riotheclown

I read about my neice having to have a proceedure done on her heart.

I had RSV, last winter, and have had trouble breathing ever since. I tried a puffer and a steroid puffer, and had some improvement but was so tired all the time. So my new doctor sent me to a cardiologist partly because of what I told him about my neice.

I had a bunch of tests that meant i had to trek on public transit two hours there and back many times. It seems I have a blockage or narrowing in the ventrical thingy at the back ?!! He URGED me to have an angiogram, it meant they would insert a line in my groin up into my heart and if they saw something, they would take care of it then and there (I would be awake) with the angioplastie thing, or discuss what else was needed.

I have had a lot of stuff since I had my butt tumour removed two years ago. And Christmas was just around the corner and even though it was ONLY one percent chance of my having a heart attack or stroke during the proceedure...I said NO!

I was very tired and hungry. He was telling me all of this stuff and insisting that I look at him and not write in my notebook but when looked at him all I could think of was how he could be so unsympathetic when looking at hearts was his job, looking at fucking *hearts*. At one appointment when he showed me the film of mine I was amazed: that was my beating heart. Wow. But this time I was really tired and upset. I had taken public transit from Pickering to North York waited over an hour past my appointment and was too late to get something from coffee shop. Everything was closed. It was dark and Halloween. I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I grumbled that I could not be ready in two days or any time before Christmas.

"Tell me how many hearts do you think you have!" So i said like a clever, petulant Matriarc, "in this body i have had four hearts and there are only three I care about!" Drama much? Marjorie would have been so proud.
"I'm three cancers for three now" so he conceded that I had a lot done to my body and perhaps it was understandable... "I will book you for a noninvasive CT Angio but it might take months to get an appointment!"

I've got one in August.

I'd never have thought about getting my heart checked at all if it weren't for my neice's post.


It hurts that I found out about *her heart* from *her post*. She hasn't talked to me since my mother died -- Just before my first grandchild was born. around Christmas and after exhaustion and worry and dread and then falling off what felt like a cliff and Shock, Grief, Loss. Death. Death. Death.
And then a new life. The heart that grew close to my daughters was beating on its own, Joy in my arms. The first grandchild, the first great-grandchild...

My niece would not return my calls.

So why do I read her posts? And what is a heart really? .
These impossible questions. LIke what did I do? Why do I get notices every time she posts? Is there a button, a big universal button to push so it doesn't hurt? So it stops? I would not have known about mine or hers. never a sound before it stopped. Not another beat, the end of memories, like the one of her tiny baby hand wrapped around the finger of my own child-sized hand, thinking, how wonderful and clever of them to have her, this baby I love...

The world is fucked up, yet no any less wonderful given half a chance, nor are any of us.
I notice the sun reaches a bit further on the wall each day so the earth still has its tilt as it makes its trip around the sun. And my heart keeps beating regardless of how i feel.

So I've been reading a few articles about quilting and they aren't in quilting blogs.

Take for instance, this one. I know it's making fun, comparing quilting groups to fight clubs but still, The Onion is well read, perhaps not by many quilters but by people who laugh about things I don't understand.

And then there is this article. "Why Quilting is Good For Us", which throws quilting in with a bunch of activities like studying physics and trainspotting ! Any of you see the movie called Trainspotting?

Now I suppose the young men in the photo from the movie might be thinking about quilting but I doubt it. They are thinking about heroine addiction. Yes, the name of my blog is "Quilting is My Addiction" but I do not recommend alternate addictive activities. (I am so upset I alliterated!)

We don't want to be overwhelmed by physicists and drug addicts snatching up all the best swatches from the sale tables! What I am trying to say is, maybe we should dial our public enthusiasm down a bit until the media frenzy passes.

Last week I had a bladder infection. I thought it would be a simple case of going to a clinic and giving them a urine sample and getting some antibiotics. So I went to the clinic on the corner where I once had a doctor. (I got upset with her when after months of her telling me my symptoms were in my head, even when I showed her a lump in my neck, I was diagnosed to have stage four cancer. I quit going to her.) There were pictures of footprints across the window of the clinic and I took that to mean it was a walk-in clinic. (Podiatrist as well as MD, oops) So I said, "I used to be a patient of Dr. G., I'm in a lot of discomfort and I know it is a bladder infection, it won't take long..."

NO. They don't take patients who haven't been in for five years or more. Brilliant, penalize the patients who remain well enough not to need to see a doctor... "Do you know where I could go?" She told me to walk east a few blocks to a walk-in clinic.

I did, it was really painful. Guess what? NOT A WALK-IN!
She told me, "there might be a walk-in down the road but they have weird hours..." Argh.

I had to use the public washroom where I burst into tears. It was really painful at this point. I waddled back and said, "Could you call a cab? This is the second clinic that would not help me and I am in so much pain..." (I had not brought my phone because it was recharging and I really thought I would be helped by the doctor at the end of the street, but fortunately I had enough money to take a cab to the hospital.)

I went to the hospital E.R. I was seen very quickly by triage, unusual and appreciated, I grabbed an empty sample vile and went to the bathroom and was able to hand it off as soon as the nurse saw me, a short wait and the doctor confirmed it, wrote a prescription for me and BOB'S YOUR UNCLE WHO HAS PROSTRATE PROBLEMS!

But seriously, when was the medical profession so concerned with billing that they would disregard someone in pain so blatantly? When did it become common place for support staff to be so calloused and inept that they would just send a sick person on their way without at least checking to see if where they were sending her even existed?

I didn't write about it until now because I wanted to calm down. In truth, I didn't want to think about it. I get sick a lot. I have had cancer twice. I have found if you get angry people tend to cordon you off and put you where you can be ignored, but sometimes if you cry you get a few crumbs of humanity. I hate crying in public. So I had to add that to what was already a painful situation. But beyond my own ordeal, this must mean that other people who are suffering are being treated poorly too.

Which is something to complain about.

Isn't it?

Days like this I miss working for a chiropractor! I will not work on the floor today, well maybe a bit. Today I am returning to little India to pick up the saris top.

I am so glad it is not like yesterday. I thought I would pass out getting the extra box of tiles I needed. Not having a car I have to use the bundle buggy and I think I re-wrenched the shoulder I tore two years ago. Plus it is H E A V Y and when it feels like 40 degrees Celsius with the humidity any effort is more difficult. I had to lift the thing on to the bus because they will not use the ramp for anything but mobility devices. I really felt sick last night. Fantasized dying of a stroke in my sleep.

The air is fresh and cool at 6:30 am this morning! What a relief!

In sad news, due to the flooding, Buttons has lost his cat condo. He is the one in the tuxedo:

"looks good, see you next year!" was all the good doctor said.  : )