Numbers.....

I tried to “find” a patient today. Actually, I had two patients to find but, one of them made it a lot easier than the other one did. The patient’s son is the only one who speaks English, so he was on the phone with me, giving me directions to his apartment:

Take the road that comes off the highway, just before it curves to the south. Okay.

Go over both sets of railroad tracks, and past Art’s Custom Cabinets and the Day and Nite Mart. Okay.

Then the “golf course” on the left and the rest home. Okay, got it.

When you get to the soccer field, look for the gray apartments right next to them. Uh, huh.

Then, call me and I’ll come out and meet you out front! Sounds good to me.

And he did meet me out front, and we found our way around apartment after apartment, broken swamp coolers with rusty screwdrivers inside their carcasses, a lawnmower with no wheels, and clotheslines……naked and forlorn.

The patient was very pleasant. The whole family was pleasant. Their apartment was very meagerly furnished but clean and tidy. The daughter-in-law wants to become a nurse: I was teaching her to do the wound care. The son was telling me all about his new job: he works in sales for the car dealership where I bought my car. He tried very hard to sell me a new car.

And the baby: 11 months old. A beautiful little girl with huge, shiny, bright brown eyes. Her hair is short and dark brown. A little bit of hair on the top of her head was pulled into a rubber band and looked just like an exclamation point on top of her head! She was fascinated by me: she hadn’t seen that many “foreigners” in her life; a blue-eyed blonde would definitely be foreign to her. I did manage to get her to smile at me, though.

After almost 2 hours, I was off to see the next patient. The son walked me to my car: I wasn’t sure I would find it again, walking through the maze of apartments, but with his help, I did.

The next patient was not so easy to find. In fact, I didn’t find him. But I tried:

Hello, Pablo? This is the home health nurse again. Which one of these apartments is Jose’s?

Where am I? I’m in the alley, behind the gas station, just like you told me.

Yeah, I see a white Jeep. A “torn-down” bicycle? No, I don’t see that. Let me get out of the car and look.

Yeah, I found the bike; it’s next to the second apartment in from the alley, is that the right one?
Okay, Pablo thanks!

Although I stood there, at the front door, and knocked on it for five minutes, no one answered the door. I felt plenty of eyes staring at me but, no one came outside to tell me where Jose might be. If he was home, he wasn’t receiving guests. Pablo assured me that he had gone over and told Jose that I was coming to see him. I guess Jose thought of something else to do. Something better than visiting with me.

As I walked back to my car, a light bulb went on in my head! I know what I am doing wrong! I have a stack of bills to pay tomorrow and now I know why! Out in front of my house, prominently displayed on my carport, are my house numbers! Duh!

People can find me because I make it easy. Bills can find me because I make it easy. Life can find me because I make it easy.

I would take the numbers down but they were too darn much work to put up there in the first place!

Maybe I just won’t answer the door.

Unless I need a home health nurse.