It’s a few minutes before noon. I’m back home after a not completely typical, but unsurprising morning. I appeared 30 minutes early (I’m compulsively early for everything - my least dysfunctional compulsion) at a nearby hospital for a carotid duplex (ultrasound) exam. My PCP ordered it to rule out stenosis as the cause of some dizziness and dis-coordination (dyspraxia) I’ve been having. Having halved one of my medication doses when I realized the symptoms had a diurnal rhythm, and medicated my newly-diagnosed hypothyroidism - the symptoms have been gone for two weeks. In any case, it’s not bad to have this as a screening test, as there can be significant narrowing before onset of symptoms.
Anyway, it took about 40 minutes and I had to empty my bladder while in the hospital about 4 time before and twice after. This is common as I process my 16 oz of morning coffee; I pee like clockwork every 2 hours during the night. Fortunately, I’ve learned how to fall back asleep quickly each time - in part by using a urinal sitting on the edge of the bed, rather than navigating to the bathroom and exposing myself to light.
I left the hospital and went to our drugstore, where we get superb personal service. It has only three parking spaces, each only the length of a car. If parked next to an SUV, it is impossible to see traffic coming from that direction on the 35 mph one lane in each direction (and a fair amount of entering/exiting traffic). So, one must be ready to pull out quickly, as I did -rather tried to do. I had backed in, as I usually do when it’s possible, so I can better see traffic from both directions. Doing this leaves about 8 inches of clearance from the front of the building; brick extending up two feet from th ground, topped by an 8ft by 8 ft plate glass window. Having an opening, I dropped the car into gear and hit the accelerator. Unfortunately that gear was inadvertently reverse and I broke the window without putting even a scratch on the car.
I am on long-term good terms with the pharmacist, to whom I apologized profusely. As soon as I paused in my self-flagellation, I drove to the nearby supermarket, where I bought some items for my wife. As I headed for the small bottle of OJ she requested, I remembered I needed some cereal, which I promptly found and put in my basket. I then proceeded to self checkout, having completely forgotten the OJ. More frustratingly than I can say, this kind of forgetting (mostly due to distraction, as in this case) is something I do, I estimate, about 5 times every day. Each time I do it I must resist exploding (sometimes I do yell, call myself names I would never call anyone else and have occasionally thrown things. I have begun to DESPISE myself.
Immediately upon arriving home I called my insurance broker. I texted him the photos I took and answered his questions. He said they will be back in touch with me and with the pharmacy. There goes $1000 deductible. To cap things off, suffice it to say, I am usually unable to type more than a few words - like these - without errors - hitting adjacent keys, the wrong key, omitting a letter entirely, or often, the first letter of the next planned word appears in the middle of the word I am presently typing. Again, I must resist smashing the keyboard.
In the middle of my conversation with the insurance broker, I have an incoming call signal showing caller ID from the institution which did the carotid. My first thought was oh oh!, is there an emergent problem?? Ever unable to engage the flash function on my old home phone (to switch between calls) I lost the call. Fortunately, she called back and I hung up with the broker with a brief apology. It turned out to be the office of a friend in that health system, a GI specialist who agreed to see my wife for a year long problem of diarrhea. Our own health system has been forcing her to wait for such an appointment for 7 months (so far) - having canceled the appointment following a four month wait - on the day of the scheduled appointment - two hours before the scheduled time (after having changed the date & time THREE TIMES previously! Anyway, my friend will see her in two weeks. He was able to obtain her medical records - fortunately - after I waited three weeks i for even a response from the medical records office - and got nothing! Here is modern, extremely expensive state-controlled with fine granularity, medicine!
The final grace is the number of fixes and revisions I have had to make trying to simply set this forth. Even correcting a single error often involves three of four attempts to get the fix right. Such is old age. Ir could be worse or I could be dead like many of my childhood friends. I merely want to share the good news I’m still around and that it is difficult. Nonetheless, I am grateful for all of it. I pray for patience with myself.
