Coffee heat rising

Health care

Another Day Later and Deeper in… ??? …

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A day later and early evening. Still sicker than a dawg. Well: that’s not surprising, since the Dawg shows no sign of anything resembling an ailment…whereas I’m banging at Death’s Door. 😀

Well.  At least…at some doctor’s door.

Jeez. Did you know you could get peripheral neuropathy in your damned teeth???  No kidding: my two upper front teeth are buzzing like an electric current is running through them. And as usual these days, the hands are stinging and tingling and hurting enough to make typing freakin’ uncomfortable.

Whatever the hell is causing this, I do wish it would go away. From what I can uncover through  my endlessly brilliant excavations of the Internet, apparently the neuropathy that afflicts the paws can take aim at other parts of your body. The lips and gums are among those parts. I’m not gonna assume that’s behind today’s fun sensations — I are a English major, after all; I are not a doctor — but it does give me something fresh to pester Young Dr. Kildare with.

Or the new doctors down the road.

YDK has moved to freakin’ Sun City — a 40-minute drive from here, through crazy-making traffic. So I’m afraid our relationship has ended. That’s too bad…because I like him a lot and found he had a fine dose of common sense: a rare commodity in an M.D.

But…now we do have a doctor’s office just down the street — within walking distance, even!   Alas, so far I’m not impressed with those folks. Nothing bad about them, mind you…but nothing notably good, either. Personally, I crave a little more than mediocrity from my doctor.

M’hijito perennially wants to drag me out to the Mayo Clinic. Their docs would be fine if they just weren’t halfway to Payson…  Sorry, but an hour of driving through thick traffic to see a doctor for 10 or maybe (if you’re lucky) 15 minutes doesn’t make it for me.

Am I the only one who imagines that medical care in America used to be significantly better 15 or 20 years ago? Honestly: these days, it hardly seems worth burning the gas to get to a doctor’s office. They don’t pay attention to what you’re saying, and even if they do hear you, they seem to miss the point you’re trying to make.

Perhaps I exaggerate, though. Or more likely,  because I’m old doctors don’t pay any more attention to me than they do any other old person. Which ain’t much…

What a culture we live in, eh?

Totally Not in the Mood!

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LOL!  A passel — and we DO mean passel — of annoying chores awaits the Human’s attention this a.m.

How can I count the ways that I don’t wanna…

  • Pick up the kitchen
  • Wash the dishes
  • Make the bed
  • Walk the dog
  • Figure out what’s wrong the the computer this time
  • Drag the garden hose around
  • Wash my hair
  • Clean the bathroom
  • Mess with the pool equipment
  • Figure out why every damn square inch of me hurts!

GAAAAA! Stop the world! I wanna get off! 

The big question of the morning is why do I hurt so damn much? Especially the hips: I can barely hobble around the house. And far’s I can see, there is exactly ZERO reason for that. Other than possibly, maybe sleeping cattywampus during the night, there is no good reason for the ridiculous body to hurt so spectacularly.

Ohhh well. Wonder Cleaning-Lady was kindly here yesterday. Thank the gods and all their minions! This will allow me to crawl back into bed (sans housecleaning chores!), whenever I can work up the strength to stumble up the hall to the bedroom again.

Meanwhile…I sit in a big old leather easy chair, swill coffee, and HURT. And that means the poor li’l dawg will not get her doggy-walk this morning.

On the one hand, I imagine walking a mile or so would loosen up whatever hurts (and hurts and hurts and HURTS), thereby relieving me of whining duty.

But on the other hand: I think not. If moving around were going to ease this pain, it would have done so already. The dawg and I have been up for nigh unto three hours, with the human putzing around in the usual a.m. tasks and frolics. By now, if normal motion were going to stop the pain, it would have done so.

This li’l excruciation actually has been going on since Christmas Day. That’s…what? Ten days or so? If it were gonna get better, it would have.

My son has made off with my car, and so I can’t go to the doctor without discommoding him. And that is a quarrel/guilt trip I do not wish to engage just now. Whenever I work up the energy (if ever???), I’ll need to call the doctor, make an appointment, reserve an Uber or a cab, get myself to the quack’s, rassle with that exchange, get a car to come back to the quack’s office, and get myself back home.

And frankly….that’s just more trouble and more hassle than I can manage just now.

Yeah: this hip thing has been going on since Christmas. According to my little Hypochondriac’s Journal (where I note ailments so I can describe them accurately to the quack), it started on the 25th.

Yup: here on the 25th we find an entry that reads “Spavined my right hip while on dog walk. Hurts like Hell!!!”

uh-HUH…  Merry Christmas to me!

So this has been going on a good 10 days. And “hurts like Hell” is a bit of an understatement…

Well…give it a day or so, and then I’ll have to start doing battle with the Mayo to try to get one of the doctors out there to look at me. That will be an exercise in frustration. And since I can no longer drive, it will be a nightmare effort to get to their office.

Hm. There’s a storefront doctor’s office next to the Albertson’s, just down the block. I’ve been there a couple times for minor stuff. They might see me on short notice. Problem is, I don’t think I can walk that far! So I’ll have to hire someone to drive me six blocks!!

Jayzuz!

STOP THE WORLD!
I WANNA GET OFF!!

*

!!!ringy dingy ringy dingy!!!…..

God Damned phone solicitor!

Phone soliciting should be illegal. 

The bastards who hire prison inmates to pester you on the phone should be arrested and fined out the wazoo. And the prisoners who let themselves  be used that way should have extra time added to their sentences.

Did you know that? A fair number of the S.O.B.’s who jangle your phone several times a day are prison inmates. Phone hustling is a prison industry. Phone s0liciting businesses go into the slams and hire inmates at a fraction of the going wage to call you on the phone and pester you.

Yeah: your taxpayer dollars at work!

Pain Pain Pain!

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Augh!!!!  WHAT a way to start the New Year!

My left hip hurts SO much — for reasons that frankly, I do not understand — that I can barely stand up from a chair or hobble across a room. Amazing pain!

Apparently I spavined a hip joint — how, I do not know. The result: pain, pain, pain, and more pain. And no, aspirin doesn’t do a damn thing for it.

Soooo….  I assume that this will go on for at least a couple of weeks — that assumption, based on experience. If it’s not gone after about three weeks, then it’s off to the accursed Mayo Clinic again! 

Ohhhhh my gawd, do I ever hate traipsing to Scottsdale to go to a doctor!

Young Dr. Kildare, that adorable young fella, closed his office up the street here and moved his practice to fukkin’ Sun City. And lemme tellya…

After the monstrous experiences my mother had with her Sun City quack, you could not pay me to go to a doctor out there. Not even YDK. That he opened a practice there does not tell me it’s possible for a Sun City doctor to be competent; it tells me that YDK is very probably incompetent.

The Mayo, as we know, is supposed to be the best. They certainly think so… And bein’ better than anyone else, docs out there peer down their noses at you, condescend to you, and treat you as if you had an IQ in the negative numbers.

But with YDK now ensconced as far on the west side as the Mayo is on the east side, there’s hardly any point in traipsing halfway to Yuma to get care that’s no better than you’ll get halfway to Payson.

We thought medical care in this country left something to be desired, yea verily back in the day? Little did we know! We had yet to experience medical “care” that does not come up to the level of care. 

I suppose I could decamp to Canada, where the socialized system is supposedly somewhat better than ours. Or somewhat worse, depending on your point of view. But…I have an allergy to snow! 😉

{sigh}  My poor li’l dawg! I was going to take her for a walk this afternoon. But…just now I can barely walk across the room…to say nothing of the mile or so around the park.

This hound is not gonna be happy with me when she sees me dodder back into the bedroom and climb into the sack. But…tough nugies, dawg! I couldn’t walk her to the end of the block, much less on her usual park-encircling route.

Outta here!

Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt!!!!

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Ohhhhh my GAWD it hurts! 

The hip ailment, that is. Old age bein’ what it is, I contrived to SPROING my hip (don’t ask how…I dunno!) so that every goddam movement hurts, hurts, and then hurts some more.

Dog followed me out to the mailbox this afternoon…didn’t know whether I could get her back in.

Fortunately, dawgs being the empaths that they are, she intuited that something was up, and she did trail me back into the house. My kinda dawg! 

Man!  I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed such baroque pain. This, from the old bat who delivered her baby without anaesthetic  because she thought labor was supposed to hurt more than one’s periods. 😮 It did not. Not by a long shot!

The hip pain envelops most of the right side, plus the lower back. And the pre-existing left hip pain has not gone away.

So…LOL! What we have here is pain¹ and pain² and pain³…how much fun is that?

Hmmmm… Here’s something at Amazon, the Savior of All Who Refuse to Trudge Out to the Store: A hip brace thingie that’s supposed to ease your back pain. Dang! I wonder if that would work?

Well…let’s wait until  tomorrow morning…if this thing still hurts (believe me: it will), we’ll order this lash-up then. And hope for the best.

If there is a best…

How is it possible to HURT this much????

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December 26: Oh. My. GAWD! The Pain!!!!

What the heck did I do to myself???????

NO idea. All I know is my left hip hurts so much I can barely walk. And that is NOT an exaggeration!

Launching into the afternoon in a state of High Boredom, I took it into my pea-brained li’l head to walk about 16 blocks easterly, through a side-strip of Upper Richistan, to explore an upscale North Central block of fancy-Dan patio homes. This is a development I’ve long admired. And recently, I’ve taken to thinking I might sell the Funny Farm and buy one of those places.

Thereby freeing me from yard work, pool cleaning, and general hassle. Right?

The place is roughly of this ilk, though not at all the same. It’s in the same neighborhood, though. And “only” 400 grand…

So there I am, going oooohhh ahhh, I could live in THIS place, “when..OWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!”

The right hip goes out.

It goes out…and it STAYS out.

Hurt?   Lemme tellya HURT. 

What I did to set it off, I have noooo idea. But there I was: a good 16 blocks from home. In spectacular agony!

Limped and trudged and trudged and limped and finally after around 40 minutes of struggle, managed to make it back to the house. My GAWD does that hip hurt!!!!!  

And totally out of the blue. What on earth did I do to myself???

So here we are: the dawg and the human, perched on the bed. The human: hips and lower back wrapped in a heating pad, set to “high.”

MIGAWD! I don’t know when I’ve ever had anything HURT so much. And why? how? I have no clue!

*****

Didn’t get much of a chance to look at the real estate over there. And unless this injury (whatever it is) miraculously heals up overnight, I won’t get any such chance. If it’s not better tomorrow, I’ll have to put my poor son up to driving me to the ER. That, or hire a cab.

dayUM, but I’m sick & tired of doctoring. Pray (please!!!) that this hitch-in-the-giddyup goes away by tomorrow morning! 

Does It EVER stop? Or even slow down?

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Goodie Gumdrops! Now we’ve got a  new flu epidemic revving up. And the authorities expect it to be particularly bad in Colorado. That’s just across the state line…  😉

Seriously: if we have a flu epidemic in Colorado, we’ll have it here in lovely (adjacent!) Arizona. Tourists will bring it across the state line, and it undoubtedly will spread across the Reservation, too.

Not like I wasn’t already sick as a dawg, eh?

Seriously: I’m inclined to doubt that I’ll survive a really roaring case of the flu just now. Always have been preternaturally susceptible to respiratory infections — when I was a kid, one evening a doctor told my mother I wouldn’t survive until morning.

Huh. He seems to have been wrong about that. Unless I’m a ghost, eh?

Truth to tell, though, respiratory infections do make me sicker than they do most people. What you think is a cold or a mild case of flu will lay me low for three weeks. And that I would like to avoid just now, what with this current mildly terrifying ailment.

Ugh. I can remember those awful brats in grade school teasing and tormenting me because my mother would keep me home whenever I caught a respiratory infection. GOD, but those kids in Ras Tanura were monsters!!! I learned to hate them even when they weren’t actively tormenting me — most of the time I’d just stay away from the other kids.

This was good, in a weird way, because it gave me plenty of time to study. Hence, lo! those many years later: Phi Beta Kappa. But…I think I would rather have had a few friends than a decorative fake key. 😀

***

So, soooo sick. The peripheral neuropathy, while apparently not especially dangerous, is absolutely crazy-making! To the extent that, as ailments go, it might actually be “dangerous,” it’s because much more of this would indeed make you suicidal.

No, don’t panic, please! I’m not about to throw myself off the North Rim. Yet. But I sure can see how, if this goes on and on and on, a person would be mightily tempted to bring an end to it. It hurts. 

And so I hurt constantly. If there were any way to stop it, I’d be inclined to try that way…even if it meant an end to life. An end to life, after all, means an end to pain.

And please: spare me the advice to take an aspirin or an ibuprofen. Both those nostrums — especially aspirin — cause peripheral neuropathy in me.

No kidding. Take an aspirin, and within half an hour or so, it’s bzzzzzzzz…

Yes, I will use aspirin. But only if I’m in a lot of pain. With the peripheral neuropathy lurking at all times, I figure one of those OTC pills will aggravate the hell out of it. And one thing I do not need to do is to make this buzzing and tingling and burning worse! 

Stop the World!
I Wanna Get Off!