August 28: My new doctor!

I know it's been a while (again) since I've blogged. Sorry Grandma. Sorry Mama.
These days have been exciting, exhausting, repetitive, and different. Things have been crazy; I don't even know where to start.

My mom just came in town! That was great and the girls loved seeing her. She's the bomb.
I bought (my mum and pop helped) a keyboard for my apartment to help me practice for my voice lessons, so that's good. It was a stupid, long, weird process, though. (one that I'm still dealing with)
I also went to a new doctor to follow up with my ER visit on the 7th. My new doctor, Josh, was THE BEST. Seriously.

So my mom came in to town for my doctor's appointment because she's my mama and it was a good excuse to come visit. She came up yesterday, spent the night in my apartment, and left this afternoon. I love seeing my mum. Obviously I know that I live in Chicago, but it is still kind of sinking in. But when my mom came to visit me..because I live here..anyway, that was weird.

If you hadn't read my blog about my ER trip (you should), I went to the ER on the 7th because I was having really intense pains in my stomach. They did a CT scan and found a kidney stone and "an innumerable amount of lymph nodes scattered throughout the abdominal mesentery" (which is what I had to follow up with my doctor about today). It was such a late night in the ER and all I heard was kidney stone so I figured that was the problem. Well, my doctor explained to me today that they didn't find the problem and they just kind of sent me on my way since the pain had stopped. Fabulous.

Let me tell you about this doctor. It's hard to find a doctor in Chicago who takes insurance from Kansas City, but I seriously lucked out. I called the insurance company, they gave me three doctors, and Josh (the one I went to) had the best reviews, so I scheduled an appointment with him. The building is in downtown Chicago (where I live), on Michigan.

The building was beautiful. Dr. Merok's office is on the 16th floor. Fabulous. As I'm working on paperwork and whatnot, I saw allergen-free granola bars available and crackers. Okay. Sweet. So then we go back and the nurse was so great. She was super fast and efficient. Then we waited less than ten minutes and my doctor came in. "Hi. My name is Josh. It's so good to meet you." So. Nice. We went through the papers and everything and he was super thorough and engaging. He told us what the next steps were and he left. (Oh, by the way, instead of a usual clip board, he was carrying around a tablet, no big deal.) So I had to get some blood drawn and I didn't even have to leave the room! The blood taking nurse lady (probably an official name for that somewhere) was really nice. I didn't even feel the needle go into my arm. My mom and I thought that it was maybe because that vein had been conditioned to getting blood drawn from it (because of my hashimotos, which requires a good amount of blood tests). Then she gave us both some refreshments. After my mom and I were super awkward and asked a lady if we were supposed to leave AND me fulfilling a life long dream of mine, rolling on a doctor's chair, another nurse brought us some papers and we headed out. My mumsy had to use the bathroom so I went to the waiting room for her.

They have TV screens that show different slides for the patients. One of them said "Have to wait a while?" and then it gave some ideas of what you could do. "Grab a complimentary snack. Play some sudoku. (They had sudoku pages for us) Or you can check out a laptop from the front desk and use our free wifi."

WAIT WHAT

I thought, "Surely not. There's no way."

And then a man with a Macbook Air walked up to the front desk and asked for the password. YOU CAN CHECK OUT MACS! ...

So, all of that to say that my new doctor just rocked my socks off.

Well, that's that story.

Have a good night, folks.

(Although I feel like my life is now a lie, I don't have any pictures for this blog..)

-Kristen