I am worried that my mystery muscular disorder is getting worse.
Lately I have been getting so tired from such small amounts of activity. And that feeling that my muscles are just hanging off my bones like so much meat is getting stronger.
But I have thought that before, and it turned out to be something transient. So I am resisting my usual urge to jump to (negative) conclusions.
I mean, I already know I am fighting off an infection.
A UTI, specifically. My second urine sample tested positive for nitrates (the kind produced by germs) and an even higher staph count than before, so yup, I definitely got something nasty lurking in my waterworks.
Luckily, the particular variant of staph is vulnerable to pretty much all antibiotics, and so Doctor Chao was able to pick the one that kills this particular bug the best with minimum damage to the good gut bacteria so vital for digestion.
Meaning there’s a chance that, for once, I will be able to take antibiotics without ending up with diarrhea.
I learned all this when I went to see Doctor Chao for my weekly B12 shot, of course.
Hmmm, come to think of it, he should be ordering new bloodwork to see if my B12 levels are healthy now.
Boy, I sure hope so. That shit could have many beneficial long term effects.
Today’s going to be a rather busy day for me and my poor tired muscles, because not only did I have Wound Care and Doctor Chao’s office (for my B12 shot) this morning, and not only will i be doing MRI #2 tonight, but in between I will be bringing in my own grocery order and whatever I order for dinner because Julian is currently “on shift” with Joe at the hospital today.
So for me, today will be a freaking marathon. No probs, I can handle it.
About Julian being “on shift” : It is very, very wonderful how Joe’s family has organized themselves into a rota in order to make sure Joe has someone with him all the time.
That is exactly the sort of warm. understanding, supportive act of kindly sacrifice and consideration that my awkward and distant family would never do.
Not even for the kids they like, aka, not me.
However, if I were Joe, I would secretly find it really irritating. When I am sick, I want to be alone with my misery.
I love getting visitors, mind you. They puncture the terrible feeling of isolation that being in the hospital can cause, and remind you that you have a life and people who care about you and you will be back to both some time soon.
But the nice thing about visitors is they leave. I enjoy their company for an hour or two and then they leave and I go back to the important task of suffering.
See, I can’t help but be “on” when other people are around. It’s kind of sickness. IF there are people around, I am performing for them.
I have no other way to relate to people, really. Sad but true.
I know that my loved ones don’t expect me to entertain them all the time. It’s just that when I try to imagine myself having people I know and love in the hospital room with me and either ignoring them or being cranky with them, my brain melts.
That could really screw me over some day, given my unstable health. I guess I will have to deal with it when I finally end up a permanent resident of medical care facilities.
Not looking forward to that, but it seems inevitable.
And I can barely be bothered to care.
More after the break.
Just the tip
The good news is that despite overestimating the amount of money that would be left on my card after today’s groceries by about ten bucks, i did manage to order in.
The bad news is that in order to do it, I had to cut the tip my Dasher (seriously, that’s what DoorDash calls their drivers) from $3 to $1.
Well I never said it was bad news for me.
Seriously though, I do feel bad about, in a loose way, stealing some of my Dasher’s tip. If money was not so tight, he would have gotten $2 more, so…. sorry dude.
But facing the possibility of not being able to order in at all because of insufficient funds when I had been looking forward to my “treat” was just too damned depressing.
So think of this as a mental health donair.
And this was after a long journey where I was taking thing off the order and trying the charge again only to get the insufficient funds error.
The breakthrough came when I realized the wraps were WAY cheaper than the plates I was trying to order from the shawarma place.
Like, $5 cheaper.
And yet I still had to, um, shave my Dasher’s tip.
Oh well. For karma’s sake,. when my finances go back to normal next Wednesday and I am ordering in, I will pad the next guy’s tip.
Doesn’t help my most recent Dasher but it will help assuage my conscience.
I am so damned bourgeoisie.
For the record, the beef “donair” wrap is quite delicious. Which is good, because I chose the restaurant totally on a whim.
Saw the listing on DoorDash, said, “That looks good!” and ordered.
And I am proud of that. I did something spontaneously and without a heavy amount of attempted forethought and it worked out just fine.
Had it turned out badly, I might feel different. Then the struggle would be to resist excoriating myself over how STUPID I had been and how if I had just given it TWO SECOND OF THOUGHT and so forth and so on.
Breaking myself of that habit is going to be tough. It’s like it hijacks my usual bad response to disappointment and turns it into raw hot self-loathing.
And I don’t deserve that. It’s not my job to do absolutely everything in the smartest way possible at all times. That’s not a standard anyone can meet.
Even the brightest of us are stupid most of the time.
But we all do our best.
And that means giving ourselves lots of room to be human.
Not an angel, or a robot, or a holy man, or a pedagogue, or any of the other ideal selves that dwell within me but can never be real.
I might have the power to seen larger than life, but I am still just some dude.
And it would behoove me to remember that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.