Tomorrow will be my last day of IV antibiotics at the Ambulatory Clinic at RGH.
And like previous times I’ve gone through that program, I am kind of going to miss it. It was nice having something purposeful to do every day, and even nicer having the nurses there fuss over me a bit each day.
Sad, I know, But I take my nurturing where I can get it.
Glad to know Doctor McLachlan thinks I am now infection free. We beat those nasty infections! Take that, opportunistic microorganisms!
Now I will get bounced back to Wound Care at the Community Care Clinic so they can change my bandages.
So when it comes to nice (mostly) ladies fussing over me, I won’t have to go cold turkey. I will just be down to like, twice a week,
I will miss the nurses at Ambulatory. I didn’t learn all their names but I learned some.
There’s Yana, one of the Russian ladies. Very sweet, works very hard, is very efficient, but there’s definitely an iron will within that smiling warmth.
There’s Edit[1], another Russian lady. Not very chatty, but very dedicated. She’s the one who worked with the intensity of a high stakes jeweler to get my IV in once.
There’s Lana, tall and elegant, cool and efficient. Just being around her made me less anxious. Always looked fab too.
And finally there’s Lauren, my all time fave, because she is so my kind of person. Funny, informal, and cool. I loved joking around with her. Having someone around I could do that with meant the world to me.
There ya go, ladies. If I am too slow or shy to thank you tomorrow, I have at least immortalized you in my blog.
Speaking of tomorrow, hoo boy is it going to be busy.
First I got that last IV antibiotics treatment at 11:30 am. The trick there will be trying not to get too emotional. That might make things awkward.
Then I have to hang around the hospital until my stress test appointment at 1:15 pm. No big deal. I’ll just read, or veg out on one of the comfy chairs in the lobby.
Then there’s the stress test. It’s something I have been dodging for years now but this latest trip in the ambulance with heart-type symptoms has convinced me to stop dicking around and get the damned thing done.
Vital to that mission is the information I got from the lady on the phone today pertaining to danger. She said the idea of the test was to get my heart rate up to a certain level while I am hooked up to lots of sensors and see what is going on in my ribcage.
I warned her that these days I get out of breath just from standing up so the test might end up being VERY short. She laughed and said that was fine.
So while I am not looking forward to it, I am now confident that these people know exactly what they are doing and are not going to try to kill me in some sort of Kafka-esqe mechanical death march.
After that, it will be back home to wait for my phone appointment with Doctor Chao to talk about a medical issue I haven’t even brought up to anyone yet.
It’s going to be a busy, busy day!
More after the break.
Oh. And it’s my birthday today. I just turned 49.
Big fucking deal.
Countdown to 50
So I got a year left before I turn fifty without having done anything with my time on Earth and made absolutely nothing of myself but a fat, bloated mass of misbegotten blubber teetering on the edge of as hideous and pathetic a death as befits my waste of a life.
Happy fucking birthday indeed.
I don’t know what is going to happen if I turn 50 without having done anything to advance my life and get the fuck out of this deathpit existence.
But it’s probably not good. For years now I have been telling myself that if I wasd still living the same stupid slovenly life when I turned 50 I would end it all.
At the time, that was just a way to soothe myself with the idea that this hell can’t last forever and that one way or another, I would escape it.
That seemed a lot better than imagining myself living another 25 years of steady decline with each birthday finding me making the same goddamned excuses to justify not facing life yet as I get sicker and sicker and becoming even more of a massive loser as the time when I should have started living gets further and further away.
Face it. Describe my life to most people and they would agree it sounded pretty pathetic. This guy with all these gifts just sits around and plays video games all day even though he’s pushing 50? And he’s never ever supported himself? He’s never had a full time job or even a short term boyfriend? And he may soon die of medical conditions he totally could have under control but doesn’t?
God, what a loser!
And all because I am too fucked in the head to even be able to run my extremely undemanding life properly.
I am one very broken unit, and it’s only going to get worse unless I somehow find it within myself to break out of this jail cell and start having a life.
But I don’t know where I would find the strength. I cast about looking for sources of positive reinforcement within myself but there’s nothing there.
And I don’t know how to find it in the world, either. Because I had such an emotionally starved childhood, I never learned how to feed my spirit.
All I know how to do is how to entertain myself. Typical “Lonely Child Syndrome.” Said entertainment keeps me amused and distracted but it doesn’t nourish my soul at all.
It just makes it easier to ignore the hunger pangs.
I’m in the bottom of a deep dark pit I can’t climb out of because I broke every bone in my body when I fell down here in the first place.
Guess all I can do is wait to die.
Or maybe do it myself if it takes too long.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
P.S. Sorry to be such a wretched bummer on my birthday. But I had to vent my spleen after feeling fine lying in bed then suddenly feeling absolutely horrible after standing up. I think my blood sugar was crashing hard. I dragged myself back from the brink by eating a mandarin orange and I am currently struggling to make myself eat more and, ya know, not die. And the very awful mood above reflects that.
I will feel better later. I am sure of that.
But god damn have things gotten scary for me.