AS IF MY LIFE is not exciting enough, I had the pleasure of escorting Zen-Den, at 6:00 a.m., to the hospital for a routine colonoscopy.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been the Colonoscopy Escort, but your duties are simple:
- Get the [snarly and grouchy] patient to hospital at assigned time.
- Wait by yourself in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area while patient is checked-in.
- When receptionist tells you it’s okay, go sit with the patient in Pre-Op Area until patient is rolled away for procedure.
- Go back out to Colonoscopy Waiting Area and wait.
- After procedure go sit with patient in Post-Op Area until he or she is released back into the wild.
- Take [ravenously hungry] patient home and feed + water him or her.
# # #
AS PER DUTY #4 I was sitting in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area, playing games on my iPad, waiting, when the receptionist called out the name of someone’s Colonoscopy Escort.
No one in the waiting area responded.
She said the name again.
*crickets*
The receptionist got up from her desk and walked around the Colonoscopy Waiting Area, quietly asking each of us if we were this someone’s Colonoscopy Escort, until she eventually got to a 40-something man with his face buried in his laptop computer.
Standing directly in front of him she said his name again, loudly, and he finally looked up at her.
By now everyone in the Colonoscopy Waiting Area was staring at him, because human beings are nosy, and because waiting is boring so anything out of the ordinary is entertainment.
She told him he could go back and wait with the patient, DUTY #3, to which he said: “WHY THE HELL WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?”
And immediately went back to looking at his laptop.
# # #
THE RECEPTIONIST WAS IRRITATED, but shrugged and went back to her desk.
However, the rest of us, the cooperative Colonoscopy Escorts, started sending hate glances toward this guy. While an adorable 80-something lady with silver white hair went a step further by looking over the top of her bejeweled reading glasses, and loudly *tsking-tsking* in his general direction.
Somehow that particular sound got this guy’s attention and he looked up to see all of us glaring at him, shaking our heads at his obvious Colonoscopy Escort faux pas.
So with a noisy *sigh* he snapped his laptop shut and trudged over to the receptionist’s desk, ready to be taken to sit with someone who had the misfortune of knowing this man well enough to ask him to be his or her Colonoscopy Escort.
Can you even imagine? 0.o
{ Images |1| |2| |3| from Pixabay }
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 