I have had a day of misadventure, which I will now relate.

It started when I woke up at around 10:30 am feeling absolutely terrible. My eyes  were bleary, my stomach felt like something died of a painfuland lingering illness in it, my joints ached, and I couldn’t seem to truly catch my balance.

Not exactly a propitious entree into daily consciousness.

I felt so bad, in fact, that I considered calling my doctor’s office and moving my 2 pm appointment to Thursday if possible.

And yes, I am well aware of the irony inherent in being too sick to go to the doctor. It sounds like one of those things that’s not supposed to happen, like being too hungry to eat{{1]} or too tired to sleep.

But I have been all three of those things at one point or another, and so while a case might be made that they should not happen, they happen anyway.

The universe doesn’t give a shit about “should”.

I felt so bad that I actually called the doctor’s office to cancel, but nobody picked up. If they had, I would probably have gone through with it.

And been spared this afternoon’s Kafka-esque journey.

Luckily for this story’s narrative needs, by the time to get on the bus to get there came around, I had eaten lunch and pulled myself together enough to decide that loser-ing out on a necessary medical appointment by hitting the panic button was NOT the kind of choice I wanted to make, so I got dressed and went down to catch the bus.

But as is sadly typical of me, I waited too long to leave the apartment and missed my bus byh a couple of minutes.

Shadows of VFS and Kwantlen all over again. I was always doing that to myself back then, in the Before Times. Somehow this irrational optimism kicks in and makes me think I need way less time to get to the bus stop than I do.

Then my mind wanders a little, and what seems like a heartbeat later, I have gone from “I have a few more minutes” to “oh fuck, I should have left three minutes ago. ”

So then I end up scrambling for the bus, missing it. and hating myself.

That’s what happened today at around 1:55 pm. So then I had to wait for the next bus.

Fun fact : I had to wait standing up because it was so hot out that the wooden bus bench was too hot to sit on.

Trust me. I tried. I felt like I could feel my nuts roasting and my buns toasting.

So then the wrong bus shows up. Well, wrong-ish. It still took me most of the way there but if I had caught my proper bus, I would have had to walk one fewer block.

That makes a huge difference when it’s eyeball-meltingly hot out.

Eventually, I get to my doctor’s office fifteen minutes late. But of course, that doesn’t mean shit because my doctor is way behind, as usual.

How behind? I had to wait an hour just to get into the examination room and another half hour after that before I saw him.

So I tell him about all the weirdness with my feet getting weird sensations and falling asleep super easily and the weird feeling in my calves and so on and so on, and his reaction was to try one test (tuning fork) then shrug and say ‘Yeah I guess it’s probably diabetic neuropathy.  Nothing we can do about that. ” and that was it.

This did not make me happy. I did the right thing in that I noticed a scary health issue and took it to my doctor and told him all about it, and all I got was a shrug and a perscription for something that might help me sleep.

Because yeah. Sleep was the issue.

And this is not the first time that I have left Doctor Chao’s office feeling like he didn’t really listen and he didn’t really care. He’s a likable enough fellow and comes across as very sweet and compassnionate, and if I told him how I felt, I bet he would feel bad about it and apologize.

But nothing would actually change. Something about me keeps doctors from taking me seriously. Maybe it’s my laid back, friendly manner.

Whatever it is, I am fucking sick of it.

After being told this entire trip was pointless, I went shopping at Price Mart^[2] and picked up some cool stuff. Cucumbers, watermelon, hot dogs, and some brand of freezies I never heard of before but they didn’t have my usual brand.

Grr on that.

So once I had made my purchases, I called a cab and waited outside for it.

And waited. And waited. Took 40 minutes for the fucking thing to arrive.

Oh, but the fun’s not over yet, kiddies, because when I got home, I realized that I had forgotten my keys.

And our buzzer doesn’t work.

And I have no cell phone so I can’t just call one of my roomies and get things sorted.

And there is no such thing as a pay phone any more.

And so I am fucked.

Luckily, a nice old lady who lives on our floor let me into the building, but I knock and I knock on our apartment door (because of course it’s locked in the middle of the day) and get no answer.

So I have no choice but to wait at the door to be let in. Like a cat.

And the thing is, I am not built for open-ended waiting. I can’t hack the uncertainty. It was bad enough when waiting for a bus and the doctor and my cab.

Waiting to actually get to come home when I was so close was not good for me.

Eventually, I just stretched out in front of the door and took a light nap. Again, like a cat. What else could I do?

I had a book with me, but I was too agitated to read.

Luckily, after about an hour, Julian came home, and let me in.

Let me tell you, that was a rough hour. But once I saw Julian I bounced back pretty fast and now I am fine.

But today has been One Of Those Days.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

 

 

[[1]] This one needs a little explanation. I was too hungry to eat once because the hunger was so intense that it made my stomach produce too much acid while also producing too much digestive churning, resulting in my being extremely hungry but unable to keep anything down. Ain’t life fun?’ [[1]]

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