Appreciating the murmur

I would like to think I’ve evolved to the point where I live to serve, but it’s entirely possible I’m simply desperate for human company. Despite being an avowed apanthropist, I enjoy being around people once in a while. Not too close, and not for too long. I am protective of my solitude, to the point where people call me antisocial (ask me if I care; the answer is no). I can't always tell what I am feeling. Still, I don’t actually hate people, even though I sometimes act like it.

This week, speaking of people, I visited my cardiologist at the cardiology clinic at the hospital to discuss the results of last week’s echocardiogram. I admit, I might have been overly eager to see him, to see anybody really. I smiled at everyone. Nobody was wearing a mask in the hospital, so I took mine off, too. I trudged up the stairs to the second floor with a stupid grin on my face, hoping I wouldn’t pay for it later by getting Covid.

I really like my cardiologist, for so many reasons. First, he’s a short round guy with a thick beard, curly gray hair, and a handshake that resembles a spatula swooping in to flip a pancake. I like that he sits heavy on the padded wheely stool. He doesn’t pretend to be thin. Second, he looks me right in the eye. Even when we were wearing masks in the exam room, he really seemed to see me. Maybe he’s perfected the doctor stare, but it works on me.

I could hear the muffled voice of my doctor through the thin walls between exam rooms. Hey, he's my doctor, I thought, as he greeted somebody, who answered in a quavery old lady voice. I fidgeted and tried not to feel possessive. Finally, a quick knock came on the door. Before I could say "enter," the door opened to admit a slim young man I’d never seen before. Definitely not my cardiologist.

“I’m Xavier, the doctor’s assistant,” he said, blinding me with straight white teeth. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, and he was perfect. I could find no flaws. Perfect white teeth, perfect black hair, perfect figure in a perfectly tailored clean white lab coat. I welcomed him and his laptop, glad to have something other than the heart failure chart pinned to the back of the door to stare at while I was waiting.

Xavier proceeded to ask me a long list of questions about my physical and mental health, my meds, my vitamins, how much I exercise, plus more I’ve forgotten. He didn’t check my cognitive function, by the way. I did my best to answer truthfully, being careful not to indicate the slightest hint of depression or anxiety. I will check his report later and probably find he thought I seemed depressed. I consciously tried to be perky, but I have a hard time pulling off perkiness.

When we got to the topic of exercise, he brightened when I mentioned my intention to jog. Big hopeful smile. His shoulders sagged with disappointment when I complained the summer had been so hot.

“You should get a gym membership,” he advised.

I nodded. “I could, but I’m nervous about Covid, a little.”

“I know what you mean. I go early in the morning when there’s no one there,” he said.

“Yeah, good, early . . .” I trailed off to indicate early, no, not really my thing. “What time do you go?”

“Between four and five,” he said. “You could use the treadmill.”

“Right, I used to do that,” I replied. “I’m afraid with this imbalance thing, I might . . .” I left off the rest of the thought: I might fall on the floor and break a hip. Or my neck. Which would be a relief in some ways.

“They have stationary bikes.”

Feeling kind of like a bug wiggling under a microscope, I was relieved when the doctor entered, trailed by two other people.

“You met Xavier? I hope you don’t mind, I brought Sasha and Roberto too? They are students. Roberto will be our scribe today.”

I practically quivered with excitement. No longer alone with the pushy Xavier, lots of company, plus a teaching opportunity! What could be more fun!

I perched on the edge of the exam bed table thing. The doctor put his stethoscope at various places around my chest and appeared to be listening intently. Then he invited Xavier to listen. Xavier took the stethoscope in his ear, put the round end on my chest somewhere near my sternum, and leaned toward me for a couple seconds. He stood back with an expression I couldn’t read.

“What did you hear?” the doctor asked him.

Xavier shook his head in embarrassment. “I did not appreciate a murmur.”

My mind worked on the word “appreciate” as the doctor took the stethoscope, put the round end in a different place, and beckoned him to listen again. They stood there together, student and teacher, joined by a stethoscope, apparently appreciating my murmur.

“Ah. Two out of six,” Xavier said with some satisfaction.

The doctor motioned to Sasha, who up to this point had been watching silently. She approached and took one end of the stethoscope in her ear.

“Hear it?” the doctor said. “Whoosh, whoosh.”

I don’t know if she heard it or not. She acted like she did. I’ve been a student. Performance pressure in front of one’s peers is a terrible thing. In a few short years, she will be treating patients of her own. We can only hope she can detect a murmur that is a two out of six on the murmur scale.

I was released with an order to have a followup echocardiogram in one year, which was the outcome I’d been hoping for. My sticky leaky calcified bicuspid valve has not deteriorated appreciably over the past six months, so I might dodge a heart attack for a while longer. Not sure about all the other stuff, but at least the ticker is still ticking.

The doctor herded his charges out the door. As I waited for the medical assistant to fetch me and escort me to the appointment desk, I reflected on the weirdness of my life. I still keep trying to make sense, to find meaning in my experiences, which I suppose means I have enough curiosity to see what might come next. 

 

I need to be sedated

Tis the season during which the residents of the mobile home park dress up in costumes and shuffle over to the clubhouse to drink strawberry lemonade witches brew and eat candy corn and tootsie rolls. Or whatever they were doing in the clubhouse last night. As I limped around the park in the gloaming, I passed a geriatric couple wearing orange T-shirts decorated with pumpkin faces. I took my earplugs out of my ears and said, "Nice pumpkins." I waited for a response but they looked at me with blank expressions, which indicated to me either they hadn't seen me walking around the park at dusk almost every night for the past year and were wondering if they should call security or they had left their hearing aids at home in anticipation of loud music at the monster mash and couldn't hear a word I said.

I passed another person just getting out of a little blue car. I could just see the top of their head, which sported a colorful jester hat, complete with bells. I didn't see the rest of their costume before I had moved on by. Something glittery, dangly, noisy, and backless, probably. One can hope.

Under clear skies and a bright moon, the old folks beelined to the clubhouse, via foot, walker, golf cart, and SUV. I briefly contemplated poking my head in the door for a looksee. Having once been in the costume industry, I have a great love of self-expression through apparel, as long as it is everyone else looking stupid, not me. Been there, done that, a lot, to the everlasting chagrin of my father. Last night, however, I didn't stick around to see what was going down at the Halloween hoedown. My party animal days are long past.

In fact, I am morphing into the opposite of a party animal. My sister gave me a word to describe what I am, which I will share with you and write more about in a future blogpost, if I remember. I am an apanthropist. Go ahead, look it up. I'll wait.

I complain a lot but I can adapt to almost anything, it seems. I was looking at some photos of the room I rent in this mobile home, which I fondly refer to as the Barbie Dreamhouse Without the Dream. I'd forgotten that just last year, I lived a life of abundance. I had two desks and two computers, and a fabulous chair on wheels, which I could drag between the two desks, as if I were two different people. An artist and a writer. What a creative life I had! And how quickly I have adapted to a life with less of everything, in anticipation of living a life with almost nothing.

I felt a twinge of sadness, which I do frequently these days, well, all the time for my entire life, if I'm being honest. I'm just a sad chronically malcontented whiner with a strangely optimistic streak of hope that I will find my creativity no matter what circumstances fall on my head. And so far I think I have. I keep writing, blogging, drawing, mentoring, hoping I'll stumble across the conditions in which I can thrive. Meanwhile, I adapt.

For instance, I'm adapting to the new revelation that my PCP has suddenly retired (or died) and now I have a new PCP, who like most healthcare providers in this system, is booked out until February of 2024. In a new round of righteous indignation, my well-meaning friends and family are berating me to "be my own advocate" and demand what I need. Ha. As if I knew what that was. I am showing up with persistence, patience, and pluck, but I wish they would say something less like "You need to push harder at the healthcare system" and more along the lines of "Gosh, Carol, that sounds stressful and frustrating."

Maybe I am too much of a fatalist. Maybe besides being an optimistic apanthropist, I am also a bit of a nihilist. What is the point of pushing? As if life were so precious. There is no meaning or purpose to existence. The meaning I attach to events is arbitrary and pointless. As if I had any control over reality. Is it a basic philosophical difference? I like living okay, usually, but sometimes isn't it okay to let the Universe have a say in how events unfold? People who tell me I need to fight harder are the ones who are most afraid of losing what they have. Maybe they need to do a little Swedish death cleaning to gain some perspective.

I think I just need to be sedated until conditions are optimal for success. Like, just let me sleep. Put me in a crystal cave and fill the door with a boulder on a timer and post a sign outside: open this tomb when conditions for this creative hothouse heirloom tomato of a person are likely to foster happiness. I haven't figured out all my specifications, yet, but for sure, when I wake up from my long slumber, I want all guns to have been melted down and beaten into ploughshares and windmills.

Caught red-handed

I whine a lot to my friends about the broken state of my brain. Yes, I am referring to the meatball in my head that I joke is constantly trying to kill me. It's one of those cynical kind of jokes that never gets a laugh, the kind where with your next breath, you throw your hands in the air and say, Universe, just kill me now, ha ha. Then when lightning fails to materialize and you keep on breathing, you say, well, not today, I guess, and keep on living and complaining your brain is trying to kill you. You know what I mean. No? Well. Ahem. Maybe it's just me.

Well, it's not all just me. My brain really is trying to kill me. Or at least, disable me. The evidence is on tape. Film. Whatever gets produced when you get an MRI.

I had another MRI, this one on my head, and an MRA for good measure, because why not, it was twofer day at the magnetic resonating center or whatever it's called. I put on blue scrubs and pretended like I was a healthcare worker, sitting in the waiting room with my blankey, nodding reassuringly to the other patients waiting their turn in the interrogation chamber. After an MRI, a CAT scan, an echocardiogram, and umpteen ultrasounds, not to mention an endoscopy and a colonscopy, I'm an old hand at this internal organ interrogation stuff. I ho-hummed through the insertion of the IV into my vein (yes, there is a valve there, yes, go ahead, keep digging, I'm used to it). Inside the room beyond the glass command cubicle, I laid down on the bed (which resembled the conveyor belt that trundles coffins into the oven). I smiled with gratitude at the tech who put a block of foam under my knees. I willingly put my head into the tray, like the prisoner going to the guillotine who still has faith that God will intervene up until the moment the blade comes down and liberates their brain, and gave the tech a thumbs up when the headphones started playing oldies.

I admit I got a tiny bit anxious when the tech put the cage over my face, six inches from my nose, but I shut my eyes and let myself drift away with Smokey Robinson. Thirty minutes in, the tech stopped the giant machine to inject me with the gunk. I had some trepidation, remembering an uncomfortable moment in the previous MRI, but this time around I didn't feel a thing. I had a bulb to squeeze in case I panicked, but I didn't need it. My veins (or arteries?) apparently said oh boy, yummy stuff, dye contrast! Let the magnetizing recommence! 

Forty-five minutes later, feeling like I'd been pummeled by an incompetent masseuse who was being yelled at by a gruff drill sergeant, the test was over, and I walked out into the hot morning sunshine.

Two days later, I got the report.

I am not crazy. It is not my imagination. It's not just a smoking gun. I see the gun, I see the bullet. My brain really is broken. The radiology report indicates I have the vascular problem that can cause vestibular paroxysmia. Not everyone who has this particular vascular condition gets my type of recurring vertigo and tinnitus, but the patients who have my type of recurring vertigo and tinnitus almost always have some kind of artery or blood vessel encroaching on the eighth cranial nerve. The good news is that there is no evidence of a tumor, lesion, or cyst that could be causing this paroxymia.

In other words, I'm a textbook case. Well, wait. I doubt if this condition is in textbooks yet. If it were, the ENTs I have met so far might not have been skeptical when I told them about it. I know doctors sleep through med school, who can blame them, but you'd think somewhere along the line when they learned about vestibular migraines they might have at least heard of vestibular paroxysmia.

For a brief moment, I felt smug satisfaction that I had diagnosed my malady correctly. Yay, me, so competent with Dr. Google! That wore off fast. Now I'm impatient and frustrated to get my hands on the remedy for the malady. I've had enough of being a doormat for some stupid artery that decided to get a little too cozy with a very sensitive nerve. I mean, come on, brain.

Well, I know you can't reason with a brain, anymore than you can petition the Universe with prayer. Arteries do what they do. Idiots, wackjobs, dictators, and politicians are similar. We can't cure it and we can't control it. If biofeedback, yoga, and aroma therapy would work, you know I would have been all over it. The futility of trying to reason with any body part, let alone an artery I cannot see or touch, is like shouting into the void. I feel the effects of its bad behavior, though, and now—ha, ha!—its inappropriate nerve cuddling has been caught on film. The red villain has been caught red-handed. Like to see you wiggle out of this one, you stupid artery. If I could get in there and strangle you, I would, although it would probably give me a stroke, but just for a moment, to express my extreme displeasure and frustration at the three years of torture, every minute of every hour of every day for three years, to listen to you horndog making out constantly with my vestibular nerve . . . surely I could be forgiven for my desire for revenge. 

I hope by next week's blog I will have received a call from the (highly chagrined) ENT (one can hope) telling me, yes, you were right, Ms. Patient We Didn't Believe. We see it right there, and even though we would still like you to see the neurologist (whose earliest appointment is the first week of February 2024), we are going to prescribe you one of those antiseizure medications as your reward for being such a patient patient instead of the raving puddle of whining anxiety we usually see. 

I have hope. But I know what happens when you wish for something. Sometimes you get it, and it ends up being worse than the disease. So (if you care), watch this space.

It's all about balance

I sense some sort of adventure is lurking over the horizon. Right now, I'm too tired to chase it, but I think it is close by. I hope once the iron pills kick in, I will have a little more ambition. And color. My friend S said I'm pale. I thought it was just my Zoom lighting. It's important to look good even if you don't feel good. I learned that from my father. Nobody cares how you feel, but everyone cares about how you look. Thanks for everything, Pop. I'd give you back your funky heart valve if I could.

Speaking of looking good, I'm glad my housemate is back, and I'm really glad E didn't have to witness my week of starvation prep for the procedure, now two weeks in my hindmost of rear view mirrors. Some things are better suffered in solitude, massive liquid diarrhea explosions being one of them. It wasn't just a wild goose chase up a colon with a camera. They did find something that might account for my iron anemia. Biopsies indicate it is something benevolent, but it's unclear what if anything comes next, besides take iron pills. 

The heart thing had me a little worried, I admit. However, after a chat with my primary care person, I've feel reassured I can live with this, whatever this is, at least for the immediate future. The cardiologist isn't precisely sure what he's working with (am I a two-leafer or a three-leafer? We need another test to tell for sure). That will happen in November. Another IV. Ho hum. 

In any case, I'm over it. All of it. I'm over everything. I just wish I could regain some equilibrium and get the hissing in my ear to stop, but maybe it's all just part of the new balancing act I'm being called to execute, now that I'm officially old. 

I've never been good at balancing. In high school we had to do a couple weeks of gymnastics, which included torture sessions on various intimidating pieces of equipment. The parallel bars, the horse thing, the mini-horse, what did we call that little thing, the Shetland pony? I can't remember. And of course, the balance beam. I was terrible at all of it. I had no strength, no grace, and most of all, no gumption. About all I could manage was a respectable handstand. I've never had any poise. From elementary school onward, gym class was endless humiliation and embarrassment. 

It hasn't improved with adulthood. I used to be able to run, well, jog, let's be clear. I was never a sprinter. I liked to think I had potential as a long distance runner, but I lacked discipline. I didn't care enough to train rigorously. I ran one marathon, slowly, and called it good. Now I can barely trot twenty yards before my heart is hammering and my lungs are wheezing. Maybe when the iron pills kick in . . . 

I'm dwelling on all this because I just had a birthday. Fall is a time of reflection, and having a fall birthday invites self-reflection. My self-reflection does not include mirrors but it does include a hefty dose of self-criticism. I am not used to thinking of myself as a sick person. Even though I have never been graceful (my sister was the ballet dancer and figure skater, not me. I played softball and volleyball), I never thought of myself as physically weak. Emotionally frayed, yes, but I could always throw a ball if I had to. Now I have to find a new equilibrium. I don't know how close I can get to the cliff edge before I fall into the abyss. I used to walk that cliff edge, metaphorically speaking. Now I can't see it because my eyes are filming over with cataracts. I can't hear the hiss of empty air over the hiss of my dysfunctional Eustachian tube. I can't even enjoy chewing my food from fear that osteoporosis and bisphosphonates have given me necrosis in my jaw. 

You are probably thinking, oh, what's the use? Why do we keep going when it is so obviously futile and fatal? Right, I get you. It's all about balance. When the heart isn't pounding, when my ear isn't crackling, when my eyes are closed, and I'm leaning securely against something so I won't fall over, I can feel the cold evening desert air coming in the bathroom window. Today it was so humid, I almost thought I could smell the ocean. 

You know what parts of the U.S. have the least amount of air pressure fluctuation? Along the southern coasts at sea level. Southern California, southern Florida. One of these days it will be time for a road trip. As soon as the iron pills kick in. 

Legacy DNA leaves a mark

For some reason I thought that after my parents died, I would not longer be  . . . what's the word I'm looking for? Not troubled. Not haunted. I don't know. That my parental units would no longer have an influence on my life? They have shuffled off the mortal coil, and even though I think of them, I am no longer troubled by them, if you know what I mean. No, of course you don't know what I mean, because I haven't told you yet. 

My father's DNA legacy reached out from beyond the blue horizon to let me know that I am still my father's daughter, even though he's been dead for eighteen years. He had an enlarged heart, apparently a genetic defect. Well, guess what? That insurance company house call doctor was right! The cardiologist refuted my primary NP's claim of predominantly opening snap, whatever the heck that is, and concurred with the cardiologist's diagnosis of a two-on-a-scale-of-six heart murmur. Thanks a lot, Dad.

Something isn't working quite right but the doctor couldn't be certain exactly what part was failing to meet standards. More to be revealed, as they say. Specifically, echocardiogram in my not-too-distant future (September). Apparently it's not an emergency. Yay.

In other news, I had my first and I hope last MRI this week. I'm sure many of you have had MRIs, it's probably quite common, what do I know? Like getting your nails done. Not for me. I don't get my nails done, and I don't have MRIs. 

In fact, all my life, I have gone to great lengths to avoid getting enmeshed with medical care. I'm the type to pretend not only is there nothing wrong, there's not actually a body. Nothing to see here, move along. I'm just an incorporeal intellect fluttering around somewhere in Tucson, completely detached from any sort of human biological disaster that might need to be shoved inside a big noisy person-sized tube.

An MRI is quite an experience. Not an adventure. Not an ordeal. Somewhere in between. I was warned it would be noisy and that I would be given headphones to protect my ears. I pictured vacuum cleaner noisy. Nope, not like that at all. It was loud, all right, but all the banging, thumping, buzzing, whirring, and beeping made me fear I had been swallowed by a demonic washing machine. 

Before she pressed the button that sent me into the tube, the med tech asked, "What music do you want?"

She didn't seem surprised when I said "60s or 70s rock-and-roll, please."

Pretty soon, I heard Jim Morrison singing "Light my Fire" far off in the distance.

From time to time, obscuring the old rockers singing in the background, I heard a prerecorded dude's voice say, "Take a breath . . .  Let it out . . . Take a breath . . . and hold it." Fifteen seconds later, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Breathe normally."

For forty-five minutes, I enjoyed a cacophony of old rock music, directions to hold my breath, and the bed-rattling, bone-shaking clanging and banging of the machine. As I said, it was quite an experience. There's something surreal about listening to In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida while wearing a hospital gown and lying on a bed that goes in and out of a metal cylinder. At the time, I didn't appreciate the metaphor. There's a joke there somewhere but I can't quite put my finger on it. 

I was glad to discover I am not claustrophobic. With the earphones, I didn't mind the noise. The only thing I did not enjoy was having an IV port inserted into my vein. Having never had an IV port before, or an MRI, I was anxious about being dosed with the gadolinium contrast dye. The med tech said she would warn me when she was going to send it into my vein, and she did. A few seconds later, I felt my entire body flush with a chill I can't describe. Muscles in my belly started twitching. Before I could say oh hell, it passed and I was fine, other than a freezing right hand, which I can tolerate, having lived most of my life with freezing hands.

I don't know which parent to blame for the genes that landed me in an MRI cylinder. I'm suspecting my mother. I'm going to go out on a little dinky limb here and self-diagnose with digestive issues related to dairy and possibly eggs. Alternatively, it could be a hernia. 

What it is not, thank god, is cancer. 

The gadolinium gave me a new layer of dizziness to my vertigo, but it passed by the next day. As instructed, I drank lots of water. And tried to breathe normally. Thus, I live to fight another day.

Fight for your right to be stupid

Actually, we don’t have to fight hard to be stupid. Everyone is doing it, in some shape or form. If you don’t mind a little weak-willed nattering from a few bleeding hearts, you can pretty much do and say whatever you want. Hardly anyone will push back on even the most egregious act of stupidity, the most ridiculous assertion, especially if it happens to align with their worldview. It’s sad that women may give up their bodily autonomy, and it’s tragic that our school kids buy our freedom to be stupid with their lives, but that is how it goes in the wealthiest country on earth. I’ve said it before and recent events seem to support me, humans are too stupid to live. The demise of the human species can’t come too soon. The planet will be much better off without us.

Meanwhile, my heart keeps beating, sometimes hiccupping, sometimes swooping, the ticker takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It’s working harder than it should, though, which has precipitated a condition with an interesting name: a predominantly opening snap. My primary care provider offered me a choice: (a) get on medication or (b) have a heart attack or stroke. Nice of her to offer me a choice.

I made my choice. Despite the terror and sorrow of living, I still want to live. I want to see how things turn out, until it’s curtains for me. Therefore, in a brazen bid for survival, I’m getting medication to lower my blood pressure.

That brings my total medication list up to three prescription meds. It feels a like a moral failing. I think I should be able to just tough my way through it. And I could try, it’s my right and privilege to be stupid, remember. Curtains might come sooner than statistically expected, but nobody lives forever. Then I think of my departed maternal parental unit, who was taking a dozen meds and didn’t think anything of it. Maybe it was the dementia, but she seemed really at peace with the reality of her failing health. She bemoaned aging, saying things like getting old is not for wimps, but she always took her meds. The only time she really got pissed off was when we took away her car keys.

I wonder who will be brave enough to take away my car keys?

In other news, I’m feeling a bit lonely these days. I haven’t seen a little dude for almost a week. Maybe they’ve all gone north for the summer. Maybe spraying poison weekly convinced them this is not a good hotel and they’ve packed the aunties and kids into the minivan and headed up Mt Lemmon. Nice to imagine. I hope the reason I’m not seeing many little dudes, alive or dead, is that I’ve killed them, but pride and hubris go before an invasion. They could be watching from the baseboards and cupboards, waiting to strike. They could be planning World War III, Bat Cave edition.

I am starting to get organized for my move back to the Trailer. Notice, it’s the Trailer now. I’m giving it the proper-noun status it deserves. It’s not really a trailer, it’s a mobile home (also known as a manufactured home, depending on when it was built). It’s a single-wide thing, long and narrow, made of fake wood paneling, Fiberglas, and plastic, and wide metal awnings on both sides to ward off the blazing sun. It’s utilitarian, clean, and safe, and it will be a good place to hunker down and figure out what comes next.

Intermittently deteriorating

Like an automaton whose internal clock is winding down, I find all systems are no longer go. My brain likes to think it is in charge. It’s not. In this cowardly new world after Medicare, it’s every body part for itself. My parts have discovered they are autonomous and thus emancipated, which means they are no longer communicating with each other, or even with me, sometimes. Each part seems to have taken the position of, it’s my system and I’ll go if I want to.

Is it possible that past a certain age, when one’s life is notoriously small, there’s nothing left to talk about except one’s physical ailments? So-called normal people with normal-sized lives can always pull out the grandkid pictures. I don’t have any of those. I have lots of photos of my dead cat, my dead mother (before they died, I mean, ew), and my distant siblings whose lives are so much more interesting than mine. In fact, the photos take up a significant amount of room on a 2-TB external hard drive. What am I going to do with all these photos?

Digital property is a thing nowadays! Did you know? If you are a prolific and greedy creator of digital files, like me, some dispensation for the mountain of bits and bytes needs to be made in your last will and testament. So I hear. I had started writing my will, and everything was going swimmingly until I hit the digital property question. We will not regret the past? Right.

Yesterday I spent much of the day organizing and transferring my many thousands of electronic documents to two external hard drives. It quickly became apparent that I need more storage. I need another device just to hold my photos, something that can be mailed to one of my siblings, as if they would ever care about my photos of Tucson. I need another device to hold my scanned and photographed artwork, which I would mail to the hapless soul who has agreed to be my digital property executor, my kind friend in Phoenix who doesn’t really know what she signed up for.

I need to sort through all this crap. This is overwhelming. It’s bad enough I took a billion photos, bad enough I made all this art and then had the temerity to think it might be worth documenting so I scanned and photographed every stupid painting and drawing before I threw them all in the trash. What have I learned? This lunacy is the opposite of humility.

There’s possibly not a moment to waste.

This week I invited a housecall doctor from my insurance company to enter the Bat Cave. I can hear you yelling, Carol, what the hell? I know. I was aware of the risks. However, I was also aware of the benefits. I saw firsthand how beneficial having another opinion was for my mother. I sat in on her housecall sessions. I credit those nurses with keeping her independent in her condo much longer than we would have expected. They suggested eliminating several drugs and adding a memory drug, which I think slowed the progression of her dementia.

Having a second set of eyes on me, even if those eyes represent the insurance company, is not a bad thing, especially given my not totally unfounded feeling that my primary care nurse-practitioner person doesn’t have time for me and my tiny health crises. Osteoporosis is not a health crisis until I fall and break a bone. Vertigo is not a real thing if the healthcare provider can’t see it to measure it. It’s a well-known phenomenon that people who complain of health issues that can’t be measured are assumed to be insane. I’m lucky my skin is white. It could be so much more fraught.

Anyway, the insurance company makes housecalls once a year for free. The appointment was for 9:00 a.m. He was late. At 9:20 he called and apologized and said he could be there at noon, if I could meet then. I said sure. At noon he called and said it would be closer to 1:00 p.m. I said fine, call me if you get lost.

At 1:20 p.m., there was a knock on my door. I opened the door to a real live M.D., a big, blonde-haired, teddy bear-shaped guy wearing pale blue scrubs, a surgical mask, purple gloves, and an ID card around his neck. I offered him a choice of chairs: Captain Eddie’s office chair on wheels or my grandmother’s straight-backed sewing chair with a pillow to hide the frayed seat fabric. He chose my grandmother’s chair, after lifting the pillow, probably to see if it was okay to sit on it. I watched him lift the pillow. With masks on, so much nuance is lost in nonverbal communication, but we muddle along.

Actually, not much muddling happened. He was completely professional, friendly, not overly chatty but interested and patient. He asked questions, I answered them truthfully. I had done my homework. I could tell him the dates of my vaccines, my shingles shots, my latest mammogram, my most recent flu shot . . . all the dates and major events. There were a few things he didn’t bring up and a few things I didn’t mention. Then he took my blood pressure and listened to my heart.

“You have a little bit of a heart murmur,” he said. No one had told me that before, but given that my father had some sort of heart defect, which probably precipitated the heart attack that killed him, I wasn’t totally surprised.

“It’s a small one, a 2 on a 6-point scale,” he said. Oh, I thought, only a two. Whew.

“And your blood pressure is very high. Do you have white coat syndrome?”

I was actually feeling pretty happy that he hadn't asked me to pee in a cup. I don’t pee on command very well these days. I am not aware that I’m twitchy around doctors but who knows. Like I said, my parts aren’t really conversing.

So you see my urgency at getting my digital property squared away, right? I could be nearing the end. Odds are, it won’t be soon, but you never know. My cousin Dave ended up on the roof at age 61.

I don’t have to engage in proper file management. I could just say eff-it and let someone else deal with the mess. Certainly, if I lollygag long enough, I won’t have to worry about anything. I just hope someone finds my dead body before I totally stink up the place. Although, here in the desert, we have a dry heat, which means I’ll probably be a pile of bone and desiccated fat cells by the time the landlord unlocks the door. Ew.

For some reason, I have a lot of anxiety over leaving a mess, to the point at which I find myself regretting my creative life. If I had a partner or lived near family, I could say, oops, sorry, and let go. But I’m alone here. Who will come into the Bat Cave and sort through my stuff? Who will box up my hard drives, my laptop, my cell phone, and mail them to my family? Who will recycle-bin  the gazillion photos from my gigantic solid state desktop-system hard drive? What crew of elves will erase the physical evidence of my presence on the planet? Who will hire said elves? There's no 1-800-LF4-HIRE. I checked. (Although, hey, you can work as an elf at the North Pole for minimum wage.) 

It’s not something I would want to dump on anyone, let alone someone I love. My family cannot afford to fly down here to take on the task, especially during COVID. My scant handful of Arizona friends might be able to help in their free time, but they are all busy leading rich lives filled with meaning and purpose. I admit, I made a mess. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Who will clean it up when I’m gone? I need to figure it out before I die. 

Anyhoo, I sent a message to my primary on Friday. If I don’t hear back within a few days, I’ll see if I can find another practitioner in the healthcare system who is taking new patients. Meanwhile, I’m sorting through the files. I may decide to chuck it all. It’s either all precious, or none of it is precious. In a few years, I bet nobody will be using a USB external hard drive. They will probably have computer chips implanted in their brains and operate their Netflix via a skin-based control panel, like a modern Dick Tracy. Either technology will have moved on, or the death of democracy and the environment will have rendered civilization unviable. We are a blip.

The human Roomba

Greetings from the desert. It’s been another typical week of chasing cockroaches, editing dissertations, dodging bullets, and poking pencils in my ears to block out the boom cars. Ho hum. I call myself the human Roomba. I aimlessly wander half-blind through my activities each day, picking up cosmic detritus. At the end of the day, I swallow my misgivings, sluice off the sweat, and park myself on my foam rubber mattress to recharge my batteries in preparation for another aimless day of wandering. What is the purpose? To get things done. What is the point? What is the point to life? To persist, until it’s time to stop.

Summer is on the horizon. We’ve hit triple digits here in Tucson, not the earliest on record for the season, but not the latest. During the day, creatures lay low, unless they have air-conditioned SUVs, then they are out barreling from Target to Lowe’s to Fry’s in search of I don’t know what. Company, I guess. 

Covid loves company. I still prefer to isolate, and when I go into a public indoor space, I still wear my trusty KN95. I’m one of the few. I don’t care. They can’t see my face, which means I’m invisible. Their eyes slide right off my mask as if my entire body is not there. That’s not new for me. Menopause precipitated my secret power of invisibility.

Speaking of growing old, I went to an ophthalmologist this week to see how my cataracts are progressing. Nicely, it appears, thanks for asking. A slow-growing problem, too soon to worry.

I sat in the waiting area with a bunch of other elderly folks (middle of a week day). Most of them watched the big screen TV. I reminisced about sitting in a similar waiting room with my mother, reassuring her every five minutes that yes, they would eventually call her name. She hated to wait. Time waiting in a waiting room must seem endless when you have dementia.

I got my prescription updated. I hope it will be accurate, given that my breath kept leaking out over my mask and fogging up the lens machine. Is A better? Or is B better? I don't know, who can say. Next, I endured the stinging yellow eye drops and didn't feel any of the pokes and prods. Then an energetic masked man stormed into the tiny exam room, peered into my soul through my dilated eyeballs, and said hmmm, come back in four months. I paid for my prescription and I stumbled past the oldsters and out the door into the blazing desert sunshine, mostly blind, wearing two layers of sunglasses. There should be a law that you can't drive in direct sunlight when your eyes are dilated. It’s a miracle I made it home without running my car off the road. I was useless until the drops wore off, six hours later. 

Speaking of useless, early Wednesday morning (4:05 am) I was awakened abruptly by the sound of gunshots. They sounded very close to the building. After a moment of panic, I rolled onto the rug, hoping I wasn't disrupting the party of roaches entertaining their young ones there. (Save the children! Run for the corners!) I grabbed my phone and called 9-1-1. Or I tried to call 9-1-1.

After this experience, I now know what happens when you have a VOIP cell phone provider. I have an area code 503 number. Thus, my call was bounced to Portland. The nice man on the phone tried to put me through to Tucson police but dialed the wrong number, then dialed another number (“no one seems to be answering”), before finally connecting me with Tucson Dispatch, who took the info and said, “Why didn’t you just call 9-1-1?”

After five minutes of kneeling on the floor, I was over it. It was clear that nobody was coming out to investigate. There had been no more shots and I heard nothing outside in the parking lot. I’d stopped shaking, and I could now see the humor in the situation. I hung up the phone and went back to bed.

In the morning, I checked the news: Homicide a block away. I read a little more about the incident over the following days. Some guy shot at his on-again-off-again girlfriend and her friend as they were driving away from him in a car. They thought he had a gun, and turns out, they were right. That happened several blocks south of here. 

He didn't realize his shots had nailed his girlfriend in the neck. He followed them in his own car. When they stopped, I guess he saw the blood and thought his girlfriend had been fighting with her friend in the car. So he shot at the friend. I think those were the shots that woke me up. His girlfriend died in the car a block up the street. Somebody called it in at 6:00 am.

Police caught the guy. He’s 21. His girlfriend was 18.

Meanwhile, there’s a lunar eclipse tonight. I’m working on my last will and testament. No connection, just thought I’d mention it. 

A mild case of existential dread

COVID is still a thing here in Arizona. I'm laying low in the Bat Cave, hiding out from omicron, even though I know, as a bleeding heart liberal, I'm prone to believe the sky is falling, has always been falling, will always be falling. I don't fear death. I do fear long COVID. My brain already has enough hiccups. I double-mask and glove up when I go to the grocery store. Other than that, I've stopped going into buildings. I walk the streets alone, reveling in the 64F sunshine and wishing it were warmer. Meanwhile my sister in Boston is buried in two feet of snow. She's been feeding birds on her balcony. They are lined up like marauders on the railing. I'm afraid I'll get a text saying she was pecked to smithereens by chickadees and sparrows trying to get to her birdseed stash. 

Meanwhile, it's mild and dry here in Tucson. While I wait to die from a stroke, I have been patting myself on the back for finally getting the upper hand with the little dudes. I have been spraying weekly. I rarely see a little skittery dude now. Not alive, anyway. I see a few on their backs with their limbs frozen in the air. Did you know that some cockroaches are the same color as bits of sautéed onion? I know. Kind of puts you off your feed, doesn't it?

Let's see, what else? No more men with guns this week, no more people pounding on my door at midnight. Yesterday my neighbor on the other side of the wall had a little party with the girls. I couldn't hear the music but the bass from her stereo pounded for several hours through the wall. I wanted to rip a hole with my hammer and stick my head through. Here's Johnny! Now I kill you. However, I refrained. Once again, I was driven to the Internet to discover the name of my malady: misophonia. It's a thing, look it up. Earplugs don't work. I took a folding chair into the closet and sat there with my mp3 player going in my ears until the noise stopped. Eventually my heart settled back into its own rhythm rather than trying to beat in time to a song I could not hear. Neighbors. They come and go. Come August, I will be one who goes. 

Of course, life is uncertain. I'm feeling some existential dread. I heard that term on the radio today. I really like it. I think I will adopt it as my description for my state of mind. How are you, Carol? Oh, feeling a little extra existential dread today, how about you? 

It's hard to mope when the sun is shining. I have to put my back into it. Really make an effort. On these mild sunny days, it takes some serious motivation to maintain my chronic malcontentedness. It's like belonging to Misanthropes Anonymous. Sometimes I have a little slip and hate someone or something but mostly I've got this recovery thing handled. I have a lot to be thankful for. For instance, I think I might be getting a little stronger after five weeks of the bisphosphate pills. One false step on the treacherous Tucson pavement could shatter my timbers but I have hope that if I keep moving, gradually my bones will strengthen. Then when vertigo trips me over a curb, I'm more likely to pop up like Bobo the Clown. 

Mom used to say it's hell getting old. Now that I'm my mother, I can say it too. It's hell getting old. She lasted until 91, though, and I'm only 65. What the heck, Universe?

Speaking of what the heck, when I was fourteen years old, I wrote a book about some pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail. I wrote it in pencil on notebook paper. Five hundred pages. It took me four months. I tied the pages together with yarn and bound the book with kelly-green fabric glued onto corrugated cardboard. I'm looking at it right now as I'm typing this blogpost. It has traveled with me through the years, mainly because I didn't know what to do with it. Scanning it would take forever. Typing it is out of the question. Does it have any value as an artifact? If I were a famous writer or artist, it might. Like, wow, she was only fourteen when she wrote it. Nobody cares, but I still can't bear to relegate it to the recycle bin. 

Now, at last, through the wonder of modern technology, I discover I can have Google Docs type it for me. All I have to do is read it aloud. If I can stomach my teenage maunderings about covered wagons, Indian raids, and cute Indian boys, I don't think it's going to take all that long. Three pages of longhand scrawl condenses to about three typed paragraphs. If I manage to read this entire tome aloud, I think I will find out it's only about a hundred pages. Then I can store it in the cloud, shred the book, and let my literary executor deal with it, if I'm fortunate enough to have one of those. 

Your quest for control is futile

You’ll be relieved to hear, after two weeks of me camping out of an ice chest in the Bat Cave, the maintenance crew carted away the malfunctioning refrigerator and replaced it with a temporary. Like a loaner car, sort of. This loaner fridge is a little smaller, a lot quieter, and smells like an old motel. The handles are slots embedded in the side edges of the freezer and fridge doors. I keep forgetting where they are. Opening the doors conjures foggy memories of family beach trips to cheap motels with musty kitchenettes. I left an uncovered cup of coffee in the fridge overnight and tasted the smell of old motel this morning. Once again, impersonal circumstances confirm I live in temporary housing.

Omicron has come to Tucson. Last night I dreamed I was at a social gathering. In my dream, I suddenly realized nobody was wearing a mask, including me. I went outside, looking for my car so I could get a mask from my stash, but couldn’t find my car. I often lose my car in dreams. Not sure what that means.

Because I survived last week’s COVID-19 booster, I decided to press my luck and get a pneumonia vaccine. My new insurance company recommended it, and my new doctor concurred, so off I went for another jab in the bicep at my local grocery store pharmacy. You never know if you are going to be the one in 30,000 who has a negative reaction, as in, seizure, heart attack, or stroke. This time, the principles of statistics were on my side. I had a good outcome. My arm was sore but I had virtually no side effects, compared to the achy malaise I felt after the COVID booster.

Overall, I am making good progress on my 100,000 mile healthcare self-care checklist. I think I’ve had all the shots I can get for now, so check on the shots. I survived the first dose of the osteoporosis medicine with only some mild heartburn, so check on that too. Next up on my after-holiday list: a visit to an ENT, a visit to a hematologist, and a mammogram. I’d rather have another shot than get a mammogram, but what can you do. If you’ve got ’em, you gotta squash ’em. It’s a law, I think.

Most days, my brain feels like a sandcastle being washed away by waves. The things I knew how to do yesterday are mysteries to me today. How is that possible? Do I have dementia? Is there a vaccine for that? Not yet, although I heard there might be a new pill for Alzheimer’s. However, there is no cure. Mom took a drug to slow the rate of her dementia decline, and I guess this new drug does something similar, affecting other areas of the brain. It’s not covered by Medicare yet, and the annual cost of the drug is $56,000. Oh, thanks, I think I’ll pass. Once I get to the where is my butt stage of dementia, I’ll be opting out permanently with some cheap fentanyl. Of course, we know all about best laid plans. Most of my plans fall into the category of half-assed bungled plans bound to go sideways.

Tucson had its first overnight freeze and its first omicron case this week. I doubt if the two events are connected. Tucson apparently has a winter season. I blinked and fall was over, and here we are at the threshold of winter. Every time I cross one of the many viaducts over the Rillito River, I read the sign with a heavy heart: Ice forms first on bridges. Why would they need signs like that in the desert? Because it gets cold at night here, and on rare occasions, it snows, even here in the city. I’m like, what the hell, Tucson. Baja is looking good to me right now.

My ongoing adventure feels a bit vague. If you know me, you know I like to know where I am and where I am going; that way, I can manage and control my life so I don’t have to be afraid. What do they say about fear? What you resist comes back to tear your lips off? I’m not an experienced camper (although I feel a little more confident about managing an indoor ice cooler). I’d rather get a job at Walmart than have to live in my car in a Walmart parking lot. Although, considering Walmart, I might end up doing both. Who knows.

Living in the wreckage of the future is as futile as trying to live today for a better past. All I have is the present moment. Why is that so hard to accept? Oh, right, because I can still find my butt. Hooboy. The blessing and curse of not having dementia.

Despair is always an option. I reserve my right to wallow in my malcontentedness. However, the sun is out, the sky is blue, and it’s a good time for a slow ramble in the nicer part of the demilitarized zone I fondly call my neighborhood. Tucson homeowners are putting up Christmas decorations. Step by step, the journey continues.

The chronic malcontent suffers from a vestibular disturbance

I had to get out of the Love Shack for a while today. Three reasons: The morning clouds dissipated around noon, good time to go out for a sunshine fix. Second, my own personal ocean in my inner ears (vertigo) was relatively calm. I knew it wouldn't last long, no matter how still and level I tried to keep my head. And third, the boots pounding on the roof were too much to bear. Yep, that's right. Today the Love Shack is getting a new roof.

I don't own the Love Shack, in case you were wondering if I had anything to do with it. I've never seen the roof. It's flat, that's all I know. I can only imagine on a wet day it's a sloggy mess of mushy holly berries, never-decaying holly leaves, maple tree whirly seeds, raccoon nests, and bird poop. On a dry day, it's a dusty toxic mix of all that stuff. I feel sad for the three Spanish-speaking men who have been marching around on the roof ripping stuff apart since 8:45 this morning.

My cat is not amused. He spent the morning hunkered under the couch with a concerned look on his face, probably wondering who won't stop pounding at the door. I've been trying to write. Between the pounding, hammering, scraping, and tearing, and the intermittent growl of the compressor parked at the bottom of my back steps, I was somewhat distracted. My head was starting to vibrate, not a good sign. So I abandoned my cat and my writing project to go for a trot in Mt Tabor Park.

On Wednesdays no cars are allowed. The roads are safe for bicyclists, joggers, and dog walkers. The air today was lush with spring. Spring is a special time in Portland. The leaves are a billion shades of green (and purple in some cases, what are those weird trees, anyway?). The smell of newly whacked grass wafted along the trails, cut by... let's call them workers from the county sheriffs office, brought by van to do community service in the park. I can think of worse ways to do penance for one's misdeeds.

Oddly enough, while I was jogging, my head felt fine. It was only after I stopped moving that the waves of vertigo swept through my head. The lesson is, don't stop moving, I guess. But sooner or later, I get tired (sooner, usually), and I must stop. As I'm typing this, the vestibular ocean in my inner ears rises up and falls back, shaking me like a toyboat. I'm ignoring it.

As I walked up the street toward the park, I realized the roofer has roofed three houses in this one block in two days. I guess the mantra this week is make roofs while the sun shines. These guys are efficient: plan, approach, and execution in a matter of hours. I met the roofer (a non-Hispanic White guy) when he knocked on my door asking for access to the basement so he could plug in his infernal compressor. Beyond that one interaction, I haven't seen him. I imagine he's supervising a dozen other roofs in the neighborhood.

These guys aren't super big, but they wield aluminum ladders like swords and then climb up them like ninja warriors. I doubt if these roofers suffer from vertigo. Dehydration, maybe, but not vertigo. My new theory about inner ears is that my ear crystals are clumped somewhere in the vicinity of the ear equivalent of my toes into boulders that sluggishly crash into all the nerve endings in their path. In other words, ear sludge is creating a slow-motion train wreck in my head. That is why the Epley Maneuver is only partially successful. I fear I'm too impatient, advancing through the moves before gravity can budge the sludge. Either that or I'm doing it wrong. Or I have a brain tumor. Whatever.

A ladder has now appeared outside my front window, followed by heavy pounding. Three guys sure can make a lot of noise. I just plugged my mp3 headphones in my ears: Psychedelic Furs. I sail away on my cerebral sea while my cat stoically endures.

The chronic malcontent leans in... and out

As I shake the cat hair and fingernail clippings out of my keyboard, I reflect on the possibility that sometimes vertigo is just vertigo. It doesn't have to be metaphor for anything else in my life. Right? Like, oh, I don't know...balance, maybe?

Yesterday in a fit of frustration, I put on my jogging duds and staggered up the main staircase to the top of Mt. Tabor. From the summit, I trotted down and around the road, marveling at how level-headed I felt but on the lookout in case the ground suddenly turned into an asphalt trampoline. The sun was warm. The park was crowded with Sunday pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, and dogs. I felt happy to be outside, trudging my trails at half-speed while joggers blazed by me on both sides. Balance, I thought smugly. Take that.

A half hour after I got home, wham, the floor suddenly became jello and I was back on the open seas in a tiny boat. Ho hum, said I. I am quite familiar with the nuances of fluid in my head now. I picture my brain awash in a viscous murky muddy sea, but I know that isn't what is really happening. Dinky little ear rocks are meandering around, sightseeing where they shouldn't be, shredding my balance and creating the loudest, most cringe-inducing silent roar I've ever not heard.

I'm becoming a quasi-expert on performing the Epley on myself. Not expert yet, because if I were an expert, I would have effected my own cure, right? No, I'm still practicing. I love YouTube—every ENT in the world has posted a demonstration of how to do the Epley. It's great. They all do it differently, too, which is somewhat perplexing for the novice, but hey, I'm all for creativity, as long as it doesn't break my neck. So far my neck is still intact, although it is somewhat stiff from trying to hold my head level all the time. (No, I don't think it is meningitis, but thanks for asking).

What is the Epley, you ask? It's a maneuver you can perform to make use of gravity to get the ear rocks to float back along the tube into the hole. Yeah, I know those aren't the technical terms, but hey, I'm not an ENT. You can look up the anatomical terms if you really care. Rocks, tube, hole, that's all you really need to know. It's a bit like miniature putt-putt golf, but inside your inner ear, where it's dark so you have to maneuver by feel. Like, how close to barfing am I right now, scale of 1 to 10?

Actually, I haven't barfed yet, I am proud to say. I know pride goeth, etc. etc., but I'm hopeful that as long as I have to put up with this vertigo crap, that it will remain the subjective type rather than morph into the objective type. Subjective vertigo is where I feel like I'm moving. Objective vertigo is where the world seems like it is spinning around me. Like how you feel when the Roundup starts twirling and you realize you've made a terrible mistake by eating your corndog before the ride rather than after.

The Epley is like a slow motion head waggle followed by a half-pirouette, performed horizontally. You can't picture it? Well, like I said, there are multiple methods to execute an Epley, but the one I am finding easiest goes like this: (while lying on your back with your head hanging over a pillow), BAD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then GOOD side head back and hold 60 seconds, then roll on the good shoulder, look down, and SPIT. Hold until the boat stops rocking or you are thoroughly disgusted.

Well, actually the spitting part is optional, I just added that because usually I've found that I'm not miraculously cured when I roll over and that makes me so angry I feel like I could spit. But at that point, my nose is all but buried in my lime green shag rug and I'm thinking as I'm counting the seconds in my head: ants, cat barf, dust mites. I feel obligated to refrain from adding my spit to the mix, mostly because who knows what will rush in if I open my mouth. Besides, according to my older brother, when I was about five, I proclaimed in my sleep, if you turn over and spit, you'll die, and even though that was 50-some years ago, I'm not willing to press my luck.

The thing about the Epley is this: It's not an instantaneous cure. It takes time for the ear rocks to settle in properly, and some of them still seem inclined to go gallivanting. So if you are going to try this at home, you may have to do it more than once. I also read that you should sleep sitting up for two nights afterward, but I haven't been able to accomplish that feat. Maybe that is why I'm still whining about vertigo. Well, hell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. Like, ants on my desk? WTF!?

I'm back... in the land of the upright, that is

Maybe my throbbing right inner ear knew that I meant business when I made a doctor's appointment. Maybe my ear decided to cooperate, knowing the gig was up. Whatever the reason, today I am gently swaying rather than violently swirling. That is a good thing. What am I talking about? Vertigo, baby. The silent dismemberer of intentions, the invisible destroyer of brain capacity, the soul-sucking energy vampire that overwhelms your brain with sneaky waves of fog and water. Ugh. It sounds horrible, doesn't it. It is horrible. I hear it's pretty common. I wonder how many people are laying on their kitchen floor tiles, puking into buckets, and hoping death will come for them soon.

Today, at last, the happy day of my doctor's appointment, and as all happy days do, this day dawned bright and clear. My main concern was that I should make it to the doctor's office without driving my car up on a curb or taking out someone's brand new Prius. My mother was supposed to be on standby to give me a ride if the ocean in my head turned stormy.

Luckily, I felt pretty okay, calm inner seas. I called my mother to notify her that her chauffeur services would not be required. She wasn't home. Later I found out she was out getting her hair cut.

I talk to myself a lot. Do you do that? For the past almost two weeks, I've been talking to my inner ear, berating it, begging it to behave, threatening to send it to the doctor. My ear, like all minor-league demi-gods, has responded by laughing. And then swamping my mental boat with 30-foot waves.

I know I'm giving free-agent characteristics to my inner ear, but I've spent so much time talking to it, I'm fairly sure it now has a rudimentary intelligence. If I listen very closely, I can hear it muttering something. Sounds like redrum, redrum. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't say that. I am officially hard of hearing in my right ear, according to the doctor's tuning fork. (I haven't seen a tuning fork since grade school. How cool are tuning forks?) If my ear said anything, I didn't hear it.

The doctor directed me to pinch my nose shut and blow, ten times a day. Apparently, I have a case of airplane ear, my sister says, who is the expert on world travel by plane. Who knew there was a name for that icky pressurized pain? As a special bonus gift from the universe, I also have chronic ear crackling, kind of a soapsuds-in-your-ear sound, which I can hear just fine, oddly enough, considering I'm almost deaf in that ear. I've had that for over a year.

“And you didn't see anybody for it?” the doctor asked, gazing at me quizzically. Subtext: WTF?

“No, I thought I would handle it the way my father handled his physical ailments: by eating 10 maple bars and doing bicep curls with 20-pound dumbbells.”

“And how well did that work out for him?”

“Not so good. He died from a heart problem he could have had fixed.”

I didn't really say that. I thought it, though. I did tell her that my father's cure for everything was to lift weights. She didn't look impressed. No doubt she could tell that I wasn't really following that regimen very closely. She prescribed an antihistamine. Take it for a month, she said. And she wrote a referral to an ENT specialist. I left feeling no less dizzy, but for some reason, much, much better.

I managed to glide through the grocery store, hanging onto the cart like an old lady with a walker, before going home and crashing into bed. In about 30 seconds, the tsunami flooded my brain. The elevator floor fell out, and down I went, going with the flow. Bring it on, I moaned. I waggled my head this way and that, trying the Epley Maneuver in a last ditch effort to wrest control back from my evil inner ear. Let 'er rip, I groaned. Do your worst. I waited until the waves receded to a gentle rocking. Then I went to sleep for two hours.

When I woke up, the fog was lifted. The waves had calmed. The mental boat is still gently rocking while I write this, but now I seem to have found my sea legs. I don't know what happened. Timing, probably. The evil little calcium crystals in my inner ear probably finally dissolved, or moved, or settled down, or whatever the hell they do when they are behaving, and I'm returned to my full upright and locked position. I have no idea what happened today. Any mystery with a happy outcome seems like a miracle. I'm not complaining. Yesterday sucked, and tomorrow may be a repeat of yesterday, but today I won the battle for my equilibrium. Yay me.

I'll have some fries, with a side of righteous indignation, please

No complaints from rainbow city. I'll take our unsettled rain squalls and sun breaks over 6-foot snow drifts any day. On the hierarchy of things to complain about, cold comes first, way above wet. Pretty much the worst thing here in the Northwest is cold AND wet, which happens predictably often for nine months of the year. But yesterday the temp hit 56°! After the arctic polar Canadian chill blast thingie, it felt downright balmy. What's a little moisture when it's practically tropical!

How did I celebrate? Thanks for asking. In anticipation of my upcoming personal health insurance nightmare, in which I throw myself upon the mercy of the open market, I showed up for my 50,000-mile checkup with my soon-to-be former doctor at Kaiser. She's wonderful. Even when she's probing my lady parts, I know I'm in capable hands. Nobody is allowed to visit the private terrain down there except my wonderful doctor.

The assistant, on the other hand, was... well, I could say her behavior was disappointing, but I think I'll describe her as a king hell bummer hot mess. I can only assume she trained at the career college for which I used to work. I didn't ask, I assumed. Not nice of me, I know.

First, she was brusque and breezy. Normally, I don't mind brusque and breezy. You can be brusque and breezy, and still be personable. Just quickly personable, as you rush away to do something no doubt more important. I could accept that. But she didn't seem inclined to slow down and look me in the eye.

“You were just here in July,” she said accusingly, looking at the computer screen which is now de rigeur for every doctor's office.

“I know,” I sighed. “It wasn't my idea.”

“What do you mean?” she frowned.

“I got a robocall,” I tried to explain, and even as I spoke, I realized I had failed to put the right amount of righteous indignation in my voice. If I had just sounded like a customer, I'm sure she would have backed off. In my defense, it was barely 8:30 in the morning (crack of dawn for this puppy), and I hadn't had anything to eat. I didn't have much enthusiasm for churning up some frothy indignation. Wishing that pap smear services came with a coffee bar, I went on, “The voice said to call, and so I called. The girl who answered said I should make an appointment, so here I am.”

“Huh. Do you want a flu shot while you are here?”

“Sure, why not,” I sighed.

“Here. Opening goes in the back.” She handed me a white sheet and a paisley gown and sped out the door. Chanting to myself opening goes in the back, opening goes in the back, I shucked my layers and proceeded to drape myself in the one-size-fits-most cotton gown. I sat on the end of the table, scritching my butt on the paper cover and waited.

After about five minutes, the aide knocked on the door and came in, carrying something I didn't want to look at too closely.

She grabbed my left arm, flipped the cover off the syringe, and jammed the needle into my muscle. With one hand, she slapped a little blue-patterned band-aid over the hole she'd made in my arm. It happened so fast, I had a mere moment to be simultaneously appalled and impressed. Clearly, she did this often. Clearly, I did not.

The actual exam took an anti-climactic ten minutes, tops. After being poked and prodded, reamed, steamed, and drycleaned, and after wishing my doctor happy holidays, silently hoping I would see her next year, I dragged my clothes back on and shuffled down to the lab to get some blood drawn for a cholesterol check. As I sat there, a little damp and used, waiting my turn, I began to feel a little wan. I chalked it up to lack of food, rain, and pelvic exam.

Later, back at home, I fixed eggs and a pile of broccoli and zucchini and scarfed it down. Pretty soon I felt even worse. My left shoulder hurt: I could barely raise my arm without groaning. In fact, all my joints hurt. I felt achy all over. Hey! I think I have the flu. What the—!

I took a nap, but that didn't help. I met a friend for dinner. She told me that the aide didn't know how to give a proper shot. That helped briefly, as did the french fries, but by TV time, I was moaning on the couch. My cat looked askance at me as I kicked the blankets in frustration. I couldn't find a position that didn't hurt, and my shoulder felt like I had been shot. Or how I imagined it might feel had I actually been shot. Finally, I gave up. I took an ibuprofen and went to bed. Exit, stage right, dragging a case of righteous indignation like a full diaper behind me.

The next day, I felt fine, and thus was able to appreciate the magnificent sight of a double rainbow glowing against the massive gray clouds piled up before me. It was gone quickly, as the rain clouds scudded off to the east to dump snow on Mt. Hood. I reveled in a fleeting glimpse of blue sky, enjoying a delicious 5-minute respite before the next deluge.

Woozy from too much woo

I am pretty sure I will look back on yesterday as a turning point. I think I already am, actually, if I'm blogging about this. What am I talking about, you ask? Woo. As in woo-woo: the collective label some people use to refer to popular pseudo-sciences like homeopathy, acupuncture, and applied kinesiology. Yep. I visited my naturopath yesterday, the esteemed Dr. Tony, and had a mind-altering experience. Perhaps not in the way the good doctor would have wished, but well, I guess now you all can say, “It's about time!”

The visit began with the usual procedure—some muscle testing, some poking, some lifting—and then Dr. Tony stood still, peering into my eyes. As I lay on the exam table, looking up at his towering figure (he's a tall man, anyway, even when you aren't flat on your back), I realized something was about to happen.

“How long have we been working together now?” he asked.

“Almost five years,” I replied, sensing I was being prepared for a pitch of some sort. Or else he was going to tell me I have cancer.

“You are finally healthy enough for me to take you to the next level,” he said. “I couldn't do this while your system was still recovering, but now I think you are ready.”

“Ready for what?” I asked apprehensively.

“Ready for heavy metal detoxification.”

Wha—? He could see my question on my face. He took his 3-ring binder and laid it on my stomach. With my arm in the air, he went through a list of heavy metals, muttering under his breath.

“Arsenic!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“A naturally occurring mineral,” I replied skeptically.

“We want to get it out of your system. Until we do, you will not be at optimal health.”

Well, who doesn't want to be at optimal health, I ask you? Do you think I would say, Oh, no, thanks, Dr. Tony, I'll just settle for the regular amount of health. Optimal is a little extreme for me. I do everything in moderation. No, I didn't say that. I just looked at him. At that point, I was still willing to believe.

He performed a series of procedures, bizarre actions that have now become commonplace to me, involving holding a little vial to my chest, some rhythmic head compressions, and the spinal application of the little silver gun. Tra-la-la.

“This treatment will begin the detoxification process,” said the doctor. “In a few days or a week, you will feel pretty bad. Achy and sick. You need to be sure you drink a lot of water. The worst thing is to get constipated!”

I frowned, still on my back. Why didn't he warn me of the side effects before he administered this so-called detox treatment? Why didn't he give me the option to refuse? He's not unlike doctors everywhere, apparently: prescribe first, talk later.

He grabbed my left arm. “Hold it up,” he said, as he pushed my arm down. Over and over, he pushed it down, and I did my best to resist the pressure. I thought I was doing good: stronger means better, usually. He was counting the number of times he pushed my arm back down to my side. My shoulder was starting to hurt, but I kept going, determined to demonstrate how strong and healthy I am.

“Thirty-one! That's how much heavy metal is in your system!”

“On a scale of what?” I demanded.

“One is bad! Thirty-one is terrible!”

You know when you are watching a movie, or reading a book, and you allow yourself to suspend reality so you can believe in zombies, or vampires, or true love, you know, those magical elements that make a story great but have no basis in the real world? And then suddenly, a character says something out of character, or you are presented with a jarring moment of obvious product placement (Ben & Jerry's!), or an actor fails to deliver convincingly a crucial line, or you can see the wires lifting Peter Pan into the air... that moment when reality rushes back in to slap you in the face, so you suddenly fall out of the dream, you suddenly wake up and realize there is a fat man behind the curtain? You know what I'm talking about. It's the moment directors dread. It's the moment authors desperately try to avoid. All great storytellers work hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief until the story can be told, the punchline can be delivered, or the money has changed hands.

The moment of truth for me was when he said, “And you need to get a pair of colonics,” as if he were recommending I buy a pair of sandals at PayLess. At that point I balked. I told him I wasn't going to get a pair of colonics.

“Well, you can do what you want...” he said, with that tone of voice we all know so well. Like, you can make this poor choice, but you'll be sorry when you swell up like a fetid balloon full of arsenic-laced crap. I'm giving you some good advice here, but if you don't want to listen to it... well, you are on your own. Apparently, only losers think they can live without Dr. Tony. Because the good doctor is always right. He only wants the best for us, after all. Right?

The thud you may have heard yesterday was me, falling out of the magical state of disbelief with the world of alternative medicine. As I monitor my body for the promised aches and sickness (my left shoulder really hurts for some reason), I am reviewing my new position as a skeptic. My brain is fried with cognitive dissonance.

Either it was all a scam intended to part me from my money, or Dr. Tony has deluded himself into believing the quackery is real. Or else, alternative medicine really works, at least sometimes, which is what we'd like to hope and believe. Science-based evidence of its efficacy, though, is sadly lacking, which means we are operating on faith. Magic. Placebo effect.

All I have to go on is my own subjective experience: I got well after I started seeing Dr. Tony. And that could be because I started eating protein and high quality food, taking vitamins, and drinking more water. Subjective experience cannot replace science-based objective empirical testing, no matter how loudly proponents proclaim that colonics are the cure. All the woo-woo stuff was just magical window dressing, designed to make Dr. Tony and me feel like we were sharing a mystical and precious journey toward recovered health, a journey worth the hundreds of dollars I handed over to him every few months for the past five years.

I am chagrined, embarrassed to admit I may have let myself be duped by the venerable snake oil profession. (A Ph.D. doesn't make me less gullible, apparently.) However, it wasn't all a waste. I learned some things about myself. That's always useful. I guess the nugget in this experience is the awareness that I don't have to cling to old beliefs when they outlive their usefulness. Some people would escalate their commitment when faced with this level of internal dissonance. They would refuse to examine or consider any data that could contradict their world view. (Check out this website for some hair-raising comments.) Ultimately, I can't call myself a researcher if I won't consider what the objective data are telling me. Or, in this case, the lack of objective data.

Believing in alternative medicine is kind of like believing in the existence of god. Except a lot more expensive.

I've always been on the fence. It just took me a while to decide which side of the fence to climb down. The tall man behind the curtain has been revealed. I wouldn't claim he's evil—he's a likable guy—but what I am sure of is that I no longer trust him. That's sad, but perhaps it is also evidence of optimal health.

How to choose a carpet color (when you have a cat)

Today I went in for my quarterly tune-up with Dr. Tony, the eccentric but lovable naturopath. Every visit is a new adventure. Today the presenting issue was—surprise!—hormones.

“How old are you?” he asked me hesitantly. Actually, he didn't say it like that. He said, “How many years young are you?” Then he smirked a little bit. “Are you still menstruating?”

Even on a good day, even with a good friend, I dislike any mention of women's bodily functions, but in this case, seeing as how I am fifty-seven, I can honestly say, Dude, I haven't menstruated in so many years, I don't even remember what it was like. I didn't say that out loud, though, because it's not entirely true. I do remember what it was like, but I'd prefer to forget.

“Something wacky with my hormones?” I asked, not all that interested.

“Something related to your uterus,” he replied, eliciting a grimace from me. I'll admit to having a stomach, but please, not a uterus. Quelle horror.

“And your thyroid,” he added, rubbing his hands together, a trademark sign I've come to realize means a couple things: Oh, boy, time for some fun! and Oh, boy, now I can shave another slice off my student loans!

He got out his little silver gun and laid that nearby. In case I was thinking of misbehaving. Then he went out into the office area and came back with a zip case, which held all the little glass vials that on my last visit were stashed on the floor in a plastic bag. The Total Body Modification techniques were a new part of Dr. Tony's repertoire three months ago. Today the word of the day was efficiency.

He took one of the vials and waved it around my head and down my spine. Oh, brother. Then he did some baby karate chops on my neck and shot several of my vertebrae with the silver gun, and lo, I was cured. Suddenly I felt all tingly and energized. So weird.

He gave me a homeopathic in a cute little blue bottle, and told me to take Vitamin D and Cortrex every day, and come back in three months. I'm on maintenance mode!

So, anyway, here's the rest, and the reason for the title of this post.

I came home and because I felt so full of energy, I decided to vacuum in preparation for the visit of a friend. Yes, tomorrow someone is coming over to the Love Shack. I can't do much about the old cat barf stains, but I can at least suck up the kitty litter, fur balls, and dust bunnies with my fabulous but rarely used vacuum cleaner. Within 30 seconds of switching on the machine, I began to sneeze. Hard. Repeatedly. I expected it, however, and I was armed with fresh boxes of tissue placed strategically along my path. But I always forget how long the swollen sinuses last, how incessant the post nasal drip, how dreary the headache.

Which brings me to my advice about choosing your carpet color, if you happen to have a cat. As I see it, you have several options. You can go with a dull pearl gray, which will camouflage the speckles of kitty litter that your cat tracks all over the house, no matter how many little rugs you put down in front of his box. Pearl gray is a modern neutral, guaranteed to go with any wall covering. I myself have covered my walls with shelves full of books and binders, but you might have expanses of blank wall, which can be painted virtually any color with confidence, if your carpet color choice is gray.

If gray seems too cold, you can try a warm beige tweedy tone. Walk over and look at the dry food in your cat's dish. About that color, is what I'm thinking. My cat gets a multicolored dry kibble, so me, I would choose a sort of muted confetti palette. What you want is something that can hide the stains left by the piles of cat food that your cat horks up in the middle of the night. Warm beige tones are always in style, and I've heard they are the neutral of choice if you are planning on putting your home on the market.

Your last carpet color choice would, of course, be the color of your cat's fur. I only have one cat, which should make it simpler for me. But he happens to be multicolored, sort of dark on top and lighter underneath, which means I find clumps of various hued hair all over the house. I would have to choose something like a tightly woven oriental design, where if you squinted your eyes, the piles of hair could look kind of like paisleys. You know, part of the design. I don't know what you should do if you have more than one cat, though. Maybe scatter rugs?

My cat heard me typing. He hates that. Now he's lying between my hands, purring. Actually, you could say he's dictating. What color of carpet should we get, little dude? Brrrrrowwnnnn! Well, if money were no object, meaning if I had lots of the stuff, then I would re-tile the kitchen floor with a speckley gray-on-gray linoleum, so I'd never have to sweep again. Then I would carpet the main room in something tweedy with a very low pile so barf couldn't get down into the warp and weft to rot. Finally, I would carpet the bedroom in some wild paisley print. (It wouldn't keep me awake: I can't see much without my glasses.)

And that is how you choose a carpet color when you have a cat. Did I make myself clear? If you choose your carpet color wisely, you will never have to vacuum again, thereby saving your sinuses hours of throbbing grief. You're welcome. If you found this helpful—or if you want further clarification—please tell my cat. He is looking forward to hearing from you.

At last, a reason to take a moratorium on service

My brain is full of talk talk talk, but little action seems to be forthcoming. While I wait for feedback on the second draft of my dissertation, I am once again in limbo, fretting over my future and avoiding my present. Last Tuesday I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony, for my quarterly tune-up. I never know ahead of time what diabolical new technique he will want to try out on me, but I never say no. The man saved my life, after all. Four years ago, I was slowly dying of self-imposed malnutrition. He diagnosed me, prescribed clean food and lots of water, and cheerfully signed me up for the maintenance plan. I see him every few months, and he finds in me a willing victim for his latest wacky techniques.

Maybe there should be an annual limit to how much self-improvement doctors can attempt. Every time Dr. Tony attends a class or seminar, he seems overly eager to practice his new knowledge. I presume he is practicing on everyone else, too, not just me. That would be too weird if he said, Oh boy, I can't wait until Carol comes in again, so I can try out my new vertebrae-adjusting gun on her!

Today Dr. Tony looked natty in his white jacket. As soon as the examining room door was closed, he said, “I just took a class on Total Body Modification!” rubbing his hands together with obvious glee.

I grimaced at him. I wasn't feeling particularly perky that morning, what with the low clouds and rain, the piles of mushy wet leaves, and the prospect of spending money I could not afford to spend. He looked so happy. I lay on my back on his table, peering up at his grinning face, and resigned myself to my fate. Another payment on your student loan, dude. He laid a flimsy notebook on my stomach. Then he reached for my arm. I raised it automatically—by now I am a well-trained patient—so he could muscle-test me. He eagerly flipped through the pages of the notebook while pushing on my upraised arm.

“Oh, wow,” he said with excitement. He paused. “Wait, I have to look this up.” He grabbed a heavy book off the little table under the window and paged through it. Then he bent down and grabbed something small from a bag on the floor. He held up what looked like a dinky white test tube. I couldn't see what was in it, if anything, nor what was written on the label. “This little tube contains magnetically charged bla bla that will resonate with your bla bla bla, so we can clear away the bla bla bla. Bladdity bla bla. Hold this right here.”

He handed me the tiny white vial and told me to press it to my chest. I did. He tapped my leg above the knee and I obediently raised it. “Push back.” I pushed against his hand, and my leg weakened and fell to the table. He grinned like a maniac. “See, that blows out. Okay, now sit up. I'm going to adjust the bla bla on your back. Now let me see which ones...” He turned to the book again, musing out loud. “Four, eight, and... ten.” Then he took his little silver gun and pressed the trigger against certain bones in my spine, telling me to breathe in and out.

When I laid back down on the table, still holding the vial against my chest, he tested my leg again. This time I could hold it against the pressure of his hand. Muscle-testing is weird.

“So, what that was, that was the Zeta Virus,” he informed me. “This is to clear you of suicidal ideation.”

I must have looked skeptical. “This is for people who aren't necessarily planning on committing suicide,” he reassured me. “But sometimes they find themselves driving along a road, crossing a bridge, and they wonder what it would be like, what would happen, if they suddenly were to turn the wheel...you know?”

He didn't come right out and ask me if I had entertained such morbid fantasies, but I got his drift. Well, who hasn't, that's what I want to know. I mean, don't we all, aren't we all sometimes drawn to imagine our deaths? It doesn't mean we necessarily want to die, but don't you wonder? No? Well, maybe it's not everyone. Anyway, I've been cleared of the Zeta virus now, so I don't have to obsess for a while about driving my car off a bridge. I wonder how long this cure will last? I forgot to ask.

Oddly enough, as I lay back down on the table, I felt a warm tingly feeling in my torso.

“Your eyes are brighter already,” he said rather smugly. I felt like smiling, suddenly, so I did.

“The other thing that came up for you is bla bla bla,” Dr. Tony said. He looked sidelong at me. “This is for people who do too much service, people who 'take one for the team,' you know what I mean?”

I could only stare at him in surprise. Service? Taking one for the team? Holy words, sacred words, bite your tongue, young man! I wouldn't be where I am today without intentionally cultivating an attitude of service. (That's a loaded statement, isn't it? Where do I think I am, exactly?) Of course, I didn't say anything out loud. He must have seen something in my face. “This is the self-sabotaging side of service,” he said. “Where you put everyone else's needs before your own. Like not putting on your own oxygen mask before you help your child with theirs.”

Another tiny vial, this time held on my rib cage, another muscle test, and another round of spinal shots from his silver gun, and I was pronounced cured of the affliction of excessive service. Wow. Who knew! My 12 Step compadres might be interested in this little trick.

Thus, in a matter of minutes I was cleared of suicidal tendencies and a penchant for self-sabotaging altruism. My lucky day. And it all happened in the space of 30 minutes. All in all, I received a relatively inexpensive cure for a dreary day's doldrums, plus lots of fodder for thought about the nature of self-destruction and self-sabotage through service. Oh, that wacky Dr. Tony. He's done it again.