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Back to Oahu
Nov. 28th, 2023 10:08 pmTwo months later, we're on Oahu again. It's for medical reasons, which has been #1 on the reasons-to-go-to-Oahu, on our Family Feud: Hawaii Edition.
This time it's because K. messed up her knee while I was in Germany. It's doubtless due to long-standing issues dating back to when she was off of her foot for years due to nerve damage from a previous surgery. But it managed to hit some crisis point in September when she had to do all the cleaning and feeding of the cats.
It's only gotten worse since, and we had a few frustrating weeks where her new doctor, who seems to be firmly on the retirement track, refused to get her any type of imaging to see what was going on until she headed out to a physical therapy. After three sessions of that the PT refused to do any more work until she honest-to-goodness got some imaging.
And then sucky doctor sent her in for a worthless X-ray, which we knew would be worthless, though it actually showed _something_ was wrong. (That one at least was probably an insurance requirement that he couldn't do anything about, but I'm pretty sure a good doctor would have fought on the other issues, like the PT when she could have been hurting herself.)
And then we ran into the problems of living on a small island: it would be more than a month before she could get an MRI. We were told that the Kauai hospital could get her in faster if the Doctor marked the MRI request as 'stat', but he talked about how important it was to do it immediately and then didn't; and we were told that she could get it faster if the Doctor talked to a Tech, and he said he would, but he wasn't able to, and apparently wasn't ever willing to walk down to Imaging and sit on them.
So we called up the hospitals in Oahu and one of them offered Kimberly an appointment today, which was about a week after she requested it. Her appointment was at 7pm tonight, so we made reservations on a 4.30 flight and then had to make hotel reservations because the last plane left back for Kauai at 8-something.
Which all seemed dandy until I got email around 2pm telling me that Hawaiian had cancelled their 4.30 flight and we'd be leaving at 6 instead.
(We don't know what's going on, but they seem to have cancelled approximately every other flight between Kauai and Oahu today. Our seatmate thought it might be weather-related, as we have a Kona Low coming in. I just hope they're not in their death throes, because if we lose one of our two airlines that flies interisland, we're screwed.)
The hospital is about 15 minutes from the airport on Oahu, so that wasn't terrible. Except our new seats on the new plane were in row 26. And we were supposed to wait for Kimberly's wheelchair. All told, I could see these adding 15-20 minutes to the process.
So K. called the hospital and let them know we might be running up to half-an-hour late, and they said no problem.
And then we started squeaky-wheeling when we got to the airport. Despite the plane being full, we managed to get bumped from row 26 to rows 9 and 10. Five+ minutes saved. We'd earn another 10 minutes from an early departure, but then lose five of them when our pilot missed the runway and had to circle back, something I haven't seen since the '80s. (He claimed a plane had failed to clear the runway, which I guess is a good enough reason not to land.) And one of the flight attendants agreed to go to the gate at Oahu as soon as we got there to warn them of our immediate need for a wheelchair. And she did.
K. can still walk, just not much. So as soon as the unloading got to rows 9 to 10 we headed out. We met her wheelchair heading down the ramp, and she hopped in and then we wheeled out to rideshare. (As I told K.: remember when there was a taxi stand, and you could just jump into a taxi without waiting? We called an Uber as soon as we knew we'd get there before it, and we still waited two or three minutes.)
The highway was pretty clear despite the rain, as rush hour was winding down.
It turns out that imaging is one floor up, but right at the front of the hospital. So, close.
We got there at 6.57, three minutes before we were told to.
And K's appointment had been moved back 45 minutes to 7.45.
(Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled they rearranged things to ensure she could get her MRI today, and this whole trip wouldn't be a _very_ expensive trip to a Dim Sum restaurant. It would have been nice to know though, so we weren't as stressed in our mad rush to Straub.) They actually took her in a bit after 7.30.
And now I'm sitting in a deserted waiting room. The admin here in imaging left at 8pm. K literally has the last appointment.
So that's November's trip to Oahu. We're staying at a hotel a few miles away, and then we plan to get driven out to Dim Sum tomorrow before we get a mid-afternoon flight back.
I mean, hopefully, because Hawaiian was cancelling half the planes from Oahu to Kauai too today, because they pretty much have too, else planes would stack up on our island. So I'm not totally convinced we won't suddenly have a flight an hour earlier or later.
--
Oh, and when I first drafted this earlier I didn't know about the Uber drama we'd have trying to get out of the hospital.
Uber Car #1 pulled up _immediately_ after we called, dropping someone off at the hospital. Yay. But before we could get in the driver took off. K. called her and she said, "Oh, Uber just tells you to drive around sometimes, so I'll be right back there." Five or ten minutes later she called to say she was at our hotel and we weren't there. Yeah, she'd somehow marked that we'd been picked up and then blindly followed her app's directions to our destination even AFTER we told her that we were right where she'd dropped her previous ride. Ride cancelled, though Uber insisted we were in the car.
Uber Car #2 agreed to pick us up then headed 3 miles in the opposite direction. They didn't pick up when we called, so we cancelled again.
Uber Car #3 told us it was going to pick us up some blocks from the hospital. K. called them up and told them we were at the hospital and all was well. We finally got into a vehicle.
(All told we waited about 20 minutes before an Uber finally picked us up. Thank goodness that didn't happen at the airport when we still thought the appointment was at 7pm.)
--
The Aston Executive Center turns out to be not particularly Executive. All the good will won for the Aston brand by the Aston at the Banyans, several miles over in Waikiki, has been lost.
One of the first things we encountered was blood stains in the carpet between the table and the kitchen sink. Classy!
Much of the cabinetry looks like it was done by an amateur carpenter who didn't believe in keeping things even.
The suite just barely is a suite, by dint of a kitchen table ad microwave, but there isn't even a couch. (In fact, I'd call it a flat due to the lack of actual rooms. And cheap due to the lack of actual furniture.)
We had some mediocre packaged 7-11 food since we'd eaten "dinner" hours before on the way _to_ the airport. Ah for ABC stores which had great food (for packaged food) when we were starving the first evening of our last stay here. (We should have stayed in Waikiki, but it made sense to be out here by the hospital and airport, or that was our theory. Next time we'll just go into Waikiki, as the other Aston was no more expensive.)
Ah well, we're only here a night. I hope the suite I got for our Berkeley stay this Christmas isn't as disappointing, or it'll be back to AirBnBs (which I abandoned after my disappointing stay in Köln followed by the great Holiday Inn in Frankfurt).
--
Nice view of the city.
This time it's because K. messed up her knee while I was in Germany. It's doubtless due to long-standing issues dating back to when she was off of her foot for years due to nerve damage from a previous surgery. But it managed to hit some crisis point in September when she had to do all the cleaning and feeding of the cats.
It's only gotten worse since, and we had a few frustrating weeks where her new doctor, who seems to be firmly on the retirement track, refused to get her any type of imaging to see what was going on until she headed out to a physical therapy. After three sessions of that the PT refused to do any more work until she honest-to-goodness got some imaging.
And then sucky doctor sent her in for a worthless X-ray, which we knew would be worthless, though it actually showed _something_ was wrong. (That one at least was probably an insurance requirement that he couldn't do anything about, but I'm pretty sure a good doctor would have fought on the other issues, like the PT when she could have been hurting herself.)
And then we ran into the problems of living on a small island: it would be more than a month before she could get an MRI. We were told that the Kauai hospital could get her in faster if the Doctor marked the MRI request as 'stat', but he talked about how important it was to do it immediately and then didn't; and we were told that she could get it faster if the Doctor talked to a Tech, and he said he would, but he wasn't able to, and apparently wasn't ever willing to walk down to Imaging and sit on them.
So we called up the hospitals in Oahu and one of them offered Kimberly an appointment today, which was about a week after she requested it. Her appointment was at 7pm tonight, so we made reservations on a 4.30 flight and then had to make hotel reservations because the last plane left back for Kauai at 8-something.
Which all seemed dandy until I got email around 2pm telling me that Hawaiian had cancelled their 4.30 flight and we'd be leaving at 6 instead.
(We don't know what's going on, but they seem to have cancelled approximately every other flight between Kauai and Oahu today. Our seatmate thought it might be weather-related, as we have a Kona Low coming in. I just hope they're not in their death throes, because if we lose one of our two airlines that flies interisland, we're screwed.)
The hospital is about 15 minutes from the airport on Oahu, so that wasn't terrible. Except our new seats on the new plane were in row 26. And we were supposed to wait for Kimberly's wheelchair. All told, I could see these adding 15-20 minutes to the process.
So K. called the hospital and let them know we might be running up to half-an-hour late, and they said no problem.
And then we started squeaky-wheeling when we got to the airport. Despite the plane being full, we managed to get bumped from row 26 to rows 9 and 10. Five+ minutes saved. We'd earn another 10 minutes from an early departure, but then lose five of them when our pilot missed the runway and had to circle back, something I haven't seen since the '80s. (He claimed a plane had failed to clear the runway, which I guess is a good enough reason not to land.) And one of the flight attendants agreed to go to the gate at Oahu as soon as we got there to warn them of our immediate need for a wheelchair. And she did.
K. can still walk, just not much. So as soon as the unloading got to rows 9 to 10 we headed out. We met her wheelchair heading down the ramp, and she hopped in and then we wheeled out to rideshare. (As I told K.: remember when there was a taxi stand, and you could just jump into a taxi without waiting? We called an Uber as soon as we knew we'd get there before it, and we still waited two or three minutes.)
The highway was pretty clear despite the rain, as rush hour was winding down.
It turns out that imaging is one floor up, but right at the front of the hospital. So, close.
We got there at 6.57, three minutes before we were told to.
And K's appointment had been moved back 45 minutes to 7.45.
(Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled they rearranged things to ensure she could get her MRI today, and this whole trip wouldn't be a _very_ expensive trip to a Dim Sum restaurant. It would have been nice to know though, so we weren't as stressed in our mad rush to Straub.) They actually took her in a bit after 7.30.
And now I'm sitting in a deserted waiting room. The admin here in imaging left at 8pm. K literally has the last appointment.
So that's November's trip to Oahu. We're staying at a hotel a few miles away, and then we plan to get driven out to Dim Sum tomorrow before we get a mid-afternoon flight back.
I mean, hopefully, because Hawaiian was cancelling half the planes from Oahu to Kauai too today, because they pretty much have too, else planes would stack up on our island. So I'm not totally convinced we won't suddenly have a flight an hour earlier or later.
--
Oh, and when I first drafted this earlier I didn't know about the Uber drama we'd have trying to get out of the hospital.
Uber Car #1 pulled up _immediately_ after we called, dropping someone off at the hospital. Yay. But before we could get in the driver took off. K. called her and she said, "Oh, Uber just tells you to drive around sometimes, so I'll be right back there." Five or ten minutes later she called to say she was at our hotel and we weren't there. Yeah, she'd somehow marked that we'd been picked up and then blindly followed her app's directions to our destination even AFTER we told her that we were right where she'd dropped her previous ride. Ride cancelled, though Uber insisted we were in the car.
Uber Car #2 agreed to pick us up then headed 3 miles in the opposite direction. They didn't pick up when we called, so we cancelled again.
Uber Car #3 told us it was going to pick us up some blocks from the hospital. K. called them up and told them we were at the hospital and all was well. We finally got into a vehicle.
(All told we waited about 20 minutes before an Uber finally picked us up. Thank goodness that didn't happen at the airport when we still thought the appointment was at 7pm.)
--
The Aston Executive Center turns out to be not particularly Executive. All the good will won for the Aston brand by the Aston at the Banyans, several miles over in Waikiki, has been lost.
One of the first things we encountered was blood stains in the carpet between the table and the kitchen sink. Classy!
Much of the cabinetry looks like it was done by an amateur carpenter who didn't believe in keeping things even.
The suite just barely is a suite, by dint of a kitchen table ad microwave, but there isn't even a couch. (In fact, I'd call it a flat due to the lack of actual rooms. And cheap due to the lack of actual furniture.)
We had some mediocre packaged 7-11 food since we'd eaten "dinner" hours before on the way _to_ the airport. Ah for ABC stores which had great food (for packaged food) when we were starving the first evening of our last stay here. (We should have stayed in Waikiki, but it made sense to be out here by the hospital and airport, or that was our theory. Next time we'll just go into Waikiki, as the other Aston was no more expensive.)
Ah well, we're only here a night. I hope the suite I got for our Berkeley stay this Christmas isn't as disappointing, or it'll be back to AirBnBs (which I abandoned after my disappointing stay in Köln followed by the great Holiday Inn in Frankfurt).
--
Nice view of the city.