Patient Patient

Last weekend I took Laura to the hospital where she underwent a 24 hour EEG. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. I knew it was a long arduous process and way out of her comfort zone, but we just jumped in and did our best. When we got there, the techs told us what would happen, etc. to put our minds at ease. Laura kept up her famous line, "But i don't have to have a shot, right?" The answer was always no, no way. She eventually came up with an important concept in hospitalization: "But i don't have to have an IV either, huh." The answer to that was less than definitive. "Uh, that's something that the nurses decide on the floor." Oh man. High Anxiety on the spot. "Mom! why do they say that?" I was determined to get through this event without having her strapped on any giant papoose boards, so I said, "Oh, that's probably for people who won't cooperate and let them put all the electrodes on their heads, so they put sleepy medicine in the IV bag." She said, "That won't happen to me, because i am going to cooperate!!"
In about a 2 hour process, the tech guy marked Laura's head into 24 quadrants with a grease pencil, scrubbed the point of contact on each mark on her scalp with a special soap, squeezed contact goo on the spot, placed the electrode, covered it with a patch of white gauze, saturated it with a stinky glue, and then dried it point blank with an air hose. For anyone that knows Laura, does this sound like something she would like? Well, she did the whole thing with incredible self control and patience. It helped that the tech was very cute with her, like coming up with the suggestion that he could call her boyfriend to come and check out her new "do", etc. It also helped that he was from Preston, Idaho, and had some experience with horses, appreciated her knee high cowgirl boots, etc. Anyway, when she was all glued and wired, he bandaged her head up, creating a ponytail of wires coming out the top and taped the whole thing together. We went to her room and she had to hang out in a hospital bed for the next night and part of the day. Luckily there was cable TV to watch, but i think I've seen enough of Hannah Montana and the Suite Life of Zach and Cody to last me for quite a while. I guess the whole thing wasn't quite enough for me, and I decided to develop the flu during the night, and by the time we went home the next day around noon, I had chills and fever and aches so bad I could hardly drive. I tried to call Wally but could not reach him. I called Brenda, but she was already committed for the day, however, she listened to my lament and figured out that Wally was probably flying. She was right. Anyway, a salute to Laura, for rising to a new level of courage and enduring yet another trial in her long history of docs and hospitals.