Vertigo

I have a history of head problems (physical problems, not mental as far as I know), so I worry a bit when I have extended periods of dizziness. Last Tuesday, after nearly of week of imbalance and queasiness, I made an appointment to see a physician assistant.

When I arrived at the clinic, the self-registration kiosk wouldn’t let me check in. After a moment of confusion, I noticed that my appointment had been made for a branch clinic in Prairie du Chien, not for the main medical center in La Crosse.

I knew immediately what had happened. My regular doctor splits his time between La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, and when I made the same day appointment, he must have been in Prairie.* The scheduler I spoke to on the phone made the assumption that I wanted to go wherever the doctor was, even if I wasn’t going to see him. The scheduler asked me if my La Crosse address was current, but booked me out-of-town anyway. I rescheduled for the next day.

Not to make the trip a complete waste of time, I decided to stop at a new bakery/coffee shop that I’d been planning to try ever since it opened a month ago. This side trip made me zero for two, as the shop is closed on Tuesdays.

The following day I returned to both the clinic and the bakery. The PA visit was much as I expected, the coffee shop was not. The prognosis on my head is another bout of vertigo. In the past, vertigo has put me down for days. This time I just feel slightly off. I am supposed to take meclizine as needed and return to the clinic for a CT scan if the problem persists.

After my visit with the PA, I went back to the coffee shop. It fell short of expectations in one way and exceeded them in another. I bought a blueberry scone and thought that it was just okay. On the other hand, the people in the shop (both the staff and the customers) were wonderful and all that I want out of a coffee shop.

The four women behind the counter were friendly and upbeat. Dressed in either jeans or bib overalls, they would not have been out of place working at a coffeehouse fifty years ago. I could say the same of the clientele. There were maybe twenty customers in the place, a few sitting inside and most sitting on an outdoor patio. Not one of them was on a cell phone. The only significant difference between the staff and the customers was a half century of life. The baristas were all in their twenties, whereas most of the customers were old enough to actually have been in one of those coffeehouses fifty years ago. I fit right in.

It didn’t hurt that the shop is in a residential neighborhood and not in a strip mall. I sat at an indoor table and wrote for thirty minutes on the sheet of paper that I keep in my back pocket. A few good sentences came out of it.

* I normally call Prairie du Chien by its full name, but the locals refer to it simply as “Prairie.”  The name of the city, by the way, translates as Prairie of the Dogs. The western edge of Wisconsin used to be prairie, and Prairie du Chien, at one time, must have been home to a lot of prairie dogs.