A-n-n-d…speaking of doctors, as we were yesterday…in a few minutes I need to head off to a dermatologist. One of my fingernails is lifting right off its bed — for, as far as I can tell, no good reason. I haven’t hurt my hand, and none of the other nails are doing that.
Well…no: not so. You could argue that the thumbnail is starting to do the same thing.
Hmmmmm…. An infection, maybe? Far’s I can remember, I haven’t stuck my paws in any caustic solutions. If I had, you’d think all the nails on that hand would be acting the same way.
This guy is a partner of the beloved Young Doctor Kildare, who once again has left the practice of medicine to take up the leadership of a charitable organization. I hope he and I get on (I adored YDK!), because these are my “doctors in the wild,” as the Mayo calls them. That is: doctors who do NOT practice at the Mayo Clinic.
😀 The Mayo is truly wonderful. But their doctors’ offices are located halfway to Payson. No kidding: they’re on the far northeast side of Scottsdale, almost an hour’s drive from here.
So I’m not inclined to safari all the way out there for just any li’l ailment that I don’t consider life-threatening.
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So it was over to said local doc. No satisfactory explanation or diagnosis was given. But they want me to go to a neurologist.
And of course, getting in to see this worthy entails a whole new set of endless hoop-jumps! Goodie!
How do they get people to go to doctors at all, these days?
I am JUST NOT UP for this kind of hassle now.
So instead of hurrying home and making a new appointment with the new guy, I cruised up behind YDK’s offices, into a sprawling middle-class housing development of ticky-tacky stick-and-plaster homes.
My dear (late, absconded) friend Elaine and her (now late) husband lived there. I helped them fix up and paint the house when they moved in, which was how I got a good, clear, horrifying look at the place’s construction. What junk!!!!
And when you drive around (and around and around and around and…) in there, what you see is square mile on square mile of junk.
How the Hell do developers persuade Americans to buy this stuff?
😀
In theory, it ought to be a nice place to live...but…but… Heh: but if you happen to look closely enough to see how the houses are built, you want to RUN away. The structures are as flimsy as flimsy can be. Really: if you’ve ever done any work on one of them, you know that “flimsy” overstates the quality of the construction out there.
So what you have in lovely Moon Valley is mile on square mile on square mile of tossed-together ticky-tacky. Expensive tossed-together ticky-tacky.
Well. Not spectacularly expensive — most of it isn’t, anyway, though there are some fancier(-looking) areas. But these are people’s houses. Houses that are supposed to last a generation or three.
Some of them, you’d be amazed to see last a decade, to say nothing of a generation.
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Ohhh well. Here’s a rather interesting passage about a new theory of Alzheimer’s, speaking doctoring. It appears rather little is really understood about the condition…and it’s a condition that’s spreading to drastic proportions.
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Tuesday
August 20
And now it’s quarter six, after several more sleepless hours. Might as well get up and walk the dawg before it gets hot.
What a life! Such as it is…