Falling Apart and Getting Together

I am lucky that I don’t have a major health issue but that’s not going to stop me from writing a whiny post about all the little stuff that’s keeping me from popping out of bed each morning with a great attitude and my arms outstretched and singing Sound of Music style. Why can’t I be like that? Maybe if I could throw open the windows and listen to the sounds of spring it would be different. But the furnace still runs, my winter coat is still needed and we’ve even got a chance of snow back in the weather forecast! The Canadian Geese haven’t even been by yet on their way up north. Skip the robins, honking geese is my signal that spring is on the way. Come to think about it, I haven’t seen a robin either. They’d have to have microwaves to defrost worms for their dinners. I want spring and if it doesn’t show up soon I’m going to have a hissy fit!

I have so much to be grateful for yadda, yadda, yadda and yet it’s a collection of petty stuff that’s dragging me down. Remember the Popeye’s Elbow (Olecranon Bursitis) I wrote about a month ago? It didn’t go away on its own like Dr. Google predicted happens in most cases. It got bigger and redder and I called the doctor’s office. They got me in the same afternoon to see the nurse practitioner. I’m allergic to some of the (shotgun type) antibiotics commonly prescribed and the one she put me on has this written in all caps on the bottle: IT’S COMMON TO HAVE DIARRHEA WITH THIS DRUG! Yippy I oh, won’t that be fun! I also have to use heat on my elbow four times a day and go back next week to get it aspirated if it’s not gone. It’s not going to be gone. My Lucky Human Being Card is expired.

Then there are the hives I’m starting to wake up with again. This has happens like clockwork every 4-5 years my entire life. So I’m taking Zyrtec to limp through until I see my internist in April. I blame him this time for messing with my thyroid meds. It’s a balancing act. According to an autoimmune specialist I saw a few years ago, thyroid antibodies are causing the chronic hives aka I’m allergic to myself. Also going on: I broke off the side of a tooth and I’ll probably need a cap. Thankfully, that doesn’t hurt because I don’t dare to make an appointment with the dentist until after I’m finished with the round of antibiotics for my elbow. Same goes for the foot doctor that I need to see about two different issues going on that interferes with me falling asleep. And speaking of sleep, when I wake up in the morning I have an eye that’s getting crusted over and doesn’t want to open without a warm compress. I feel like a one-eyed minion from Despicable Me. And if anyone brings up the fact that a year ago I was preening about going to the gym and losing the weight I gained back over this past winter, I’m going pitch a probiotic Activia cup at their head. On the good side, a split fingernail I’ve been trying to grow out for over a year is nearly to the point where I’ll no longer need to put a nylon patch on it every Sunday. See, I can still appreciate my first world blessings. 

The complaint department is closed. Now on to some fun I had this week at an Irish Pub with four of my Gathering Girls friends where I had a great corn beef sandwich and a decadent chocolate dessert. They still had green beer but I’m not a beer kind of person. Though I miss the days of having a designated driver because I would have loved having a grasshopper, if people even make those crème de menthe drinks anymore. We laughed as if we’d been drinking, though. Boy did we laugh and I managed to dig out my rusty flirting skills and practice on a couple guys who were going by our booth on the way to being seated near-by. One of the guys paused and said, “We could just sit with these ladies. Their food looks pretty good.” “I’ll slide over and share,” I said, “I can’t eat it all.” He bantered back, “You’re not shy. I like that.” I took a little teasing from one of the ladies about talking with strangers. “Quiet Jean! Who would have ever guessed you had that in you?” Answer: Almost anyone who knew me in my twenties.

We were still there laughing and talking when the guys left after their lunch and the friendly one told us to “behave yourselves, ladies.” He got ten paces away, then turned back to say, “No, don’t do that. Have fun!” We always do. The funny part is that “behavior yourself, ladies” line is one I often use on young service people---at the hair salon and in restaurants---but it’s the first time someone used it on me. Ohmygod, it was a match made in heaven and I let the old guy walk out of my life without a second thought. Just kidding. I caught up with him in the parking lot and slipped him my phone number and if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. But sixty years ago? ….well, I might have done that. It's fun to remember what it was like to be young. I just can't be it anymore. More's the pity and disappointment in that admission. ©

Diets, Doctors and the Box in the Basement

I’ve had the same internist for almost fifteen years. He’s a skinny-mini and I’m pretty sure I could bench-press him if I was so inclined. He’s got a new computer program and he showed me a flow chart that tracked the ups and downs of my weight through the years that I’ve been going to him. Up three pounds over this past six months, down the six months before. Ya, that’s my pattern. Got the message, doc. Accountability. I tried playing the jokester during this weight conversation. It usually works with him but this time he didn’t see any humor in me saying that I was on the Trump Stress Diet, eating everything in sight that isn’t nailed to the wall. He replied, “Well, you’d better find a different way to deal with your stress because he isn’t going anywhere.” What did I expect him to say? “Here’s some coupons for Cold Stone ice cream,” would have been nice, “go get your sugar buzz on.” 

My thyroid test numbers are wacked out again. We’re going to lower my dosage which, hopefully, will make it easier for me to sleep but won’t throw me back into a chronic hives cycle. I’m allergic to myself. If he had a flow chart on my thyroid and hive history overlapping it would show that I’m almost due for another five-six months bout of daily hives. A few years ago an autoimmune specialist finally concluded that thyroid antibodies have been causing the chronic hives off and on since I was a baby, but what’s new now is there is an infusion available to stop the hives in their track, if you can get the insurance company to cover it and a doctor to order it. But which doctor? The autoimmune specialist who takes four months to get into see? The internist who seems to be letting too many things fall through the cracks lately? Or the allergy doctor who would refer me back to one of the previously mentioned doctors but only after a few months of loading me up with useless tests and pills? I don’t know what was going on with my internist this week, he sure wasn’t his usual self. But then in the wake of what’s going on in the world, are any of us our usual selves?

I should be cleaning my house right now instead of hanging out at the computer. Ya, you read that right. I’m cleaning before my cleaner cleans. Actually, it’s more like picking up stuff and putting it where it belongs. I have a habit of littering the house with shoes and putting papers that need filing on top of the filing cabinet instead of inside it and I leave clean clothes hang in the laundry room too long. I don’t want to fest up to how messy my kitchen table/desk top looks the day before my cleaning service shows up. It’s embarrassing. I also go through the house and pick up temptations like my cell phone, iPod, house keys, jewelry, sensitive mail, my purse, medications, etc. and I put them in the car. Then I’ll have to pick up all the dog’s toys. Right now his tiger is trying to suck the dust out from under the stove and his squirrel is trying to figure out how to get outside the door he’s been stalking.

Have you heard of the Million Letters Campaign? Andrew Carroll, an author and the director of the Center for American War Letters will be in town later this month and is giving a presentation at the senior hall. We’re being encouraged to bring in letters we have that were written from war zones to donate to the campaign and I have a huge box full in the basement from the Vietnam era. And that presents a dilemma for me. Is it time to let go of those letters? If so, what do I do with the carbon paper copies of the letters I wrote to the guys on my penpal list? Am I really ready to give up on the idea that I’d like to write my own book on that era of my life? I have four choices, I think: 1) Hand them over minus mine; 2) Keep them all but put the contact information for the Center for American War Letters on top with instructions if I’m died, please mail this box to them; 3) get off my duff and write the book; and 4) do nothing under the illusion that I’m going to live forever and have plenty of time to decide later on. 

I suppose I could try reading some of letters and decide if there is any historical value in letters written back and forth between strangers. I don’t remember them being filled with any Red Badge of Courage-like stories. I remember them as being from young guys eager to hear from a college girl. Guys eager to get perfumed letters that got them teased by the others at mail call. I remember crushes. I don’t remember there being much talk about the topics the Center’s website says the letters they collect show: "---love, humor, faith, death, homesickness, grief, anger, courage, peace, human resilience, camaraderie, reconciliation, patriotism and historical events.” But it’s been decades since I’ve read those letters so my memory might be selective. Do you think it’s time to let go? What would you do? I’ve only got fourteen days to decide. ©

Medical Week for the Widow

I’ve been running the roads. Monday, the doctor. Tuesday, the dentist. Wednesday, the infusion center for my first Reclast treatment. I live on the north end of town and everywhere I had to go was on the south end which meant I had to take the expressway with its dreaded S Curve that cuts through the heart of the city. I’ve hated that curve since it was built in the early 1960s. Back then, the power brokers (think a handful of Trump-like creatures) dictated which buildings would be hazed by a wrenching ball and which ones would be spared. Surprise, surprise, their property still stands. A friend who drives the S Curve twice a day says it makes him feel like a race car driver as he banks his car near the outside wall, then crosses over to bank the other side. It’s his favorite part of the day, or so he says. I would rather eat earth worms but that won’t get me to the south end so cancel that trip to the bait shop to buy me a gift. 

I went to the doctor prepared to be bubbling over with happy good health and sharp, witty old lady banter. I was determined to make up for the last time I was there when I told him I didn’t feel well but I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt so spaced out. SPACED OUT? Damn! I thought as drove home that day, I shouldn’t be saying things like that to a guy who could transcribe that into my records as: showing signs of dementia. This time he had a new twist for my visit. He brought a woman in from “records” who, I was told, was going to chart everything we talk about so that he could get back to face-to-face patient-to-doctor talking. “I assume she’s sworn to secrecy?” I asked. “Yes,” the doctor assured me with a broad smile, “what happens in this room stays in this room.” And thus their weird experiment began. It will be interesting to see if they’re still doing it when I go back again. 

When I go to the dentist I probably drive past a couple of hundred dentists along the way. I’ve known the guy since before he went to dental school 25 years ago and if I planned on staying on the north end of the town I’d probably change to the one within walking distance of my house. Old people who drive 40 miles an hour on the S Curve while everyone else is going 80 are frowned upon. Fortunately, I'm still able to keep up but I stay firmly planted in the center lane and hope the pretend race car drivers don’t loss control as they do their crisscross antics in front of me. Once, on an icy night when there were no other cars around, I did a loop-de-loop in the middle of the S Curve. Side note: I just looked up the term ‘loop-de-loop’ to make sure I was spelling the ‘de’ part right and was shocked to see that the urban dictionary defines a loop-de-loop as a sex term for what we old timers used to call the 69 position. I assure you I was not having sex on the S Curve. I was driving south bound, lost control and ended up going north. Since then they’ve spent millions trying to make that section of the highway safer for wintertime driving but I still hate that expressway and the political string pulling that put that ridiculous curve in the city. End of rant.

I told the doctor that I was nervous about getting the Reclast treatment because of my hive and allergy history. He said to tell them at the center if I get itchy so they can slow down the infusion and give me an antihistamine. “Great,” I said, “I’ll scream bloody murder if that happens.” “I wouldn’t advice that,” he replied, “but do let them know.” What I actually wanted him to say was I was worrying unnecessarily, that reactions to Reclast infusions rarely happen. According to the nurse at the center, it is rare but it can happen at the time of the infusion or anytime in the first two weeks. Wonderful. Two weeks of drinking a million glasses of water a day (to help flush the stuff through my system) and two weeks of eating a couple of extra servings of calcium rich foods a day (because the infusion will be working to take calcium from my system and depositing it into my bones) and I’ll be out of The Valley of Hives-Hanging-Over-My-Head. And did I mention only one cup of coffee a day for the next two weeks? 

I did learn something at the center. They now have an infusion medication for chronic hives, if you can get your insurance company to pay for it. I told the nurse I’d mortgage my house to cover the cost if I ever get them as bad as I had them a few years back. Every day for nine straight months of itching, having my face distorted from giant hives and popping four different prescription medications a day was not a walk in the park. On the way home from the center, I stopped for a fresh supply of antihistamines---just in case---and a gallon of ice cream. What a happy coincidence that my new blender came with a malted milk blade. There goes that eleven pound weight loss recorded on my medical chart this week. ©