Had a phone appointment with Doctor Chao this morning.
And the good news is, he wasn’t late for it.
The bad news is, he was early, WAY early. The appointment was for “between 11 am and 1 pm”, because apparently only a doctor’s time is actually valuable.
Well he called at frigging 9:30 am! An hour and a half early.
But luckily, I was not doing much of anything besides hanging with my fuzzy friends, so I was able to take the call.
But that’s the second time in a row he’s pulled this calling early shit. In retrospect. I kind of wish I hadn’t rewarded this behaviour by taking the call.
Maybe next time, if I am feeling ornery, I will say, “No! Call back at the right time!”.
And then hang up.
OK, no, I probably won’t do that. But it’s an amusing thought.
Oh, and one more slightly galling thing : he asked me what he could do for me when it’s his office that made the appointment.
I kind of assumed you had something you wanted to talk to me about, Doc.
Anyhow, I knew what I wanted to discuss. First we talked about this disturbing thing where I get attacks of shortness of breath when I lay down.
Like I’ve said before, it’s like my heart is having trouble switching gears. The attacks are fairly mild as long as I don’t lie on my back, but seeing as I am 51, already have two stents in my heart, am quite obese, and have a long family history of men dying from heart disease, it makes me more than a little worried.
He said that what can happen is if you have sluggish circulation (check), blood pools in your legs when you’re sitting down. If you then lie down, that fluid now rushes back from where it was into the heart and the heart gets overwhelmed by it, and thus, I end up having trouble getting enough air for a little while.
And that seems plausible enough although that last bit confuses me. Why would too much blood in my heart makes me feel like I’m not getting enough air?
I have so may more questions.
What I really need is a doctor I can email.
We also discussed what’s wrong with my fucking legs. I am proud of myself for mentioning that as of last week it has been two years since I landed in the hospital and I still don’t have a diagnosis.
So he reached into his back pocket and pulled one out of his ass.
He said that when you lose sensation in your feet, your body is not getting all the feedback from your lower legs it needs to keep you balanced properly and that can lead to issues with the legs over time.
I don’t buy it. It’s plausible but unsatisfying. There is definitely something wrong with the muscles in my legs, especially the tendons, and that same thing has been making my arms weaker as well.
But I guess that’s all I will get out of him for now. But this is definitely not over. I need treatment, not just explanations. I don’t want to lose my ability to walk without a fight.
I figure what I need, assuming his theory holds, is physiotherapy. The right kind of physio could boost the circulation in my legs and feet and build the muscle tone back up in my limbs to combat the apparent atrophy.
And who knows, my physiotherapist might be a sassy Jamaican lady with whom I will argue a lot but ultimately form an unlikely bond.
What? It could happen.
More after the break.
What we choose to believe
We the “smart” types tend to act and feel as if all our beliefs are the only logical conclusion possible given the facts and that therefore choice doesn’t enter into it.
Which is pretty damned hubristic, when you think of it. And it’s also a dodge. Oh, of course I don’t have to defend my beliefs on a personal level. I can just stand back and pretend all my conclusions to be foregone and that therefore to argue against them would be to argue against logic itself.
What a load of crap!
And the truth is that there a lot of different equally valid ways to look at things and we are fully enabled and empowered to choose the POV that works the best for us.
“But that’s cheating! And/or delusional! And/or lying!” you shout.
But no, it isn’t. You are not choosing to see black as white or day as night. You are just adjusting your view within the confines of observed reality.
Take that old saw about the cup being half full or half empty. Cocktail party conversation aside, the truth is that it’s both. Both statement are equally true and apply to the exact same object so we are free to choose to see it as half full.
After all, you’re not wrong.
And the half full POV is a much happier one, so why not choose happiness?
Of course. there’s a lot more going on. For one thing, pessimists tend to fall victim to a negative bias every bit as delusional as Pollyanna optimism, where they have subconsciously decided that only bad things are real.
This is an understandable overreaction to a loss of innocence but the trick is not to get stuck there, but to let the pendulum keep swinging back and forth till it reaches equilibrium in the middle somewhere.
Or even deliberately let it swing towards the positive, just more informedly so.
I am convinced that we can change our negative outlooks to something more conducive to living a happy life.
But it’s going to be hard, especially at first. We have a lot of negative momentum to kill. Getting that flywheel to stop dragging us under will not be easy.
But I am determined to do it.
Fuck all that negativity telling me I have to be sad.
I choose to be defiantly positive!
Take that, world!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.