Friday Fumbles

I was at my second consultant examination this week. Two separate days. Both taking place in the Health Science Centre which is a rambling spreading behemoth of recent design. Poor signage, endless walking, limited parking, limited wheelchairs. In other words incredibly stressful even if you're young and active like Niece and Daughter, but beyond the pale for seniors like me with physical challenges.

So I haul along my friend for these multitude of appointments and insist on paying her for her services as it is a huge chunk of time (often 3 hours for a 10 minute appointment) out of her life and she has to play hunt the parking spot and hunt the wheelchair as, seriously, the walking through the sprawl has to be seen to be believed and impossible for me and George, my cane, to manage.

So it was there, as I was finally in the waiting room, I said to her: "Why in the name of the goddess am I putting myself through all these consults and tests and evaluations? I am completely stressed out and hello quality of life?"

Now I hasten to add cancer is not on anyone's radar, so I am free to say that. Cancer would be another story entirely.

So I saw the new consult, who is added to the team of my healthcare. Which I am so grateful for and all effing free (sorry USA). He is a surgeon charged with managing my anemia. I liked him immediately.

I told him about my conversation in the waiting room and he then proceeded to review what he would have to do to my body to find the causes of this failing blood and tiredness issue.

Dear gawd, I said to him:

"Lights down the stomach, lights up the bowels and like you mention, odds of nicking something, slim though they are. I will be 77 in August. I am stressed just sitting in your waiting room and evaluating all these appointments and my life taken over by monthly visits to each of my team not to mention blood draws and lung xrays. And I beg the question why? What is it doing for me in the long run?"

"You know," he responded, "I can't advise you on this decision, only you can do that. But I can tell you I hear you. And if I was facing 77 I would want to enjoy myself too and not have to worry about procedures like these. I'll let your GP know what we talked about. And try and eat really healthily. It might improve your blood readings, they are pretty dismal."

So there you have it. And I wonder if this is the path I need to take. Disconnect from the medical specialist team, see my GP once a month and enjoy what's left of my life. Apart from routine maintenance and taking my daily truckload of pills. I'm sticking with the beta blockers. I seem to have crossed the hurdle of depression and flatlining. And my blood pressure is in the normal range after so many years of elevated. Wowser.

Friday Fumbles

A little note popped up in a knitting sketch book this morning:

"Why do people long for immortality when they don't know what to do with themselves on a wet Sunday afternoon?"

If I ever get to the end of my To-Do list it will be time for me to die.

Looking through some photos, this photo touched my heart. Grandgirl and Ansa laughing together on a rock from 2006. Try not to laugh back at them imagining the shared joke.

I fear for my friend L as her texting to me has stopped completely. Another friend ran into her and said she seemed terribly confused and shouldn't be driving. So she has worsened. I do hope her sons are monitoring the situation. The last text I had from her was her questioning if she should go into a seniors' residence. I supported that, of course. She is more than ready. I wrote about her here, our last time together, in 2018, in 5 parts.

I never tire of photographing the sea in all its thousands of moods. This one I took way back when L visited me here in Newfoundland and life seemed so much simpler then.