Get the picture? … by Sherry Hopkins

It was Friday and Dear Don had taken a vacation day for a long weekend. For the past four or five months he has been treated for rosacea, a rash on his right cheek. The treatments have included antibiotics, topical ointments and even an injection of steroids into the sight. To this point nothing had worked so he was scheduled for a laser treatment on this Friday.

He was a little nervous about the treatment because he didn’t know what to expect. Neither of us expected what followed.

After a long wait he was called back. About twenty minutes later I heard him at the checkout desk making a future appointment, but he never came out.

So I got in line for the restroom when a nurse hurried out to the waiting room and called for Sherry. I turned upon hearing my name but another lady arose and followed the nurse back. My turn for the restroom came and I went in. I was in there for a bit because I was fooling around with my hair.

When I exited fifteen heads turned in my direction and in unison asked, “Are you Sherry?” I nodded yes, confused as to why they all know my name and are asking for me.

“The nurses are looking for you ” they informed me. “One of them just went outside to see if you were there,” a lady added, as she ran to the nurse in the parking lot yelling, “She’s in here, she’s in here!”

The nurse hurried back in grabbed my arm and hustled me back to an examining room where I find Dear ol’ Don green as a gourd and lying on a table. His head was covered with a rubber glove filled with ice and he looked a little worse for wear.

“What happened,” I asked “was the laser treatment that bad?”

“I was checking out after finishing up and felt dizzy and lightheaded,” he told me. I mentioned this to the nurse at the desk and they all start scrambling to get me seated. That’s the last I remember until I awoke on this bed.” The nurses are all around his bed treating him like he had just survived a heart attack.

“Do you want something else to drink?” they asked, “are you comfortable? Let me get you some more ice for your head.”

I was still a bit confused at this point so the story continued as the nurses filled me in.

“He said he felt dizzy and we grabbed a chair and had him sit down. Just as he sat down his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell out of the chair. The doctor was with another patient and we couldn’t lift him so we drug him to this room. It was really hard because his rubber soled shoes were catching on the carpet and making a duh duh duh duh sound.”

At this point in the story Dear Don sat up and yelled, “ I was having a fit? I was having a fit?”

“No,” they explained to him, “ your shoes catching on the carpet were making you appear to be having spasms, you weren’t really having them.” Relieved Dear Don lay back down turning a bit greener.

The nurses continued saying they couldn’t get a pulse on him and his blood pressure was low and they panicked at this point. The doctor was finally free and with the help of a male Laser technician they got him on the bed. They administered ammonia (smelling salts) and that brought him around promptly.

Of course the first thing he asked for was me. He only told them to ask for Sherry in the waiting room. There were two of us there that day unfortunately. The other Sherry stood up and they ushered her back to Dear Don’s room. She went in and sat down seemingly happy to be there and to do what was asked of her. She looked at Dear ol’ green Don, smiled and said,

“ Hello.”

“That’s not my wife!” Dear Don yelled, feeling more alarmed now. “She’s not my wife.” The nurses ran back in and grabbed the poor woman and rushed her back out of there. Then the frenzy really set in to find me.

So by then I had been located and they hurried me to the back. I asked the nurse what happened and the above story was relayed to me. I started laughing because at this point it’s really funny.

No doubt the nurses must have thought I was having an unusual reaction to Dear Don’s dilemma. I was a little concerned with his green color though he didn’t look particularly good in green. The whole time I talked to the nurses, Dear Don is planning an escape route.

“I’m not going back through the waiting room,” he told me.

After thirty minutes or so he was able to sit and stand. They found pulse and good blood pressure.

Dear Don expressed his embarrassment and thanked all the staff for their care and concern. Thankfully, we don’t see wife number two again. The nurses were complicit in aiding our escape out the back door and told Dear Don as we left, “This only happens to the biggest and toughest of our patients.”

Yeah right. So with the male ego still intact thanks to the nurses’ big fib we escaped out the back door and on to our next adventure.

As for the rosacea, it has finally gone away.  But we don’t know if it was the laser treatment, the fainting, the embarrassment, the carpet burn, or turning green.

Ladies and gentlemen the Hopkins have left the building.

You get the picture.
(Contact Sherry at swjcsc@wildblue.net)