So, managed to get to the gosh darn GP today.
Nothing spectacular came of it. We talked about my dizziness on rising. He looked at my latest lab results from the ER and noted that I am – get this – sodium deficient.
Well bowl me over with a chicken.
Now he certainly didn’t want to tell a very sickly fat dude who is pushing 50 to eat more salt, so instead he told me to drink less water.
Um, no. I refuse to see my 3-4L/day water habit as unhealthy. It’s falling behind on my hydration that makes me ill, not overdoing it.
So I will add the salt back into my diet.
Now I just need proof that I also have a caffeine deficiency and things can go back to normal. Ha ha ha.
Anyhow, that’s the dizziness on rising. But that’s honestly no big deal. I can cope with it. Just means I have to take things slow when I first get up, with an option of sitting back down till the room stops spinning,
My real problem is my legs, or rather as I realized, my knees.
All my leg pain is centered around my fragile knees. No big surprise in retrospect, they have been fucked up ever since that incident way back at Nerdvana where I fucked them up by crawling on all fours to pick up a remote.
I was told at the time that I had cartilage damage on both knees. And then they told me that cartilage damage just plain can’t be fixed.
Ya don’t say. It’s a major part of dozens of parts of the human body yet modern medicine, which can replace entire hearts, grow new organs in a test tube, reprogram your immune system, oh and create entirely new organisms via CRISPR, can’t fix a little strip of busted cartilage on a fat guy’s knee?
Anyhow, it’s not a big surprise that as I age those knees are getting worse. Right now, the next step is to go get X-rays of said knees and see what they show.
My guess is nothing, if it” a cartilage issue, but I did take a fall onto them around a month ago, so it is a good idea to look anyhow.
If/when they don’t find anything, I imagine the next step will be an ultrasound. Unlike X-rays, they handle soft tissues just fine.
So I have some hope for my continuing ability to walk. Hopefully I won’t just hit another dead end where they more or less tell him I’m not worth fixing.
Hell I still have a big ol hernia I was told they couldn’t fix either.
i guess I should have thought of that before being someone they see as worthless.
Not that I’m bitter.
I will do my best to get the X-ray done tomorrow. The secret is to not try and fold it in with any other tasks.
I basically got one mission’s worth of endurance in these legs and that’s it.
Having to go do Wound Care an hours after Doctor Chao was quite painful.
Why must life hurt me so?
More after the break.
So over this!
Just for the record, I am so very, VERY over going to the kitchen and back being a fucking bloodsport every single time.
The latest development : remember that “cramp” I mentioned? The one that would show up just under my right kneecap sometimes when I had been sitting down for a long time? The one I knew was a “cramp” because it went away have four steps?
Well it stopped doing that. It was there the entire time I was hobbling about getting my 7-11 order from the door. Every freaking step there was another red-hot stab of bone pain to remind me of exactly how fucked I am.
The answer : very.
Now I am back at the computer, panting like a rented mule and rubbing my various sore areas to make sure I didn’t lose any parts along the way.
So far so good, though a few bits feel like they are considering jumping ship the next time the opportunity comes up.
This shit has got to end. Like I said before. it all recedes into the background of my mind after I sit or lay down for a while and that seems to always coax my mind into thinking it really wasn’t that bad and this time I will be ready.
But it really was that bad. Worse, even. And instead of being ready I am traumatized anew by it.
I find myself longing for braces or splints or the like. Something to immobilize my errant knees and give me some much knee-ded (see what I did there?) stabilization when I walk and thus both protect the poor patellas from further injury and give me some relief from all this god damned pain.
Pretty sure that is what they would do if I went into the ER with fresh injuries resulting in my current crippled condition. Get me in some sort of supportive framework.
But I suppose the medical system figures that if you made it to the doctor’s office, it can’t be all THAT big of a deal.
Remember, the doctor’s only real job is to get you to leave so he can move on to the next fee. Er, patient.
Again, not that I’m bitter. Nope. not at all.
Oh well, Hopefully tomorrow I will get those X-rays done and then next week I will talk with Doctor Chao on the phone about the results and what comes next.
I have to keep forcibly reminding myself that this is not forever. Human beings can be repaired. The road to full recovery might be long, twisted, and painful, but some day I will be able to walk without pain again.
I’ll still choose not to when I can avoid it.
But it will be nice to have the option.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.