So yesterday we bid goodbye at the company to the colleague I'm going to replace as our office manager. At the end a couple of us were throwing a basketball around down in the yard, something I haven't done since school nearly 30 years ago. Naturally, just like it happened back then, I made an unlucky catch and hurt a finger; left ring finger, to be precise. For immediate care I put some Mobilat and ice on it and got drunk. This morning it hardly hurt any more, unless I stretched it. However, it had a slight but noticeable droop. I debated whether to go to the nearest ER with it. Since everybody was saying how paradoxically empty hospitals currently are due to COVID, I eventually thought better be safe, and it wouldn't take long anyway. Yeah, my ass.

Got Manchester-triaged after an hour of waiting, with the assessing doctor opining it might be some sinew damage or a small fracture. She advised it might take some more time for treatment since their incident surgery department was currently rather busy. When I returned to the waiting area, a guy with a broken kneecap complained that he had been here for four hours already. Another advised that this was completely normal. Looking up the Manchester system, you're supposed to wait no more two hours. Well at least for me it worked, since after about 1:45 I got seen by a surgeon who seemed to think the initial assessment of "dislocation" was rather exaggerated, but sent me to x-ray.

I don't mind the waiting too much, really. Between the waiting area and x-ray, I passed (and heard) several patients who were clearly in much more urgent need of attention. At one point my mother called on my cellphone per her usual weekend routine (nobody here seems to care about the ban on cellphone use, from the security staff on down) with rather bad news about one of her brothers. He has had trouble with slurred speech and, increasingly, drooling and problems to swallow for some time. Now he has been diagnosed with ALS. Of course he's nearly 80, and at that age you can expect people to die sooner rather than later regardless of particular conditions. But this is my favorite uncle, retired army aviation LTC, former CH-53 driver and later flight accident investigator, who is the single most responsible person for my own aviation enthusiasm. Even now he's a member of an online group making simulator flights with one of them assuming the role of ATC; that is, when he's not volunteering at a nearby rehab clinic, or fixing stuff for the neighbors.

So all things considered, I like being a non-urgent case who has to wait at the ER. I'm just bored while waiting for the x-ray results. Don't mind me.

At least it's not life threatening. Going to an Urgent Care facility was not an option for you?