The Health Physics guy who kept coming in to measure my readings always acted terrified of me. Really, dude? THIS is what you DO for a living. He'd always hold the box out as far from himself as possible. I mean, I understood why, I really did have cooties, but dang. There was a part of me that wanted to jump up ONE time and hug him, just to hear if he would scream like a girl.

Because the radiation can gather in and damage the salivary glands, they recommended sucking on something sour for a while. I planned ahead, grabbed some sour candies. Well, they recommended lemons. Have you ever actually sucked on a lemon?? I wanted to gag. And I had to do it every HOUR. Even overnight. The first night, I barely got any sleep because the nurse would call to remind me (again, they didn't want to come in and physically be around me, so as long as I said all was well... it was fine). Well... around 3am, the sanity snapped - and when I lose touch with reality, I go stupid. I picked up the phone: "Nobody's home." 4am: "Pizza Hut, will this be for delivery or pickup?" And this went into the wee hours of the morning, but at least the nurse got a good laugh out of it. She was always so sorry to wake me.

As much as some aspects of this ordeal really pissed me off, I have to say the nursing staff was NOTHING but kind and competent, and they are paid WAY too little for what they have to deal with - and why I usually go out of my way to be as non-demanding as I can. Last night, a woman was brought upstairs around 1am, and proceeded to spend the next two hours screaming at and berating the staff and security. (I was on the Acute Care floor, I had no idea what was wrong with her.) They got her calmed down, two or three hours later, she was at it again. Around 9am, again. At no point did I hear the nursing staff lose their temper, they did all they could to calm her down. Someone always stayed at the main hallway entrance to keep an eye out for visitors and keep them away as politely as possible, as it just was not safe with that woman in there. Again, I had to suppress my inner smartass and not come bursting out my door, screaming, "Do not make the Hulk come down there and slap a bitch!" They did eventually get her sedated and cleared to be transferred to another floor.

My nurse this morning had me laughing. First call: "Are you continuing your lemons?" I confessed. No, I had switched to sucking on the candy. "Don't blame you, those things make you want to puke after a while, don't they?" Oh heaven, a kindred soul. She understood! Squee! And yes, after the first five or so, the mere thought of lemons was enough to turn my stomach, which isn't really that good for recovering from anything. Then, as I was reading over the discharge papers with her, it said to continue the low-iodine diet for 4 days. I looked at her, she looked at me.... and she went, "Are they CRAZY?" Same when we looked at the instructions for me to start my drugs back up in four days. "Why?? That makes so sense! Sit here, I need to call this guy and see what he's thinking!" Turns out the paperwork was started when I came IN. So... forget the LID, and I start my drugs back up in the morning.

Now, aside from a followup or two... hopefully this is it for a while. I can get back into the swing of things. Torment the boss.