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Since the cataract surgery I'm beginning to think that perhaps getting blind in one's dotage is a good thing. I saw myself in a way today that I'd prefer not to have occurred. It was myself in a brightly lit mirror in one of the men's rooms at the VA Hospital in Durham that did the trick. With my new eyes I saw that I have indeed become a wretched looking old man. Still, without option, I gotta take it straight up.
There is a couple of mirrors here in this house of horrors I built. Apparently as a mausoleum. A smaller mirror that is essentially a Wal-Mart special I bought one day thinking I could move it around to a good light, and actually see what's become of me over the years. People lie. I needed to know for myself. Now I do. Damn!
There is a larger mirror in the bathroom that came with a chest of drawers I inherited from my mother's furniture. Despite the seedy, rundown condition of it's frame, it's a fair quality mirror. I have a jury-rigged overhead light in this room that's only there for the sole purpose of seeing my way to the commode at night.
There are two ceiling-to-floor windows in the adjoining room on the south side of the house, and a large open doorway that provides light to the bathroom during the day. But, there is never enough light in that room to allow me to take a good look at myself from top to bottom. Besides, I stopped really looking at anything with the onset of the cataracts. I couldn't really see the objects of the world anymore, why bother to look?
It's a handful to attempt to describe how I moved through the world more blind that I had dreamed of. I know that when I was driving my car I went everywhere by some sort of memory system. Like the note I wrote earlier about change not being what I bet the farm on, but on what didn't change, that guided my hands on the wheel and my foot on the brake.
I didn't recognize people by what they currently came across as in real time. It might seem obvious that I would try to gain recognition through the sound of their voice, but I'm legally deaf too. I felt very foolish when I paid $700 plus shipping for a pig-in-a-poke gadget, copy-righted as a Neurophone. It's inventor claimed that by using it that a person could learn to hear through their skin. It's occasionally paid off for me to be this kind of foolish.
No, it wasn't by sight or sound that I somehow maneuvered my way through the physical world as I got older, and then older still. Today, on my drive to Durham I sang some vowels to bring my focus to my voice. It might have been the best decision I made all day. I sang the vowels to open up the resonance of my voice. Speech is mind. Mind is speech.
It's probably true that I don't listen to what a person says to get my clues on how to respond. I listen to how they say it. It doesn't matter to me what they say. Everybody says anything that's convenient to get across their intent. What a person chooses to say from all that is possible will still be known, and therefore unknowable.
Sometime the people I converse with sense that I'm not listening to what they say, and that has political consequences that don't facilitate getting to the null point where anything is possible, but in the dimension of how, not what.
The doctor I've seen the last couple of appointments at the arthritis clinic wasn't there today. She had a good excuse. She had a baby since I saw her last. It doesn't matter. I hope she got the baby she wanted. I've been through four or five doctors as my primary clinician since I got sent there for a final diagnosis. They're all on a fellowship program to become specialists in Rheumatology.
It doesn't matter which MD they assign my case to. Nobody knows how to cure rheumatoid arthritis, much less the regular, less drastic kind of arthritis called osteopathic arthritis... or some such. About the only thing any of the doctors can do about these autoimmune diseases, and all other autoimmune diseases is to treat the symptoms, and pray for an easy death.
The VA Administration feeds the teaching hospitals and universities with veterans for them to do what they will. No harm. No foul. VA hospitals can be scary places to visit. Those places reeks with unlimited examples of man's inhumanity to man. It is hard to sit in practically any waiting room without body parts from every aspect of a human missing, and many times, multiply so. Even so, many laugh at themselves.
I was attended to today by two doctors, both Fellows. Their relationship appeared to be that of a more experienced doctor, and a newbie learning the ropes. Both were licensed general MDs who were trying to take the high road. They felt me up and used their stethoscopes on me simultaneously. They seemed befuddled. Particularly the more senior one.
At least he told me what all was considered wrong with me, but concluded that all my illnesses paled before the rheumatoid arthritis. He practically guaranteed me I would eventually get several types of cancer and diabetes, and that I should seriously entertain the future replacement of my knee joints, and that could happen anytime.
I was rather amazed at what he said. He was not happy that I questioned his diagnosis due to the fact that I walk and climb stairs practically everyday. I accused him of using hypnosis to cause his diagnosis to come true. They left the consulting room looking for their supervisor. They took their time.
Soon enough, however, the "boss" doctor came in the room, positioned himself before me in an easy, non-threatening manner, and asked me what was going on. The only thing I talked about was how I'd spent a couple of hours yesterday researching the term "undue haste". That's all it took.
He figured it out, and assured me they would not change my prescriptions for the next four months, but I had to return in two months for extensive lab work. Okay? Sure, but will I get travel pay like a regular appointment?
The older, more experienced doctors can get pithy with me and we both enjoy it. I can only resist their omnipotence in small ways. My life is at stake. They know. I refuse to let them use me as a guinea pig or as a teaching tool at the expense of my questionable, yet vulnerable self-respect.
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