Lesser of the Great Wild Goose Chases Around Robin Hood's Barn

I have this stubborn bacterial infection that just escaped going to the pneumonia that my wife has. Maybe, though, I have pneumonia as well. We had the same symptoms, but they took her chest X-rays and I wasn't zapped.

It doesn't matter, we're taking the same antibacterial and we got the same instructions - rest and drink plenty of liquids.

Now my wife just had a knee replacement and she has to have a caretaker. That be me. I don't have the luxury of chilling' out like my old cat, Mark.

Part of the impossibility to just sit down and rest are the doctors themselves. We are like Old McDonald's Medical Practitioners Farm, "Here a Doctor, There a Doctor, Everywhere a Doc-Doctor".  Yesterday I described our great lost in the wilderness of Ogletown-Stanton adventure of survival and yesterday I thought I was safe and secure in my living room armchair. I had a cup of coffee and was watching this horror movie, really unbelievable stuff, about these aliens running for President of the United States. It was bizarre and frightening stuff. There was this gentle brain sturgeon trying to get a word in edge wise, some big bully with very strange hair, a bend old man who seem to control a gang of teenagers, a woman barking like a dog among other strange and varied creatures...even the Pope popped-in; like I said, a really fantastic movie. I don't know where these scriptwriters come up with this stuff. Makes you glad it couldn't be real.

Anyway, the Physical Therapist came to torture my wife about then. Pain is unfortunately part of the healing process and the exercises are designed to stretch the leg to the limits so it will become normal again. This hurts and the pain can linger, which it had and kept her awake the night before. When we were at the orthopedist's on Wednesday, once we found him, he had asked if she needed renewed pain pills. She decided she could tough it out and said no.

Oh, I came to regret that no.

She told the Physical Therapist yesterday morning that she had changed her mind and wanted the pain pills. The Therapist, given my wife's pain pain level, agreed this was a good idea and the Therapist called the Orthopedist's office and told the secretary. Our concern was this is a controlled substance and might require a physical appearance at the druggist with script in hand, but the secretary told us the regulation had just changed and the doctor could call it in to the pharmacy. She did have to have the doctor do this, however, and he was in surgery. The Therapist told us to follow up with the pharmacy after 2:00  and make sure the doctor did it and if not contact the doctor's office to get it done. She was afraid if it was missed and 4:00 came we would not be able to reach the doctor that day. Otherwise, this seemed in hand and nothing more than a short drive later to the drugstore.

My family never seems to have short or simple anything. My grandmother used to say we never did anything that we didn't have to do at least twice. Why do grandmothers always have to be right.

The day began to pass and I thought about what to do for dinner. I knew we were getting low, but I had some pork chops and thought I'd do this pork chops with apples and onion dish. I had some apples and onions left, but when I went through the freezers, no pork chops. So, reluctantly, I went out to buy a few pork chops, and then when I got to the store I decided I might as well pick up some groceries for the days ahead, so already I ain't resting like I should.

I left the supermarket and see it is after 3:00, so I might as well zip over to the pharmacy and get that pain relief for my wife. Zip? Zap! Zig-Zag, this is when things went off track. The pharmacy had received no order for this medicine. I told the lady I would be back after I checked with the doctor.

She says, "Tell them we have a problem with our phones, they won't be able to call or fax it in. They'll have to send it electronically."

I rush home thinking maybe the doctor did call it in but was stymied by a bad phone line. By now it is after 3:30. I call the orthopedic office. I get the ever present maze of death, but I go right to the heart of the beast and press zero. Amazingly I get a human being on the first stab. She asks how to direct my call. I spill out my tale of woe. She transfers me to the doctor's secretary and when the phone is answered..."You have reached so-and-so, I am in my office from 8 AM to 4:30 PM daily Monday through Friday..."

I look at the clock, it is 3:45 so why aren't you in your office as advertised.

"...if you wish to leave a message, then leave your name and spell it, your number, your medical history, rank and serial number..."

I left my message of the missing medicine, the wife in agony, the broken pharmacy phone failure and hung up to tell Lois the bad news. I doubted we'd get her pain pills today.

I told her I wasn't going to cook, it would be McDonald's. She had another medication on order, the antibacterial, and she asked me to pick it up anyway. So on my way to buy dinner, I stopped back at the pharmacy to get this medicine and what do you know, they had just received the order for the pain pills, but weren't sure they had any in stock.

For some reason this pharmacy often seems not to have medication in stock and needs days to get it.
Not this time, he had it and the medicine would be ready in a half hour. (I wonder why it takes a half hour to count 14 pills out of one bottle into another? One of those unsolvable mysteries of life.)

Now I go back home. I immediately get a phone call. It is the orthopedist secretary telling me the order had been sent. I told her I knew, the drugstore had it and thanked her. I hung up. The phone rang, it was the pharmacy calling to say the medicine was ready.  I went back, got it, got dinner, ate too much, but at least Lois could get some relief.

Now all through this I was praying and as you can see the prayers were answered. But did there have to be so much drama about it?

Methodrexate Fog, Meth Heads, Rigid Digits, Exploding Sneakers and a Cat in a Box

This morning I made a little trip and it was sometimes scary. I had to drive my daughter to work after dropping her car off at a garage for repairs. She works down in the Christiana area, so it was a zip (relatively speaking) down I-95 South and then on roads I have less familiarity with. I use to drive the I-95 part regularly on my last two jobs before retirement, since both were in the Christiana Mall so I was familiar with that high-speed, multi-lane leg of NASCAR stretch of road.  I even went over the speed limit this morning just in an attempt to survive, getting to 75 miles per hour and yet still not catching the traffic ahead. The ding-dongs behind me were riding up my tailpipe nonetheless. I can deal with the traffic, but as I have aged I struggle with driving at night and at 6:15 in the morning right now it is dark out, and this morning was positively black. Add to that a fairly thick fog and it was no pleasure drive.

My daughter's employ is down a long narrow lane, through a wood, ending in a circle. It was like a scene from a Slasher Film, the narrow wooded road and the fog. I could barely distinguish the road surface from the bordering ground going in and coming out. Best I can say, at least I wasn't in yesterday's condition.

Speaking of fog, yesterday I was very much in one. I was very fatigued and fell asleep before noon and didn't awake until 3:00. It was as if I was pulling my body up out of quicksand when I tried to get to my feet. I walked about in a haze. I wondered about this, because I have been having these weariness bouts all too often recently and what do we do when we wonder in these modern times? We Google it!

I was most likely in a Methodrexate Fog. I am on Methodrexate because of my arthritis and on Tuesday

the doctor upped my dosage...again, and on Wednesday I took my weekly fix.  Searching I discovered many others in the same state and the fatigue was worse on the day after they popped their pills. Oh, joy, one more wonderful side-effect of a medication. It ends up a Hobson's Choice. Take my medicine or leave it alone. Or perhaps it is a dilemma, for taking the medicine has these unwanted side-effects, but not taking may lead to more twisted joints. I was driven to the medicine by my paralyzed right fingers in the first place because I didn't want to risk more.

I also discovered in my research that some people on Methodrexate tested positive for

Methamphetamines, probably because they both come from the same root chemical. Looking at images of Meth Heads after looking up Methamphetamines made me think they should use these people's images like they do those extreme cigarette smoking cases to scare people from smoking. You want to see same ugly looking faces after being on meth for a while go look up Meth heads.

I certainly hope Methodrexate doesn't have such marring attributes. After all, as you have probably noticed, my handsome face is my fortune.

Yeah, right!

I did escape my fog enough to accomplish something yesterday. I got new sneakers, although nobody calls them sneakers anymore, so what I got was cross-training foot gear. What I had was running shoes. I just bought the running shoes back in June I believe. My old sneak...whatevers I wore on my feet had finally disintegrated after years of wear on the trails. I wanted something light with a good tread. These runner shoes I bought for about $45 seemed just right. They were light and definitely had a real imposing tread. Forty-five dollars was a bit high for me. I had generally bought sneak...whatchamacallit footwear under twenty dollars, and they usually held up a couple of years, so these $45 jobs should keep me moving for a lot longer wouldn't you think?

You'd a thunk wrong. Here we are just entering October, like five months or less later, and my running shoes were exploding. The tread wasn't waring, it was just plain coming off in toto. My inner sole was sticking three-quarters out the back of the shoe like a green Miley Cyrus tongue.

You do the amount of walking I do and you can't have that happening. So I made it out to a Payless and bought a pair of silver cross trainers for $23.

Let's see how they hold up.

When you buy shoes, you get a shoebox. So I'll put my difficulties behind and leave you with a smile, I give you, Mark in a Box!

Only trouble with Having Old Friends is that Old Part

I saw this ad come across the TV the other night. The sponsor was making a point of their longevity in the practice of their services. They put up a big old icon on the screen. It said, "Founded 1970". "Founded 1970," which is 43 years ago. I guess that's a long time now. This is a problem in my life these days, time slips away so quick every decade seems closer than it is.

If "Founded 1970" is a proof of longevity, what is a friendship founded in 1950? That's a total of 63 years if I still remember how to count. So is it longevity or antiquity?

And it isn't just a friendship, it's two. There are actually a couple others. I've been friends with a lady named Iva forever, I mean we go back to the state of consciousness, let's say 70 years.

But she's a girl. I'm talking about male bonding here, three guys who met in third grade and got kind of joined at the hip. There we are on the left back in 1957, when we all had a lot of thick, dark hair. Ain't we a handsome bunch?

We were so alike in many ways. That's what cements you to other people over so many decades. We were very alike and yet very different in other ways.  I was pretty geeky, I guess, this hick from a swamp, shy and ignorant of so much that the other kids knew. Maybe we were all geeky in a way. We got a lot of guff from others in that small town.

Life moved us apart physically, and for some periods in mind and spirit as well. Oddly many events in our lives paralleled even when we didn't know it.  We seemed to move into the same areas or work for banks here and there. And in the end we all drifted back together, even if mostly over the Internet. There we are on the right when we had a little reunion in 2011. We were percolating rather well at the time.

Stuart is down in Florida, but we managed to write several plays together on the Web. Ronald is living
in the slower-lower southern part of this state of Delaware, while I live up at the top. To me we still are much alike. Our differences might seem big to some people. I'm a vocal Christian and 52 years married to the same woman. Stuart's Jewish and he's married, too. Ronald is pretty much non-religious in a definable way. He has his spiritual moments. He isn't married because he can't be. He's Gay. He has a partner of 48 years. I'm pretty Conservative; Ronald's pretty Liberal. I'm not sure about Stuart, maybe he falls somewhere between us.

But never mind the differences. We like each other as people and friends. You don't always have to agree to like someone. You have to look at a person's heart, not the labels they or others have hung about their necks. I've actually known some people in life who seem to agree on everything, but can't stand each other...so life's a mystery sometimes.

These are old friends, my oldest friends, and that OLD is getting old. Age is catching up to our bodies, if not our minds. Ron got news the past year that he has prostate cancer. Bummer, he is going for a nuclear seeding in May.

We just heard from Stuart that his knees are gone, bone on bone. He's into leg braces and pain and

most likely knee replacements down the road he limps along.

I thought I was the sturdy one, boppin' along without a care. Well, I knew that wasn't completely true. I mean I had a terrible time 15 years ago and lost my thyroid. Then I developed gout and Psoriatic Arthritis in more recent times. Boy, is that a pain!

But last week was the kicker right in the...well fill in the blank. I had a bit of pain about my waist and felt very tired. I figured that Ms Flu had returned. It would pass, I figured because it always did. But last Sunday after church I was really weary and woozy and didn't have the energy to walk across the living room.

Monday morning when I awoke I had to dash to the bathroom and I think it was trying for the Guinness World Record. I've occasionally had someone tell me I was full of it. Monday morning seemed to be an attempt to prove them right. I certainly wasn't full of much of anything after that.

But I figured maybe this gets the poison out and Ms Flu will fly 'way, except I was seeing something black that said it may not be Ms Flu. It's more like Captain Blood.

Well, for once I called my Doctor and saw her last Thursday. She is of the opinion I got me a bleeding ulcer. She sent me off to the Lab for blood work. The paper said STAT at the top. She said she'd have the results by 3:00 and if my hemoglobin was too low she was going to put me right into the hospital. Then she got me an emergency colonoscopy appointment for next Thursday. Oh, joy, oh joy!

But my Lab results showed my hemoglobin was down, but not dangerously low so I escaped hospitalization. I am also going to escape all the foods I don't want to escape. No spicy food, no tomatoes, no fries, no alcohol, no coffee, no tea, no soda and no chocolate. I can have tofu. Uuh!

Anyway, I went out this afternoon and bought almost all my treats for the party next Wednesday evening. I got a packet of Dulcolax Tablets, an 8.3 oz bottle of Miralax and a 10 oz. bottle of magnesium citrate, yum! I didn't get the Crystal Light to mix in the 64 ounce bottle of water with the Miralax yet.  I will have to drink eight ounces of this cocktail until the whole jugs gone, the instructions say.

It's a good thing I don't live in New York. I wouldn't be able to prep for the procedure. Mayor Bloomberg doesn't allow these super-sized drinks.

Rite Back to the Past

Some of you, whose memories may be working at a higher par than my own, may recall a mention of my blood pressure among all the waiting I previously posted about. All the waiting may have help escalate that blood pressure in fact. It may also come to mind I spoke of visiting my doctor. Whether you do or not, that is the case. My doctor insisted she get a chance to look under my hood before she prescribed anymore pills for my engine pump. I complied.

After my run in with the berserk testing machine at a pharmacy, which held me prisoner within its cuff well beyond the minute it had promised for the reading, I entered my Doctor's back lair with some apprehension. That machine had said my pressure was 220 over 140, which I believed was somewhere outside the normal scale. I had come home and did my due diligence by Googling "extreme hypertension". I got an article that said a pressure like mine (actual a shade lower than mine) was called malignant hypertension and suggested if I wasn't already dead that I should be in a hospital. So-o-o-o what was the Doc going to say?

My weight was down 12 pounds since my last visit, so that was good. I wasn't having any plumbing issues, not really, except when I had to go, I HAD to GO! The technician and the Doctor both slapped the sphygmomanometer cuff about my arm in turn and my reading was 147/80. A little up, but not too bad. Doc had me take a cardiogram. It was the same as a year ago and quite normal.  After all was said and done, I was ruled reasonably healthy and destined for longevity. She then pulled out her iPad and zapped my new refill prescriptions directly to my pharmacy.

It is important to note this was at midday of Wednesday last. Now a couple hours past midday on this Friday I went to that pharmacy to retrieve my freshly minted pill packets. Will I experience the same long lines as the last three times I have visited there in the past week?

Well play me a German Folk Dance and slap me silly, there were a mere two people in line ahead of me. I should be through in a whistle. The first customer seemed to be getting quiet a few bags. He must have received a separate pill for each organ of his body and then one to counteract the interaction between this melange. Finally they loaded his purchase on a forklift and hauled him to his car.

The gentlemen directly ahead of me stepped to the counter. The clerk went to the wall then to the computer empty-handed. Ut oh, been there, done that. "Sir," says the clerk, your insurance company won't allow us to do another refill of that prescription until the 23rd."

"I don't understand," says the man.

"Your insurance company won't pay any portion of this prescription until the 23rd."

"Ah," says the man. "What do I do on the 23rd?"

"We will just fill it on the 23rd, sir."

"Oh, will you call me like before then?"

"Yes sir?"

With this the man walked away and I was up to bat.

"Name?"

I gave it. The clerk walked to the wall of plastic bags. He shuffled about. He came and looked in the computer. He walked back and began speaking to a pharmacists. Haven't I played in this scene before? If they come and tell me it wasn't sent it I think I will become a bit unkind. I sat there when the Doctor wrote it out and emailed it over.

The clerk comes back. "The doctor hasn't finished counting the pills for verification of a controlled substance. She will be finished shortly (there is that shortly again). In the meantime, just have a seat over there.

Oh, I suppose I will have the old, "Larry, you may get in line now" moment coming. Okay, I wonder, does it take two days...and as I sit my eyes wander to a large poster on a far wall: "The 15 Minute Prescription Guarantee* 15 Minutes, or you get a $5 Gift card." That is not the only such placard, there is another by the counter and another on the side wall and there is a tiny one by the register. The same thing is printed on the face of the pamphlets that come with each vial of pills you receive. You know, those foldout papers telling you of all the varied and sundry side-effects that just may kill you before your medication cures you. "If when taking this medication your leg falls off or your eyes pop out or you experience sudden death, immediately call your primary physician."

I waited much longer than 15 minutes the last three times (in the last week, need I repeat that as well) I stood here for prescriptions. Nobody dropped any $5 Gift Card in my bag. Maybe I should ask about this. At that moment the pharmacist called me up to the counter and rang me up on another register. I didn't have to get back in line this time. I didn't demand any gift card. I don't think it was 15 minutes this time and the pharmacist was so nice and pleasant I couldn't keep my anger.

It took me back a moment when she said, "$42." Whoa, Nelly, shouldn't it be $14. I stuttered out, "F-f-forty-t-t-two d-d-dollars?"

"Ninety day supply," she said. "Is that all right?"

Yes, it was. I had forgotten the Doctor told me she was doing that if my insurance company allowed. Fine with me, I hate running back every month.

Still, I wondered about that 15 minute business.  But you see, it read: "The 15 Minute Prescription Guarantee.*" You see there is an asterisk. That means, what you think you just read is not at all what you read. That asterisk means in the end they are going to bite you in the asterisk.

I read the fine print: * (see asterisk at the beginning means this is what you should have read and then you'd know why you'll never ever received a gift card in your bag, sucker) "Guarantee applies to prescriptions dropped off in-store and at drive through only." (I was right, the Johnny-come-latelies got preferential treatment over we nice, considerate people who allowed the pharmacy time to prepare our goods.) "Certain exclusions apply..." (That generally means you're the exclusion.) "Certain exclusions apply including prescriptions requiring ordering, prescriber contact, third party assistance, professional services, or prescriptions presented immediately before or during Pharmacist lunch break." Good luck getting that gift card, Charlie!

Oh, I better pop a pill, I think my blood pressure is rising.

I am waiting for...Wait! I've Been Waiting So Long I Forget What I was Waiting For

I'm a patient man. I've raised children, have a wife and had a dog. If you don't learn patience then your kids hate you, your wife divorces you and your dog bites you. I have spent much of my life waiting in parking lots and doctor's offices, so I am a patient man.

This past week seemed designed to test the patience of Job.

First was the highly hyped anticipation of Irene.You think of all the jokes about waiting for a woman to get ready for a date, it seemed Irene was taking forever to get made up for her grand entrance.

Then we were waiting anxiously to get rid of the big windbag.

When she finally went off in a huff, we found ourselves waiting for the lights to come back on as she took our electric power with her. We were more fortunate than some, our power was out but 12 hours, and much of those overnight doing sleep time.

And when the power did pop back, we had to wait another day to have our cable services, so another 24 hours of no TV, no internet and no telephones. This came back on sometime while I was taking my morning walk, then went off again in the afternoon and came back hopefully for good after we returned from dinner Monday evening.

So speaking of my morning walk, this was also part of the waiting game. I usually walk in one or another of our wonderful nearby state parks. However, they had closed the state parks last Thursday for the convenience of Hurricane Irene to spend time there alone. Apparently one of her favorite pastimes is knocking trees over and overfilling creeks and rivers. I wondered on Monday if any were now open. I decided to try Bellevue, which is the closest, just a short spin down I-95, where I can often see if the gate is open or not from the highway.

This morning I couldn't see the gate at all, so I went off the exit and around toward the park entrance. It was fifteen minutes past their opening time. I was behind another vehicle who turned into the park drive and then immediately did a U-turn. Ah, so the gate must be down.

I didn't want to turn in behind the guy making the U-turn. I went straight down the road and went right into the lane of some corporate mall. I did my own U-turn around the little island with the mall sign ready to go left back the way I had come, except... Except four million cars were suddenly on this road from both directions. What is this? This road seldom is very busy, why now?

Why indeed, it must have been opening time in the Corporate Mall for all four million cars were turning in. Finally one lane cleared and something slow came in the other and I zipped out and went on my search for some walking room. Talley, I thought, Talley Day Park was probably open. This is a county park with about a two mile walking track that does a figure-8 around the grounds. It wasn't far, I would zip over there.

Did I say zip?

Not so zippy.

I went up Marsh Road and now I had a nut behind me. This was not a patient driver. She was right on my bumper, which I hate. Then she was kind of trawling side-to-side and I realized she was going to try and pass me on the right, on the shoulder of the road. Oh, no, no, no, I wasn't having any of that. I edged over enough she couldn't. I slowed a bit as well.

We were coming to the intersection where I would turn left and I wondered if she was going straight. I was tempted, if she was, to go straight and further impede her progress up the road. See, that's how angry I get at tailgaters. But I went into the left turn lane after all, just as the light turned red against us. This woman went to the right as if to go straight, but instead she turned into the Pizza Hut parking lot on the corner, crossed its lot, exited the far exit, made a left on the cross street, then a right on Marsh, all so she didn't have to wait for the red light to change green. Say, babe, set your alarm for a little earlier next time!

Now I haven't far to the park. I was driving west (or is it south) on Wilson.  I will soon come to a road called Shipley, make a right, go a short distance, make another right on Faulk and then quickly be at the park. I am just beginning my ease into the right turn lane for Shipley when a traffic report comes on the radio.

"Shipley Road is closed this morning between Wilson and Foulk due to a downed tree."

Now I have to go a longer way, but still not too bad. I go straight and eventually Wilson crosses Foulk, where I make a right and head back a couple miles to the park. Won't be long now...if it hadn't been for that sign, "Road Work Ahead" and the flagman on the corner and the closed right lane and all the backed up traffic.

After my walk I planned to avoid the construction on Foulk by turning left and going home the way I had come. No road work on that side. I pulled up in the left lane of the exit drive from the park at the light awaiting the green signal...which never came. I sat there and the traffic on Foulk sat where they were because they also had a red light and then they got a green light and moved and I sat there.

So I made a right turn on red from the left lane. I know, I know, but believe me, there was no traffic coming behind me.

Of course, now I am in the backup for the roadwork with the closed right lane. I use the word roadwork loosely. Yes, the whole right lane and right shoulder were behind the ornate barrier of orange cones, but the work was being done to THE SIDEWALK!

Things off the road were no speedier for me lately. I found my blood pressure elevated two weekends ago. I was in a drugstore dropping off a prescription for my wife and spotted one of those "Take Your Own Blood Pressure" chairs, so I took it. I shoved my left arm through the cuff and pressed the button. The cuff began its squeeze. A little sign said you will have your results in less than a minute. The cuff continued its squeeze. The result windows stayed at zero, unmoving. The cuff continued to squeeze. Time ticked by to the beat of my heart in my pinched arm, definitely longer than a minute. It came to mind I might be in a malfunctioning machine. It would never give me results and the cuff would never release my arm. Perhaps it was a possessed machine in a Stephen King world, one that would soon rip my arm off and beat me with it.

And just as I was considering yelling for help, my results popped up and the cuff released. My heart rate was 66, toward the lower end of the normal scale of 60 to a 100 at rest. But my blood pressure was a tad high. Okay, more than a tad. More like giraffe height. When I got home I called my doctor because my high blood pressure medication was used up and so was the renewal date. The receptionist-phone-answerer-nurse-whatever said she would call them in to my pharmacy. (I take two different pills for high blood pressure.)

This was on a Monday a week ago. On Friday afternoon, after I got home from work,  I went to the drugstore to pick them up. I am a bit of a procrastinator I admit. On the way I glanced at my gas gauge. I was below a quarter. Oh rats, I should have got gas last night or this morning on my way to work. I better fill the tank now.

Easier said than done. At the next intersection was my regular service station. Cars were lined up at one bay of pumps. It would be hard to squeeze in that side. The other bay was blocked off by my familiar friends, orange cones. Those tanks must have already been drained. The gas station on the other corner was no less crowded. I drove on.

This is good, I am driving in search of a gas station less crowded. Perhaps I will run out of gas looking for gas.  Just to keep my mind alert the radio picked that moment to announce places were running out of gas. I came toward another station, but the traffic was backed up for a red-light and I could not see if the station had lines or not. Closer I came and then stopped, again by traffic and the light. Again closer and stop. Eventually I reached the lot and it wasn't bad. I pulled in with only one car before me at a bay of pumps.

I got my gas and went out on the other road because of all the traffic. I had to go around Robin Hood's barn to get back to my drugstore. On the way I passed the supermarket I often picked up at and pulled in the lot. I wanted to get some soda and perhaps some batteries. As I parked I saw the Wilmington Trust Bank Branch was now striped of any identifiers. This was the great conversion weekend. No more Wilmington Trust Bank. Next week this would be M&T Bank.

I went in one door of the supermarket and right out the other. I wasn't dealing with that madhouse. Why was there so much traffic on the roads because certainly everyone in the county had piled into this supermarket. Besides I could see the battery display and it was empty. I got in my car and drove down the street to my drugstore.


I come in and there is a long line. I guessed everyone was not it the supermarket after all. The rest were here getting his or her prescription refilled before the Hurricane arrives tomorrow. I had never experienced long lines here before. So, I waited and I waited, and I waited some more. The woman before me asked if she could step out of line to sit in a nearby chair. Certainly, I'll hold your place. No sense having people passing out before me, that would only slow things up. Why was it so hot in the place? I could see into the pharmacist's workroom and they had fans set up in there. We were wilting out in line. No fans here. So by all means, dear lady, please take a seat.

Finally I reached the counter and gave my name. The clerk shuffled off to sort through the hanging plastic bags. He went over and spoke to one of the pharmacists, he came back and began searching the computer.

"Did you drop them off today?" he asks.

"No, my doctor called them in three or four days ago."

He shuffled back to the pharmacist, then conferred with another pharmacist, then rechecked his computer.

"We have no record of a call in," he says. "I could call your doctor now if you wish, if he is still open."

I look at the line behind me. "No, that's okay. I'll call her when I get home."

But I couldn't. It was now too late in the afternoon and I wasn't certain the doctor's office was still open. I would have to wait until Monday, after the weekend and after the passing of Irene.

More waiting and more to come...

On Monday, once we had phones again, I called the Doctor's office. The receptionist-phone-answerer-nurse-whatever said she thought she had called it in, she would check.

I waited on hold.

She came back and told me the Doctor had disallowed my prescription renewal because I had not been in for a visit since April of last year. I would have to make an appointment to see the Doctor before she would renew my prescriptions. I made the appointment for the coming Wednesday (which is the day I am writing this). The lady then told me she would call in enough prescription to see me through until I saw the doctor, five pills of each medicine.

The Little Woman and I always go out to dinner on Monday. We usually leave at 5:00. At 4:30 I announce I am going to run over to the drugstore and pick up my ten pills, oh foolish ever-optomistic me, I actually believe I can do this and be back home all within a half-hour.

Traffic was heavy, but this really didn't slow me up greatly. I arrived at the drugstore with still twenty minutes until five. I went back to the pharmacy and what is this a Disney World ride? Today's line was even longer than the pre-Hurricane Friday line. And there were several people sitting in nearby chairs. And it was still darn hot in the place.

So I parked myself behind a lady and I waited, and I waited, and I waited some more. Then do you know what I did? Why, I waited. On Friday two clerks were processing the crowd, but today only one fellow had that joyless job. I admire his good spirits about it though, because there seemed to be mass confusion reigning in the wait area. People seated would get up and come to the line or go around it and call through the window for "Private Conferences with a Pharmacist" to berate someone, anyone to speed it up.

Then occasionally someone behind the pharmacy counters would yell, "Doris, you may get in line now." Wait a cotton-picking moment here, who is this Doris and why is she being paged into line ahead of others? The only thing I can figure is she dropped off a prescription and said she would wait for it.

Now this doesn't seem right. When I drop off prescriptions I always tell them I will come back later, usually meaning in a day or two, to pick it up. I figure I am doing them a favor, giving them time. They usually thank me for this. But if I dropped my prescription off at some earlier time (or in this case, my doctor called it in that morning) why should I have to wait because some Johnny or Jill come-lately said they would wait for theirs. That's like having made a reservation at a restaurant and having them give your table to a walk-in.

And thus I waited. Finally my lottery number comes up and I am at the window. "Name," asks the clerk.

I give it and he shuffles off behind a rack of plastic hanging bags. He then says, just a minute and goes and confers with a Pharmacist. He returns to me.

"We have one hanging," he says, "and the Pharmacist is working on the other. Do you wish to wait or come back later?"

I wish to ring someone's neck, but I say, "I'll wait." No way I am coming back later now.

So I step aside and I wait, and I wait, and I wait some more. He said the Pharmacist was working on my second prescription, did he not? How long does it take to slide 5 pills into a plastic tube? Then at last, someone yells, "Larry, you may get in line."

I step forward, but oh no, this did not mean, "Now we have your pills just come get them." No this meant exactly what was said. Larry could get in line.

Eventually I got my ten little pills in the two plastic vials and was on my way home. Needless to say I didn't make it by 5:00, but no matter, we were on our way to dinner, apparently with the rest of Delaware. Bumper to bumper traffic down the roads. Now it was rush hour and these roads do get crowded at this time of day, but they were more so this night, thus we waited a bit longer for dinner.

But we didn't wait long for service at the restaurant. Lauren was our wait person and had our drinks ordered before we sat down. She knows us well and has extra cherries put in mine. Quickly, my cup of soup was before me. Waiting seemed to be at an end, but there was still the matter of some banking business to contend with and we will get to that next time...if you can wait.

Carried Away

Once upon a time about eighteen or nineteen years ago the Old Goat's body began to act strangely. If the body had a separate mind then it had become schizophrenic.

Oh, at first it was little things easily dismissed as fatigue perhaps. For instance, The Old Goat would come out of his office at work, make a little semicircle and walk into a wall.

He felt a bit silly the first time it happened, but when it occurred again he became very cautious of his steps. After all, how many times can one walk into walls before people begin to talk or check your desk drawers for the bottle or worse?

This slight course miscalculation wasn't totally new, although the walking into walls was an added feature. He had been aware of an inability to steer straight when walking down sidewalks. He would sense a drifting to one side or the other and was always making small adjustments not to get too close to the curb. He would kid about it. "I hope a cop never asks me to walk a straight line, 'cause I can't."

Ho, ho, ho, what is it anyway? Are the shoes lopsided? Is it lack of sleep, too much on the mind, aging?

It shouldn't be aging. Eighteen years ago The Old Goat was only in his early fifties and he felt energized most the time, a multi-tasking, go-go-go, always doing something type of guy. He had a good job, a sexy wife and an active social life. And that was probably the whole thing, he was just a bit too active and he was a bit body weary, which sometimes effected his walking, nothing more than that.

Except the little sessions of off kilter were soon joined by more off putting things, like muscle cramps, double vision and attacks by sources of light.

Most people suffer a cramp here and there in life, the usual there being the leg. The Old Goat had those now and again, but this was different. It was becoming a much more than a once a day battle with a stubborn muscle that didn't want to un-tense, plus it was all over his body, his chest, his sides, his neck, even his face.

The double vision wasn't all it was cracked up to be either. It was downright annoying. The Old Goat would come home from a hard day of walking into walls and howling from painful cramps, sit down for a bit of the telly and he would be seeing two televisions, one floating slightly above the other. Or was one floating slightly below the other. It was hard to be sure which was the vision and which was the double vision. It was also very upsetting to not quite be able to focus, especially if a pretty girl in a bikini was on screen.

The eye doctor said there was nothing wrong with his eyes.

Now these things came and went over a period of time you understand. They didn't all slam him at once. The worse was the light attacks. That is, The Old Goat discovered one fine sunny day that he wished for rain, anything but a lot of light. It hurt, really, really, really hurt. He couldn't stand that light. He was driving to work with one eye closed and a hand over his other, peeking through the fingers to see the road. Not only that, his eyes began to feel as if he had half a beach of sand behind his lids.

Naturally he eventually discovered the problem and got treatment. He had Graves Disease and this had led to Hypothyroidism for a while and then flipped to Hyperthyroidism, a fairly rare thing. It had also given him Graves' Ophthalmopathy, a fancy way of saying his bloody eyeballs were popping out of his head. That was what caused the scratching sand feel. His eyeballs were so pushed forward his eyelids couldn't close all the way and his eyes had dried out.


Now we could go in to more of the horrors of this disease and the minutia of the treatments, but not right now. Let's just jump to the chase. He eventually ended up not being able to work and sitting at home under a blanket all day to keep that nasty light away. The Disease had weakened his muscles and he had trouble even walking. It was not fun.


But it did give his best friend some fuel to tease him, the case of the pulled down pants...almost. 


Actually this was not his only embarrassing moment caused by his condition. There was another and here is what they were and how they came about.


After some weeks of being basically a blob of jello kept in the dark, he began to feel somewhat better from the medications they started to give him. One day, he decided to drive somewhere. It has been forgotten what he had set out to get, but that isn't important. What is important is he ventured out of the house for the first time in a long while. He drove his car, which was an old Chevette. The gas gauge did not work in this car. He ran out of gas.


He was several miles from home on a fairly unoccupied part of a particular street. He decided he had to walk the few blocks to a main road where there were some gas stations and get gas. He made it to this road and his first hurtle was he needed something to put the gas in, so he found a store where he could buy a gas can.


Spanking brand new gas can in hand, he went into a gas station where two women were attending the counter where you paid for gas from the self-service pumps. He paid and carried his brand spanking new can to a pump where he pumped, lost his balance and fell on his not so brand spanking new can, that is, his rear end. There he sat, struggling now to get back on his feet. (Remember the disease had weakened his muscles horribly, getting up wasn't easy.)


It ran through his head that the two women were probably already calling the cops about the drunken man buying a can full of gas, obviously a deranged individual on his way to commit arson.


Okay, that was embarrassing moment number one, but no one who knew The Old Goat saw it or knew of it.


However, jump ahead some weeks and The Old Goat was beginning to recover. He was on new medicine and even back to work. It was coming up on Valentine's Day and his wife and he had not been out to anywhere together for a long time. He decided they should go out for the lover's day, and anticipating some after dinner activities along the same line, h put on a very skimpy...how can I put this? Oh, let's just be frank, he put on a very skimpy G-string beneath his pants. No one would know but he and his wife.  I mean, married couples do these things, believe it or not.


So they went to a restaurant they had never eaten at before (it has since closed and I believe been torn down to make way for a mall that is on that spot today). It was called the Longwood Inn or something like that. It was a slightly upscale place. They were seated and ordered drinks. The drinks were brought and they ordered dinner. But The Old Goat had felt odd upon arrival. His head felt strange. He wasn't sure if he was getting ill or not.


He tried to fight it, but it was really bothering him so he told his wife he was going to the rest room and sit there a bit to see if he felt better. He got up and set off, leaving the room they were seated in and entering a second dining room.


The next thing he knew, he was being carried under his arms by the Host and a Waiter. "Did I blackout?" he asked.


They said, "Yes."


They took him to the lobby and sat him on a chair right there in front of lines of people waiting for tables. People were looking at him. At that point, the waiter undid his belt and the top button and began pulling down his zipper.


"Whoa! Wait a minute. What are you doing?" he asked.


"Loosing your pants," the guy said.


"We can call an ambulance," the Host was saying.


"No, I'm fine. I'll be okay. Don't do that."


The Old Goat pushed aside the waiter's hands and then redid his pants. He got to his feet.


"I'll be fine, " he insisted.


He went back to his wife and they asked the waitress to pack the food to go. Once this was done, they beat a hasty retreat and never went back to that place.


His pants got opened and he doesn't know if his little skimpy Valentine surprise was noticed by anyone, but his pants didn't fall down, not that that had never happened to him, just not this time.

A Hard Pill to Swallow

The Old Goat has been fairly healthy most his life, which is how one becomes an old goat. Probably a good guideline for staying healthy is don't walk in front of buses and stay clear of doctors as much as possible. I've managed to avoid speeding buses, but into doctor's hands I have occasionally fell.


"The Doctor says your cholesterol is also very elevated. She is prescribing..."


"Forget the cholesterol prescription."


And capsulated there is what modern doctors have become, Pashas of Pharmaceuticals, glorified pill-pushers. Once doctors wanted to cure you, now they want to shove as many pills down your throat as possible.

"One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small"

So you ask, what's your problem? If you are feeling groovy why are you bothering with doctors anyway?

I haven't a choice. And it all begins with another type of Pasha, the winged kind that gave name to a certain gland.


Fifteen years ago, when I was still something of a Billy, I walked out of my office, did a semi-circle and walked into the wall. That was a bit odd as well as embarrassing. If I was a secret imbiber it may have made sense, but I was pretty much a sober-sider. I don't know what I chalked it off as, especially since my walking a straight line was becoming a bit of daily challenge, but nonetheless I ignored this ignoble happening.


The muscle cramps were a bit more insistent in demanding my attention. Everybody has probably suffered a muscle cramp now and again during their life. If you haven't, then don't worry, be happy and count your blessings. Cramps hurt. Usually they would hit the leg somewhere when it was chilly. You would be laying comfortably in bed, for instance, stretch out a foot, wiggle a toe and zap, something would freeze up and send lightening through your body.


Those occasional foot or leg clamps were bad enough, but now I was getting such things all over my body. You get a muscle cramp across your chest and you think you're going to die. I'd make a slight move and suddenly something was stabbing me and wouldn't bend. I was even getting face cramps.

Still this didn't drive me to the medics. Maybe I just wasn't drinking enough water. Maybe I was just tired. It was summer, maybe it was the heat (although in the past I usually got any cramps in cold weather). Oh well, it'll probably go away on its own.


And then came the screening and the netting of the butterfly, and the reason why I can no longer avoid pill-pushing doctors.

A Hard Pill to Swallow Two: The Screening

When last we saw the our intrepid hero he was walking into walls and enduring agonizing muscle cramps and discounting it as heat or overwork. How's that for intrepidity? Did I misspell that? Should it be idiocy. At any rate, this was 15 years ago and at that time I was gainfully employed full time and then some for a bank, although we couldn't call it a bank; we had to call it The Company, but I digress.


Periodically, The Company being always considerate, concerned and solicitous of its employees well-being, as we know all corporations are, would provide various health screenings. Usually these were conducted by the Visiting Nurses Association or the red Cross. Since it was part of my job to promote within the support of the place that supported agencies such as these, I was certainly expected to lead in using what was provided. Thus one day, between wall-bumping and muscle cramping, I sat down in a chair next to a nice young, and I have to admit, pretty nurse in her crisp white uniform to have my blood pressure checked.

She smiled as she strapped the sphygmomanometer about my arm. She smiled as she squeezed a tube and the cuff tightened like a hungry snake about my biceps. She smiled as she took hold of my wrist to clock my pulse and then all the smiles and color drained from her face. She looked on the verge of collapse. I felt perhaps I should offer her my chair.


"I want you to see a doctor immediately, " she said.


Huh?


"Your blood pressure is...," and she announced some stratospheric number I no longer remember "...and your heart rate is only 20 and your skin is clammy and I think you passed death's door perhaps twenty minutes ago."


Oh, is that bad?


Apparently it was for she obviously expected me to keel over dead at any second right there in the grasp of her sphygmomanometer. (The sphygmomanometer was named for Socitomesis Sphygmomam, the famous seventh century Greek physician who was the first doctor to give his patients a reassuring squeeze on the upper arm when delivering bad news. You know I must know of what I speak because I once worked in a hospital.)


So I went to my doctor. 


My doctor sent me for blood work.


About a week later I received a hyperventilating call from my doctor telling me to come see him immediately.


As you can see the immediately of the nurse and the immediately of the doctor did not happen with great immediacy. If my demise had been of real imminence you wouldn't have me here now to share this modern marvel of medicine with you.


The problem? My blood test results had come back and they made no sense to the doctor.


I sat in his office looking at a bunch of numbers that meant little to me. (I had a male doctor in those days, but he eventually packed up in the middle of the night and left his patients in the lurch one day, which has nothing at all to do with my tale other than in my last post I referred to my doctor as "she" and needed to explain the gender switch. No one went to Sweden for a quick nip and tuck.) The doctor was saying, "In this test your number is below the lower range, as it is in this test here. But that is impossible because if this number is low, then that number should be high. While, over here in this test your number is dancing like an organ grinder's monkey when it should be twirling like a Russian gypsy's dancing bear. I can't understand what's going on here."


Yeah, that's what I want to hear from my primary physician, that gives me confidence of a cure.


Naturally the result of these tests were more tests performed by varied test specialists. Its always more tests and more specialists. Primary Physicians graduate medical school knowing two main phrases: "I'm writing you a prescription for..." and "I'm sending you to a specialist in..."

Tests in hospitals and tests in clinics and tests in private offices with a lot of prodding and poking and greasing up body parts to run cold wands over. At the end of a long line of assessments, evaluations and sometimes embarrassing evasions I was called back to the primary for the results.


"I haven't a clue."


Well, he didn't exactly say that. He rambled on a bit, throwing hard-to-pronounce words in the air about this or that to prove he had read the reports, but the gist was, "I haven't a clue."


So he sent me to an nephrologist.


I did not want to hear anything beginning nephro. Nephro has to do with the kidneys and malfunctioning of same. You don't want lazy kidneys, you don't want misfiring kidneys and you sure don't want renal failure.


The nephrologist ran his own gauntlet of tests. One day I came to his office and he greeted me with a smile and said, "You have hypothyroidism."


This meant my thyroid was asleep on the job. All I needed was to take a little pill every day that would work while the thyroid napped and I'd be find and dandy. Wasn't I just a lucky guy?

But Miss Luck is a fickle lady.

A Hard Pill to Swallow Three: Butterflies Gone Wild

The sun was bright, except it was a cloudy day and there was little sunlight. Yet I was squinting mightily to see against the glare. I had one eye closed altogether and a hand over my other peering through the crack between my fingers.

I was driving in morning traffic down I-95.

My eyes hurt. What few sunbeams were out there poked at them like heated needles. It was painful to be outside, something I was fully aware of lately.

It truth my eyes hurt all the time now. It wasn't continuous hot pointed objects pricking them since that only happened when I ventured outside into sunlight.  The rest of the time, in the artificial light of my living room or the dark of my bed, it felt as if my lids were at the beach; they felt full of sand.

Have you ever gotten sand in your eyes? It is not pleasant, it burns and scratches every time you blink.

Not only was there pain, there was double vision. I would watch TV and two screens would float below and above each other. That girl in the bikini doesn't really have four...well, of course not, it is my burning eyes.

I went to my optometrist and he found no problem with my eyes. "Double vision can be caused by other things," he said, "you should see your doctor."


To cut to the chase, I ended up back with my endocrinologist, the man who was writing my prescriptions for the Thyroid hormone to boost my hypothyroidism to proper levels. He examined me and was going "hmmm".


Have you grasped the pattern yet that when anyone in any profession goes "hmmm" it is going to mean something bad for you?


"You have hyperthyroidism", he declared. "This is very unusual to go from hypo to hyper. I only see one case a year of this."


Well, hoo-rah, I am this year's winner.


Now my lazy butterfly gland, hiding in its cocoon so many months, has spread its wings and become a moth gone wild. It flaps its wings against a switch and every extreme becomes the opposite extreme. Where hypo hated heat, hyper hates cold. Where hypo wanted me laid back, hyper wants me to burn up the road. Where hypo wants me to put on weight and be fat, hyper wants me to be trim and thin. Wait, that last one isn't a bad thing, is it? 


But what has this thing in my throat got to do with sand in my eyes?

The over zealous organ has pumped out hormonic messages to my eye muscles saying pump it up, baby. I have Graves Disease (which is a terrible name when you think about it). My eyes are scratching all the time because the muscles are forcing my eyeballs out of my head and it has reached the point where my lids won't close completely, even when I am asleep. When eyelids won't close down shop, your eyes dry out.


There is to be a long and arduous road ahead, but that will be a story for some other time. The point here is eventually they killed my thyroid and left me thyroid-less and forever in the grip of the doctors.


Which brings us back to this year and the doctor trying to prescribe cholesterol medication.


You see, I must forever take that little pill now (well, the forever of my lifetime) and doctors will only prescribe it in short bursts, which in my case is usually one year. Annually I must trot back to beg for my prescription renewal and under go the indignities of an exam and the ever popular blood tests.


To tell the truth, most years I have gone for the exam, gotten my prescription and skipped the blood tests. But this year I played the good patient and went for the blood tests in advance of my scheduled visit to the doc. When I heard from her (my doctor now being a her) as follow up to my exam she said she had consulted on my blood tests with an endocrinologist and it appeared my medication wasn't working.  This probably explained some problems I had been having lately, like kind of near collapsing at work (another story for another time). They didn't think my stomach was absorbing the medicine and she was going to prescribe a new one to see if that worked.


"What if it doesn't?" I asked.


"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she replied.


I'm hoping we never come to that bridge. I have a bed feeling about what might happen if I can't get any thyroid hormone flowing out of my digestive system into my life support systems.


Then she hits me with the high cholesterol level and wanting to put me on even more medication.


What's the hurry here? I don't want additional meds. The thyroid and the high blood pressure pills are enough, thank you. There is no reason to rush to judgment here. She has just told me my T levels were off, that my Levothroid isn't working, that I am back to suffering hypothyroidism. Malfunctioning thyroids distort everything and they can cause elevated cholesterol counts, this may be a false alarm.


"Wouldn't it be better to wait and see if the new medicine works before prescribing anything for cholesterol?" I suggest.


So we do. So I get the new stuff called Levoxyl and after eight weeks (she only gave me two refills) I have more blood tests.

The Levoxyl is working. My T's are in the proper ranges. And guess what? So is my cholesterol.


See, that cholesterol diagnosis was a hard pill to swallow and I rightly spit it out.