so i woke up this morning and staggered my way to the mass general hospital for my doctor's appointment. i was classified as an urgent care patient, which shuffled me to the first available doctor that day. before i got to that though, i was sent downstairs to radiology to get my foot x-rayed. while some people had on hospital gowns, i just had my temporary id bracelet. there was no other people left in the waiting room before they called my name. i laid down on a large flat table with wheels while overhead was this large contraption descending from swinging arms. the room was dark and the machine projected a crosshatch mark on my ankle. "it's not really my ankle i'm worried about, it's more my foot," i told the operator. "don't worry, we usually get a portion of the foot as well," she told me. figuring they were the experts, i didn't say anything else. after they took 3 snapshots (top, tilted, and flat) i was free to go back upstairs to wait for my doctor's appointment.

by then i had already been in the hospital for almost two hours (i got there at 10am) before they called me to see the doctor. i stripped down to my underwear (ugly carrot-patterned boxer shorts, not even sure where i got them). the doctor pressed around, made me walk and flex my foot. "unfortunately, your x-rays aren't ready yet," she told me, "and radiology has already gone to lunch." she said more than likely it was just soft tissue injuries (which would heal on their own), but if she saw anything to be concerned about in the x-rays she'd call me back. in the meantime, i was supposed to rest my foot, bandage it up, and keep it elevated.

i returned to porter square, where i bought some bandages from CVS before getting a medium cup of white hot chocolate from dunkin' donuts on this cold and dreary day. back at home i wrapped up my foot. i'd never done anything like this before, but i kept on asking myself, "what would a mummy do?"

hours later a nurse from the hospital called me up. "they x-rayed your ankle but you said the pain is in your foot," she said in a accusatory tone, "you'll need to come in again, we're going to have to redo the x-rays." i told her the doctor said if i was better by monday, i wouldn't have to come in. otherwise, i could go straight to radiology monday morning and get rescanned.

so this whole doctor's appointment turned out to be a complete failure. not only did they not x-ray the right part, but i waited 2 hours just to be sent back home again. i didn't even score some prescription strength painkillers! it just confirmed my original thinking which was i didn't think anything was broken and that eventually i'd just get better on my own, no thanks from modern medicine.

something i noticed about my foot: ever since the accident, i haven't done much walking, just basically confined to my house. however today i really put my foot to the test, and as a result, there was some serious new bruising on the outer and inner part of my foot, as the blood started to pool in those areas. it's kind of gross but after i bandaged everything up i couldn't see it anymore.

i was also on the phone today sorting out some billing issues blue cross. earlier this week i received a bill of $150 for the MRI i had done back in march, something i thought my health insurance would cover completely. i shouldn't be complaining too much because the actual cost of the scan was $12,924. you heard me right: $12,924. it's like, either get an MRI or buy a small car. that's an outrageously expensive service and doesn't seem normal. imagine if i didn't have health insurance, there would be no way i could ever get an MRI done (and get those lovely images of my insides). i spoke with julie and she said when she had hers done way back, the actual cost was just $2000. does MGH inflate their service fees to bilk the insurance companies?

i helped bruce in the late afternoon to figure out how easy it'd be to update his laptop hard drive. hardware-wise it was a piece of cake, we found the location of the 2.5" hard disk and even managed to pull it out of the machine. however, we didn't have a contingency plan as to how to migrate his old applications and data to the new hard drive (and all his installer discs are back in pittsburgh), so we ended up scratching that idea. later we opened up the wrist rest to get at the DIMM's, to see if could install more memory to make his computer run faster. my parents showed up around that time (scheduling conflict). after bruce left, i ate some rice porridge while my parents did some online research on tear drop and pop-up camping trailers.