More Blogging Through Email: How to Embarrass Your Friends

hey girl.

do you know how i spent yesterday?  feeling my way around the house, running into walls, actually cooking a huge meal for fred's wednesday evening dinner with kitty (and 7 other people of the militant lesbian existentialist feminist types) -- using very sharp knives, hot oil, boiling water, the whole shebang -- while SEEING DOUBLE!

it seems like every wednesday i am supposed to double or increase one of these new meds, and whoa, nellie, does that make wednesdays (and thursdays and fridays) interesting.  "am i about to cut into this lovely dancing chicken breast or am i about to slice my shimmying index finger off?"  "is that a bouncing mushroom or the jumping bean of a wine cork?"

so... while fred was out turning on the local dykes and i was trying to watch the seven televisions in the bedroom, while petting the always multiplying number of cats ("there's marmy. there's dobby, there's buddy, there's buddy again, wait, there's dobby one more time, and look!  another marmy, no, two more marmies!"), feeling dizzy, dreading what going to the bathroom was going to be like... i ripped off my fentanyl patch, and passed on my 9 o'clock and midnight meds.  then, apparently, i passed out and slept from about 8 pm to 7 am.  if i had spasms, i didn't know it.  plus, i shut the door -- which is like putting an upside down crucifix as a sign -- open this door, wake me up, and your ass is the proverbial grass.  chasing out the dozen cats was hard, though.

and would you believe...?  i am still seeing at least one-and-a-half, if not double!  it's like everything has a visual echo. one and a half wheelchairs.  one and a half café presses to pour boiling water into...  but i can finally see well enough to type. with, praise the lord, spellcheck.

while i am gabbing about eyes -- i saw the eye doctor -- a lovely, romney-like (as in "all business"), whirlwind of a teeny woman who runs at 100 mph on the most beautiful italian stilettos, in mini-dresses, all doctored-up, of course, by a long prim white coat (tailored).  her name is dr. k and she is very good.  i could kick myself in the booty for sticking with that guy we used to waste an hour on the highway to get to... and then, he would never answer my questions, and used to laugh when i asked about a plan.  the straw that broke that camel's back came when i asked him when he planned to remove my cataracts and he said, "never, if i can help it." and laughed.  so i almost ran to good old dr. MDVIP go-to-guy, begging for a referral.  i am mad at him, too, though, because for all those years i would tell him how the guy made me feel minuscule and unimportant, and that my only option was to slowly go blind. or to go slowly blind. whatever.  see? it's the blindness behind my bad grammar.  or am i confuising french weeth zee anglais?

well, now that  i AM going blind, it's largely that a-hole's fault.  he let my eye pressures stay much too high for much too long, did not track the damage to my optic nerve often enough, etc.

anyway... she does more testing than any doctor i have ever visited (and yes, i admit that impresses me, particularly because she explains -- quickly, very quickly -- what they mean), compares results, and even runs additional tests because "the data shows a tie... we must break the tie!"

she has a drably dressed female flunky, who is apparently her Scribe, who hovers behind her writing down all the numbers, parameters, and codes that the good dr. k barks out in a voice much larger than her person.
i had to visit five different rooms for the visit, no biggie, unless you are in a wheelchair and have to transfer an ungodly amount of times, in the presence of medical techs unused to people so impaired.  nothing more fun than plunking one's ass down on an unsecured rolling office chair, for example.

also, who knew that having to put your chin in the thingy, while pressing your forehead against the other thingy puts horrid pressure on the area where you used to have a shoulder?  useful trivia, eh?

BOTTOM LINE:  removing a cataract is normally a 15-minute l'il operation with local anaglesia.  "you have terrible glaucoma. everyone experiences a huge rise in eye pressure after any eye surgery... but for a glaucoma patient that can mean blindness... also, you still have this p.acnes infection in your body.  we would need to use general analgesia, and perform two surgeries at once, a glaucoma surgery as well.  and so... the decision willl not be mine [dr. k's] but the anesthesiologist's at the hospital. let me go make some calls..."

and no anesthesiologist would agree to touch me.

so... she said i could at least go ahead and get new glasses, so they tested my vision, which could easily have been a comedy routine in and of itself.  "okay, read that line for me." "what line?"  and so on...

anyway, i get to have some 9-inch thick glasses in lieu of having my cataracts removed.  she said to let her work on the anesthesiologists.  i figure all she has to do is pick a young, feisty, unmarried one, take off her white coat, and invite him out for some fresh squeezed carrot juice at the local health food store.  sit on a bar stool, cross her little legs, and show those million dolllar shoes...

now i need to figure out whether to wait until i adjust to this freaking medication increase before i go try to try on glasses and get that script filled.  hank could be my fashion adviser, i guess.  oh, god.  he gets excited when i wear something besides an oversized men's short-sleeve button-up, button-down shirt -- they happen to be the kindest tops i can wear after losing one shoulder and having the other in constant pain from overuse.  it's oh-so-attractive!  oh... and they go over neutral-toned oversized scrub pants because they are the easiest for me to put on, and kindest to my legs. so hank gets excited and compliments me when i turn up in my faded "cal" t-shirt and sweat pants!  "you look nice, honey!"

what a sweet boy.  of course, some idiot at the first existentialist church of angry lesbian feminists gave him TWELVE kelly green tees promoting the local elementary school down the street.  this thrills my snazzy dresser, and now all i see are HIS sweat pants (complete with air holes) topped by these green well-made-so-as-to-NEVER-wear-out EXISTENTIAL ELEMENTARY -- WE LOVE LEARNING t-shirts.

the good news, and i imagine you would like some:  the memantine is helping the neuropathic pain -- by maybe 20%?  and the mobic, my god, a drug that has been around forever!  why wasn't it ever offered, or even mentioned, before?  okay, so it may make me bleed to death... but that aside, it is helping at least... 30%. some days more, even, but some days not at all.

it's the dantrolene that is kicking butt. and supposed to be stopping the seizures, and it AIN'T.  but i am not yet at the full dosage.  i've gone from 25 mg a day to 150 mg (as of yesterday) and next wednesday?  300 mg.  at that point, my vision may resemble what one sees looking through a kaleidoscope.  so someone come up with enough money for a week of joints, and i will just lay in bed and dooby on down...

what else, healthwise?  my depression is better. i only think of suicide after about 4 pm.

my right leg is still leaking.  so yes, i have a huge kotex pad from the mitt-romney-50s (since holding an aspirin between my knees would accomplish nothing) wrapped around my leg at all the spout spots.  you haven't lived until you wake up and try to figure out why your bed is wet... not under your bottom, not with urine, not from a spilled water bottle, not a cat contribution, but from a leg that has sprung a leak...

hank and i are doing the best we can to be together.  he is scared.  i am scared.  so we meet in the middle of scared.  and joke around a lot, which -- if we have any brilliance to us at all -- is our brilliance.  the presidential race provides a lot of material.  i know, i know, you are either a republican or a libertarian (my bet is libertarian) and i am a socialist, and hank is mr. independent (he thinks)... so i should leave politics alone.  but really, when you can't see and you're about to perhaps lose your health coverage AGAIN, and you are descending wayyyyy into poverty -- along with your fellow 47 per-centers -- and after 4 pm you consider applying a dozen fentanyl patches and taking 500 mg of baclofen?  2012 amerikan politics is your friend!  i do have to stray from foreign policy because then i just get overwrought.

so.... HOW THE HECK ARE YOU? are cindy and amber still on The List?  and would you come deep clean my bathroom (no one should be allowed in there...)?  ruby the honda needs help, too.  whenever i climb insdie ruby the honda, i start grabbing tissues and wiping... which does nothing beyond make fred give me the stink eye.  "i know, i know," he says.  then he forgets, forgets.  i scrambled in there last week, for the eye appt, and it REEKED of pesticide.  he said he got in the night before and there were ants everywhere.  duh.  he eats in the car and i just cannot figure why ants would be all over my dear baby ruby.

okay, who knows when i will be able to write again.  i will try. and i send you love and hope, love and hope.

profderien