Progress Delayed

There are things I should be doing. Cleaning house. Getting the files and boxes I moved in here organized. Getting a workout. Maybe going for a walk on this cool morning.

I am supposed to (according to Dad's GP) call a cardiologist for an appointment to get an echo cardiogram of his heart. But Dad said (during my morning call to him when I told him this) that he would 'think about it.' In 2005 he had one after having a TIA. It is a non-invasive test but we both wonder what they will do if they find out he has congestive heart failure. Give him some more drugs? I tell him I'll delay getting the appointment until he talks to his GP about it. He needs to go get a flu shot. He changes the subject. "When are we going to get a haircut?" I suggest next Tuesday after my tennis match.

I need to clean house because we are having people over tomorrow evening on a hallway progressive cocktail party that one of the guys on the hall organized. I need to accomplish things. But it's such a cool morning. I think I'll take that walk.

I took the picture in front of a Bubble Tea place on the Drag.

Touching Base

Really, a blog (or a journal) should be updated in a quotidian way. I sometimes feel like people are looking here for me and I'm missing. I read other people's journals and the ones that update faithfully, well, it's hard to miss what's going on with them even if they don't say it. [I missed that a blogger I regularly read had split with her husband somehow. Hmmm. Well, we've no such news here you'll be glad to know.] And, of course, without a record I lose track of myself, disappearing as in the above (aren't you sick of them?) reflection picture.

So, I woke up this morning having dreamed of bacon the size of bath towels and wondering about the pig. The thing about dreams is you can't make that stuff up! What's more I think I dreamed of giant bacon before. I was thinking it was Thursday, too, instead of Tuesday. I'm mixed up and confused.

Yeah, we've watched stocks plummet the last few days. Worldwide financial news is so bleak it makes our losses look minuscule. We have started looking at stores, restaurants, banks, building projects and businesses and wondering which ones will go feet up first. I feel like I should be like Warren Buffet, cash rich and bargain hunting. But, yeah, not.

I am still cataloging things. I'm still not doing any real projects. A short story I had in my head that evolved into a novel started merging with another novel. I think this is fine as long as they just stay in my head, don't you?

I've been looking all over for a little book I bought in Paris, A to Z of French Food. I'm not sure why I'm looking for it. I just saw it in my catalog of books and wondered where it was. I had a box of books at Dad's labeled Paris/France but it was not in there. I went out there and looked through it today. I did decide to bring a few books and maps from that box to the condo (although they are still in my car) because I'm noodling about planning a trip. Only maybe a trip to somewhere in the U.S. where we can stay with friends is a better idea.

Yeah, my mind is all over the place. I got a call from my dad's doctor, too. He didn't get the chest xray we had done, he did get the ultra sound of his leg (no clots, the technician had already proclaimed) and he got the blood test for peptides. It is high. Maybe. There is normal and then there is 'adjusted for age' normal. But the GP thinks a trip to the cardiologist for an echo cardiogram is in order because high BNP might mean CHF. (Congestive Heart Failure.) Only one wonders how one treats a 92-year-old man for CHF. Or anything else for that matter. Drugs, I suppose?

We went to a party tonight for people who had donated to Hospice Austin. In spite of the financial meltdown, people were cheerful. Compared to death, yeah, not so bad. Some were sneaking out to hear the debates. I'm sorry, what?

Oh, well. I'm here. Nothing new, really. We are not trying to slip anything by you at Visible Woman.

Waiting

I appear to be intently waiting for my subject to give me the right expression. Only, I am the subject. Me and some inanimate objects. This was taken on South Congress in July 2004. No, I don't keep records that well. But the photos are in dated folders and the triangular shape is the distinctive shadow of a church that sits across from Uncommon Objects, which is just the sort of store that would have a window display like this.

We spend a lot of our time in life waiting. Waiting in doctors' offices, hospitals, dentists' offices is one of the worst waiting experiences. I often tell people that I don't do enough check-ups and stuff because I feel like I have been to the doctor or whatever but really I was taking someone else to appointments. Yesterday, I finally made it to get my eyes checked (after three tries). I am happy enough with my glasses. He recommended a slightly different prescription should I refill, but I'm not buying new glasses. I'm happy to say my retinas look normal. In the waiting room I read a magazine we probably have at home. I had to go back to the waiting room a couple of times to wait to dilate enough for this and that. Finally it was too uncomfortable to read. It took an hour to get all the tests and wait between stuff. They took scans with this high tech machine that would allow them to grind ultra-expensive (well $150 more than regular lenses) specs that are supposed to be much better for your vision. I was tempted, but decided not to do it now. So my eye check went fine and even if the check-up was a little overdue (it had been about sixteen months) it was really pretty timely. I drove home with one of those twenty-five cent dark film things stuck under my sunglasses and was still blinded by the sunlight. Still a few hours later I was back to normal. That would be my fill of well care (and doctors' offices) for a while if I had my way.

Today I'm going to be waiting with my dad to pre-register for surgery. Actually, he'll be doing more waiting than I will because I will be filling out the paperwork. Which is worse than waiting. You sit there, seething, knowing you have written up the same thing before and angry that they make you transcribe the drug list you have neatly typed into longhand so you have a chance to mess it up. And, by the way, there is no change since you gave it to the doctor and an assistant wrote it down longhand and then they next assistant said "I can't read Doris' handwriting." Or since you spent fifteen minutes reading the list to a hospital pharmacist on the phone.

Even if I have to spend time in waiting rooms, I'm glad I'm not the patient. I'm a medical nihilist. Always hoping the cure for anything is just waiting a bit. And, of course, the ultimate cure is there if you just wait.

What Should I Rant About?

Yes, a liquor store. And me barely there, barely registering. Which is how I feel just now.

Some days you feel like a rant or two (which I should probably take over to The Journal of Unintended Consequences), but you just can't focus on which one. The medical bureaucracy? (If your job is to schedule appointments for preparation for surgery, why do I have to call back twenty times and when you call why are you using my dad's first name as a last name? All you have to do is make appointments. How hard can that be? If I come in and have a two-hour meeting pre-opt can you guarantee me that you won't lose all the paperwork temporarily and make me fill it out again and then complain that you have two copies? Because that's what happened last time we went to this hospital for a planned procedure.) The hubris of some people. (Just because you are a widely-acclaimed athlete who beat cancer does not mean that all cancer is curable, right now, with money from your organization. And, by the way, I don't really find 'surviving' cancer comparable to 'surviving the Holocaust.' And, by the way, surviving cancer sort of implies surviving death itself. Hubris.) But I shall not rant here. I shall go and exercise with the intention of getting myself in good shape to survive the medical bureaucracy as my dad's caregiver (imagine how hard it is on patients!) and to perhaps change the 'cause' on my death certificate when it finally, inevitably is issued.