Well, a mystery, anyhow.
Thought I had an appointment with Doctor Ebtia, my cardiologist, at 8:15 am this morning. Julian dropped me off there at the appropriate time.
But when I got there, the office was locked. Nobody there. Weird.
Aw crap. I just re-checked my notes and they say the 27th, not the 26th. So the appointment is for tomorrow, not today.
Well I ain’t gonna be there because I have a heart ultrasound at 7:15 am at St. Paul’s tomorrow. One ordered by Doctor Ebtia herself. And seeing as I was told the ultrasound will take 30 to 45 minutes, and it takes half an hour to get from St. Paul’s back to Richmond, there is no way I can make it on time.
So now I have to call her office and work this out.
Now I am on hold. Wow, they have Muzak. How old is this place? They want out of business ages ago. But the need for light on-hold music remains, it seems.
This shit is offensively mellow.
LOL. The comedy continues.
Turns out that my notes are wrong and the appointment was for today, the 26th. But it was a phone appointment. D’oh!
So while I was discovering that the office was closed, she was phoning me and finding that I was not home.
What a silly mixup. Oh well, lesson learned : always note whether an appointment is in person or over the phone.
Good thing I had to be in the area to get my IV antibiotics anyhow.
It was super convenient. The office building with all the doctor’s offices is right across the street from the hospital, so all I had to do was cross the street and get my daily dose of personal attention, human touch, and antibiotics.
Sad. But it is what it is.
No surprises there. Checked in, pinky-purple form, got hooked up, nurse changed my dressing while the IV dripped, all done, went home.
The taxi driver annoyed me by not knowing what the hell he was doing. He had to ask me which way to turn onto Cooney Street to get to our place.
Which was annoying enough but his thick accent made it even worse.
From then on I guided him, which I greatly resented. I hate having to tell cabbies how to do their fucking job.
The idea is that I get in, tell you where I want to go, and you take me there. I should not have to give you directions. It’s all very simple.
And it’s particularly galling in the era of ubiquitous GPS.
Just punch it into Google Maps. dude!
Oh well, job done, anyhow. My next thing is tomorrow’s heart ultrasound, which is no big deal apart from it being at 7:15 in the fucking AM.
But the procedure itself is no big deal. Ultrasounds are very chill. They put the goop on the place, they probe around with the hand scanner, you’re on your way.
Much more chill than, say, an angiogram, which is the last procedure I had and which was very complicated.
After that there’s a lull till my CPAP appointment on the 3rd of August.
I could have sworn I had something on the 4th, too, but if so, all evidence of it has vanished, so I hope that they call to remind me the day before.
I am really not cut out for the life of a gadfly.
More after the break.
Greetings from outer space
Currently stumbling about trying to recover from some truly deep and terrible sleep.
Wow, is my brain fried right now. Crispy. I’ve been awake for over 20 mins and have staggered through making supper and yet I am still bleary and dizzy and have the distinct feeling that my head is a balloon full of helium and my mind has already floated off to Venus or some shit.
So I am playing tag with the screen right now, weaving in and out of focus on it and getting my words in periodically.
This kinda sucks.
But I love you people and want to share my wisdom with you, so I soldier on.
Must have really needed that nap. I must have done a shitload of high intensity ultra high density dreaming in the roughly two and a half hours of downtime.
Admittedly, my sleep has been pan fried crap lately. I realized today that I have been getting maybe three cumulative hours of sleep a day for what feels like forever.
That’s bad. Very bad.
There is nothing so bad that sleep deprivation can’t make it worse. I can feel how big that blank white space in my mind has gotten and it’s not a pretty picture. I would feel a million times better if I just got like six hours of soli high quality sleep.
Easier said than done, of course.
In fact, if it was that easy, I wouldn’t have that problem in the first place. But I am a very complicated person and both highly neurotic and extremely complex, and I have multiple physical issues too, and all that adds up to a restless head.
Restless Brain Syndrome, I now call it.
I know the solution. I need to take one of my sleeping pills. I have a bottle full of quetiapine right here. Could take one and my next nap would be longer and I might actually pay off all that sleep debt.
I’ve been dodging doing that because I don’t like the period of hyper sleepiness and grogginess and serious sleep apnea side effects that will inevitably follow.
Imagine barely being coherent enough to get out of bed and go pee only to be faced inevitably with the impossibly complex task of eating.
These are the days where you seriously consider whether you want good sleep enough to get yourself a catheter.
And intellectually, I know the hyper unpleasant mega-sleep period will be “worth it” once I catch up on sleep, but I am a tired creature and making little sense and I don’t wanna.
I probably will, eventually. This bad sleep shit had got to stop.
But I won’t enjoy it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.