The Po Show

Informationally Challenged

So what am I supposed to think when Ross suddenly calls at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, and I hear the sounds of PA announcements in the background, so I know he's on a train? I ask how he is and in a tight voice he says, "Not great. I'll explain when I get there." I ask if he's okay, and he says, "Yeah," and then we hang up. And I'm left with 35 minutes of wondering what's going on.

My first thought is that someone has died. He got a call at work, and now he's coming home and making arrangements. His dad? His grandmother? His other grandmother?

The next thought is that he fell and really hurt his knee. Is it the same knee? The other knee? Does he need to go to the ER? Will he need a more major surgery now?

Is it job-related? Did something blow up at work and he just walked out? Is the firm in huge trouble? Did he get pissed and quit?

So I scurried around trying to keep occupied till it was time to go pick him up. Then I drove to the train station and there he was, walking fine, so it wasn't his knees. That left someone dead or the firm in financial chaos.

He got into the car and I said, "So, what's up?" and then I noticed that the side of his face was all puffy. He explained that he'd been to the dentist for a cleaning and check up last week, and they took some x-rays and didn't like the look of one of his teeth, so he'd gone back for a follow up. The whole tooth was shot, with internal infection, so they pulled it and rebuilt it. Before the rebuild, though, they'd had to do a full bone graft. The whole bill was $4900 (!), but it looks like we're only going to have to pay $1000 (!). He had them call his prescriptions for antibiotics and mouth rinse into the Rite Aid in Grand Central, then once he got them he realized that it was 4:20 and there was a train leaving in 10 minutes for home, so he decided to just leave rather than going back to the office.

I'm glad he's okay and the tooth got taken care of, but WTF??? Why did he neglect to tell me that any of this was going on? I didn't even know he'd gone to the dentist last week. I certainly didn't know that there seemed to be a problem, and that he was going back yesterday. Is this classified information? Why didn't he consider this worth telling me?

He said he was sorry, he just didn't think of telling me. And he said that this way, I didn't have to worry about him, and I was left free to continue to worry about why the hell my doctor STILL has not gotten back to me about my biopsy results. I finally emailed last Friday, and got no response, so I called (yes, CALLED!) and left a message yesterday morning, and still have not gotten a response. It's been over two weeks now. It was supposed to take about a week. For the first week or so, I was trying to remain optimistic, since my doctor had said that if it was negative, she'd just send me a letter in the mail. So since I kept not getting a call, I kept thinking that meant the news was good and I was getting a letter. But no letter has come, and no calls, and frankly this surfeit of information is starting to get to me.