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shreddies update
Oct. 19th, 2008 07:54 pmLet me offer you a sneak preview of the latest episode of the medical soap opera my life seems to have become. I'm hoping the series will be canceled at the end of the current season so I can get on with living normally!
In our last episode, which in fact didn't air (for reasons that'll become obvious), I was sitting around in my robe yesterday morning, checking my e-mail and generally doing not very much while I waited for my brain to wake up so my day could begin, when suddenly a funny itch began in my eye. By the end of an hour or so, this had become something 'way beyond a mere irritation; it felt as if I'd managed to get some of the wasabi from the previous night's sushi in there. The eye was watering to Niagaratic levels, and my nose was in reflex doing very much the same. Pam took one look into the bloodshot morass that had once been her husband's eye and whipped straight round to the doc's, in whose waiting room I sat for a further hour or ninety minutes clutching a hankie to my eye and a succession of others to my nose while whining unconvincingly that the pain was receding really quite a lot and could we possibly GO HOME NOW before the doc started pouring toxic chemicals into my eye?
Pam displayed that unruffled obduracy that qualifies her so well to be my wife, and in due course the doc did indeed pour toxic chemicals into my eye. For good measure, once he'd finished his nurse appeared for her own bout of toxic-chemical pouring. Satisfied at last, she clamped down onto the roiling sludge of arcane compounds the bandaid version of an eyepatch, designed to look girly, be uncomfortable, and cause the maximum amount of hair-uprooting agony when pulled off -- which I was finally allowed to do today. Getting the patch's sticky stuff off my skin was more difficult; I expect by the time I go to bed tonight there'll be a little areola of trapped fruit flies around my eye.
The biggest problem was that the affected eye was the one that dominates reading and other close-up work, such as sitting at the computer and writing. I have very odd eyesight -- have had since birth. One eye is good only for close stuff, the other only for distance. Depth perception involves my brain performing complicated tricks I'd rather not think about. With my right eye patched over, writing was next to impossible, even with the use of a lens for my "distance" eye. So much for my effing deadline . . .
And deadlines are going to be jostled for the next two days as well. Tomorrow morning we have to go into the hospital for pre-admission testing, just to check I haven't picked up any STDs or whatever since I was there a few weeks ago.
Then on Tuesday morning I'm scheduled for another angiogram, which involves the surgeon assailing my groin with sharp instruments so he can push his little camera around inside my circulatory system, taking snapshots as he goes and encouraging me to watch the whole travelogue on the screen hung specially for this purpose over my bed of trauma. Why the docs think I should want to do this is anyone's guess. Me and my circulatory system get along just fine so long as I can trick myself into believing I don't have one, that it's just other people who do.
The purpose of this latest probe is to examine my carotid arteries. These were to be given the Dynorod treatment back at the beginning of June at the same time as my bypasses were being done, but at the last minute the carotid surgeon announced he wasn't sure it was necessary after all and besides he'd got the golf course booked, so it was left off the day's schedule. Now my cardiologist, bless him, is thinking it might be a good idea to get a second opinion about my carotids -- hence this latest procedure.
And, as soon as my life subsides back to routine after the chaos these two interruptions will inevitably cause, it'll be time to get the long-delayed triple-stenting done -- that's sure to lay me up for a couple of days, if not more. After that, perhaps there'll be the delights of having my carotid arteries reamed, which I imagine will generate even more of a disruption.
As some who are close to me might detect, I am getting profoundly pissed off by all this artery fartery. What was the title of that biography of Henry Miller? Ah, yes, Always Merry and Bright -- meaning that he wasn't.
