Week 85 - Talking Hobbies & Talking Boys

Thursday #86 – this Thursday kicked off with some interesting patients. When I saw in my appointment book that someone was coming in because he “had a branch hit him in the eye and wants to check if there's anything in there” I started to panic about removing foreign bodies and diagnosing fungal keratitis.

By the time he arrived I had psyched myself up to deal with presumably a very red/sore eye and was surprised to see him walk in with neither eye noticeably irritated. After some questioning it came out that he had been wearing his glasses at the time and so “luckily” the branch hadn't hit his actual eye – I was starting to wonder why he was wasting my time. I heard stories about his polio, dodgy lungs and disastrous sleep apnoea test but didn't look like I was getting rid of him any time soon as I had to reassure him that a stray branch hitting his glasses had not caused a retinal detachment. As he finally made his way out of my office he told me that next time he came in we would talk about my hobbies since he had told me all about himself. I think he misunderstands the doctor/patient roles. Anxious that I had no real hobbies to speak of, I pretended to still be playing soccer and briefly discussed this. He left me with some religious talk after asking if anyone in my family had cancer and told me to trust in the The Lord.

After Mr Polio left I had a little break before seeing The Cute Preschooler. At just 4 years old he was very well behaved and I felt bad that nothing I did seemed to make him see any better. Not wanting to have him back for a second time and still not find anything, I encouraged his mother to take him elsewhere as she was sceptical about his level of vision and our non-child-friendly charts. I agreed that the letters and numbers were difficult for a 4 year old and the pictures are particularly stupid. I am starting to worry that The Forestville Optometrist is going to get sick of seeing my reject kids.

From 3:30 I had no patients booked in and enjoyed my usual Thursday afternoon bludge while DTM went and saw The Hangover III without me coz he couldn't wait 24 more hours. Apparently he had been waiting a really long time for this movie to come out...which I'm pretty sure was the same amount of time as everyone else had been waiting since The Hangover II.

After work I headed home briefly to change into my gumboots and head to the city for the long awaited dinner with Legs 11 and Legally Blonde. The Hot One was nowhere to be seen but we coped just fine without her. We left the ordering to Legally Blonde (who's been to this busy Asian eatery before) with my only proviso being no duck or seafood. In a move that reminded me of the creamy cake debacle at our joint birthday dinner in year 9, Legally Blonde took this on board and ordered a feast of mostly prawns and duck with the occasional pork or chicken thrown in. After The Cabbie recently bought pet ducks, I held my ground on not eating that dish but was able to cope with prawn dumplings.

Talk soon turned to boys with DTM, Straighty One Eighty and The Guy I Don't Know Well Enough To Nickname all up for discussion. There was talk of quitting jobs, finding jobs and moving countries, with Legs 11 providing some insight into suddenly finding yourself mother to a teenager when you're only 26 yourself. She did not do very well in selling the idea of being a parent to a rich private school kid.

After dinner, Legs 11 headed back to her parenting duties while Legally Blonde and I headed to Star Bar with DTM for a cheeky happy hour beverage. It was raining when we left (unlike when we arrived at dinner) and finally I didn't feel so silly wearing my gumboots and carrying my umbrella! Legally Blonde left halfway through her wine as The Guy I Don't Know Well Enough To Nickname had arrived to pick her up. This left DTM and I to do what we always did so well on Thursday nights, drink happy hour wine and beer by ourselves.

We headed home on the 10:30 bus after a quick detour via KFC for a popcorn chicken snackbox for DTM. Not the best day at work but always nice to have dinner with the girls and some drinks with DTM like back in the day.

Week 84 - Retesting & Home-Theatre-ing

Thursday #85 – I headed into work this Thursday hoping for one of my usual quiet Thursdays having called in sick on Wednesday with tonsillitis. No such luck as I opened up the appointment book and saw 94% next to my name – indicating a mere 6% of my day could be spent bludging. I was less than enthused.

Also not helping matters was the fact that among my 13 patients – 4 of them were people I'd already seen coming back for more! There were 2 I had asked to come back for a follow up, and they were in and out in a flash, but the other 2 coming in for retests were not doing so at my request!

The First Retest Lady was whinging about her new glasses and nothing that really seemed like it was my problem – she wasn't happy with the frames, the lenses were too thick and she felt like she needed to tilt the glasses to see clearly. All this sounds very much like something the dispensers could have dealt with and left me right out of it. After offering to change the prescription (all I can really do) she still seemed unhappy and wanted a refund. I can't help feeling she had changed her mind (like I had earlier in the week when I returned a dress I had owned for 4 days and not taken out of the bag - yes last week's spontaneous graduation purchase had backfired) and was coming up with a bunch of problems hoping we would just offer her a refund. That kinda screws us over though and in the end I have no idea what happened as I handed her back to The Dispenser Who Doesn't Quite Know My Name.

The Second Retest Man was one I had been briefed on a couple of weeks earlier by The Manager. She had made him sound like all kinds of trouble and the test actually went rather well. I'm not too sure he needed a retest at all – perhaps if The Manager hadn't shown him the wrong lenses and made him lose confidence in her this all could've been avoided.

DTM texted to say he was at The Mall studying in the library and could meet me for lunch. We ordered our food and sat down for about 10 minutes before he ditched me after deciding he wanted to go see Star Trek.  He argued that this time would work better than the later one as this way he would be out of the movie well before 5pm to head to the library and then grab a lift home with me. At 3.30 I got another text from DTM saying he was on the bus home – ditched twice in one day and I'm pretty sure no studying actually took place.

When I got home I was pretty exhausted and DTM decided I needed cheering up – apparently this would be best achieved ordering Thai, grabbing some ciders and watching Super 8. While it wasn't my favourite movie ever, after seeing Spring Breakers on Saturday night, any movie where the cast are wearing more than just bikinis looks like a masterpiece.

After a few ciders watching the movie, I got a semi early night and left DTM to watch Movie 43 on his own. I'd seen the opening 15 minutes or so and that was more than enough. Hugh Jackman with testicles on his neck and Naomi Watts making out with her son – it might have been worse than Spring Breakers if I could bear to sit through it.

Not the best Thursday but ciders always help.

Week 83 - Reuniting & Impulse Buying

Thursday #84 – this Thursday kicked off with a Humphreys reunion of sorts when my first patient of the day was The Ex-Cop. I wasn't overly joyed about this as he hadn't been my favourite colleague at the big H but I put my game face on and got through the hour appointment. Why is it that the patients I don't want to see always have the longest appointments? It wasn't that bad in the end as turns out he's only a douche at work when he thinks he knows best, but in this environment where I am quite clearly the expert compared to him, he generally accepted what I told him, which made for a nice change.

At lunch I went on a mission to find a dress for graduation. The info pack they had sent us had me wondering what I could wear that would possibly be appropriate for the “joyful...formal...solemn” occasion all while factoring in that this unusually warm May weather will probably end by the time grad rolls around in June. I found a dress reasonably quickly and made an uncharacteristically quick decision for me and bought it.

After lunch I had a few patients before my usual quiet afternoon with an hour break at 3pm. My last patient of the day was another former Humphreys colleague. Unlike The Ex-Cop, The Barefooted Cards Hippy was unaware that her appointment was with me. She seemed genuinely shocked (and fair enough) as she enquired “are you an eye doctor now?” Never one to dispute the doctor title I nodded along that yes I was indeed.

After work I headed home to DTM and his persistent question: “what do you want to do tonight?” I explained that after a pretty raging week thus far (The Seekers concert on Monday night with The Marge – they may be 70 but they've still got it, Insight audience taping on Tuesday night – pretending I understood all the talk of North Korea while appearing on live TV was exhausting, and Ironman 3 at IMAX on Wednesday night) I wanted nothing more than to put my trackies on and sit at home watching TV. We did just that.

An interesting Thursday at work with old colleagues swinging by, some intentionally and some not, topped off with a necessarily quiet night at home.

Week 82 - Co-bludging & Spinning

Thursday #83 – Having reached new levels of slackness and writing this more than 2 weeks after the event, this Thursday can best be described as almost forgotten. It's safe to assume I had Weetbix for breakfast and headed off to work.

The morning was fairly standard one can assume and the afternoon was again its usual quiet Thursday self. I had recently discovered Aero Bubbles and these helped past the time as the last 2.5 hours of my work day were completely empty.

Being equally bored, The Girl With The Tiger Tattoo abandoned her reception duties and came to hang out with me and get an eye test. Having no real prescription to speak of, it wasn't quite the lengthy time waster we had both hoped it might be.

I got a little excited to see a “special” appear in my appointment book but on further inspection it was just a plan for The Indian Brother to phone and make sure I knew how to get to Chatswood for work on Friday.

Unsurprisingly, I don't remotely remember what happened after work but will assume I had dinner by myself as DTM had declared himself vegan for 60 days starting the Sunday 4 days prior. He has since failed and been seen eating beef, egg and chicken but on Day 4 he was still going strong and I was left to fend for myself.

I do recall fitting in a quick session on the exercise bike – the rareness of such a feat makes it memorable. I pedaled for just over 20 minutes while watching Dexter which I am finally, after 7 years, caught up on. I was certain I was on a roll having done a similarly athletic thing on Wednesday but not surprisingly it did not carry on through to Friday and the bike has not been sat on since.

A rather cruisy Thursday at work topped off with some endorphins from my admittedly brief self-run spin class.