Time for another installment of this Wednesday/Sunday night series!
Picking up from last time –
I was late. Late!
Partially I was nervous about this because I think I read somewhere in our packets that it’s bad if you’re late. (Obviously it’s bad.) But that it’s bad on some bigger level – like they might reschedule other things, or make your process go longer, or whatever.
Additionally, I didn’t like this because being late doesn’t say anything good about me as a person. Responsible people are respectful of people’s time, and they’re on time. I know we live in California where everyone operates on California Time (which is just normal time pushed back 5 – 40 minutes, or sometimes even longer, since everyone is late to practically everything ever).
I really dislike California time, so I try to be on time to stuff. But I can still feel myself being lulled into being a typical Angelino sometimes. Ugh. (Ugh!)
Anyway, I have no real excuses or good reasoning. I was just late and felt awful about it. Thankfully, they didn’t make a huge deal, and they saw me anyway.
Side note: When I first got my schedule, I saw that my first test was at 8am(!). My next one wasn’t ’til 12:30pm. I asked if there was any way to move them closer together, but alas, there was not.
(I can totally understand that. Sometimes, which scheduling things with so many moving parts, you can’t accommodate every person in the most ideal way for each individual. Of course, this was fine. I was happy to do what they needed… even if I did fall short of it. So sorry!)
All right, enough about me being late! Other than being embarrassing, it wasn’t a big deal. Okay, I will actually just say one last thing about it though…
My first test was a CT Urogram. You couldn’t eat or drink anything for 3 hours before your exam. (It said that in bold capital letters on our paperwork.)
But once we got there, they had us drink a small cup of water. Judging by the other patients doing it as well, we’d drink a small amount of water then wait a specified amount of time. (30 minutes, maybe? I’m just guessing.)
Then we’d have the test. I’m thinking that small bit of water had something to do with the test (though obviously, I really have no idea).
But if that was the case, it would’ve been really great to know, “Okay, since you’re running late, drink 3 ounces of water, so we can still start your test on time. You just won’t have the waiting period here.”
Obviously, they wouldn’t have had to tell me anything had I just been on time. So, I know it’s completely my fault. I was just wishing I wasn’t late, and I felt so bad, that I was grasping at magical scenarios in my head in which I wouldn’t have slowed anything down by being late…
But maybe someone else was early. Maybe nothing was slowed down. Maybe someone cancelled. I don’t know. All I know is they saw me. They didn’t seem mad. I was only mad at myself. (Grrr.) But since the people were so cool, I let it go soon enough.
And this is where I’ll pick up next time.