irritates me because I was told to be here before 7am so that I could be seen before the surgical team got busy with their daily appointments. I got missed.
All this is partly my fault, because I put off going to the doctors for months. I have very little faith in anything to do with the medical profession. Because of this I have gotten used to ignoring pain and illness, besides, I am usually too busy to take much notice.
So yesterday when I finally gave in and made an appointment to see the doctor, I was nervous. Mostly I was nervous because I was worried the doctor would say there's nothing they can do, as they seem to do so often these days, but there was part of me nervous that she might say there is something there and it's bad.
So what she said was, there's something there, she doesn't know what it is, and I need to go to the hospital to have it looked at by someone surgical. So now I am in limbo, I know it's something, I have a few ideas of what it could be, but until they have seen it they are not making any decisions. But I have been pencilled in on the surgical list for today, which worries me. I'm trying not to think about it too much, but when you are sitting in a room for several hours trying to stay occupied, it's hard not to start thinking about it. I don't do bored well. I thought I was well prepared with the bag of crafty library books, crochet blanket project, and mindless games loaded on my iPod that I bought with me. I finished reading the books after the first couple of hours, then I crocheted until my neck ached. Then I played games for an hour or so, until my iPod battery almost died. Then I discovered that I am in a free wireless hotspot, and I bought my iPod charger with me, and there is a power socket right next to my chair. So here I am, draining the hospitals broadband and power, waiting for a scan that I don't want, to hear news that I may not want to hear.
I think my point is, I don't want to be here, I have been tempted several times to just walk out the door. If I have lived with this discomfort for several months already, why can't I just keep living with it. Maybe it will eventually just go away. So, to occupy my time and keep me (relatively) sane, here's a list of things I should have been doing today:
• sleeping past 5:30am.
• spending the day at home with my little man.
• getting a visit from the speech and language therapist, which we have been waiting for for 4 months.
• making a gift for a friend who turned 50 this week.
• making cupcakes for said friends birthday celebration tomorrow.
• designing and choosing fabric for my cushion swap cushion.
• the usual household chores like laundry, dishes, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning etc. (notice this is at the bottom of my list, that's for a reason).

That is just today's list, I don't even want to think about the things I won't get done if I have to go to surgery and stay here for a few days.
But at least I have google reader, so I can catch up on all my favourite blogs, for as long as I am next to a power socket and free wireless hotspot.
I would probably trade my iPod for a big bowl of wedges with loads of sour cream and salsa, or just about anything else edible. Even a cup of tea would be great.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone