It's cold and raining and Monday, and I have to get up early for my admittance interview at a local hospital "intensive outpatient program" for people with drug and/or alcohol issues. The hospital is only a few miles away, but it's rush hour and traffic on and around the DC Beltway is never pleasant. I have a 9 a.m. appointment, but have been told to arrive 20 minutes in advance to do the inevitable paperwork.
As usual, I can't sleep, so I wind up leaving home around 7:45, figuring I can stop at a McDonald's on the way for coffee and a biscuit, and read the paper for a while, because I know this upcoming appointment is going to be a bitch. "Paperwork" always means filling out forms that ask questions you've already answered and given to somebody else, but their own system is too inefficient or their own personnel are too lazy or stupid to find the data, so it's just easier to make me provide it all over again. My labor is free after all.
So I get my coffee and biscuit and dawdle over the paper as long as I can stand the light and noise (I am sensitive to both due to my brain injury -- long story, another time) and head back to the car. Jesus, for late April it is downright chilly: my car dash reads 39 degrees. Traffic, however, is more forgiving, and I am nearing the hospital with time to burn. Which is good, because it just then hits me that the appointment is not at the hospital, but at an adjacent building. (Another common trait among TBI's.) Anticipating this brain fart, I entered the address in my phone, along with the time, so at the nearest opportunity I pull into an office building parking lot. I check the address, then the street sign, then the address again, because this never happens to me ... I have quite by chance found my destination!
The euphoria was not to last. CATS, a cute euphemism for something rehab related, turns out to be located in a generic office suite, such as any dentist, lawyer or architect might lease, complete with oppressively bright fluorescent lights and six-month-old copies of People in the waiting area. I complete the paperwork with what I consider admirable dispatch, considering the conditions and circumstances. There is one piece of paper concerning a state database of drug prescriptions that requires my signature for some reason, but the verbiage is so inscrutable that I'm compelled to query the receptionist. Her only suggestion is to take it up with the social worker I'm about to see.
I finish the paperwork and wait. 9 am comes and goes. Meantime a stream of people enter, chatting amongst themselves. This would be one of the groups run by CATS, which I'll be added to once this obligatory process finally ends. About 9:40 a 30-ish brunette woman named Jennifer opens the door and calls my name.
to be continued...
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