Got the X-rays of my thoracic and lumbar spine after Wound Care today.
Wound Care went fine, but was a tad more involved than usual as it was once again time for one of the Wound Care Clinicians (Linda this time) to debride the callouses on my poor ol feet.
They’re always a little sore afterwards, with a faint burning feeling. Well, my feet were just abraded rather thoroughly.
I guess not everything that gets removed is dead, calloused skin.
There was one moment of somewhat not-nice amusement when my nurse looked around and said to herself, “Now where are my Caesars?”.
She was looking for her scissors. Which in her accent came out….. LOL.
Don’t worry, I am not so uncouth as to laugh at the poor woman who presumably speaks at least one more language than I do.
But I am laughing now because teehee.
Then it was off to Brooke Radiology for the X-Rays. Superman was busy so they had to use the machine.
And the folks at Brooke were their usual smoothly efficient selves. But I did end up having to wait in line a bit before registering at the front desk and that did a number on my poor busted legs.
In retrospect, I should have used the chair function of my rollator (outdoor walker) and rested except when it was time to move ahead.
Oh well. Live and learn.
But that plus the usual amount of walking involved with doing Wound Care plus the extra lifting of my legs I had to do for the debridement have all left my legs not very happy with me at all.
They keep threatening to spasm or cramp up and I get little jabs of pain in the back my my upper legs when I get up to get food or water or whatever.
Right in my big ol’ drumsticks.
If it keeps up, I might take an extra dose of Gabapentin and see if that stops my legs from bitching at me for a while
Had to put on the usual ridiculous hospital “gown”. I am positive the tech told me to take my pants off but leave the shirt on, which sounded ass backwards (so to speak) considering it was my lower and mid spine that was being X-rayed.
Then I get de-pantsed just to find out she gave me a gown, not the…. I want to call them “hospital pants”, basically terrycloth sweatpants – I had been expecting, and now I am completely and utterly confused.
So what else is new?
So I take off everything and get into the stupid gown. This surprises the tech, who insists on putting an extra gown over me like a blanket while I am on the X-ray table.
Whatever. Like I have said before, I seem to be less modest about my own nudity than most people, and this was one of those rare moments when that causes slight trouble.
Of course, the fact that I don’t wear underwear did not help either.
Anyhow, pictures taken, Doctor Chao’s office has them by now, and I should hear from them about it in a couple of days.
We will see. I might have to chase after them about it.
It’s so hard to learn to be positive when I am naturally cynical and suspicious.
Maybe I should try to split the difference somehow. Like, be all, “What a wonderful day to be alive in this cold and hostile universe! I can’t wait to embrace the new day and all the ways fate will fuck me over for no good reason! Yay. ”
No. That just sounds sarcastic. And/or schizophrenic.
More after the break.
Window dressing for a sweatshop
That’s how these words I type feel to me right now. There is a hell of a lot of heavy shit going down in this busted up headspace of mine and then there’s my conscious mind just sitting on the sidelines saying, “Wow, that looks like hard work. ”
Like I got repeatedly told, rather traumatizingly, as a child, you can help most by just staying out of the way.
I guess that’s how I learned that I don’t matter and nobody wants me around. I wanted to help so badly. I wanted to do what everyone was doing. I wanted to do my part.
But nobody had the patience to teach me how to do things and it was easiest for them to just tell me to GTFO.
I guess that’s how I learned that my needs don’t matter at all. My whole life, I did what was best for others. I was the malleable, adaptable kid who is always okay with whatever you are changing about his life and who never asserts a single need of his own, to the point of self-neglect.
Because I was too timid to ask for anything. I got the message very early on that I was just barely being tolerated and the last thing I wanted to do was make myself any more of a burden than I already was so I never asked for a thing.
I was always the only third class citizen. There was my parents, my siblings, and then me, the accident. The unwanted houseguest. The Christmas puppy. The afterthought.
And the whole time, I had no idea I was being neglected and abused. I was well into adulthood before I began to even question how I was raised and it was decades after that when I started wondering why I wasn’t treated like my siblings by my parents.
I was never equal. I was always living like a house mouse, scurrying around trying not to be seen and surviving on whatever crumbs the others left behind
And that’s so very….wrong. That’s not how you are supposed to raise a kid. You’re not supposed to make him feel like a stranger in his own family. You’re not supposed to make him feel like you wish he’d just disappear.
I tried to. Really I did. But I just kept existing anyway.
How bratty of me.
No wonder I always felt so small. And why I wanted to escape detection and feared “exposure” because none of the attention I ever got was very positive.
And why even when I was with my family, I was mentally checked out and only half listening to what was going on. Enough to monitor the conversation for things that involved me (rare) but not really engaged or present.
The same thing I would later do in the classroom. And get in trouble for it because teachers would thing I wasn’t paying attention.
But I heard and learned from every word they said. It just did not take up a significant portion of my massive intellect to do so.
Looking back, I wish I had grown enough backbone to make demands to be treated fairly by my family and my schools. To throw my weight as an incredibly gifted student around and get a fuss made about me, even if I have to make it myself.
I was, and am. an academic genius. But the only teacher who seemed to recognize this was my favorite teacher ever. Mister Blair Arsenault.
Nobody else wanted to invest in me. Too much work, I guess.
Now it’s up to me to invest in myself.
I’m working on it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.