I had to go back to the podiatrist today.  Let me preface this by saying that I have the coolest podiatrist in the world.  He is Vietnamese, but has great English language skills.  He is friendly and polite, but a little sassy too.   My favorite thing about him is that he never denies me pain medication.  As a person blessed with rheumatoid arthritis,  fibromyalgia, and all kinds of immuno-suppresant illnesses, I have never met a pain med I didn’t like. 

Today I asked him about prescribing muscle relaxers for me again, and  he didn’t even hesitate to pull out his Rx pad.  “Do you need more pain medication as well?”  Which caused me to wonder if anyone has ever said no to that question.  Now I am generally in pain, and with all of these blisters on my feet (and new ones appearing all the time) I teeter on the edge of agony…so of course I said yes.  Here’s the thing though…I take maybe one or two of the capsules on a bad day.  I don’t abuse the pain meds I have.  I have a running prescription for pain meds for my fibromyalgia and RA and that usually is enough to keep the pain at bay.  Even with this prescription for something stronger, I always fear the possibility of addiction and take as little as necessary to relieve the pain.  Still, I wonder if his other patients are as responsible with their medication.  I truly believe that he probably isn’t as free with the codeine with other patients as he is with me.  He knows that I have worked for a surgeon and an optometrist in the past and that I have a true fear of becoming addicted to pain pills.  He knows that I am not going to get in any trouble with this prescription.  In my mind though, I see a granny in a surgical boot slugging back some Oxycontin with a Ripple chaser. 

The other thing that cracks me up is when they ask you on a scale of 1 to 10 (one being very little pain and ten being the worst pain that you could imagine) what is your pain level?  What possible good does that really do?  First of all, I could lie.  Secondly my one might be anothers five.  Basically all pain is relative and all relatives are pains.  I think the worst pain I have ever had was when they set my broken ankle without giving me any pain medication at all.  I would definitely classify that as a ten.  A one might be a deep splinter.  Boppy, on the other hand, shrieks at the thought of having a wart frozen off his foot.  He was gritting his teeth and clenching his butt like you wouldn’t believe. If I had had a lump of coal that day, he could have produced a diamond.   He told me he almost thought he wasn’t going to be able to stand it.  A wart?  Really?  My point being…if anyone had asked him at that point if he would like a prescription for pain medication his response would have been an emphatic “Yes!”  When The Precious was being born we hurried to the hospital to await his arrival.  Upon entering the hospital room I saw my non-vag. daughter curled into a fetal position, eyes closed, holding the hand of my son.  We had brought him lunch so he pried his hand loose to go eat and upon telling him that the smell of his lunch was making her nauseated and would he please get away from her, she clamped onto mine.  If you had asked her then she would have told you that her pain level was a ten.  That is, if you could have gotten her to speak at all.  Twenty minutes later she was sitting up in bed, talking and laughing.  All the pain lines and frown creases were gone and she was writing sonnets to the anesthetist who had given her the epidural that was responsible for her incredible mood swing.  My hand, however,  has never been the same.

I used to think I wanted to be a doctor.  I still love all the medical ins and outs.  I love anatomy and physiology.  I love researching the symptoms of an illness and trying to see if I can diagnose it before the doctor does.  I’m right about 75% of the time.  I can do CPR.  I can give shots.  I feel certain that if I had to I could deliver a baby, but the one thing that I would never want to do is to determine how much pain someone is in.  It would be so easy to prescribe narcotics to a junkie without even realizing it.  I think one of the most important things that doctors do is to read their patients.  All of my doctors are great at what they do, and when I say “all” that is an extensive list.  Everyone from my GP to my podiatrist is very sympathetic to all of my aches and pains, and I think that is because they know that I have this very real fear of becoming dependent on pain medication.  I tend to under take them rather than abuse them.  My hubby loves to tell me to stay ahead of the pain, but that is impossible when your pain is chronic…you just learn to deal.

Anyway, back to today…my doctor used a syringe to withdraw fluid from the largest of the new blisters and sent the sample in to the lab to make sure that it is normal fluid.  He bandaged all of my many blisters and sent me to have blood drawn to see if the previous medications were doing anything to bring down my RA count and told me to come back in two weeks.  That is an improvement.  I have been being seen once weekly.  In two weeks we will be able to tell if the Methotrexate is bringing my numbers down.  Of course, if something happens or if I need to have more blisters drained, I will go back earlier.  I am still just thankful that it is summer (so I can go barefoot or wear sandals) and that all of the blisters are on the tops of my feet.

Until then it is back to what passes for normal around here.  Which basically means I am just waiting to see what new hell my body will put me through next.  There is a reason that I get along so well with all my doctors…I see them more often than I see my family.  I am the only person I know whose doctors hug them when they come into the exam room.   Building a relationship like that is necessary when your very existence depends on them…trust me.  I should know.  I’ve been to three doctors in the last three days!

Happy Birthday!  You made it through another year.  Good for you!  To still be getting around at your age is quite a remarkable feat.  I have been concerned ever since they got rid of mom’s rascal, that you might need it, but there you are.  Standing on your own two feet.  You see I’ve been concerned that all of that baggage you are carrying might weigh you down.  You finally got your James Bond Racing Set, but I have a strong feeling that there is so much more resentment that needs to be released.  Personally, I keep waiting for you to go postal.

I remember the first time we met.  You liked me then.  You didn’t know that your brother would marry me and that I would battle you for the title of family smart-ass.  I love the gentle quips we trade.  The humor that is lost on so many is not lost on you.  We are a lot alike you and I.  I am a wise ass. You are a wise ass.  I love gross medical stuff and google everything medical that I can, and you are just the same.  We have a lot in common my friend…except that age thing.  You are old, and I am not.  (There’s also a slight difference in height, but I’ll keep that to myself, Shorty).  You probably couldn’t imagine all those years ago when you were holding your baby brother, that he would marry someone closer to your age than his.  You’ve handled that well, by the way.  Much better than most members of the families.  You became instant uncle to three of the most unruly, mouthy kids on the planet and you’ve never smacked them once.  I’ve smacked your kid any number of times.  You obviously are endowed with great patience.

I don’t have a ton of stories about your childhood and what kind of kid you were because Boppy wasn’t around then to rat you out and Grandpa isn’t talking.  I do have pictures of you in that bitchin’ hat when you were somewhere around 12.  I can tell from that picture that you were a total playa.  I envision you as a Sinatra fan…although he was just a child when you were born.  The hat however, is totally Frankie.  I know that you were such a frightening child that mom and dad hung up their hats for several years before trying again. I know you were a young parent (not as young as me, but I’ve always been an over achiever), I know you were the President of the Chamber of Commerce in some podunk towns in Iowa and Illinois…guess you couldn’t get a nomination in a real state.  I know that you gave up big city life to run a trout resort in another podunk town (hoping for a C of C post?),  I will never forget the Christmas you held us all hostage while you droned on and on about how life had kicked you in the ass.  You listed every gross injustice you suffered from the beginning of your life through to the then current day.  In your opinion it all began with that damned James Bond Race Track.  Thanks for showing my children that you can grow old without growing up.  It is a lesson they learned well.  But the thing I know the most about you is that you would do anything you could for the people you love…and you have always made me feel that I could count myself among them.

Happy Birthday!!  I hope you get up the wind to blow out all those candles…but knowing how windy you are I am not too worried.  Don’t set off any smoke alarms!  Here’s wishing you a great day…which for a man your age should include a glass of prune juice with which to take his Viagra.

There are times in your life when you are just shocked.  In my case it’s usually because I had something come out of my mouth that I was totally unprepared for.  People are always amazed by my personal observations and the fact that I share them so freely, but I’m not the only one who says shocking things.  Several members of our family are very vocal.  I know my dad always said what was on his mind…sometimes too loudly, but it was my mother who shocked me most recently.

I was sitting at my mother’s on Saturday.  I had come for a visit after the long trip.  We had been to the fruit orchard to get some produce.  We had gone to my aunt’s house to see how she was doing (and also to scavenge some things from their garden).  We had moved her furniture around a bit so that she could more easily access her computer, and after all of that we were sitting and chatting.  Now my mother has always been able to start a conversation in the middle of a sentence.  I clearly recall a time when we were sitting in silence and out of the blue she says “yes, I was telling your daddy just the other day…”  I looked around to see if someone else had entered the room and she was telling them about some incident.  I feared that I had gone temporarily deaf and then had my hearing restored after the other person had spoken or in the middle of a grand enlightening.  But on this day she started the conversation in the right place, just in the wrong way.  “You know, if I could find a good Christian man for companionship, I think that would be nice.  I’m not looking or anything, but if that happened it would be nice.”  Some part of me was thinking about that deaf thing again, and really hoping that was the case…I mean not that I had gone deaf…but that I would…quickly!  The mature and supportive daughter side of me smiled and said “that would be nice.”

I remember the sinking feeling I had when I realized at 17 that I was going to be a mom.  I remember where I was when the Challenger went down in flames.  I remember being shocked by John Lennon’s assassination, and the many times I said things and then wondered if I looked as shocked as the people I was speaking to.  That look of abject terror, total surprise, and wishing you could rewind time has been a constant companion of mine.  This time however it wasn’t my mouth that was spewing unbelievable crap…it was my mother.  I felt like that smile was plastered on my face for hours while my brain was trying to think of an appropriate response.  Instead of screaming out “what the hell are you even saying?” my brain said I had to be the voice of reason.  So while I was saying how okay I was with what she was saying my head is going…”what are the odds?”  Then last Sunday some old dude hit on my mother.  It was kind of funny actually.  Apparently they met in the parking lot, found out they shared a Sunday school class, and talked a little bit more before church.  It was then that she learned that he went to Arizona every winter, and mother got a little worked up over that.  She said she wasn’t having any part of that.  She wouldn’t leave her kids for that long or over the holidays.  Do you see where I get my active imagination?  My mother already had them married and traveling to Arizona and she had just met him that morning.   At least I guess they were married…I kinda assumed they weren’t going to be shacking up but then again I never thought she would talk about marriage after my father died either.

Now all joking aside, there is an outside chance that she just told me all of this to point out how lonely she is.  It may have been a subtle nudge that I could be coming over more often.  Bless her heart though, she has my older sister coming over at noon for lunch and then again after work for dinner.  Plus, she told my sister about finding a companion too.  I try to go to see her 2 or 3 times a week and call every day.  I am doing the best I can.  I have a family to take care of.  I did have a thought though, you see I’ve got my eye on a greeter down at Wal-Mart.  He looks to be about 80 or so.  He seems nice enough, which is to say he always hands me a cart and says “welcome to Wal-Mart.”  He has a job and probably drives at night.  I’ve seen him there in the winter months as well as the summer so he stays local.  I haven’t noticed a ring, so I’m thinking about whispering in his ear that if he is a Christian man, I’ve got a woman for him, and if not and he can fake it, I’ll still hook him up…as long as there’s no pookie-pookie.  There’s an image I don’t need in my head.  I kind of knew the day might come when I would have to help care for my parent’s.  I sure didn’t know that would include being their pimp.  Now every time she smiles at some old geezer at Wal-Mart, the gas station, or any of the other places we go I’m going to have to worry about what her intentions are.  To quote The Precious “Ewwwwww!!”