Just got back from the doctor. Guess what they found on my ultrasound?
The song above contains a hint!
Spoiler : I got a hernia. A really big one. Right down my midline, above the umbilicus. The hernia itself is 6 cm long, but the hernia sac is 12 cm by 6 cm and 6 cm deep.
For my fellow Canadians with imperfect knowledge of metric, that’s around 5 inches by 2.5 inches and 2.5 inches deep.
Imagine a hockey puck the size of a CD and you get the basic idea.
And I won’t go into it here because I don’t want to make myself sick, but let’s just say the way the doctor described it nearly made me faint.
So for the moment, I am just plain not going to think about it. He reassured me that while bad things might happen, they probably won’t. And he has referred me to a specialist for probable surgery.
So I am just plain not going to think about it until I have to. Eventually, his office will call and tell me when the appointment to see the surgeon will be, and I will make note of this and make sure I don’t forget, but otherwise I will go right back to not thinking about it until I have to.
That’s my plan and I think it’s a good one.
I also talked to him about my back pain, which prompted him to check my lungs (???). He also prodded my spine for sore points.
He didn’t find any. It’s not that kind of pain, It’s much deeper.
So he wrote me a prescription for massage therapy.
Score! Massage sounds pretty great to me even when I don’t have back pain. If I am ever rich, I will have full time masseur on call at all times in my mansion.
A huge Swedish dude with big muscles and big hands who can work my spine like it’s a pipe cleaner in the hands of some impossibly butch Mister Dressup.
Two issues though : are they still doing massage therapy during Covid? And if so, will my disability medical plan cover it?
The answer to the first question seems to be a definite yes. A quick google search revealed a bunch of places here in Richmond talking about how they are open despite Covid and taking appointments NOW.
The second question is far harder to answer. As I recently learned when pursuing new eyewear, what they do and do not cover is a tightly guarded secret (really, they have a moat and a dragon and everything) and so I will have to ask individual clinics what they do and do not cover.
I’m willing to pay some of the cost myself, but not all of it, Not even half.
Oh, and I told the doc about my cataracts.
You know, I could come out of that surgery with much better vision.
That would be freaking awesome.
More after the break.
Don’t you know about the bird?
Seriously. I expected him to look like a beatnik Wolfman Jack with the crazy eyes.
Instead, he looks like a blonde Tom Waits. I can dig it.
Feeling somewhat better about life than I did earlier. I think I have reached the point of anxiety and worry and depression trip my “fuck it” circuit breaker and right now I am reveling in the apathy.
Because seriously. Fuck it. Whatever happens, happens. I will keep doing whatever my depression lets me do, and maybe a little bit more, but otherwise I will await my fate with the cheerful fatalism of a medieval French peasant.
Maybe tomorrow there will be war, or famine, or a plague, or locusts. Maybe even an invasion. But we will have today, so let’s make today as good as we can.
It’s a sentiment I cannot argue with but it does not fit well in my cramped and paranoid Northern European brain.
I want to go romp with the faeries of the forest and dance naked round the firepit with a coven of witches and wise women, really I do.
But I can’t do it until I am sure the chores are done, the crop is in, the children are in bed, the fires are covered or put out, and the laundry is done. Oh, and the pigs are fed, and the chicken coop needs mucking out, and that new calf is ill, and….
I can’t conceive of not worrying about things like that. Even if I acknowledged that they were someone else’s problem – not my farm, or my farm but I leave it to my employees, or whatever – that would at best only buy me a little time before my system oriented brain would want to know how it all works, how all the pieces fit together, and that would lead to my needing to optimize the system, and before ya know it I am knee deep in what is going on and emotionally invested in it all and the scenario above unfolds.
This is also how I might end up in leadership roles I never wanted. When you are the guy who sees the big picture, and knows what is going on, leadership comes to you naturally, wanted or no.
Honestly, I might be healthier with a system to fret over and improve.
Or I might lose my marbles completely and become completely obsessed.
Honestly, I could either way.
Where was I? Oh right, cheerful fatalism.
I could never be someone who never worries about tomorrow, either. I am way more ant that grasshopper, for better and for worse.
I am, at best, an ant who moonlights as a grasshopper on weekends.
But I don’t mind admitting that sometimes, I wonder if the grasshoppers of the world might know something I don’t.
Maybe they blithely blunder into problems I would see coming and avoid, but they don’t spend all their time worrying either.
As in all things, there must be a happy medium between the two poles somewhere.
Damned if I know where, though.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.