Update from gimp central (Warning: Viewer discretion is advised)

Yesterday after school I went directly to the doctor, arriving about 2:45. I got home around 8. That should tell you how well things went.

First I saw my internist. He felt my leg, which, I must admit, has endured less abuse than Angelina's leg, and said the could feel where the muscle was torn. As in he could feel the ends of the two separate pieces of muscle. Good thing I don't get squeamish, because that's pretty gross. He sent me down to radiology to get an ultrasound to try to determine the size of the tear and to see if I had any blood clots. (By the way, I've heard that blood clots are dangerous, but isn't blood supposed to clot?)

I got to radiology at 3:15, got in a gown and sat, alone, in the waiting room until 4:50. The good news is that I got to watch several episodes of Barefoot Contessa, so I'm ready to whip up hors d'oeuvres of mini grilled cheese sandwiches and spinach-fontina crisps, a gourmet dinner of lemony chicken breasts with brown rice and green beans, with dessert of french toast bread pudding and a sticky caramel tart, (though if you scroll down a bit you'll see it would probably take me half a day to assemble the ingredients).

Finally got into the ultrasound room, which had a very comfortable table/chair/bed for me to lie down on. Having never been pregnant I'd not had an ultrasound before. It was painless and took about 10 minutes. The technician then went off to go over the results with the radiologist (this immediate evaluation is charmingly called a "wet read" in reference to reading x-ray films immediately before they had time to dry. So wet pixels and all, they read the ultrasound and told me that I had a small blood clot and that I should call my doctor ASAP.

To give an idea of my current slow motion world, I called the doctor's answering service as I left radiology and had him paged, and he called me back 10 minutes later, and I hadn't gotten to my car yet.

The doctor told me I had to go on blood thinners and called in a prescription. There's a pill, which takes about 4 days to reach full effectiveness, so in the meantime I have to give myself an injection every day. Not surprisingly, not every pharmacy has self-injectable blood thinners, so I spent a half hour running (not literally) around getting the medicine. The doctor, though he didn't say so, was clearly unhappy that I had been active without blood thinner.

Once home, I got to shoot up this stuff, which was not as hard or as painful as I thought. I now have to live in fear of getting a cut or a bad bruise. And by then I was too beat to go to the supermarket.

This morning, we still needed the groceries, so I went to Acme. It took me an hour to collect about 15 things scattered around the store. On the way out I asked the manager if I was allowed to use the electric scooters they keep near the entrance. She said, "Sure. They should be all charged up and they corner very well." I can hardly wait.

At this point, my main problem is that every routine little thing has become arduous, so by early evening I am exhausted. My leg is very stiff and kind of sore. I'm not even to get into how crabby I was at school. We'll have to see how well I hold up for the rest of the week.