Sunday I decided to move all of my Lego minifig cases from under the window to behind the two armchairs so that I can actually see them, and the went through all my artwork that was still boxed up and arranged it all in the empty space. I still need to work out which pieces are going to end up on the wall, because there are a few too many for it to not look a little messy. But it's good to have 98% of the stuff out on display.
The weirdness really started on Monday when I called the hospital to follow up about my appointment for my thumb. She told me it was Friday... as in last Friday. I wasn't especially pleased as you can imagine, especially since I called them on Wednesday specifically to find out when it was, only to be told they'd let me know. And the woman I spoke to on Monday said that I should have gotten a letter, which I hadn't.
So they made me a replacement appointment for today (because of course, the Orthopaedic clinic only operates on a Friday)... but then in the evening on Monday I took some recycling down stairs and decided to check the mailbox, just in case.
And sitting there in my mailbox was the appointment letter for 9am Friday... which was written on Thursday and postmarked on Friday, and which didn't get to me until some point after 10:30am on Monday (which was when I checked the mailbox the first time)... so even if I had gotten it on Friday, it would have been at least an hour and a half late.
There was much muttering about people and their general stupidity.
That was on top of having to call Medicare to change my details because the Government's whizz-bang online system wouldn't connect to my Medicare account. And the woman I spoke to just said "yeah, that happens sometimes"... gee, helpful.
Tuesday Ma was doing a training course for work in the city in the morning and then came over early afternoon so we could ostensibly go to the movies. Sadly there wasn't anything on that we wanted to see at the right times, so we had some lunch at a little place on Wellington Square and then went down to Marion for a bit of a wander.
Because we got down there a little bit late, by the time we were heading back to the car pretty much all the stores had closed their doors... and it's always a little strange walking around a shopping mall that's relatively empty and where everything is closing up.
I also discovered on Tuesday that Ma and I will be away in Sydney when the state election is on... so that'll be better than having to interrupt my birthday weekend for boring and mostly useless civic duty.
Wednesday was fairly quiet, other than being stood up by a guy who seemed to be a little too interested to be real. Granted I changed a number of my profile pics on various hook-up sites to something slightly more "provocative", so it may have just brought some of the crazy out of the woodwork for a little while. Still it's better than feeling like The Invisible Man, which is what promoted the pic change.
Thursday I got a call from the land agent to say that the owners of my apartment want to have the place valued. Now, I don't want to go into full on freakout mode... it's only a valuation, they may or may not put it on the market, and I mean the other apartment block went through three owners in the length of time I was living there, but that was the whole block, not a single apartment. I'm safe for the next year, for the length of my lease, but I don't really want to have to be going through this whole rigmarole of moving again next year. I just want a place I can call home without having it disappear out from under me.
Anyway...
Today was about 100 different flavours of strange...
It started off when I found a letter in my mailbox (I never bothered to go and get the mail yesterday, so I grabbed it when I came back from my walk) all the way from Sweden. Turns out that somebody from Sweden used to know somebody with the same surname as me who moved to Australia in the 80's, and wondered if I was related. Which would be a no... my surname is my mother's father's surname (I change it legally when I was 16) and while it's not unique, it's a fairly uncommon surname and I wasn't aware there were any more of us here.
But a fairly quick Google search (because my Google-Fu, like my Lego-Fu, is mighty) I have either tracked the dude that Boel (the Swede) was in search of, or at least someone who shares his name. So I'll email Boel a little later and pass on the info.
Once I got back from my walk I only had a little bit of time (enough for breakfast and a shower) before I had to turn around and go back into the city for my appointment at the Orthopedic outpatients.
Although, adding to the general "what the actual fuck" of the entire Royal Adelaide experience as per the beginning of this post, I got a little lost when I first got there... mostly because the level that you walk into from North Terrace isn't, as you would expect, the Ground Floor, or even Level 1... oh no, that's Level 3 for some incredibly inexplicable reason... so when I got up to what I assumed was Level 3, I discovered it was actually Level 5 and had to come back down again.
But other than that everything pretty much went off without a hitch.
I showed my letter to the cute boy on reception and he grabbed my file and told me to take a seat amongst the half dozen other patients... I had just enough time to send Ma a quick message before one of the nurses called my name (I was the first one I actually heard called too), and then took me off to one of the treatment rooms.
She went and checked with the doctor on whether I needed to have another set of x-rays, but came back and said that I didn't (which was kind of a shame, I would have liked to have another look inside my hand), so she cut the bandages and we tried to work my hand out of the cast.
Now, if I hadn't walked to the hospital, I might have been able to slip it off, and to be honest I probably could have anyway, but I didn't really want to pull too hard on my thumb, and that was what it felt like I was doing. So instead she took me off to the Plaster Room and got the Cast Saw Vacuum fired up and cut open the thumb section and (with the aid of a mini pair of Jaws of Life) we slipped my hand on out of there.
Yaaaay! I have a hand again. Kind of.
Having been more or less immobilised for the last two weeks, it was a little bit stiff, but thankfully not sore, but the skin all around my thumb was very dry and flaky... not real pretty.
The nurse left me with my naked hand to wait for the doctor, who showed up fairly soon thereafter. And boy was he pretty. I do like me a pretty doctor... you know, those few times that I need a doctor.
Anyway, he poked and prodded the injured hand, than the good hand to compare, then the injured hand... he was very thorough. In the end he declared that my hand was all good, but would need a Thumb Spica Splint, and that the nice folks from Physio would come and sort me out for that one.
He disappeared to get the aforementioned someone from Physio, then came back not that much later and dropped me off in a waiting area to wait Physio with piece of paper saying that I was discharged.
Physio Girl (who was very sweet) showed up within about a minute after he left me. Seriously, I don't think I've ever had such good service at the RAH... the whole thing, from beginning to end took less than an hour.
And I was very glad that I got there a little before 9am, because when Physio Girl showed up to escort me off to their department, the entire Orthopedic waiting room was crammed full of people. Even taking into account that a lot of the people may have brought somebody with them, that was still a lot of patients.
Anyway, Physio Girl sat me down in the splint room (actually I don't know if that's what it actually was) and set about constructing my splint for me. Yep, none of that "off the rack" ill fitting splints rubbish. They use thermoplastic, cut it to the appropriate shape and then heat it in a pan of water and mould the whole thing to the shape of your hand.
Modern technology... it's a miracle!
So when she was finished, my thumb was pretty much in the same position as it had been in the cast, but the splint only covers the ball of my hand and half of the back... and looking at that Instagram photo I took just after it was finished, and comparing it with how my hand looks now, my hand was pretty swelled up when I had the splint put on (the combination of my morning walk and then the walk to the hospital, I guess), but at least I know that it's not going to cut off my circulation every morning during my walk.
Thankfully I don't have to go back to the hospital and see them again, I just need to use the splint for six weeks (which would take us right up to our Sydney vacation, thankfully... and I might take it with me anyway, to use while I'm sleeping) for everything except showering (which is good, because given the temperature of my hot water, the thing would lose it's shape in a heartbeat).
Technically I'm not suppose to drive... but given that it's a week tomorrow that Ma and I start our Fringe adventures for this year, and the fact that I have a haircut with Tink next week (must remember to get her new address too), I don't think that's going to be a rule that I stick to very strictly.
And I have noticed that my wrist is a little weak at present... not really surprising given the fact that it's been mostly immobilised for two weeks, I've been carrying around a big heavy cast and probably moving my wrist in some unusual ways... hopefully it will sort itself out fairly quickly.
When I was finished at the hospital it was only 10am, and while I didn't really have any errands to run, I didn't just want to go straight home so I went and got something to drink and bummed around town for a bit.
I also had a chiro appointment this afternoon, so I gave them a call to see if I could move my appointment any earlier. Luck was definitely with me, and I managed to slot in three hours early.
That still gave me about an hour and a half to kill, so I went to take a look at the new Adelaide City Library which opened today. It's in the new Rundle Place building and takes up the whole third floor. Weirdly it's been... I don't know, more than a decade (possibly two) since I've actually spent any time in a library, and I guess I always compare any library I see to how the State Library used to be when I was a teenager (racks and racks and racks and racks of books that you could get lost in).
So given that caveat, there perhaps weren't quite as many books as I was expecting, but they did have a nice range of stuff.
I wandered around for a bit, then found the graphic novel section, grabbed a copy of the Batman Noir graphic novel, found a seat by the window and just chilled out for a while.
Once I'd read my way through the graphic novel, I went to grab some lunch and made some faces at a strange baby (as in a baby who was unknown to me, not an intrinsically odd infant)... seriously, there's nothing that will lift you mood quicker than making a baby laugh.
Then I headed off to my chiro appointment and once I'd been poked and prodded yet again, I headed on home.
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