What can I say, I love alliteration.
Today I tried to get some lab work done but was thwarted by Covid.
Can’t wait till THAT bullshit is over and done with.
I had planned on going to the LifeLabs near Lansdowne Mall (the one with Brooke Radiology on the main floor) to finally get around to the labwork that Doctor Craswell ordered for me last Wednesday.
Coulda shoulda done it on the weekend, but whatever.
So at 1 pm, Julian and I headed out. Got to the lab. Woops, they don’t do walk-ins any more. Or rather, they do, but there’s a 1.5 hour wait.
Well I didn’t have 1.5 hours to wait. The car had to be back to Joe for his commute before that. So no labwork for me.
Grrr. Luckily, I had a backup plan. I brought along the results of Friday’s angiogram in case I had time to drop them off at Doctor Ebtia’s office and save the apparently two week minimum it took a three page document to travel to Richmond.
When, again, you could have gotten in there faster via snail mail.
In fact, I am forced to wonder how exactly it does get there in the natural course of events. Because for the life of me, I cannot imagine a process that would actually take two god damned weeks.
Except walking it there, I suppose. But even then, ten days, tops.
So I must conclude that it spends most of that time just sitting there waiting for someone to put it just a little further down the line.
Which would be staggeringly inefficient even in the days of the paper office, but since the advent of the electronic computer it’s absolutely inexcusable.
Get this : during our initial conversation, Doctor Ebtia (cardiologist)’s secretary actually suggested I “take a picture of it and email it to her”.
So apparently they have heard of the internet, they just want other people to do the work surrounding it.
I don’t have a cellphone (gotta fix that), so I could not comply.
I resent being brought into this goddamned process at all.
And the thing is, I know the document started out as an electronic file. What doesn’t? So why couldn’t St. Paul’s just email the goddamned thing to Doctor Ebtia?
None of it makes sense.
Oh well, at least it gave me something to get irrationally angry and bent out of shape over, and those can be therapeutic.
Next up on my busy social calendar is an appointment with Doctor Craswell on Wednesday at 11:20 am, and in theory I have an appointment for an echocardiogram at St. Paul’s on Thursday.
I say “in theory” because I’m pretentious. But also because I looked at my notes and found that the procedure is schedules for 5:30 pm.
Um, nerp. Not healthy enough to get there via transit and there is no way I can get a ride from Julian that late in the day.
I will discuss alternatives with J&J tonight, but if a plan cannot be conceived, I will have to call up St. Paul’s and reschedule.
Which is not that big a deal.
But I am worried that the medical system is started to view me as a flake.
More after the brake. I mean, break.
Into the heart of darkness
Yup. More “Wound” talk. Sorry.
I can see it clearly my head, though it is hard to describe. Like an evil-looking outline of a person, and where the heart would be there is instead the outline of a heart glowing with a terrible heat in a malevolent shade of orange/red.
And this heat pulsates and throbs in the air like hate itself, and the eyes glower with resentment and loathing, and as the waves of vibration and radiation push my mind into the hell of eternal heatstroke and drain all life and vitality from every cell of my body, I know that only death can end my pain.
And I ain’t done yet. I don’t want to go. I like it here. I can still have fun.
And I am still an extraordinary being, with incredible powers. Talents and abilities beyond most people’s ability to grasp, a depth and beauty of spirit that gives me extraordinary insight into the human soul, the vision of a messiah and the pragmatism of a miracle worker, and one heck of a nice guy too.
I really just want to make people happy. Nothing could please me more.
So that dark cancer at the core of my soul is not the real me. I need to know that. To take it deep inside where it can burn the poison from my veins and melt the ice cube on my heart and flush the toxins from my veins and make me pure again.
I am not my illness. I am that which became ill, and can become well.
I am not my issues. I am that which has the issues, and can deal with them.
I am not my weakness. I am he who became weak, and will be strong again.
The real me is a strong, powerful, confident, daring, courageous, beautiful, bold, incredible, and thoroughly amazing wizard.
One of these day, I will emerge from my cave and shine upon the world. And my light will be all the brighter for having been banked so deep for so long.
But there’s no hurry. Waiting is fullness. Healing will happen at its own rate and attempts to constrain and capture it with funny little symbols of quantitative reasoning are as laughably misguided as trying to scientifically determine the color of love.
The answer may surprise you.
I will do what I can to stay alive and free of pain. I won’t get it all right all the time. I’m still a very ill man on all levels, so I can only do what the illnesses allow.
But I am going to fight. No defeat, no surrender. I’m the Juggernaut, bitch, and nothing is going to stop me.
I may not win.
I may lose horrible.
I might die a senseless and premature death.
But I will never, ever give up.
Live forever or die trying, right?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.