Day +20 To Piss Or Not To Piss (Into The Wind)?

How fitting that today is Groundhog Day, because same same with a side of same. What that sameness looks like here is this: urine test, blood test, Nadir making fun of me, asking to see my tits, me showing him my tits, me asking when I get to go home, him pulling my beanie down over my face and lifting me up into the air in a very strange side hug. 

He said that this is where we bargain. Except, of course, he does not let me speak, monkey face, shut up! No questions either, so bargaining is more like me telling him to let me talk, then just talking over him, and when that doesn't work asking him how he ever woo'ed his wife. When do I get to go home?

My numbers are excellent. He says this with an intense stare, a smile, and surely I think this week, today, now. But no, he wants me to stay until next week, something something about the last 3 out of 4 people got infections when they left too early and had to be hospitalized; I am crushed. I thought surely not another Shabbat Shalom, that I would be home in time to watch the next Real Housewives on my couch. He gives me a shrug, and I guess this is what he meant by bargaining. You want to go to hospital at home?

Well, when you put it that way.

Then I met with Professor Slavin, the BMOC, or Scientific and Medical Director if you want to get technical. Slavin said I could go home whenever. Today. But not before he politely made a motion as if I should pull up my shirt, so I did, and he looked at my rash and made some notes. With a fountain pen. I kid you not. 

So when is it? When do I get to go home?

The answer lies somewhere in a flurry of Hebrew back and forth, fast and loud. But seeing as how the only words I have picked up are yes, no, please, good morning, good evening, thank you and sorry, I have no idea what they were saying except that the end result is that I needed to pee in a cup again. You try making a sentence out of those words that means that all of this will be decided with placing my pee in a centrifuge.

So now we wait. Will the Groundhog emerge from his burrow? The lab will have the results of my pee in a few days. Or will the Groundhog see his shadow and there will be six more weeks of winter? I mean, that's a little severe. We're talking about the difference between me booking a flight for February 4 or keeping our standing reservation of February 10, but honestly, truly, those 6 days may as well be 6 weeks.

In the meantime, proof of Nadir. He is something of a chupacabra in that he doesn't allow photos of himself. But after the pissing match incident, my dad and I saw him outside of the clinic and he invited us to sit. It was nice, actually. He's funny, and as rough and as rude as he is, he takes it right back. So we sat while he smoked, throwing the burning butt into the flower bed behind him and then smoked another. At one point he offered my dad a cigarette, my dad who has smoked off and on my whole life, white knuckle quitting for years at a time until suddenly on the phone I hear the telltale inhale between words and call him out, his biceps a landing strip for nicotine patches. My dad has not smoked now for 2 years, but he took one of those cigarettes and lit up while I screamed, even pushed Nadir for giving him one. Then I took out the only ammo I had, my camera. And this, folks, is the elusive Dr. Nadir, albeit the lower 2/3 of his face as he lept over the table to stop me.

That's what you get for calling me stupid.

xo,
S