County General Hospital

It was a very surreal experience on Saturday, my trip to the general Hospital i  Ventura to take my Friend Dexter to the emergency room for his matching set of blown out patella both right and left leg, how this happened is anotehr story, but for now we will agree it happened at the gym where we work out! Upon arriving and doing check in and paperwork, we sit, and we wait,and wait and wait. Ok he finally gets the nod and goes on back and not to soon as a restless crowd of patients and derilects waited amongst us side by side.  To include the crack ladies and guys, the bra-less -toothless wonders waiting for their turn  and the guy we almost who disagreed with us about our football conversation, uninvited mind you but he had his opinions, apparently went to high school with John Elway and was full of useless almost facts. DExter gets called in ad Terria goes in with him as she knows all of the right questions to ask for our friend Dexter who may have taken a few many blows to the crainium during his 4 years in the NFL some nearly 30 years ago. He goes in and 5 hours later he comes out with a diagnosis of "FUCK" your knees are fucked up dude and need surgery Monday morning at a neighboring hospital in the County system. But while he was in there I got to view 2 near fights about music being played too loudly on one persons phone and a total lack of respect for people privacy , then you had the unruly kids running through a full waiting room as if it were a playground of some sort, funny but sad a shit to me. People who shouldn't have kids raising them as pets and not kids. The 60 year old homeboy playing his itunes from his phone at 10 level, rocking out to old school supremes and diana ross as if he were at home and the 40 people in the waiting room weren't there, the toothless lady formed a few choice words for him and all he said was"louder you want it,Louder" Off  she cried Off , well this went on for 30 minutes then security shows up and tell Pablo the Paisa to chill on the tunes or his sick ass would be kicked out of the E.R, he complied and the room ful of apparently sick people kept going back, yet I heard no coughs or groans , saw no limps just a bunch of people with spring in their step going back for some sort of reason that didnt appear E.R worthy to me ,even has a 7 year old girl come in for a tetenus shot for slicing or shucking oysters with a knife was apparently a good idea to her...ooops she missed  and her mom and over stuffed ,over done aunt were there to comfort her, all was well til she realized that she was there to get a shot and the waterworks began, she was still waiting when we left.

Dexter was released and we had to load his hulking body into our flex somehow while his legs were stabilized and stiff.Sliding him onto the back seat took 3 dudes and a  little ingenuity to accomplish but it was done, then we get him to his home where the 4 steps on the wheel chair were fun and jarring for poor dexter ,we made it to his room,offloaded him and gave him his piss jar and told him we will see you at 530a.m Monday for  a trip to Santa Paula general for an early morning surgery which I imagine should take 4-5 hours and Terria will wait while i go to work at 730 after a drop off of Dexter, thankfully his mother and brother will be there in the morning as well for support and thanking Terria for being such a great human bing to my friend, our friend and realizing that Dexter has few friends and many pains in his life, now he must confront this long road to recover for a 56 year old ex athlete who must confront his mortality and the long arduous road of rehab towards recovery, he may or may not be able to walk normally again and he won't know until they humpty dumpty his knee caps back together again, parts of which are floating in his thigh and not looking good. Sad to think that this man who once ran a 4.35 40 yard dash and bench pressed 450 lbs as a running back will now have trouble walking normally as a 56 year old man. See you in the morning Dexter, much love and many good thoughts go out to you my man, to the man who calls me Chief... Goodnight