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It would have been just as easy and a lot cheaper for me to have called up the scheduling person at the Durham VA Hospital to cancel my next appointment and arrange to get another. I could have done that. True, I would have had to borrow a phone to call them, but they got an 800 number and it wouldn't have cost anybody anything. I drove there just to get outta town.
It was a comfortable drive. I didn't stop anywhere during the 100+ mile one-way trip. Most of it was on I-40, and the rest of it was a breeze. There wasn't any traffic tie-ups either coming or going. I've made the trip so many times I could do it blind-folded. As blind as I've been with the cataracts I actually did drive most of it by memory.
Finding a place to park when I got there was a piece of cake. I circled through one area, and then found a good spot as I headed toward another area right beside the hospital. I only had to walk a hundred fifty yards (137.16 M) to get to the clinic. There was one guy ahead of me in line at the reception desk.
After the scheduling guy put my social security number into the computer system, he looked a little puzzled because I didn't have an appointment,and asked me what could he do for me. I explained that I needed to cancel my regular appointment on August 5th and make another one later on. His face lit up and he pleasantly told me what I had to do.
He told me I had to go up to the second floor to get the appointment canceled, and see the lady who handled all the cancellations for several clinics. He wrote a room number on a slip of people, then got up from his desk and indicated for me to follow him out in the hall behind his office. There, he pointed to an elevator and told me to take it to the second floor and go to the room number on the slip of paper. The woman I needed to see was there.
I took the elevator upstairs and started looking at office numbers. Two different guys stopped what they were doing to help me figure out where the office was. Soon, this young guy took me in hand and led me straight to the room, then went inside and told the lady I was looking for her. I heard her tell him to ask me to step right inside.
The office had two rooms each with it's own desks and cabinets. Her desk was the one with the window that looked out on to a manicured courtyard. She motioned for me to come on back, and then she cleaned some folders off the chair beside her desk and ask me to sit down. She seemed like she was in a good mood. Probably because the young guy had flirted with her.
The piece of paper I had brought with me was the standard VA appointment sheet that contained all the appointments I had for getting the cataract procedure done at the Fayetteville VA. She recognized the standard form right away. I pointed out to her my appointment for surgery on August 5th, and told her that I was previously scheduled for an appointment there in Durham on the same day.
That was about all I had to tell her. She knew exactly what I was there for. Redundantly, I told her I wanted to cancel my appointment at the clinic in order to do the surgery in Fayetteville, but needed another appointment as soon as possible. I asked her to see if she could find an opening on any other date than the dates I had appointments for on the list I brought.
Before long, she had found an appointment date for me on August 11th at 09:45. She saw that I had a post-op appointment in Fayetteville on August 10th, and asked me if that was too tight a fit since it was the next day, but I assured her it would be just fine. She printed me out a confirmation of my new appointment, and that was that. It was an entirely satisfying meeting that, for a change, went smooth as silk.
I only stopped once on my way home at the I-40 Rest Stop near Benson to stretch my legs. I had to deal with the early rush hour going through the state capitol. Raleigh is a big city now with all the traffic problems metropolises have. I wanted to relax a little to let the stress go. The next fifty miles home got further and further away from suburbia. I felt giddy about accomplishing my goals for my trip so smoothly. I celebrated by buying a rare Pepsi Cola.
Not long after I got home my sister-in-law and next door neighbor drove up in the yard pulling a trailer with her riding lawn mower on it. The hitch had gotten stuck and she asked me if I could help break it loose. I took my large crow bar I keep beside the door out there and made short work of the trailer hitch's problem.
She asked me if I'd like to use the mower to mow my lawn, and I was very pleased she did. My lawn has been a mess because of the drought that killed back all the lawn grass. The drought ended yesterday. Mowing it and leveling out all the irregular, brown grass before it started growing again, meant that my place would look practically civilized.
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