Back home from yet another doctor’s appointment. This time they gave me a transfusion. I had a cigar when I got home.
Hey, here’s a cool book: Chessmen of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The protagonist, John Carter’s daughter, Tara of Helium, has a motto that gets her through a host of dangerous and difficult adventures: “I still live.”
Next week it’s time for my colon cancer operation. I think I need that motto.
(Erlene, are you out there? Hi sign to you.)
I had a hundred bladder stones, the doctor said. He took ’em all out… via the tiniest hole in the male body. I came out of the anesthetic feeling like a car had hit me.
And then there was a lot of diddle about the wrong pharmacy to keep us from going directly home this afternoon.
No, I can’t keep track of all the medical interventions that have been proposed for me. I can listen for maybe 20 seconds before it all turns into babble and mush. Sorry, but I can’t help it, I’ve always been this way. Among my very first words were “Go away!” That was my response to the family doctor. Back then they still had family doctors.
Let’s see if I can salvage this last half-hour of the day.
I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow morning, my mind keeps trying to blot it out. Some kind of Medical Procedure is waiting for me: crush and remove kidney stones, I think. Via the tiniest hole in the body.
And then next month is the colon cancer operation, with a few items from the DeLuxe Fun-Pak waiting after that. Hip replacement, anyone?
It’s a bit hard on the morale.
In case you thought I fell in…
Well, heck, we shopped for groceries in the morning and have only just now gotten back from the doctor’s office: it ate up the whole day. We’re going to a bunch of doctors, we’re both stressed out… and so we went to the wrong one! We had to retrace our steps all the way back, get there late, and then sit and stew for an hour in the examination room.
We wound up getting, oh, ten or 15 minutes with the doctor, and I can’t say I understood a word he said. Patty could hardly make out what he meant. In my unlearned opinion, I’m falling apart at the seams. The whole business has made me rather absent-minded: I only feel all right when I’m working on my book. (I finished Chapter Set 5 today–one more to go.)
The next step is the MRI, and I can’t tell you what comes after that because the whole business slid right over my head.
I will now try to bring back Joe Collidge.