I had to go to the regular hospital for my MRI rather than the clinic on the other side of town. University of Washington's medical program is spread out across the city of Seattle. I could be anywhere from the Stadium to the best ER hospital on the west coast, Harborview. But this time I was sent to the UW hospital that is just off campus from the University. UW Medical is a teaching hospital so you don't just see one or two people, everyone is on a team. So lots of people in your room is to be expected.
I ended up parking on the Southwest side of the building which is more of a place for staff parking but they also have ample handicap parking there too so I went with that parking garage. I parked close to the back entrance which is literally the basement. The first hall is a long corridor with their typical "they saved my life" giant posters of people with stories of what the Medical staff has done for them with benches lining the other side. A strange placement for seating which is the introduction to even stranger places. The next set of doors releases you into a maze of hallways. Everything from defunct equipment to doors with hazard warnings such as "high levels of radiation". Creepy. I finally find my way to the elevators to take me upstairs. I have enough time for the cafeteria but I find it confusing and go to check in.
The woman behind the desk is chattering away with co-workers and finally has me approach the desk at 12:48pm. She starts, "You are early, your appointment doesn't start until 1:30. And it looks like there is no insurance information so after your appointment you should check in with admitting and have them enter it." I tell her, "I will just go now since I still have plenty of time before my scheduled appointment." She says, "ok". And off I go to another floor where admitting is and give them my info. Now I do have a lot of time so I go to the gift shop and get some coffee to keep me alert until my appointment time.
I arrive back at the waiting room full of people and find a seat. I hear the check in staff giggling away and hear the woman who I spoke with say, "I'm just waiting for my second interview and I'm out of here!" She went on to brag how she was on the hunt for another job which could make her life better and runs down of list of down sides to working at the UW Medical center. Then more giggling and chattering. I then realize it's 1:43 and I haven't been brought back for my MRI yet. I get up and go over to her asking what happened. "Oh I can check you in right now" she says. "Thanks" I reply. I go back and sit down and immediately wonder, why did she just now say she checked me in when I checked in nearly an hour earlier. I feel the frustration starting to set in and I go back over to her desk to reprimand her for not telling me to check in again when I came back. She didn't seem sorry for her complete lack of communication as she clearly wasn't interested in doing her job any longer. I told her I needed to know how much longer I was going to have to wait. By then the tech was right there to take me back and I was so relieved.
They asked if they could test something new out on me. I said, "Sure!"
They wanted to monitor my heart rate as I had my MRI. I thought that was pretty funny considering that I have been trained to relax my body to near sleep in any circumstance where I can relax my whole body. Laying in an MRI machine is just that. I chose to listen to jazz while I tried to not completely pass out since I tend to flinch when falling asleep. Only had one little wiggle between images so I made it through it ok. One of the staff members announced, "I was totally grooving out to your jazz, good choice".
Coming out of the hospital was the true challenge. How to get through the maze? Naturally I have a keen ability to determine direction and can usually puzzle myself out of things quite easy but the way the halls are arranged in the basement of the hospital I was not so lucky. I passed doors that said, "do not enter" and "do not knock". More scary warnings of disturbing things behind closed doors. I asked two people I came across to point me in the right direction. At one point I realized I wasn't even on the right floor! I still had to go down one. But I finally made it out. I felt like I had escaped a terrible place when I finally opened the door to the sunlight flooding in.
