IT'S ALIVE!

Respiratory distress, hypoxemia, syncope. Over on a nursing website I saw mention of an elderly patient with all three of those on his admission chart. During a slow moment he asked if he could step outside for a smoke. No, I myself am nowhere near that. But if it had been possible I would have liked to have been outside the lab having a ciggie while inside they were trying to find a promising vein for a blood sample. Jabbity jabbity.

Tests:
1. CBC w/Plts (No Diff) (CBCO)
2. PT, PTT, INR
3. Complete Metabolic Panel (CMP)

They didn't even bother checking if I was alive! For all they knew, I could have been suffering from COPD, with a pulsox of 0%, HR similarly at 0, and RR also 0. At which point the chart would read that the patient is dead, the patient is not living, the patient is not alive, the patient is deceased, gone to meet his maker, he has kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible, he's pushing up the daisies, and having breathed his last he is no more, and rests in peace.

At the very least, hold a mirror up to my nose to see if I'm breathing and have a reflection.

Oh wait. My exclamation when the needle went in proved that I'm alive.
Or at least it established sensitivity and sentience.

It was hallowe'en very recently. You never know what is roaming those dark San Francisco streets looking for a blood lab. But I suppose they're more worried about hopping vampires and drug addicts. According to Fox News those are all over the downtown.

After visiting the lab I had pork siu mai (豬肉燒賣) and pan-gilded turnip cake (蘿蔔糕 'lo paak gou') a block away, then decided to take the bus up hill five blocks to my polling place. The bus took a long time to come and was rerouted, because a fallen tree had blocked the street. Did I ever mention I hate walking up hill? Bum leg. Imagine that last stretch "illuminated" by multilingual cursing (mostly in Dutch). That same bus problem still hadn't been resolved later in the evening, so there was a longer wait than usual. I wished I had brought two pipes.

Tomorrow morning's commute will be surreal for a number of people. I shan't modify my routine, as I expect that by late afternoon it will have cleared up. Lunch, smoke a pipe, shopping, teatime, another pipe.

And I will periodically gloat to myself over the election results, which can be seen as a massive finger to Trump, MAGA, and Texas. Well-deserved.



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