Cold Bathrooms, Warm Hoodies and Miracle Power of Honey

Some Fridays arrive with a clear topic in hand; others show up with a blank screen, a stubborn pocket door, and a foot wrapped like a mummy. Jean’s week delivered all three — plus a few medical mysteries, a sweatshirt that now fits like she borrowed it from a linebacker, and a maintenance man who unintentionally rescued her from writer’s block. Settle in for her latest dispatch from the continuum of independence, cold bathrooms, and the winding road of wound care...AI

How many times am I going to start a blog post by saying I’m staring at a blank computer screen without the foggiest notion of what to write about? This time, however, there’s a maintenance man on the other side of my apartment trying to fix the pocket door between my en‑suite bathroom and the bedroom. It only slides halfway and then gets stuck. And you’re probably wondering why it matters, since I live alone and privacy shouldn’t be a problem.

For one thing, I’m a creature of habit, and I’m afraid I’ll forget not to close it, get trapped in the bathroom, and die of starvation before anyone finds me — which isn’t entirely true. If I didn’t show up on Mahjong day to set up the tables, mats, and sets, someone would come looking for me. I may be wrong, but I think it takes longer than six days to die of starvation, assuming I got trapped on a Wednesday night. Although knowing my luck, I’d be the first documented case of someone starving to death in a bathroom with a fully stocked pantry twenty-five feet away.

But the main reason I need the door to shut is to keep heat in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower. This stupid apartment has no heat source in the bathroom except for a small heater on a timer that’s part of the ceiling exhaust fan. I’d add my own space heater, but there isn’t an electrical outlet anywhere except on the countertop — where the cord would no doubt end up in water and I’d die by electrical shock. My entire apartment is too cold for me. The heat ducts are close to the ceiling, so I can’t even stand in front of one to get warm the way I did in other houses where I’ve lived.

My favorite winter attire is a hoodie that says, “Yes, I’m cold! Me 24:7” sprawled across the chest. I put it on the other day and almost cried. I spent a fortune on that bulky sweatshirt, and after losing 40 pounds it totally engulfs me. It was already a size too big last winter but now my hands are completely covered, the body of the shirt is halfway down my thighs, and I have enough room inside to conceal an eight‑month pregnancy. It’s one of those situations where I’m both happy and sad at the same time — happy for the weight loss but sad that my favorite garment now makes me look like a toddler who wandered off wearing her father’s college sweatshirt.

I still have more weight to lose, so I’m trying not to buy anything new. Like most people whose weight has been up and down their entire lives, I had a stash of clothing stored away in a box labeled “Too Small.” They are just right now. So I’ll be okay until around Christmas, when I hope to be in new territory with a number on the scale I haven’t seen since I was forty. I thank the gods of science who developed Zepbound for that possibility, and I curse the gods of misfortune who gave me a foot wound that’s preventing me from walking my butt off — literally.

And finally, I found my topic to blog about: updates on my foot.

I’ve been to the wound center three times now, and I can actually see progress. And guess what they’re having me dress the wound with. If you said scoparium honey, you’d get the kewpie doll. AI says scoparium honey “is a unique monofloral honey produced by bees that pollinate the Leptospermum scoparium bush… produced mainly in New Zealand and parts of Australia where the native tea tree grows.” For wounds it’s “applied topically in medical‑grade gels to promote tissue repair and fight bacteria.”

But it’s a little more complicated than just dabbing it on. First I have to apply a cream that lessens the pain of cleaning the wounds (there are five) and let it set for ten minutes. Then comes cleaning the wounds with a cleanser that has “acid” in the title before it’s ready for the honey, followed by covering the wounds with a gooey, sticky infused gauze. On top of that goes a silicone foam dressing and enough tape to mummify my foot. At this point my foot has more layers than a wedding cake. But I still have to add a compression tube folded double over my toes and its liner. The foot doctor I was seeing before I started going to the wound center wasn’t even having me cover the area with anything but a cream.

As part of the hunt to figure out what caused — or is contributing to — the wounds I’ve had since May, the wound center sent me to a vein doctor because they suspected a “leaky varicose vein.” But the vein doctor said I have good blood flow going down to my feet and back up to my heart, and nothing that requires surgery. She recommended that I see a vascular doctor to rule out an issue in that department, even though she said that since I can walk 7,000 steps without pain, she didn’t think a vascular doctor would find anything. And since she seemed interested in spending Blue Cross and Medicare’s money, she also said I should see a dermatologist and an autoimmune doctor.

When I told the wound center doctor that, he made a sarcastic remark under his breath about her wanting to run me all over the place — which pretty much echoed what I thought. I didn’t tell him that she also thought he was wrong to tell me to cut back on my walking because, she said, “the ankle is like a second heart, pumping blood to our feet.” Don’t you hate it when doctors disagree? It’s like having divorced parents, except instead of arguing over custody, they’re arguing over my foot. Even though cutting back my walking has slowed down my weight loss, I’m sticking with his advice since I’m finally seeing improvement — which I never saw during the three months of going to a foot doctor twice a month. When I finally saw what Ms. Foot Doctor was billing my insurance company, I was flabbergasted. $326 each visit on top of what Medicare was paying her! Thankfully, I got smart enough to ask for a referral and I'm now getting a treatment that seems to be working. Whatever is causing the open sores, they went from one open wound to five under her care.

Circling back to where I began — because I read once that writers need to do that — the maintenance man is gone, my pocket door works great again, and I no longer have a blank computer screen. Now I need to save what I just wrote so I can do some proofing and editing later today. ©

Photo: When I was searching Etsy for a photo of my beloved sweatshirt to use up above, I noticed they were having a sale so I broke down and ordered another one — two sizes smaller and out of the plus size category! They have a no returns policy so if it's too small, then it will live in my closet as incentive to stay on the weight loss course.  

If It’s Wednesday, I Need to Write

I think I’ve finally run out of things to say. I got a haircut on Monday and talked non-stop the entire time. That’s what happens when you get housebound for so long, then see another human who is more than willing to let you have diarrhea of the mouth. My hairdresser asks lots of questions and it’s occurred to me more than once in her presence that she’s using me for entertainment. You know how some people can treat their elders, like they know just what to ask to rattle our cages and get stuff to fall out of our mouths that will make them laugh. Kind of like Art Linkletter used to talk to children. That's my hairdresser. Just wait, honey, it will happen to you too when you pass seventy.

She’s letting my hair grow out and into a pixie cut. I didn’t ask her to change the style, didn’t know she was even doing it until Monday. All month long I struggled with the Woody-Woodpecker look at the back of my head. I didn’t know she did that twist thing when cutting each section to give it “lift” in the back. “Don’t do that again!” I told her. She says in two more haircuts I’ll look like Jennifer Lawrence. I wanted to reply, “I don’t recall telling you it was on my Bucket List to look like Jennifer Lawrence.” But what I actually said was: “Great, I’ll give you two more months of play time on my head because it will still be winter and I can wear hats.” What makes a hairdresser unilaterally decide to grow out a client's hair? Strangely, though, I really would like to look like Jennifer Lawrence.

Tuesday I had an express pedicure. Not my favorite thing to do but I have a foot doctor appointment coming up so I wanted my toenails not to be so long they’ll injury the doctor. The pedicurist thinks I have a circulation problem that gives me brown spots near my toes and on the nails themselves. She says she told one client to get something similar checked out and she ended up having heart surgery. Oh, goodie. I think it’s a fungus and/or the results of life-long foot issues but what do I know, I’ve only had my feet for over seven decades and one foot has been "shot up" with medication to kill off the nerves.

The foot doctor is just returning from his yearly month out of the country working with Doctors Without Borders. My eye doctor goes yearly, too, and one of my husband’s specialists did the same thing. They must have a good recruiter in town. The things you learn about professionals’ personal lives is amazing when you play tit-for-tat right back at them when they ask you questions. My foot doctor, for example, gets his deep summer tan cutting his own lawn and he loves his shrubbery more than any red-blooded man should be allowed. I had pegged him for a boater and can easily visualize him out sailing like a Kennedy near Nantucket. Every time I see him I am reminded not to judge a book by its cover. He may be drool-on-your-shoes handsome but the fact is a "yupper" bred man with a compassionate heart and simple tastes lives inside his head. A yupper is a person raised in the Upper Peninsular of Michigan.

I have nothing more to say. Later in the week I’ve got two movie and lunch dates---one with my club from the senior hall and one with my Red Hat Society chapter. If you’re guessing I’ll be writing movie reviews for my weekend post, you might be wrong. Don’s sadiversary is coming up, marking the end of my 3^rd year of widowhood. I might be writing an evaluation, a self-examination to see if I’ve made any measurable progress in the Department of Getting on With My life. ©