Fast Food

I’ve had an interesting week – one bookended by a couple of fast food tales. On one end, there was a question about Cincinnati Chili, on the other, I was doing drugs in a Whataburger drive-through line.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Allow me to explain.

Monday morning, my alarm clock rang at the gawdawful hour of 4:19 to allow me enough time to walk the dog, shower, get dressed, and headed to the hospital for a bit of surgery. Had to be there at 6:00 to be put under at 7:30.

I met the surgeon three weeks earlier. We discussed what he intended to do to me (remove a small, suspicious growth from my liver), how he was going to do it (laparoscopic surgery), and where we would be doing it (at the hospital ten miles from my little corner of the DFW Metromess). Before I met the man, I noted from the CV he provided on the internet that he had spent time in Cincinnati.

I wanted to ask him Gold Star, or Skyline.

As a point of information for the uninitiated, Gold Star and Skyline are a couple of chain chili parlors doing business mostly in Cincinnati and Hamilton County Ohio selling “Cincinnati-Style” chili to the masses. (For more information about Cincinnati Chili, look here.

Well, I didn’t get to ask the good doctor about his favorite Cincinnati Chili on my initial visit, so, I determined to ask when I saw him just prior to surgery.

Well, here I was getting prepped for surgery and the nurse asked if I had any questions. She answered most of them already, so I told her that since the doctor spent time in Cincinnati, I was wondering…

“Which do you prefer? Gold Star or Skyline?” The nurse came out of left field to ask the question I was about to ask. She told me that she was from Northern Kentucky and her preference was Skyline! Her interruption broke a bit of ice and put me in a better mood.

And yes, when the doctor came in for his last visit with me before I went under, I asked the question. “Skyline!” We talked a moment or two about the Queen City before he left and I was given some happy medicine to put me under the knife.

I woke up about 3 hours later (or was it four?) not a bit hungry despite having been fasting since nine the previous evening.

Pain? There was plenty. Tylenol, some other pill I had no idea what it was was fed to me over the next 24 hours while I was itching to get back home.

When I was discharged just after lunchtime Tuesday, the doctor prescribed a nausea medicine to go along with something called Oxycodone for me to pick up at the local CVS. Well, not me, but my wife. There was no way I was going to drive for at least a week… even if a doctor had put no restrictions on me. Married to a nurse, I know exactly what I didn’t need to be doing.

After getting home and getting settled, my wife drove to the CVS here in our little burg since my phone told me that the prescriptions were ready to be picked up.

One little hiccup.

The message sent by CVS said that the nausea medicine was ready, but that the Oxycodone was “On Special Order”, meaning they didn’t have it. When my wife returned, she explained the situation. I thought it wise to go ahead and wait. After all, I wasn’t too anxious to be taking a narcotic, despite the pain.

That was Tuesday.

I managed to control my pain with double doses of Tylenol interspersed with double doses of Ibuprofen.

It worked, despite the fact that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.

My only problem was a cough, caused in part by difficulty in getting fluids out of my chest. For a few days, I was chugging down cough drops almost as quickly as I could unwrap the things. Tired of that, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to go to Wally World, to get a bottle of cough syrup.

Since it was Saturday, and since I was feeling good, I convinced my wife to drive me to Wally-World to get cough syrup, suggesting getting sandwiches at Whataburger on the way back to the house. I went into WW, came out with the cough syrup, and struggled to open the bottle while my wife drove us to Whataburger for our sandwiches.

I finally got the bottle opened after we placed our order – dosing myself while we waited to get to the drive-up window. It was then that I observed that I was doing drugs in the Whataburger drive-through lane!

See? It wasn’t all that bad, now was it?

Our order arrived.

While I was securing our sandwiches for the ride home, my phone buzzed with the news from CVS that my Oxycodone had arrived.

Four days later.

I have other thoughts about CVS, but I’m not here to gripe, I’m here to exude happy thoughts.

Be Seeing You!