Tag Archives: surgery

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Doctor!  Doctor!

This growing old shit is not for the faint of heart.  Even just Stayin’ Alive can become a full-time job.  I recently read a post from a young woman who complained that she had two doctors’ appointments in one day – and then she went for a workout at the gym.  It is possible, but not likely, that they were both with the same doctor.

Damned amateur!!  For those whose idea of excitement is perusing a long list of medical appointments and whines – Read on Mac Duff!

MONDAY – The worst
I took the wife to see her GP.  I insist on using that term.  Clinics and medical labs use the term ‘Family doctor.’  She has one.  The son and I have another.  They both treat “Families,” just not this family.  This visit was not medical.  It was administrative.
The polyp in her duodenum that was removed two years ago, has regrown.  We hadn’t heard anything from the specialist in Toronto who was going to operate, until we got a Sayonara Suckers email from him, telling us that he’s moving to Vancouver to practice.  Since it’s been precisely located and identified, the less-than-specialist in Cambridge feels that he can handle it.  We await an appointment.

Her dentist found a lesion on one side of the wife’s tongue.  A local Oral Surgeon snipped out enough for three stitches, and a biopsy.  It might have been Hyperkeratosis, a callus-like thickening of tissue.  (Insert shrewish housewife joke here.)  It was Dysplasia, a modification of cells that isn’t, but could become, cancer.
We were sent 75 miles to an Oro/Fascia/Maxillary Surgeon.  He felt that it extended too far back into the throat and ligament, and suggested an ENT.  The GP referred the wife to a local one who is probably the best in the Province.  We hadn’t got an appointment, so we asked the doctor to check.  The computer file showed that the ENT had declined, because his wait-list is 4 years.  He suggested 3 or 4 other names.  The GP wanted to know, if she couldn’t contact a local one, would we be willing to travel 75 miles east again, to Hamilton, or 75 miles West, to London.  As long as somebody does something, soon.

TUESDAY
We both had an appointment with our new Osteopath, because our last one decided to practice from her home, 20 miles away.

WEDNESDAY

We both had appointments with our Optometrist.  They already had to be delayed and rescheduled three weeks later.  The wife had her lenses with cataracts removed, and new, plastic lenses inserted about six months ago.  An emergency visit later showed that, as often happens, not all the organic matter was flushed out of the sacs, and it combined and grew like ivy, clouding her vision.  Only last week, she spent a half a day at the hospital, having it burned out with a laser.  Both her sight and mine are better than they were a year ago.

THURSDAY

Both the wife and daughter put their best foot forward, and I took them to their Podiatrist.

FRIDAY

It was the car’s turn for a service visit at the dealer.  The son dropped it off at 8:00 AM after work, and was Uber-ed home.  It was both his, and the driver’s, first Uber trip.  I was Uber-ed back to pick it up in the afternoon.  I have ridden in a few electric cars, although not a Tesla, yet.  Even including Toronto taxis, this was my first ride with a dash cam – front-facing, cabin and audio.

The week was so busy that neither of us had time for a workout at the gym.   😳

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J U X T A P O S I T I ON, Too

Once upon a time, I published a post about

JUXTAPOSITION

a word which has come to mean the vivid, visual disorientation of viewing two, very different things, beside, or near each other.  The examples I gave, were a tiara on a pig, and a Rembrandt, hanging in a Port-A-Potty.  I was recently exposed to a Canadian case in point.

I had to take the wife to an Oral Surgery and Maxillofacial Clinic, 75 miles away, in Canada’s dark, dirty, dingy, rough and none-too-ready steel city.  When we finally arrived, after navigating the bewildering downtown maze of one-way streets, I was suitably impressed with the magnificent little edifice.

It was relatively brand-new – perhaps 5 years old.  It was clean, and neat, with swaths of well-polished glass, shiny stainless steel trim, and Carrera marble.  You’ll have to take my word for it, because I could not locate any online external images of the place.  It’s almost as if they are ashamed of their neighborhood, and don’t want to scare off any potential customers.

I can’t say that it’s in a ‘Bad Neighborhood.’  It’s about normal for this place.  The street in front looks feels like it’s maintained by the Ukrainian Paving Company.  Cheek by jowl with, and across the street from it, are an ‘Adult Theater’, tattoo parlor, Payday Loan Company, cannabis dispensary, Moe’s Cavern dive bar, and Bob’s Pizza (Hiring delivery drivers.)

I stayed at a motel in a neighborhood like this, north of Detroit, and it had an armed security guard, but this is Canada, where guns are banned – except for criminals – and muggers have to say please, thank you, and sorry.

Ten years from now – or twenty – gentrification will have set in, and it will be surrounded by doctors’ offices, and spas, and tony salons, but right now, it sticks out like the only unsore thumb.

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(continue last year’s anti-Festival Of Conspicuous Consumption Christmas rant here)

Canada’s celebration of Yuletide commercial excess continues to match, and even exceed, the USA.  Local radio stations and store Muzak play-lists switched to All Christmas All The Time back at Thanksgiving – but that’s CANADIAN Thanksgiving, in late October.

I was recently in a store where I heard Driving Home For Christmas, and thought, “It’s your own damned fault.  If you hadn’t got yourself on a terrorist watch, and No-Fly list, you wouldn’t have to drive.”

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Unfamiliar Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 thought it “Sounds familiar” a while ago. Go on, whack me with your silliness………….

1. What is a paddywhack?

That’s a drunken Irishman, being taught some manners, down at the local pub.

2.  What is a goujon?

That was the special grey mustard that the Toph in the Rolls-Royce didn’t have.

3.  What is a bichon frise?

That’s me, complaining that a little open-heart surgery has changed my favorite chips from being made with real potatoes, and fried in real oil, to being bought, frozen, from the supermarket, and run through an air fryer.

4.  What is a botanist?

An ace special-effects technician who is highly skilled at conceiving and building android creations for science-fiction movies.

5.  What is meant by jocular?

It’s a collective group of ‘Lost Boys’ who grew too large to remain in Never Neverland.  Now they ride race horses.

6.  What is a reamer?

It’s the first new boyfriend of a fellow who just came out of the closet.

7.  What is couscous?

That’s the wife, trying to tell the cat that she’s put out some soft food.

8.  What does it mean to chortle?

Chortle means to silence an entitled Karen.  Various methods are available, depending on the presence of potential witnesses.  Like the Valley-girl speech of a few years ago – Gag me with a spoon,  Don’t tempt me, bitch!

9.  What is a niblick?

That’s a midnight snack that I try to conceal from the warden wife.

10. What is lancing?

It’s a small city in Michigan, where no-one knows how to spell.

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Second Millennium

THIS IS MY 2000TH POST

Big deal, I know a couple of bloggers who have reached 10,000.  I console myself by claiming that they are the WordPress equivalent of Post It notes, 50/75 word posts about themes and memes and blog prompts.  I like to think that mine have a little more body and content.

I recently passed my 13th WordPress anniversary – almost thirteen years of dutiful, self-imposed, three-per-week, Monday/Wednesday/ Friday blogposts.  Like many other long-term bloggers, I seem to have just run out of things to write about.  Even when I do come up with a new blog theme, I don’t seem to have the strength, the stamina, the concentration, the creativity, or the dedication to get it composed and posted on time.  That’s why so many “Monday” A To Z Challenges slid to Wednesday – I needed two extra days to get them finished.

It may be partly because of my continued aging – it may be partly the result of major surgery – it may be partly because of ingesting multitudinous medications (The pharmacy sent me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY Card.), but as Uncle Albert says, “I’m So Easy Called Away.”

I may have to do what several other long-term bloggers have done.  I may have to reduce – but not eliminate, for now – the number of my posts.  What the CBers used to call Sani-Bagging – reading other people’s posts and picking up their garbage, without spreading any much of my own.

So far, I seem to be able to keep up with Fibbing Fridays.  Sometimes a little late, but I publish A To Z Challenges.  After over ten years of providing jokes and humor, I’m having problems finding more that suits three-digit IQs.  Adult humor doesn’t need to have sex in it.  My output may diminish somewhat, but please keep stopping by.

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Smitty’s Loose Change #27

What’s the first impression that you want to give people?
That I am aloof, and unapproachable.

What colleges have you attended?
Quite a few, but the list is dwindling because of the restraining orders.

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What’s your favorite month of the year?  Why?
Not that I’m Jewish, but it’s the holy Jewish month of Sukkoth.  Being a Jewish month, it’s only a week long, but it has an admonition about not doing any work, something I can really get behind – and take a nap.

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Having survived cardiac surgery, I still check my blood pressure when I stop into the pharmacy to pick up my multitudinous medications.  Most recently, I registered 114/63, with a 60 pulse rate – no more pounding and straining, and racing.  I hope the person who used the machine before me was there to pick up their blood-pressure meds.  Their numbers were 195/101/68.  No flu shot for them that day.  One paper cut, and it would be all over the walls.   😮

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About half of the US is champing at the bit to install a dictator, and to usher in a new age of Fascism.  They may succeed.   😮

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I recently observed an AI voice-to-text program that apparently was coded in Woke
A policeman, in speech, became a police officer in text.
The Right to talk, changed to proper.
Questioning, became asking enquiries.
Answered back, changed to fired returned.
Seemed, became was to appear.

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Watching Constitutional-rights videos is a constant source of humor and amazement.  People will trudge from the furthest, back corner of a parking lot, directly up to a person on a public sidewalk with a camera, and announce that they don’t want to be recorded.  They will declare that it is illegal, and cannot be done without permission.  To prove their claim, they will then pull out their cellphone, and record the cammer, in public, and without their permission.  They will approach, within arm’s-length, of people that they then describe as weird, strange, suspicious, and dangerous.  One woman walked up  and recorded, and demanded identification from, a man that she then accused of being a Terrorist.

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To prove that it is a smart thing to See no evil, Hear no evil, and Speak no evil, and to add to his collection, someone gave the son a set of wise young owls as a Christmas present.

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’24 A To Z Challenge – P

A minor little thing like a heart operation caused me to lose my A to Z challenge sequence, and miss the posts for the letters N and O.  Am I going to go back and fill them in??

N  O

Am I going to forge ahead with a post for the letter P??

POSSIBLY

So many interesting P words – so few functioning brain cells.

Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl in the bathroom??
Because the P is silent.

The same as ptarmigan – surely, an Inuit word, because it means
any of several grouses of the genus Lagopus, of mountainous and cold northern regions, having feathered feet.
But wait, it came from – 1590–1600; pseudo-Greek spelling of Scots Gaelic tarmarchan, akin to Irish tarmanach

TWO P OR NOT TWO P

I leave you with a strange little word with two, different non-P pronunciations

PHOTOPTARMOSIS

Sneezing caused by the influence of light – a minor affliction suffered by my mother and I, and probably many others.  Researchers still are not sure of the exact cause or causes.  One doctor suggested the possibility of thin sinus walls.  The sunlight might penetrate, and cause blood vessels to swell, triggering the sneeze reflex.

😎

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The Better Religion

LOSS OF ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL WILL BE KEENLY FELT

What a sad demise for St. Mary’s General Hospital, and for the community.  St. Mary’s has a valued history, and was originally administered and staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton. Many people who need hospital care still prefer St. Mary’s over the now Grand River Hospital, and yet St. Mary’s is the one to close.  Monetary decisions seem to override patient care and community input.

I don’t know what the Op-Ed letter-writer’s problem is, but it almost certainly is not what she implies in her letter.  The building is not going to be torn down and disappear.  It will remain a hospital for another ten years, and become a specialty medical facility after that.

It does not provide superior medical care simply because it was founded by a Christian organization.  That myth was put to rest decades back.  The nuns and the Catholic Church gave it up in 1989, and it became city-owned and run.  Some years ago, I rushed my wife there with an apparent exploded gall bladder.  While staff quickly ferried her upstairs to surgery, I remained below to officially register her.

I reached a spot on the admission form marked “Religion,” and entered N/A.  The clerk insisted that I had to fill it in, so that if my wife died, they would know whether to send a priest, or a preacher.  I told her that if my wife died while in their care, they’d better send a lawyer.

Soon after that, the elitist, divisive, US-vs.-THEM, my religion is better than yours, even when what you really need is medical care drivel, quietly disappeared.

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SECULAR ADDENDUM:

Like the letter writer, and many others, I also prefer its less-stressful, small-town feel and service, to the huge, confusing, impersonal hospital across town.  It’s where I went for my eye surgery, my bone density test, and my angina stress test and cardiac treatment.  However….

It sits in the center of a large, oval traffic circle, at the top of a hill, with vehicles whizzing by on all sides, in a dense residential area.  It has no room to expand, or for parking.  Patients, visitors, ambulances, taxis, police, and delivery vehicles have trouble getting to it, and safely leaving.  Money is hardly the prime concern for alteration.  People’s lives – their health and wellbeing, their safety and medical provisions – are increasingly at risk.  Something must change, despite all the feel-good nostalgia.

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Fine Fibbing Friday

Questions to Pensitiviy101 last week were from Melissa: How would you define these?

  1. Ambidexter

This is a porn-watcher who can switch hands without missing a stroke.

  1. Blatherskite

A husband is helping his son try to fly a kite on a windy day, but it keeps crashing to the ground.  His helpful wife yells out the door, “Henry, you need more tail.”  He yells back, “Make up your mind.  Last night you told me to go fly a kite.”

  1. Breviloquent

No idea!

  1. Crapulence

Porta-Potties at outdoor concerts.

  1. Graumangere

That’s a person who eats French oatmeal.

  1. Grimoire

A sad biography, written by someone diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

  1. Illaudible

When your employer hires a motivational speaker to give a talk about Better Communication Through Better Attention And Respect For Others, and you can’t hear a word he’s saying because of all the shop talk and office gossip.  I’ve recommended that the break room coffee be changed to decaf.

  1. Podsnappery

That’s an entry-level job on the frozen pea line at the Green Giant packing plant.  If you do well, you can move up to armed cobbery.

  1. Poetaster

This is someone who is reading The Raven for the first time – Once upon a midnight dreary.

  1. Polemic

This is like a Zumba exercise class, but for young women learning to be strippers.

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Blog Prompt: Do You Have Any Collections?

OH BROTHER, DO I EVER!!

This getting old shit is not for the faint of heart.  I have often whined said that I had to retire, just to have the time to drive the wife and I to all our medical appointments.  With all the medical advancements, she and I are working on accumulating a complete set of medical practitioners to keep us alive and mostly pain-free, if not exactly happy and healthy.

She and I have different GP’s, because our family doctor fired her because she was too needy, and the MD who took over the practice would not accept her back.  She and I have a common Chiropractor, and an Osteopath..  She and the daughter share the same Podiatrist.  She and I have the same dentist, but I have to drive the handicapped daughter across town, because our clinic will not deal with Government-funded clients.

I am on the client list of an Orthopedic surgeon, who installed my bionic shoulder, after I fell off my motorcycle.  He also replaced both the wife’s knees.  I have a thoracic surgeon who is monitoring my navel hernia.  I have a Urologist who monitors and prescribes for my swollen prostate.  The wife has a Nephrologist (kidney specialist) who monitors her under-functioning kidneys.  She must have lit a fire under the wife’s laissez-faire GP.  Suddenly, she was referred to the Stroke Detection and Prevention Clinic, a vascular clinic, and she got an echocardiogram at the same Cardiac clinic, but a month earlier than I was seen for my angina.  To chase ongoing, mild anemia, she was also referred to a Hematology clinic.

I’m still on the books, but I doubt that I will ever again see the neurologist who diagnosed my eye problem, some years ago.  He pulled a Bill Cosby, and is currently on trial for molesting 50+ young females.  He referred me to an Ocular surgeon at the eye hospital in London, Ontario, who did a retina tack.  Soon after, a local Ophthalmologist replaced my left lens.  Later, she replaced both the wife’s lenses, and recently, my right one.  The wife and daughter and I all attend the same Optometrist.  The wife still (occasionally) wears her hearing aids, but I gave mine up.  The better to ignore you with, my dear.

The wife used to visit a Physiatrist – a pain-management specialist – but he says he’s done all he can.  A local Gastroenterologist diagnosed the wife’s duodenal polyp, and referred her to another GI guy in Toronto to remove it endoscopically.  He passed the task off to yet another, young, female endo-surgeon at a different hospital.  Along the way, we’ve made the acquaintance of a smattering of anesthetists.

Twice, the wife has spent overnight at a sleep-study clinic for her apnea, so that the Government would fund a CPAP machine.  We have a firm which provides, maintains, and electronically monitors it, notifying her doctor if any serious change is noted.  After the wife’s fall, a medical supply firm came to the house and installed a bed-rail, and get-up arms on the toilet.  I installed a handicap rail on the adjacent wall.

Damn!  Ignoring the psychiatric section – perhaps not much longer – there are not many medical fields that we don’t cover.  Still, it beats the alternative.  Excelsior!  😀

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Spinning a Yarn FF

Last week’s Fibbing Friday questions were provided by Jim Adams
https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/

Thanks Jim.

 

1.Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold in exchange for what?

Bitcoin.

2. What did humans do before the bobbin was invented?

The drunken sport of getting apples out of a tub of water without using your hands, involved spears.

3. What is the difference between knitting and crocheting?

In crocheting, you can’t use the cutesy pun, TINKing to describe unknitting stitches to correct a mistake.

4. What does a drop spindle do?

Dispenses liquid dough into hot oil, at the doughnut-ball fair food kiosk.

5. What does a painted pony have to do with a spinning wheel?

George Dubya said that he tried marijuana, but he didn’t inhale.  Barack Obama was honest enough to admit that he inhaled.  THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!  If you can quote 1969 lyrics, you didn’t inhale, you didn’t drop out, and you didn’t drop acid – which might explain a painted pony.

Pedantic BTW:  The Blood, Sweat & Tears song doesn’t sing about a yarn-making spinning-wheel.  It refers to the constantly-spinning Wheel of Life.

6. If you stick a needle in your eye, does that show sincerity?

I have never seen the word Stupidity spelled like that.  I have let four doctors, on three occasions, stick needles in my eyes.  I Can See Clearly Now.

7. What was Barthélemy Thimonnier known for?

He was the famous opera singer that the Singer sewing machine was named after.  It was a much better marketing ploy.  Just imagine owning a Thimonnier.

8. What happened in the Golden Age of sewing?

Special clothing was made for King Midas.

9. What breed of sheep makes the best wool?

It’s a breed called “Pittsburgh,” developed by US Steel on a farm just outside the city.  My mother used the yarn to knit a Volkswagen.

10. What happens when the cotton field gets rotten?

You’d better not get sick.  You won’t be able to get medications out of their containers, because you can’t pick very much cotton.