Top surgery, part 1

We arrived in San Francisco a little after 4:00 Sunday afternoon, over an hour before our scheduled arrival time — astonishing, given the fact that we left the Denver terminal over two hours behind schedule. This would in part be due to the fact that throughout the night, it would seem the engineer was very nearly exceeding the 80mph speed limit across the Nevada plains; causing myself and, I imagine, several others to fear for their lives in the middle of the night as we awoke to the sensation of flying off the rails every time we changed tracks.

The ride overall was uneventful, and though I had expected to encounter boredom sometime after 15 minutes on the train, we were surprised to find that doing nothing for two days was quite peaceful; to the exclusion of the train breaking down for several minutes somewhere in nowhere Nevada. This did not altogether soothe ones’ thoughts during the previously mentioned midnight cruise. As we passed alongside a river for a number of miles, a large collection of rafters could be seen waving; and, farther up the river, exclusively mooning. It seems there would be a rural custom of which I am not aware.

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After a cab ride to Dr. Brownstein’s office — and a call to his receptionist Kathy after standing lost on the street corner for several minutes — we managed to find the door. The office is nothing like doctors’ offices around Denver. It’s small, tucked into a side street, and very un-office-like. The walls aren’t all white plaster; instead covered with dauchsund pictures and vaguely abstract art. The exam room is next to his desk — seated in front of an intimidatingly enormous, overstuffed yellow chair remeniscient of something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — separated by a simple wood-and-paper room divider no doubt obtained from Chinatown or similar Asian design shops.

Kathy and another receptionist walked me through the procedure, answered questions and set up the post-op appointments. Then we met Dr. Brownstein, who went over anything that the girls missed and talked about the drains and dressing I would be wearing afterwards.

We took a cab back to the hotel, ate a light dinner and waited for the 4:30 alarm the next morning.

~ by geekbynature on June 24, 2009.