Outpatient Blood Draw at Virginia Hospital Center

It’s been a long six weeks. We have been dealing with non threatening but very annoying health care issues. It’s been a lot of doctor visits, pharmacy fills, and testing but with no final diagnosis yet. A lot of things have been ruled out. But my husband has a personality that needs to know or he simply won’t rest - creating many sleepless nights. So now he needs to have an ultrasound - scheduled for this afternoon, and more blood work drawn this morning. He had a video visit with the doctor last night. Since there was a staffing issue at the clinic that is right across the street from where we live, we needed to go to the hospital for the lab draw. Thanks to the patient portal, we were able to schedule it on line and sign all the paperwork before we arrived. The hardest part was finding parking. I wanted to avoid the parking structure, so we found a space on the perimeter and used the park mobile app and scheduled an hour. Navigating the hospital is always interesting since we haven’t been there except for outpatient GI tests two weeks ago. Once in the lab area it was quite simple and well organized. If we ever need to go back we will at least know what we are doing. Since we haven’t really needed this much health care it’s also been an exercise trying to figure out what insurance covers. We are not looking forward to the bills that are piling up. All of the results have already been sent through the patient portal and luckily they look just fine. Hopefully things will be the same this afternoon. And for the first time my husband is hungry again - of course on the day he has to stay “nothing by mouth” until after the ultrasound. I don’t know what he will do if everything is negative. It’s been a very anxious time for both of us so we will deal with that when the time comes. 

Capitol Hill Graffiti Wall

I’m not a big fan of graffiti. In fact, I really don’t like it. But sometimes the weekly 52frames photo challenge takes me to places that I normally wouldn’t go to get pictures for a particular subject matter. Two weeks ago the idea was to find some interesting walls. Old Town Alexandria hit the mark on that one. In fact the image that was submitted was picked top 52 out of 2000! But I was contemplating another photo - an interesting graffiti wall that is actually an “art gallery” of sorts. One of the support walls under the freeway in our old Capitol Hill neighborhood is very well done - because it’s not created on the stealth. The wall sits within a skateboard park. The freeway actually divides the old Capitol Hill with the new yards park neighborhood. We used to walk under it when we took walks over to the Anacostia River. The area will be one of the most, if not the most, dense populations in DC once all the high rises are done. Nationals Park was one of the first things built there. Since I didn’t use the graffiti wall image for the walls challenge, I thought I would take another photo for the “shot with a phone” challenge last week. I ended up using a Tidal Basin photo instead. Maybe one of these days there will be another call for something like this. I actually liked the photo - I just don’t care for the graffiti. 

Old Town Alexandria Fall Scenes

With Halloween over, Old Town Alexandria still boasts seasonal decorations. A lot of them are window boxes and gardens that change from summer to fall. The cool tones become warm and the street scenes are always a pleasant experience when we take a morning walk. Rather than meander in the neighborhood and community park, or our old Capitol Hill neighborhood - our next favorite place is Old Town. We are never disappointed. Occasionally a friendly dog wants a bit of attention. A golden retriever was anxious to get it and tried to give us a toy so we could play. The architecture all around is really beautiful but we know from experience that living in an old building has its own set of never ending issues -which was the main reason we moved to northern Virginia. We used to have lunch at least every couple of weeks in town but haven’t done that for almost two years. I’m not sure when anything will really get back to normal. I keep hearing about it but don’t feel it quite yet. Yes, things could be much worse. But I long for the time when we could just do ordinary things and just didn’t have to think about it. 

52Frames_shotwithaphone Weekly Challenge

I was so excited last week that my walls photo was chosen as one of the top 52 picks. So I wanted to try and continue my efforts for this weeks challenge - “shot with a phone.” Since I always shoot with a phone and I don’t own a camera, the subject matter was wide open - which makes it more difficult. We started the week in our old Capitol Hill neighborhood where Halloween decorations were an option. The problem was that Halloween would be over by the time the challenge for the week gets posted. Some of the photos from the Barracks Row neighborhood were interesting. We headed up back at the graffiti wall under the freeway for a shot I’ve taken several times but can’t seem to get enamored but it. On a very windy and rainy day we decided to take our morning walk in Tysons Galleria. We hadn’t been there for quite some time - but it’s a great option when the weather is foul. I got a couple of shots there, but nothing remarkable. Since the fall weather has been so lovely, we took another ride to the Tidal Basin at the end of the week and we weren’t disappointed. We started off by the Roosevelt Memorial and walked towards the Jefferson Memorial. In between there were some interesting scenes of a flooded Tidal Basin and underwater sidewalks and benches. All of a sudden a bird showed up at just the right time and that photo is the one we selected this week. It really isn’t that remarkable, but my husband loved it. He loved the walls photo last week and that did the trick. We ended up walking around the entire Tidal Basin and so it was a great morning. I can’t imagine that the bird photo will be noticed this week, but the idea is to get out of the house. Getting noticed is just a bonus.