The lovely waiting period for a shot

Today I went through the annoying process of sitting in the waiting room of the air force clinic for an hour, then sitting in the clinic room for another thirty minutes, staring at the walls, in order to get my pneumococcal meningitis vaccination for the implant surgery. But I mean, REALLY? Is it really necessary to make someone spend an hour and a half of their life waiting for a doctor to write a piece of a paper and then walking 20 feet to the next clinic for the vaccination, which once you receive that piece of paper ONLY takes 5 minutes total? IS IT!? It's truly a consistent reminder why I do not bother going to the doctors unless I feel like I might die. The worst part of all this is that the health care reform, once fully enacted, is going to make waiting for the doctor just as long as an hour to several hours long. Bummer huh? Surely I would've grabbed my book to read while waiting, but I actually felt it'd be a quick in and out, and, if you have a hearing loss, you're (at least I am) always afraid you're not going to hear the nurse call your name, so I pretty much prefer staring at the door and reading the lips every single time the nurse pops out to call a name. Therefore, I wouldn't even get much reading done anyway.

Guess what I realized today? Our fish tank filter is LOUD. Unfortunately I do not wear my hearing aids all the time. I only wear them when I gotta go somewhere, like to the doctors, maybe a job interview, la la la. It doesn't seem necessary to wear them when I'm sitting at home on the computer all day and won't hear anything but barking dogs and jets. Plus, they make my head hurt. They make me tired. They make my ears itch. And they are completely outdated and need to be programmed to the change of my hearing over the last 5 years. Which reminded me, even though I'm getting the implant in my right ear, I'm gonna need the left hearing aid reprogrammed, or at least, replaced, with something a bit more modern than my 8 year old aids. I noticed that many new hearing aids don't even require ear molds anymore. How about that?! Although with my luck and type of loss, I'd probably be recommended for aids with molds. But then I remembered, insurance rarely covers the cost of hearing aids. Stumped. I'm gonna have to yell at someone. Probably the husband. But then, someone will probably manage for me to get approved for a hearing aid- somewhere- someday.