Did the ultrasound thing at Richmond Hospital today.
No big deal. They had me show up half an hour before my appointment instead of the usual 15 minutes “just in case”. so I ended up sitting in the waiting room and reading the Dilbert Principle for 25 minutes.
I could have played 10 more minutes of Monster Train, you assholes!
Speaking of which… more on that later.
The procedure itself was smooth sailing. Ultrasound is a breeze compared to a lot of other ways to get pictures taken of your insides.
Admittedly, there was a little pain as the imaging tech, an Asian lady, pushed the probe around against my tummy to get the shots she needed and kind of jostled and importuned my organs in the process.
Then came the rectal probe, which was performed by the very cute Doctor Armstrong. He reminded me of Doctor Greene from ER because he had the same combination of competence and nervousness, like he was trying SUPER HARD to get everything right but was scared to screw up, and wow, I find that hot ass fuck.
That’s not necessarily a typo.
What can I say, men in caring professions turn me on.
Now obviously a rectal probe was a total nonissue for me. I’m gay and vers and so I am not exactly a stranger to putting things up there. I was not worried at all.
In fact, I contemplated telling Doctor A that I was a gay man so I was not exactly going to freak out and/or feel violated by him probing me.
But I figured that would probably freak him out and make things weird, when my intention would have been to reassure him, so that was a no go.
Pleasant surprise : he actually told me what he found when we were done. I am so used to medical imaging being akin to a bizarre ritual you do because the medical priests tell you to and you have to wait for them to consult the omens and tell you what they say.
Scuttlebutt (heh) : he saw some small fluid filled sacs on my prostate, which are a sign of infection, but they were very small and not inflamed (or “angry” as he adorably put it) and seemed to be on their way out.
Great news, in other words. It seems the antibiotic I have been taking for three weeks or so, Sulfatrim, is doing its job.
I had noticed that I was peeing a lot less often and with a lot less pain lately, so I was hoping this would turn out to be the case.
So that’s one crisis handled, at least. I still have out of control diabetes, untreated sleep apnea, an unhealed wound on my left leg, a massive hernia in my sternum, diabetic neuralgia everywhere, oh, and whatever the fuck is making me so weak.
Oh, and a left eye fulla cataracts, but that’s getting taken care of Monday,
But at least I got my waterworks sorted out.
More after the break.
AVPD and me, redux
Well the initial rush of diagnosis euphoria has worn off, and I am now willing to qualify my initial self diagnosis of Avoidant Personality Syndrome.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the best damned description of my exact life and my exact problems that I have ever seen. It’s quite frankly been nothing short of a revelation.
But, I don’t match the description quite as fully as I thought.
For one thing, there is what I will call my paradoxical shyness. Basically, I am both incredibly shy and incredibly…. not.
Socially, I am cringingly, cripplingly, brutally shy. I am terrified by even the thought of having to deal with a bunch of people I don’t know. I hide from the world specifically to avoid that kind of thing. I can’t walk past other people on the sidewalk without feeling like every single one of them hates me and is outraged by my daring to subject the world to my toxic horrible awfulness and wishes I would just die. All my time at Kwantlen and then VFS was spent having at least a low grade panic attack.
Sometimes a lot worse.
But intellectually and verbally, I am bold as particularly bold fuck. I have no fear of anyone and will say anything to anybody at any time. I’m extremely opinionated and both promulgate and defend my often highly unique positions with vigor and precision. I have never in my life been verbally bullied – as if – and I have never hesitated to offer my opinion or lacked verbal self-confidence.
It’s a strange dichotomy. I don’t match the usual profile.
A timid little churchmouse I ain’t.
And even in social situations, my shyness is not universal. Sometimes it suddenly reverses itself and I enter kamikaze mode where I just plain don’t give a FUCK any more and just throw myself into the fray with wild abandon.
Granted, this happens most often when I am RPing as Fruvous, but still, the fact that I have this side of me contradicts my usual real world shyness.
This is what leads me to believe that I am naturally an extrovert, or at least way more extroverted than I have been, and thus if I could shuck my depression and AVPD, I could be a super charismatic and amazing dude.
I’m working on it.
Heck, I even enjoy doing customer service. Like I have said before, as long as I have a clearly defined role, my shyness stays at a reasonable level.
When I worked for my uncle (RIP, Uncle Sonny), I knew exactly what was wanted of me. People wanted me to ring up their stuff. I could totally do that. It was well within my arena of competence.
There was no gray area. No social no man’s land to navigate. To be honest, I was thrilled just to have something I actually could do. Loved that job.
The walk to and from work was scary, though.
Lastly : the literature on AVPD talks a lot about how us sufferers fear any kind of criticism or rejection.
And that’s half true of me, too,
Criticism does not scare me. I am totally confident in both my ability to defend against it if it’s false or accept it if it’s true. When someone genuinely corrects me, I am genuinely grateful to them,
If they’re thinking to challenge me with some bullshit, though, I will take them down like a bitch and leave them crying for their mama.
Rejection, on the other hand, terrifies me. I can’t handle it at all. Even the slightest hint of it – so slight that it’s all in my head – can send my whole psyche crashing down into the most brutal of self-loathing depression.
My verbal superpowers don’t do me much good then. Because of course, rejection fiys all too well into the negative narrative of my being an awful, awful thing.
What can I say. I’m a complicated man. And no one understands me. Period.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.