Ranting, Venting, and Sundry Issues...

    Great, leaping, sweet, gay Moses!

    Today, my hands feel as though they spent the night having an anvil dropped on top of them again and again and again.  Obviously, this can only mean one thing:  I'm definitely due for another wonderful Remicade infusion, and, after checking my calendar, I can see that I get poked and plugged in this coming Friday.

    Has it been eight weeks already? 

    The funny thing is, I can always tell when I am due, and for the last two weeks, I've begun to notice things really getting inflamed, swollen, and pretty damn sore.  It's certainly distracting as I try to do my scribbling yet find myself focusing more upon the fact that typing is slowly turning into a painful little chore.  Then, before I know it, the thoughts of these aches consumes me, and I can't get a damn thing done other than write about them in the hope of finding a suitable catharsis.  Then, I have to abandon the writing because it just hurts to damned bad to type, and I'm left to just stew with my thoughts and misery.

    I suppose things would be better if the rheumatologist who put me on this stuff wasn't such an ambivalent robot of a woman.  Here's a hypothetical based on some of our recent conversations:
    "Hi doctor," I said not too long ago.  "I think if I went for these infusions every six weeks instead of eight, I'd not have this weird little urge to throttle the life out of you."
    "Nope."  She responded.  "I think you need to go eight weeks because I'm the doctor here, and I know things that you don't."
    "Okay.  Do you know that after six weeks, this stuff, which barely works to begin with, is pretty much is gone from my system, and I'm once again back to where I started?"
    "No," she said.  "But I know other things."
    "Like what?"
    "Math," she said.  "Watch!  I will add to your dosage, and I will do some tricky math to raise it by 200mg." 
    "Astounding!"
    "That's why I'm the doctor."
   
    The really annoying thing comes when she asks the arbitrary question, "on a scale of one to ten, how bad does it hurt?"

    I always laugh at the question, and I tend to sit there with a blank stare and just ask "where does drinking a lot of whiskey for breakfast so I can get out of bed fall on that scale of yours?" 
    "Okay, so that's a ten?"
    "No.  I think it's a nine.  A ten would be driving over here after breakfast and clubbing you with the empty bottle."
    "So, it's a nine, but you're just not making the face like I have on this cute little chart?  See?  That face is what a nine is supposed to look like."
    "Would it help if I make that face?"
    "It probably would."
    "Your diagnostic skills are astounding."
    "It's an art, really."
    "Yeah," I said.  "It's art that looks like it was crafted by a third-grader with a torturous home life.  But, look!  I can make that face."  [grimace]  "Is that a ten?"
   
    It's frustrating, and I figure, at this point, the doctor is pretty much better off just asking me how the weather is outside as opposed to any health-related questions since, when I answer them, they just get shrugged off anyway.  That is, unless, she asks, "on a scale of one to ten, how's the weather outside?"

    So, to make a long story short, I suppose things here may be somewhat slow this week as I find myself dealing with some of these annoying aches and doing things to avoid making these aches worse.   But, I will try to post when I can. 

-DP