Just got back from the podiatrist.

Irony : turns out his office is right next door to my surgeon Doctor Nguyen, the guy I visited yesterday. My podiatrist, Doctor Jung (hard J, so not pronounced “young”), is in office 360 and Doctor Nguyen is in office 355.

Small world, and all that.

Doctor Jung appeared to be operating out of a GP’s office while the GP was away. Fine by me. I am sure the average GP has everything a podiatrist needs laying around.

First I waited till he got off the phone with another patient, or rather, their hospice. Sounded like he was trying hard to convince the caretaker that there was no point in taking the patient back to Doctor Yung and that the patient really, really needed to go to the ER ASAP.

Man, being a doctor is hard. I have never questioned their big salaries.

Well, not here in Canada, anyhow.

Frankly, he handled that phone call way better than I would. By the end I would have been screaming, “Listen, are you stunned or just lazy? GET HIM TO EMERGENCY OR HE WILL DIE AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT.”

I only seem calm and steady of temperament because I have so little stress in my life.

If I was a medical professional and lives were on the line…..watch the fuck out.

Anyhow, once he got off the phone, we had our consultation. We had to go through the whole taking down my personal information on a paper form thing.

WTF is up with that? Why the hell are people like surgeons and podiatrists still using paper records when I know damned well that the BC medical system has centralized patient records now?

Even Doctor Chao, my GP, seems reluctant to use the information off the computer. I have to tell him, “Well, there SHOULD be an X-ray attached to my file…” or say “doesn’t it say that on the screen?”.

Perhaps the problem is information overload. We made all this information available to doctors without upgrading their brains to handle it all.

The bottleneck is the cerebellum!

Anyhoo, information over, he took a look at my feet^[1] and examined the problem area (quite painful in parts) and declared that what I had was a serious buildup of callous that probably covered something non-good.

So he took a “before” picture, then used a scalpel to pare away all that nasty callous. And that was mostly pain free, as a callous is just compacted dead skin and thus has no nerve endings to register pain.

In fact, it felt sort of good, in the way picking a scab can feel good. Suddenly the skin underneath can breathe again and the itch is relieved.

So while he was carving away, it occurred to me that I had spent the last few weeks stalwartly avoiding picking at the damned thing when it turns out that would have saved him a lot of trouble.

Not really. Probably.

So once the site was excavated, lo and behold, there was the culprit : a diabetic ulcer, AKA a hole in my foot.

There it was, on the “after” picture. Site looked way better with all that yellow callous gone, but right in the middle was a little black hole.

Bodies should only have a certain number of pre-approved holes.

So the doctor put some antibiotic on it then covered it with a band-aid. In order to continue to care for it, I am going to need :

1. The antibiotic prescription Doctor Wishlow at the ER wrote me filled. Pretty sure I can send Julian for that. By now, my pharmacist must know Julian well enough from Julian picking up prescriptions for me that him filling one won’t be weird.
2. Bandaids. Luckily, the hole is small so just your regular genetic band-aids will do fine. We may already have them. And….
3. Neosporin, Polysporin, or another antibiotic spray. No prob, stuff’s cheap.

And of course, lose weight and control my diabetes. And stay off the affected area, and when I can’t. put the weight on the heel.

No big deal.

Of course, at the end of the visit, I had to pay him. Cash. Which felt dirty and wrong. Like paying a priest for taking your confession, or paying your Mom for lunch.

I sincerely hope I never have to do that again. And it’s not just the money. I mean, sure it sucks to be out $75.

But the real issue is how it made me feel, and it made me feel gross.

That’s just plain not how things are supposed to be here in Canada.

I feel violated.

More after the break.

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Just a stub

Wow, that previous section is 800 words. EXACTLY 800 words.

Guess I was really cookin’. I really am happiest when I am writing, or at least doing something meaningful and productive.

Now if only I could hammer that thought through all these think layers of emotional scar tissue that keep me from pursuing my own happiness as well as all my ennui and emotional inertia in order to have that actually motivate me to be productive.

Depression makes it so that even knowing doing something will make you happy is not enough to make you want to do it.

Because there’s still that profound resistance to action. The Great Friction. Driving with the parking brake on.

And in some ways, I am trying to learn to generate enough power that I can power through all that resistance and live something like a normal life.

But on another level, I am also trying to relax the resistance and let things flow smoothly and naturally instead of being all cramped up inside.

When those two lines meet, it will be my moment of liberation. Rebirth. Renewal.

But also, um, like, science and stuff.

Who says I can’t be a transcendental rationalist?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.