My Rough Day

At 9am, I had a follow-up doctor's appointment with an opthamologist to figure out what's going on with my left eye and what the recommended treatment is. I had already had lots of tests and different imaging scans done on the eye, so I was just going in to hear the results of what the doctor and his team found (as a 2nd opinion). Aside from me waiting over 2 hours for him to show up (he was called in for emergency surgery), I received the news I didn't want to hear. Apparently all the infections I was having was caused by a type of MRSA bacteria in the eye, which is for the most part immune to antibiotics, which is why the injections I was getting in my eye were only providing temporary relief.

In addition to my eye being a breeding ground for the bacteria, the scar tissue from the surgeries I had (and from the multiple infections) over the years has restricted the blood flow into the eye, and has caused a dramatic drop in the eye's intraocular pressure, which can lead to an array of other types of diseases, including causing problems with my good right eye.

What I didn't want to hear is that this doctor agreed with my first doctor's recommendation about treatment, which is the total removal of the eye (aka enucleation). He recommended that I do it as soon as possible (preferably next week), but I told him I wanted to get things in order first (with work, school, etc), and scheduled the surgery for October 2. Although the surgery can be done outpatient in about six hours, I told him that I wanted to stay in the hospital overnight, and leave after an examination the following morning.

After my doctor's appointment, I went back downtown to meet with my new advisors at Georgia Tech, who were going to help me get all my paperwork processed, get on the payroll, and get everything else done so I will be an official "research student." I was also going to be told if I was going to be teaching a class or not, in addition to continuing my research off campus. I was first sent to the administrative office to get all the forms filled out and signed, and then went to go talk to the lady who runs the "graduate student assistantship assignment office" to get my research assignment and to give her a blank check to automatically deposit my "salary" into my checking account. A perk of being a research student is that they get paid about 30% more than regular graduate students with teaching assistantships. Well, it turns out that because of budget reasons, they decided to classify me as a teaching assistant as opposed to a researcher, which would mean that I would not only have to put my research (that I've been doing for over a year now) on hold for God knows how long, I would also receive less money and would have to suck up to a professor and grade all of their student's papers, tests, lab reports, whatever else TAs are supposed to do. I wasn't really concerned about the salary, because I have other means of adequate income which far exceeds anything they would pay me. But hey, money is money!

I told her that this was completely unacceptable, that I would not have agreed to come to Georgia Tech if they wanted me to be a professor's slave, and the reason Georgia Tech asked me to come there was because they wanted to have a larger presence of American students who do research. She apparently was offended by the usage of the word slave (as if I meant anything racial by it), and she sternly said there wasn't anything she could do. So I stood up and told her I was sorry to have wasted her time and that I was not going to attend the school, and walked out the door. She caught up with me in the hallway and told me to hold on, and sent me to the head of the EE department. He apologized for her misunderstandings and unwillingness to help me, and said he would pull some strings to get me reclassified as a research student, and wouldn't have to be a TA.

The rest of the processing went quite well, got my new student ID, computer login, parking pass and gate card, and even got my medical records to the health center. As I was leaving and got to my car, I noticed that I had a parking ticket waiting for me under my windshield wiper for $50 (parking without a parking permit). I parked exactly where I was told to by the EE administration staff, so I took the ticket in to them and told them to take care of it. Surprisingly, they said no problem. It's nice to see that the parking people down here are Nazis just like they are at NCSU.

While I was driving the 7 blocks back to my condo around 4pm, I got a call from my very upset, embarrassed, and crying girlfriend, who was out shopping today. When she gets real upset, she sometimes speaks Italian or a hybrid between that and English, but from what I got from her short phone call, apparently she was being held by the store/mall security and was being accused of shoplifting. She told them that she wasn't going to talk to them unless I was present. So, I rushed up to Buckhead to go to the Phipps Plaza mall, and went to the security station to see where she was. I went to the store (it was called Sigrid Olsen). By the time I got there, though, they had worked everything out and had apologized to my girlfriend. Apparently the sales associate (a stupid cunt) became suspicious of the indecisiveness of my girlfriend, who was trying on a lot of different clothes, and was making several trips to and from the dressing room. Additionally, she had lots of shopping bags (from previous stores) and upon walking out of the store, the alarm went off, and was accused of putting merchandise in the other bags. They searched the bags and found out that the associate simply forgot to take the alarm tag off of a single item, even though she had paid for EVERYTHING. Her sales receipt was over $350, but yet the associate decided to accuse her of stealing a $50 shirt. It's all just stupid bullshit like this meant to give people like me headaches.

So, as we're leaving the mall, I walk her to her car, and see that someone had run into the back end of her car and drove off. We called the police to file a report, and then we go back in the mall to see if they could look at the surveillance tapes. Obviously the guard on duty is a complete idiot and doesn't know what we're talking about, so we leave a voicemail with the guy in charge of security to call us back after he checks the tapes. She drives a real nice Mercedes SLK Roadster that she got for her birthday earlier this year. Insurance is going to take care of everything, but it sucks that such a nice car was damaged by someone who didn't even have the common courtesy to fess up to it.

So yea, it's been a pretty rough day.