Picking up from last time –
When I say I don’t love having visitors, it becomes this whole thing like something’s wrong with me. I tried to explain (as I have in my blog), that the time when you’re actually in the hospital isn’t when you need visitors. You have the whole bustling hospital around you. You’re tired. You look tired. You already have a team of people waiting on you. I’d rather have people once I leave.
But oh no. She thought that was the weirdest freaking thing ever. She was telling me how they expect a lot of visitors to be in there. I think because I was pushing back a little, she overdid it and made me feel like I needed a freaking parade in my room everyday.
(I understand if maybe I get pushed, and I push back, that she feels the need to push even harder. But a social worker should be a bit more calm than this, right?)
Then, the new social worker pipes in. “You called your dad earlier today. Are you close with him? Do you want him there?”
Wait, excuse me. What? How do you know I called my dad?
Earlier, before Big Kidney Say started, when we were all milling about waiting for the doctors to come in, I called my dad just to let him know I’d made it there okay (since I’m horrible with directions (and pretty much with driving in general)).
I stepped to the corner of the room away from everyone else and made a short, quiet phone call. But this woman said she’d been in there watching us! What?!
Some woman was in there being a sidler (you know, like from Seinfeld) to us? She also asked me about things I’d asked in the meeting. For instance, I’d asked about when I could return to running. So she brought that up. “Is running important to you?” Yes. Yes, it is.
It’s fine, I guess. Maybe I should’ve been more observant/thoughtful to who was in the room. Thinking about it later, I had seen her in the listening portion, but assumed she was another person giving a kidney whom I just hadn’t met before the meeting started.
Also, nothing I said or asked was secret. But I just thought it was a little weird that she was paying so much attention me even when I was in the corner of a mini-bustling-ish room, before any nurses or doctors entered – before anything was even beginning to start at all… that this woman was paying enough attention to me to be able to hear me say, “Hi Daddy” in the phone. I know I’m loud, but I’m not that loud!
So, that threw me a bit. Why are you in there kind of spying on us? To me it felt a little icky, but maybe I only felt that way because I was oh so unbelievably annoyed in my conversation with the social workers.
Getting back to the whole visitor thing… Well, let’s pick up there on Sunday.