Finally got that labwork done! Phew!
Here’s the timeline :
Wednesday the 16th of June, 2021 : I go see Doctor Caswell. She gives me the lab req for two lab tests, a fasting insulin and something called a C Peptide test.
I tell myself that I will get them done on the weekend.
Monday the 21st of June, 2021 : Woops, the weekend is over and I didn’t do it. Better go get it done today, right?
Ooops. no. Went there at 1 pm, was told that the wait was an hour and a half, car had to be back to Joe at 2 pm, so… no dice.
We will try again tomorrow.
Tuesday the 22nd of June, 2021 : Got there bright and early, ready for the wait. Waited in the hallway – in a chair, thank goodness.
No way I can stand for that long. I couldn’t when I was going to VFS and that was 5 years ago. I am way less healthy now.
I kinda miss those days. I did things back then.
Anyhow, while I am sit-waiting, I look at the lab req and am reminded that I was supposed to fast for these fucking things and I most definitely had not.
I wait anyway, and it’s crushingly boring. Once more, I could not achieve “hospital mode” where I just kind of veg out and doze in a Zen like state, so instead I just waited and was bored.
Could have brought a book, but it wouldn’t have helped. I was too agitated to read.
After an hour waiting, moving up one chair now and then (the hallway was lined with them), I get to the front, confirm with the interior receptionist that both tests required fasting, and admit defeat.
Luckily, the receptionist was nice enough to write a little note for me to give to the hallway receptionist so that I would not have to wait today.
Wednesday, the 23rd of June, 2021 (today) : Fasted for around ten hours. Not that I was given a specific duration, damn it.
I hate ambiguous instructions.
But it was ten hours last time I got a fasting insulin test, so I went with that.
And one nice thing about being able to test my blood whenever is that I was able to confirm that while I got super hungry and felt a bit weak, I was not, in fact, in a hypoglycemic state at any point during the fast.
Phew. Fasting sucked but at least I wasn’t risked my life for medical reasons.
That’s all kinds of fucked up.
“We’re worried about your health, so please go play footsie with death so we can get more information about you. ”
Anyhow. Was smooth sailing today. Skipped the line, went almost immediately into one of the little rooms, blood was drawn, everything is good.
Which finished my medical business for the moment. But now I have to call Doctor Caswell’s office back and talk to Ben and get another appointment.
Plus my eyes might not be healing properly. So next week I am going to call Doctor Vaezi’s office for an appointment. And talk to Doctor Chao about my left knee and the dangerous pains coming from it, sometimes randomly.
Falling apart sure keeps a fella busy.
More after the break,
Don’t run away
Thinking I should get that printed out in huge letters and plaster my room with it. Or maybe get it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.
The perils of being fleet of mind. Before one becomes addicted to running away. one must first have the capacity, and with a mind like mine, escape is always ever so easy.
It’s sticking around long enough to learn something that is the hard part.
I’ve talked here many times about the destructive nature of the urge to flee. How that panicky escape mode blinds you to the long term consequences of your actions and focuses your mind entirely on the very narrow goal of escape at all costs.
It’s a form of insanity in and of itself because it blocks access to rational self-interest and most other higher brain functions and partially takes control away from the reasoning mind and puts one in an altered state of consciousness.
That’s why people often have trouble relating to the things they do when panicking (or angry or hiding). They are not themselves in those moments. The person they are most of the time bugged out and left an idiot version of themselves in charge.
So they ask, “Why did I do that? It made no sense! How could I have done something so very very stupid?”.
Answer : well, look who you left in charge.
It’s like a situational lobotomy.
So what’s a scaredy cat (fox) like me to do? I want to stop being like this. I want to learn to hang in there and fight. Even get hurt.
Pain is a great teacher, after all.
But the rationality suppression aspect of panic makes it much trickier than it seems because the very part of my mind that would let me calm myself down and remember not to run away is the part that goes right out the window when I panic.
So I would have to somehow desensitize that panic button. Get that alarm system disarmed enough to let me stay calm under stress.
In other words, I would need to chill the fuck out.
Either that, or learn to function better when panicking. That’s a counterintuitive solution, to put it mildly, but it might actually work.
It would take making stupid me smarter, essentially. Not easy for someone used to doing everything via an application of overwhelming mental energy like myself.
It would involve dealing with thing like a normal person, essentially. Most people have to muddle through life via a blend of reason and instinct. Both get educated.
But not lucky fuckers like me, oh no. I’m a wizard, Harry. I have billions in brains and rarely ever sweat the brain strain.
As a result, my instincts are really fucking stupid.
I wish there was a pill I could take that would give me normal IQ for a couple hours.
Guess I’ll just have to take up drinkin’.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.