The Dodgy Downstairs Deal

Of all the situations to find yourself in, this was one of the more unique. There was a driver, a needle, a brain doctor, a urine bag, an off-duty nurse, and a suburban white couple who was questioning everything. There are pictures to verify this.

The driver was the instigator, possibly the brains behind the operation. She suggested that an off-duty nurse could be brought by the house, as long as the deal happened downstairs after dark. She also arranged for the brain doctor and the urine bag to be brought over for a cash transaction. The process could be completed in two hours if everything went smoothly, but that didn't happen.

If you haven't guessed yet, my wife and I were the suburban white couple ... the straight man, and in situations like this my spontaneous wife becomes even straighter then me. I've been coming down with some type of symptom lately, and we elected to treat it with non-traditional resources. Okay, so it wasn't a urine bag, but the rest of the details so far are true. It really looked like urine though.

The driver convinced us to arrange for an IV to be administered at our house. The only good news at this point is that I saw the needle come out of sterile packaging. But the nurse was coming off of an emotionally stressful conversation just minutes prior, and the doctor asks for a coat hanger almost immediately after coming in our front door.

The nurse whips out her rubber gloves, and to ease the tension I mention that she has no need to worry because I do not have HIV. She replies, "That's okay, this is to protect you from anything I have." Then she laughed ... I'm not sure that's funny.

The doctor and the nurse had never worked together before, so I was hoping that there would be some overlap in the knowledge base between the brain doctor and the nurse ... but that just wasn't happening. The brain doctor was afraid to do needles - something about how they were considered very tiny tools. The off-duty nurse wasn't sure what the doctor was talking about half the time, and as these two were prepping for the action, I heard the phrase "I don't know" way to often.

My wife was quite serious in her questioning, "Do you really want to do this? Are you really that sick?" The doctor had his questions also: "What did you eat for dinner?" It was like I got caught or something, and I replied honestly with "Pizza and root beer." He gave me a look like, "Well maybe that's why you're not feeling so well, chump." I knew better, so I did kind of feel like a chump.

The kicker may have been when the nurse asked for a pen and paper to do some math. We asked her if she wanted a calculator, but she said no. Hmmm. She didn't need my height or weight, but somehow she was going to calculate how long I'd be hooked up to the juice. After a few disgruntled looks on her face over the next five minutes of staring at numbers, ratios, and long division, she triumphantly announced that it would only take two hours hooked up to this IV. Why no calculator?

After much hesitation, we went forward with the IV and the bag of mystery fluid that looked like urine. They said it was vitamin C. The doctor even claimed to have had this done to himself once back during "school." It was going to help me feel better.

The process took another turn for the worse when the doctor took his money and left after the first 15 minutes. He said "just send me a text if anything goes wrong" over the next two hours. He was wearing all black instead of the traditional white, so what was I supposed to say? He said he was "going across the street" ... so does that mean he has another one of these scheduled for the evening?

The nurse and the driver stuck around for a bit, but that seemed to be more for emotional reasons. They seemed quite confident that this fluid dripping into my veins was going to work out just fine. But after an hour, they left also. So my wife and I are there in the basement, urine bag not even half empty, and I'm supposed to hold "pretty still" for another hour. We decide to play a card game, and well ... I end up not holding still enough. Who knew?

We make it past the two hour point, and at this point the calculator seems like a really good idea that the nurse opted out of. Maybe in her hand calculations she forgot to carry the one. We've made it through about 80% of the bag, but I'm not paying much attention to it at this point because I'm in a card game. But after awhile I look down at my arm. Sure enough, there's a knot near my elbow the size of a GOLF BALL!!! Are you kidding me? This is a dodgy downstairs deal gone bad from the suburban white couple's perspective.

In classic home remedy fashion, the doctor told us to "just pull the needle out when you're done." He may have even winked at me after he said this. Well at this point I'm DONE, as I don't want this knot by my elbow to keep swelling and burst urine all over the place, or whatever this "vitamin C" stuff is.

In true street fashion, I pulled out the needle myself. No pain ... mission accomplished (except the massive knot in my arm). I have the cell phone numbers of the brain doctor, off-duty nurse, and the driver. So I called all three of them ... with NO answer from any of the three! Classic. At this point, I'm thinking that I should have known all along that the follow-up care in procedures like this would be below average.

Eventually the driver ends up being the one to call back, not exactly who I needed on the other end of the phone. But she was with the nurse, who let me know that "this just happens sometimes." Oh thanks.

So if you saw my blog post a few months ago about business opportunities, you may recall that I like to post a moral at the end of the story. So the lesson for today is one you have heard before, but maybe in a different context. But we've read a story about the famous cliche - "It's not what you know, it's who you know." You see, if I hadn't known the driver, I would never have been able to get the medical care that I need.









Here's a picture of me questioning the process.








Here's a picture of me literally pointing the finger at the driver (not in the picture for legal and confidentiality purposes, since she was the brains behind the operation), along with an unsettlingly bewildered look on the brain doctor's face.












And finally, a great shot of the "urine" bag next to the mysterious coat hanger.