THE SQUEAKY MAN

The hospital is a cool, comforting, and confusing place, after which one goes to snarf down a cheeseburger. Cool, because it typically has air-conditioning; comforting, because I already knew that the fong se sat (放射室) is on dei haa, yi lau (地下，二樓). And confusing because I needed to pee after getting my thyroid ultrasounded. The cheeseburger should have been a bacon cheesburger (煙肉芝士漢堡包 'yin yiuk ji si hon bou baau') but the waitress is a little hard of hearing.

After lunch, one wanders off into an alley to have a smoke.
Only one of those three is doctor recommended.
Well, two if you include urination.
Not three, but four.


One seldom actually knows whether there is someone in a big institutional bathroom, and knocking is of no use because they might be deaf. Finding out that the loo requires a key is even worse. Am I going to walk in on some elderly deaf-as-a-doorpost auntie in the middle of doing the needful? Has uncle passed out and slumped forward due to something diabetic? Is there a surgeon in there frantically reading up on emergency busted aorta repair for dummies? You never know.

Then, having gained access to the facility one worries that someone desperate will also have a key and come storming in while one is draining. At which prospect the normal adult urethra locks up solid.

The thyroid scan (甲狀腺嘅超聲波掃描 'gaap jong sin ge chiu seng bo sou miu', or in short 甲狀腺超音波 'gaap jong sin chiu yam bo' took less time than alloted, and began around twenty minutes before it was scheduled to start. I had arrived in radiology around forty five minutes early. When I left the house I was worried that I was going to run out of time. Because, and this is NOT a medical issue, I am neurotic about these things and hate rushing.


I am fairly certain that no medical people I know saw me devouring the burger or lighting up. Years ago doctors would of course smoke pipes, and there may have been ashtrays all over the place in the hospital, but I doubt that that has been the case since the seventies at the latest. And Chinese American female medical personell probably never smoked.
Unless they worked the emergency room.



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