Wednesday, November 28, 2007

2 Week Checkup

Went for my two-week checkup after starting dialysis. This time I dragged dear brother with me too, because I wanted him to meet the nurses, and ask questions and satisfy himself about leaving me alone. Poor guy had to work - he works on East Coast time when he's here, so he'd been up since 4:00am local time (he's one of those strange ones - a morning person). I was eating up the better chunk of his best productive hours, but because he can be overprotective at times, I wanted him to be really at ease about my starting dialysis, and living alone.

So he asked his questions, mainly to do with that one thing I hate above all - exercise. I'm not supposed to use the rowing machine now (not that I ever did use it on a regular basis... HAH!). So now he's going to ship the rowing machine off to his home, and get me an exercycle. Or even worse, a membership at the Gold's Gym across the street. HORRORS! :D

Amma and K dropped me off at work that day, then came back around 4pm to pick me up. I'm afraid I gave them (and CMR) a small shock because they showed up at the front door, but I wasn't there to meet them. They tried calling me, but my cell phone doesn't always pick up calls because of the abysmal reception in the guts of the building, where my little corner is. Tried again, still no me. After the third try, they called CMR, who in turn tried to call me as well. She also tried to find me online. Amma says she came in and asked the recep if she could in and check on me, but the recep could not allow that. What was I doing in the meantime, you ask?

I'd packed up my stuff - shutdown the computer, stuffed it in the bag, etc. I was chatting with another person in the same cube-farm. She was planning a trip to India, for a month, and I was busy telling her about Kaziranga National Forest, and the Gir Forest and all the stuff I could remember. I had my phone in hand all this time, mind you. I was wondering why Amma didn't call me again - they were pretty close to the office when I'd talked to her last. Finally, around 4:45pm, my phone buzzed with a text message, "Where are you?" It was from K, finally! I sent a text message back saying I'd be right there, then realized I had to head to the loo first. Did so, and my what a reception I got when I got into the car! First thing I did was call CMR to let her know I was OK, then calmed down Amma and K and told them what to do if they wanted to find me and I wasn't responding on email or phone (they're supposed to call Security and ask them to either take a look see or escort them to my desk, and back out if I'm not there).

So that's the little story for today...

2 comments:

Shammi said...

Good idea taking Kumar along. What sort of exercise ARE you supposed to do anyway? No rowing machine, natch. Stepper? X-trainer?

Anonymous said...

Radha, I had earlier only read the posts that you had emailed to us and got to read the rest today. I sincerely feel U.S. should remove the limit of max. six months stay at a time, and let Amma stay with you only. That would be comforting to all of us. Hats off to you Radha for taking things in your stride. Love, maya