Posts Tagged ‘Doctors’

It’s the last week of the quarter. Well, the last week of the last quarter. So, I’ve been crazy busy, trying to bring the projects home on time. Had an immense weight lifted today. I finished my last 434 script and handed it in to my awesome professor, John Sweet (The Affair of the Necklace.) I haven’t slept much in the past two days, but I got it done and in. So, now all I have left is the rewrite of my play for next Tuesday. Then school will be done.

Regular posting should resume tomorrow. I’m taking a long night on the couch to regroup, before the final push. Plus, Jason and I have a few things we have to get cracking on. On top of all that, I had my dental appointment on Tuesday. What was supposed to be a 3-4 appointment turned into an 8 and 1/2 hour marathon. 8 of those hours were solid work. The 1/2 hour was interspersed throughout the day in ten minute increments for breaks. It was unexpected and wiped me out. I still haven’t completely recouped my forward momentum. I lost an entire day to it. I came home and tried to work and couldn’t. It was a rough one. Roughest I’ve ever had – terrible back pain in the chair in the morning, countless shots throughout the day  to numb the area consistently that they were working on, six teeth in total were addressed, an allergic reaction to the slow-setting material they used for my first round of impressions. It was grueling. I’m thrilled it’s over and I don’t know how else it could’ve been done, but I never want to endure that again.

So tonight, some TV, some pasta, some Ice Cream, and some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.

Not a good day, by any stretch of means. Just got out of a notes session on the desert script. Let’s get right down to brass tacks. I’m tired and feel a little beat up. These days happen. This too shall pass. Doc shall rise again.

- The notes session. Overall, I guess we survived. There were definitely some good notes and the talking it out that happened around that notes will, most likely, prove quiet positive. That being said, it’s never fun, as a writer, to watch as work you were responsible for get completely shredded. Work that you invested in, stood by, and believed in. It happens. It’s happened plenty before and it’ll happen again; but going through that tonight was not fun. Especially when you felt those sequences (not even scenes – entire sequences!) were just called flat and “not doing it”, but had been misread. You flip open the script the exec/producer has written all over and across whole pages, multiple pages, are big red X’s from corner to corner. Sure, I’m venting here, because I couldn’t in the meeting. Sure, I know I have to take it and, hey, it’s clear I didn’t do my job. But, that doesn’t make the pill of it all easier to swallow. Not that the scenes need to be unanimously adored or loved, I guess it’s just that they were tossed completely out. It’s the worst kind of strike out. The one that makes you look foolish, most of all to yourself. Thank God Jason was there. Otherwise that would’ve gone much, much worse.

-For some reason, it’s like a sauna in my apartment. I checked the heater and it’s not on. I kind of don’t know what the deal is. It’s not all that hot out and it usually doesn’t get that hot in the apartment, ever. (No direct sunlight, really)

-I’ve got Dave, an awesome cocker spaniel, with me for the weekend. I’m watching him for a friend, who had a job in New York over the weekend. He’s about ten. Really happy go lucky. A super sweet dog and has taken quite a liking to his stay at Camp Doc where the treats flow steadily and the walks are plentiful, dinner’s always on time, and we sleep in late when the spirit moves us!

-Though I am looking down the barrel of a seventy-two hour lockdown in the apartment. Got a ton of writing and even more rewriting to do. Mainly for school this weekend. It is the final push.

-I’ve slowly become a Trader Joe’s shopper, for the most part, over other stores. I think it’s more cost effective, but I’m not so sure, yet. It’s keeping me out of Whole Foods, which is good.

- Finally watched the Lovely Bones last night. Didn’t I first mention it almost two weeks ago? I haven’t seen a movie that so thoroughly misunderstood the novel it was adapted from in a long, long time. I mean, we’re talking BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES missed the boat. It was rather stunning to watch. I don’t recommend it, though, for fans of the book. In addition, the film was so wildly self-aware of itself, it almost seemed like an exercise in Douglas Sirk styled melodrama.

-Early Tuesday morning, I’m to have a long procedure done on my teeth at the dentist. I won’t get into the cost, or what it is, it would probably bore most all of you. Suffice to say, it represents the end of the decade long endeavor to overcome a condition I was born with – a not uncommon problem, but still difficult to manage without extensive work on your teeth. Work that, in the end, costs as much as a nice mid-market sedan. I will be thrilled to be done. My gifted and talented dentist, Dr. Grace Ahn, will be thrilled as well. My amazing dentist in Chicago, Dr. Scott Stiffler, would be amazed if he knew. It’s been a long road. Especially with no dental insurance to speak of through most of it.

- Man, it’s hot in this apartment!

-Dave sure does love watching HGTV and his rawhide bone.

-Cards beat the Cubs. That helps. A lot.

That’s all I got. Have a safe and fun Memorial Day Weekend.

No, not school tests. Medical tests.

I lived without health insurance for almost all of my twenties and fortunately never had a major scare. Sure, there were a few minor dust ups here and there, but no hospital stays or, even, broken bones. Let me tell you, that’s pretty miraculous, all things considered. I won’t get into the Health Care debate. I was also, as most of you know, a bartender for fifteen years. So, I ABHOR the public discussion of politics. Too many long, snowy sunday nights listening to idiots five single malts in pontificating on the topic du jor even though they wouldn’t know a newspaper if it bought them a drink.

I will say this – it’d be nice if we could figure out a way to make an affordable option available for everybody. I digress (notice how often I do that? It’s a thing with me. I live a life of tangents.) What I’m getting to is that after all those years of no insurance, or emergency care only; graduate school has afforded one enormous global perk in my life for the past two and a half years. That perk is world class, comprehensive health insurance. It is a beautiful thing.

So, I assembled a team of doctors over my time here. Literally. I think I have 8-9 different ones under the hood checking me out right now. It’s awesome. If there’s a medical test, I will take it. Got a referral? Let’s do it! I am determined to make up for all those lost years, plus I’m not getting any younger and there are some questions to answer while we have the time and ability.

All that being said – I recently went over to the UCLA Medical Center for some cardiovascular tests. It was all pretty standard. Basically, I was just getting double checked out before proceeding with some rather basic meds. All in all, I ended up having an EKG and an EchoCardiogram. Today I received the official results – the doctor’s notes.  Everything is just fine:

“…The patient does not seem to have any symptomatic angina, dyspnea,
or any symptoms concerning for any frank structural heart disease or active CAD.”

Reading through the notes though and seeing a bunch of numbers I could either pretend I understood, or could admit that I had no clue what those numbers represent, one thing came back to me. That was the experience of the Echocardiogram and something a friend said in relation to it that, well, is bound to at least make you...think.

If you haven’t had one done (hopefully, you haven’t had to) you lie there on the exam table while they take a sonogram of your heart and measure how it’s doing in there. Mine took about a half-hour. The strange part is that as you lie there, the only sound is your heart beating up on the screen and then a picture of your heart pumping away comes into view. You think: “That’s what drives the whole package..” as you watch it do it’s thing.

Anyways, this is what my friend noted: ” Then you realize that this “battery” (your heart) has been running for however long you’ve been alive – steady, reliable, but running without fail – for me that’s thirty some odd years – with (hopefully) many more to go. It doesn’t turn off. You, technically, can’t shut it down or rest it. It just goes until it doesn’t.

While that thought sent a cold shiver down my spine for a minute (Wouldn’t it be nice to power down for a bit?), ultimately I found inspiration in it. This is why I’m going on all these doctor visits, returning to the gym, trying to get better work habits and sleep habits going – all to keep that battery running (Obviously.)  In the end, though, the idea behind this is really a touch deeper – it’s really  to enjoy the coming days ahead, and all that will come with them, whatever that may be.