ROW80 DAY 21 A DAY TO REMEMBER - PART 1 **APOLOGIES TO WALTER LORD

I had some vague idea when I went to bed Sunday night of following up my epic Check in blog with.... something. Possible even something more knee-slappier than the boffo ending, I left you all with regarding my Runescape exchange with my ultra-suave friend Bryan. I am having trouble remembering what it was now, because I was getting a headache. I don't get many headaches, thank God, but when I do, they tend to be strange and weird, and I get stranger and even more psychotic than normal. I should have known this was going to be bizarre. I stepped outside for a breath of fetid, dumpster air, and the putative Spike and Angel were patrolling for vampires and demons out behind the La Ideal Meat Market. I accepted this as perfectly normal. They must have had Protect-a-Wino duty tonight.

Anyway, I was feeling tired and stiff and went to bed. I woke up at 4 am with the absolute worst nest pain on the left side of my neck, along with this really swell headache. This is either the spinal meningitis or the brain tumor I fear has lurked and eluded every MRI and voodoo spell for the last 50 years. Alarmed, I proceeded to burrow back into the pillows and sleep until abou1 pm.

Of course, it’s not one whit better when I wake up. So, I climb into some clothes, deputize JC to watch the house, so it's not completely denuded by crack hos and meth addicts, grab whackamole, glasses and crawl off to the bus stop. Only in this case, being Nebraska, it's all about the presentation, so I pretend to look like my head is not being riven in two by a wedge. Thank God, it's a short walk and a short wait.

By the time I get to TGH, I'm starting to get confused. I get off the bus and I have to get across a cross walk and I'm having trouble seeing it. A police officer noticed my difficulty and flagged down this doofy little card that runs around the campus, hauling people to and fro. People were getting in his way in the crosswalk, both pedestrians and some cars were just being impatient driving around him, a Tampa Police Office. He was getting impatient; a white pick up truck started to pass, but he looked at the woman's face and asked if she was all right. I was trying to get in this little cart and I heard "he's having chest pains." The officer instructed the woman to follow us. We zipped around the rear of the hospital and up a hill. The triage people tried to take me first. I said, "I'm doin' my own triage, get that guy there, ha may be having a heart attack." The attendants ran off after the lady and her husband. I got in the door and got in line. Typical TGH hurly burly. I worked in a teaching hospital for 5 years. This is nothing new to me.

Okay, let the festivities begin. Sign in, with a bunch of poorly scrawled information. God bless the intake people. They must have crystal balls and some kind of thought-detection. I can't even read my own runic output. Yet I'm always "Mary Wallace" " Mvxs Tcpldee." I was "Mary TGH" for a while once, but they could still find me. Now. the fun part. Find a chair in the waiting room. I look around. Just about every chair is taking. It looks like the Ship of the Damned. And nearly everyone has one of those charming Hospital Blankets. This is where normal blankets go before they die. This is blanket Purgatory. If you're a good blanket here, you may actually get out of here and go to blanket Heaven. I haven't formulated that part of the Theology yet. If you fail here in blanket Purgatory, you are made into those nasty little Hospital Socks. You know, the kind with non-skid crosses, and tight-ass collars, or whatever the hell those rings of death are called to keep them form slipping off your feet. They also come in either the most eye-blindingly shades of color known to man or the dreariest.

I have a theory about this; the violent chartreuse, reds, purples, blues, yellows are all given to the schizophrenic, bipolar mental patients. The dull, dull, dull, blah, dreary, brown, green, gray, lilac shades are given to the depressed people to ensure repeat business. The only thing that is even remotely “PC” are the fuzzy pink ones given to the people who are having breast biopsies, and those suckers could have been manolo blahniks and I wouldn't have noticed when I had a biopsy there.

These blankets however do not do one thing to keep anyone warm. When I was a patient here for 2 months, I weighed about 70 lbs at one point. I counted. I had 14 blankets. The damned blankets had to weigh more than I did. They did not keep me warm They would have made swell windows. These blankets have been washed and bleached so many times they don't even feel like normal material anymore. I bet if you stretched those bastards really tight you could file through metal. Those damn things are rough. And everybody's wrapped up in them. The blanket girl came around "Cigar? cigarette? Blanket o Death?" and asked me if I wanted one. I told her to bring me some Saran Wrap. That'd be warmer. Geeze.

But, once again, I'm off on a tear. This is a good place to stop, so I can launch into tomorrow's tear, which is actually today now. Shit, Like I'm not confused enough.