Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment - Day Three

**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.**

Treatment Day:  3

Arrival Time at Lutheran Hospital Wound Healing Center:  7:58am

Appointment Time:  8:30am (I forgot it was later today.)

Doctor Arrived and I got to go back to where the tubes are:  8:28am

Notable things about today, as opposed to previous days:  There were actually other people in the waiting room.  Several of them.  But none of them were in for the Chamber treatments.  Once again, it was just me, flying solo in the room of tubes.  (There are 3 of them.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before.)

Cutest conversation overheard in Waiting Room:

TV: "...blah blah blah's new song "Something Birthday" blah blah..."

Lady in Wheelchair: "Tomorrow is your birthday."

Man in Hat: "I know."

Lady in Wheelchair: "What if I can't quit smoking?"

Man in Hat: "Well, that's all I want for my birthday, so..."

Lady in Wheelchair: "But what if I can't do it?"

Man in Hat: "Then it'll be all I want for Christmas." 

Notable things about self today:  Still generally feel the cold-like symptoms.  Have been needing to use Afrin, which I hate, to breathe through my nose at all in the evenings, and used it again this morning as I was changing into my sweet hospital gown. 

Blood Pressure Before:  115 over 78

Treatment length:  2.5 hours

Physical things noted during treatment:  Seemed like the time it took to bring me “to level” and back again was shorter.  Maybe it was, now that they know I can handle it or whatever.  That’s about it.

TV station the nurse put on for me:  USA

Things happening on USA today:  Marathon of Law & Order Special Victims Unit.  Caught the last half of an episode about pedophiles, an episode about a newscaster being raped and then blown up with a pipe bomb hidden in a box of flowers, and an episode about a frat boy being sodomized with an expensive violin bow, killed with a blender, and then dumped in a sewage treatment plant.  (This show is seriously fucked up.)

Detective Stabler’s most noteworthy one-liner: “Whoever dumped our victim really knew their crap.” (Obviously from the last episode seen.)

Things I thought about not relating to cable television shows:  My cousin, Marna.  Not much else.

Most difficult moment:  The air breaks with the mask thing were daunting again today for whatever reason.  I felt panicky when I was trying to breathe through it – like I couldn't get enough air.  Even though I know I could just move it away and breathe the pure oxygen as freely as I want, it still makes me nervous for some reason.

Blood Pressure After:  120 over 80. 

Time Left Lutheran Hospital: 11:25am.  I used the side door to exit again and enjoyed my outdoor walk.  Also did all the deodorizing, make-upping  and contact-lensing there again.  And immediately put my Industrial piercing back in.  It REEEEALLY wants to “heal” from this thing.  Which is kind of awesome when I think about the fact that what I WANT is for it to be healing stuff!

Arrival Time at Work:  12:00 Noon

Reason for delay:  Had to go downtown for a 3 minute visit with my friend Jen Hearn, to whom I needed to drop off a pair of amazingly large sunglasses for her trip to NYC this coming week, and then ended up stopping to get myself a ham & cheese croissant from Civilization in Tremont (which I have not had one of since my Visible Voice days… fuck, I forgot how GOOD they are!!!) as well as a respectable cup of coffee.  I have not eaten lunch the past two days, so I figured this was a completely acceptable detour.

Noteworthy After-Effects:  Nothing new.  Voice is very Kathleen Turner.  Throat hurts.  Sinuses ache.  Full of snot.  Definitely beginning to believe that this is indeed a cold and that the repeated pressurization of my angry sinuses is making the kicking of said cold much more difficult.

Treatments Left:  37

Number of times I had to pee between end of treatment yesterday and leaving for the treatment this morning:  11

Number of interesting photos to share today: 0

So here's this uninteresting one instead:

Til tomorrow.  Xxo,
Phoebe Marie