Today is like most days. We head from winter to summer and the weather has turned. Bright, sunny and 70 degrees. Great day for yard work or better yet fishing.
Of course I’m in an Uber heading to a hospital to see the eye surgeon. I hope for the last time. The gas bubble is gone and I have about 50% of my sight restored.
Good time to write, the occasional pot hole creating typos along the way. Will require a rewrite and edit but that’s the normal course of action, no matter how or where written.
This is hopefully my last appointment for May. I have had my fill of Uber and hospitals and doctors. A break is desperately needed.
Last week was the same, a record 3 appointments at 3 different locations. The six rides cost me $320, so much for retiring on Easy Street. Guess building streets ain’t cheap.
The news was all negative, starting with the oncologists and ending with my family doctor. The Doctor of Pain thrown in between, who wanted to review the results of the latest MRI and cause me more pain with nerve blocks.
The serum protein levels are going up, and not backing down as in the past. “Let’s redo the test, and instead of yearly you should come back in 6 months. You know, let’s make that 4 months.”
The MRI was done to look at my facial bones for necrosis of the jaw. Why my teeth are falling out is from chronic inflammation. Well that’s good news.
Except the MRI also picked up the top 3 vertebrae and severe narrowing of the spinal column. Hmmmm, so keeping my head down and neck bent might have been part of the reason I’m now in extreme pain.
Better to get some eyesight back and take more morphine I suppose. Would that have played a factor if that condition was known before the surgery? Do you think?
The dreaded W word popped up. Wheelchair. “Are you prepared for this, not saying it is going to happen real soon, but…”
My reply was simple, “There’s nothing to prepare for. I don’t want to end up in a wheelchair and lose all my freedom.”
Yes I know many people live productive lives while in a wheelchair, I just haven’t seen anything to convince me it’s going to allow me to have any quality of life left.. If I lost the ability to drive and had to rely on others? It will never happen.
MAID is Medical Assistance in Dying. Legal suicide, with a ton of conditions to qualify, but if someone doesn’t want to continue living, it makes sense to help them do this as painless as possible.
Sit with friends, have a glass of lethal wine, go to sleep and not wake up. The friends and family have to drink from a different bottle, obviously.
I need to revisit the subject of MAIDs sometime in a separate post. Something new for me to learn.
With that news I decided to head to a gay bar/pub in the Village, known for their huevos rancheros. That and an Old Fashion, which was my drink of choice when I was an alcoholic, sounded just what the Dr. ordered.
Why the drink? Shouldn’t have, but wanted that familiar warmth and ease provided in that first drink. Let my mind roam. Shouldn’t have but did anyway. Thought about a second, Old Fashioned that is, but knew better. Seriously.
One was all I wanted or needed. Enough to calm down, and do some serious pondering. A wheelchair? It seriously will not work.
The next and last appointment with my family doctor, was a “let’s catchup” face to face, sit down and chew the fat affair. His focus was on my depression, its good someone is paying some attention to. Seems my past visit to the psychiatrist fizzled out completely, where the offer to help was limited to one pathway, group CBT
A long conversation that boiled down to:
“Sleep?”
“Bad.”
“Mood?”
“Low.”
“Pain?”
“All time high.”
The evil triad once again. I’m hanging on to mild depression while my lack of sleep and pain fight it out over which is worse.
I’m whining again.
The solution? Try to break the sleep pattern with more medication, simply up the dose of trazodone…again.
I’m here at the hospital finally. Let’s see what happens with the eye.