Well it didn’t go great.
I certainly didn’t read him the Riot Act like I had imagined myself doing. I had whole scenes written like they were the closing arguments in a legal drama swimming around in my head as recently as yesterday.
But of course, when he was actually right there in front of me, I reverted to being my usual attentive and submissive self, like I always do around doctors.
The closest thing I did to really asserting myself was try to get praise and/or approval by showing off my layman’s knowledge of medicine.
So, fawning, nerd style, essentially.
I did convey how worried I was about my worsening condition, and I told him about the recurring flulike periods with the energy drain and runny nose and muscle aches and so forth and so on.
So I got that done, at least. But I am disappointed at how meek I was despite how pissed off I truly am that the initial incident where my legs stopped holding my weight was last August and we still don’t know what the fuck is going on.
We know it’s not my soine and it’s not my cardiovascular system. The stroke people said it might be neurological, might not be.
So what the fuck IS IT?!?
I want my goddamned legs back, damn it. Either that, or a diagnosis.
I think they owe me at least that much.
Doc Chao said it could be directly related to my uncontrolled blood sugar. Fair enough. I won’t be able to address that until I see Doctor Coswell again and she gets me to do the stupid diabetic training again so the government will pay for my testing strips.
It’s always something, isn’t it?
But yeah, it could be that my diabetic neuropathy is attacking the nerve endings that control movement in my legs and elsewhere
Once I get my diabetes under control again, we will see if things then improve.
I guess I can live with lancing my fingertip once or twice a day. Assuming I can get it to actually do its job.
What defeating me last time was not being able to get an actual reading no matter how many times I punctured myself. I would either get an error or it would tell me there was not enough blood on the strip.
By the time I had done this like ten times, still with no success, I was done. Yes, a saner and smarter person would have kept trying until they got it right, even if that meant they had to call some call center somewhere, but I am not that kind of person.
Instead, I just gave up forever. Simple, really.
That’s the problem with a fear based emotional ecosystem. You are always looking to escape, even in situations where hanging in there and dealing with things is way easier and better in the long term.
I’m always poised to flee. And if I can’t flee, I freeze up.
And if I couldn’t do either of those, I supposes I would fight.
But only as a last resort.
More after the break.
Oh, quick update : gave up on beating that demon boss after the game started just plain not letting me get to the third and final stage.
I would kill all the second wave enemies and then…nothing. My peeps were left just standing around with nobody to fight.
Screw that. I bugged out of that fucking place post-haste.
It’s all in your head
But then again, what isn’t?
I mean, we’re all ultimately just brains in skulls experiencing things. Everything you have ever done,. no matter how sensory or emotional, has really been electrical impulses firing rate speeding up or slowing down or staying the same.
This bothers a lot of people because it seems to reduce us to “just” a bunch of neuroihemicals talking to themselves.
But mind that word “just” because in this kind of context, it’s extremely deceptive.
For example, the Mona Lisa is a brilliant work by one of the most talented and inventive people to ever walk the earth…. but it is also “just” a blob of oils stuck to canvas.
The works of Shakespeare continue to teach people how to write effectively centuries after his time and are produced by dozens of troupes all over the world every day.
But they are also “just” a bunch of symbols stuck together.
Absolutely anything, no matter how magnificent, can be reduced to some mere collection of random components if one wishes to see them that way.
The question becomes, why do you want to see it that way?
The real scary truth is that those fluctuating neurochemicals are connected in a pattern so complex and intricate that it contains an entire living breathing person, lock stock and two smoking gametes.
So just like the words you are writing now are “just” a string of ones and zeroes on a computer somewhere causing your own neurochemicals to change electrochemical states in a million different ways, we are all “just” a bunch of proteins with anxiety.
And I think that is absolutely wonderful.
Feeling fragile and timid and weak right now. And terribly worried that I am facing a future of increasing debility and that before too long I will be stuck in my bed unable to even get up to go take a leak.
Well, that’s what certain containers of mine are for right now.
But as for, um, the other, I have managed, despite my hospital stays, to avoid ever using a bedpan in my life.
Luckily, they have moved on from those. So I am probably in the clear. They have what amounts to potty chairs for grownups now, and while they do not exactly afford one a great deal of dignity, it beats the hell out of being expected to squat on a bucket.
I mean my god…. what if you MISS? I shudder to think of it.
Sure inspired me to get the fuck up out of bed and make it to the bathroom, though.
Being told I need to get up and move around is one thing.
Having the alternative be the bedpan is quite another.,
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.