Tag Archives: doctor

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 34 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 34 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

2. Going vegetarian. My most recent trip to the doctor involved one of his more humorous suggestions. He ended our visit recommending that I consider going vegetarian. Look, I don’t hate vegetables. I eat a lot of them. But thinking I’m going to opt for a lettuce and tomato sandwich sans bacon this summer ranks well into foolish and wrong territory. He obviously saw the twinkle in my eye, because he then hedged his bets a bit, calling for foods with reduced sugar and salt. OK, I’m not so set in my ways that I object to swaps and adds on spec. Most mornings I’m home start out with a cup of Greek yoghurt and a banana or other fruit. This week I opted to try the “zero sugar” option produced by my favorite yoghurt brand. I might as well have spooned wallpaper paste directly into my mouth. Throughout the day I’ve also been known to throw a handful of peanuts or cashews into my gaping maw from time to time. Fine. I’ll get the unsalted version. Yeah. For all the flavor there, I could just have easily saved my money and gone outside to eat a handful of dirt. I’m sorry doc, but when I’m deciding what to eat, taste and flavor is a pretty damned big deal. You’re never going to convince me to join the “food is fuel” crowd when food is so many other things too.

3. Writer’s strike. There’s apparently been a writer’s strike happening in Hollywood for most of this month. I won’t even pretend to be educated on the reasons for or against. As a consumer of content, I might have reasonably expected to have noticed that there was a strike happening by now. It turns out I don’t watch all that much “new” content. When I’ve been intentionally watching the screen, I’ve been doing a slow re-watch of The Sopranos and Mad Men these last few weeks. As for live television piped into my home by old fashioned cable, my set is usually parked on channels that air reruns of shows with season upon season of episodes available or BBC News to put some background noise in the house. Maybe the writers are victims of their past success. At the rate I’m going I could keep going for a decade before I realize no “new” material was hitting the airwaves. I’m probably an outlier, but with my particular givens, I’m not sure a WGA strike is going to have the impact the writers are hoping to see. 

Still better than the average Tuesday…

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Anya had her first checkup with her regular vet this morning. It was about as successful a visit to the vet as one can reasonably expect from a cat. They caught her up on shots and gave her a once over. Aside from the eye, they didn’t find any areas of concern. She’ll go back in late May for her spay surgery. It was nice to talk to the vet about “normal cat stuff” instead of emergent situations needing immediate and decisive intervention. 

After that, it was a quick trip home to drop Anya off and reset a bit before running off to a couple of appointments of my own. There, we largely talked about things I already know since there were no appreciable changed to anything since the last time I was there. Checking in periodically seems to keep the sawbones at least reasonably satisfied. Plus, it’s nice to get an occasional confirmation that my innards are still plugging along in spite of what I’ve done to them. 

I knocked a few other things off the list while in transit. It wasn’t a particularly restful day off, but it was full of stuff that needed doing. Then again, even if the whole thing had been pissing away time on stuff that didn’t need doing, it would still have been time better spent than the average Tuesday in the office. And on that happy note, the week drives on.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Still waiting. Here we are 9 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if the last 30 months didn’t prove that working from home works. All this while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. Gotta love working for the sick man of the enterprise. There’s probably plenty of blame to go around, but since the updated policy for supervisors was published nine weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for not getting this shit done.

2. Medical records. Online medical records are great, except the part where the system used by my primary care provider and the system used by one of my specialists don’t in any way communicate with one another. There’s also no obvious way to manually upload information from one to the other. A quick call to my PCP’s office confirmed that “Yeah, it really doesn’t do that.” Super. So, I’ll just continue to schlep hard copy of reports and test results around like it’s 1957 because that’s still easier than finding and using a goddamned fax machine in the year of our lord 2022.

3. Advertising. Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I’ve once again received an email from every company I’ve done business with for the last 20 years. I don’t know what they think they’re accomplishing, but it doesn’t feel like effective advertising… unless their definition of effective is to jam up my inbox with stuff I’ll delete before reading and thereby fill a potential customer with questions about whether he wants to do business with them again. I’m sure there’s some advertising industry metric that shows why mass email blasts is a good idea. Maybe it works for some consumers, but it doesn’t do much for me other than piss me directly off. 

Half a sick day…

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I took some sick leave this morning largely because I had a doctor’s appointment. In my head, though, that was just an invitation to “maximize” my use of sick time. As the only variety of leave that accumulates forever and can then be used to add time to your years of service at the end of your career, the stuff is precious. I try to dole it out as infrequently as possible. 

Since I was already going to be at the medical center, it only made sense to head across the street to get my blood drawn for a different appointment I have scheduled at the end of the month. And hey, since there’s a pharmacy at the opposite end of the shopping plaza, I might as well walk down there to see if they’ll dose me with a flu shot and the new and improved COVID booster. 

I had the very best of intentions here. I mean, from a time management perspective, knocking out all those things within 500 yards of each other makes eminent sense. What I failed to account for, however, was the net effect overall of two vaccinations, losing 7 or 8 vials of blood, having fasted for 16 hours, and there being absolutely no caffeine in my system. Let’s just say I spent a good part of the rest of the day feeling vaguely “muddled.”

After a couple of meals and a bottomless mug of tea, I’m feeling well enough for my troubles now. This evening, I’m mostly wondering if I’ll have the same reaction to Pfizer’s bivalent dose as I had to the two boosters from Moderna. If I do, sometime around 10 AM tomorrow morning my body will throw the switch from “feeling fine” to “feeling like hot microwaved trash” and that situation will persist for about 12 hours. 

That’s all a very wordy way of saying that I think I over scheduled the day today. Some things make perfect sense in terms of efficiency, but it pays to not forget checking in with other factors, too. It would have been nice to have that in mind this morning, but here we are.

I’m pretty sure it’s a racket…

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Tomorrow will start the first of a series of various doctor visits and lab appointments that I really had been hoping would somehow magically fall off my calendar. I’m sure they’re all very important and will reveal many interesting and entertaining things, but it’s a level of shit to do and sick leave I don’t want to burn off that’s just uninspiring.

A month or two ago I got myself an endocrinologist, who seems nice enough, but is determined to build her own history rather than just going on the eleven years of records I sent over from Johns Hopkins. So, over the next six to eight weeks, I’ve got multiple appointments lined up for basic blood work, thyroid testing, pituitary testing, a “nutrition assessment,” and one or two other things I’ve got noted as “Endo Appointment – UNK” on the calendar. I assume they’ll tell me what I’m there for. At this point, it only feels like I’m missing tests for color blindness and hearing.

The good news, I suppose, is as far as I know there’s nothing new actually “wrong” with me. The doc didn’t appear alarmed and used phrases like “establish a baseline.” Since I feel fine, my numbers are basically hanging around where they have been for a decade, and they didn’t immediately throw me in the hospital to conduct these tests, I’m proceeding from the assumption that this is either a) standard procedure for bringing a new patient into the practice or b) an unsophisticated scam to bleed me for copays while charging Blue Cross a small fortune. Either one feels entirely possible at this point – and both feel like some kind of a racket.

Now that the bathroom is in spitting distance of being done, I thought maybe this would be the time to get back to the series of dermatologist appointments I paused in the spring. Turns out that was wildly optimistic. Maybe I’ll see him again in November… assuming there isn’t some other ridiculous thing that comes up between now and then.

Not what I signed up for…

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A few months ago, my doctor started hectoring me to schedule an appointment with a nutritionist. The guy cured some recurring foot pain I was having years ago with the power of positive thinking, so I’m usually game for anything he wants to try.

Let me start off by saying I could probably have gotten a cardiology appointment more quickly that I was able to get something scheduled with a local nutritionist. I made the appointment so long ago that I’d honestly forgotten about it. In fact, it wasn’t until my boss mentioned this morning that I was scheduled off this afternoon that I remembered it at all. That’s not the finest hour for my long-term memory, but I made it on time today so at least I have that going for me. 

I’m not sure what the doc expected me to learn. Eat less, exercise more, knock it off with the red meat and gin. I’m perfectly willing to admit intellectually that I should be exercising an hour a day or that I should be eating low-calorie, flavor-free foods. But the simple fact remains that a) That’s not how I want to allocate my limited free time and b) I like foods that don’t taste like someone smeared cottage cheese on cardboard. I’m well aware that I’m taking years off my life… but I’m not at all sure that the cost of adding years is worth what joys I’d be expected to give up.

This all would have been a fine use of an afternoon, except for the part where when I called requesting an appointment with a nutritionist, the nice people at Christiana instead made me an appointment with an endocrinologist. She was pleasant enough, I suppose, but far more interested in sending me off for a round of all the bloodwork than discussing how to make low-fat lasagna that doesn’t taste worse than the box in which the noodles arrive. I’m pretty sure that’s not what my doc or I really had in mind… but she said her office will be happy to refer me to a nutritionist, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and build a whole suite of medical professionals while I’m waiting on that to happen.

Sometimes it’s increasingly difficult to tell if I’m the sane one and the world has gone mad, or if the world is sane and I’ve lost my mind. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference.

Aging and other inconveniences…

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This week, I’ve had an appointment with my dermatologist and two physical therapy sessions. Next week I’m back at PT for two more rounds. The week after that it’s an appointment with my primary care doc. Three weeks from now it’s a follow-up with the dermatologist. Then, four weeks from now, I’ll turn 44. 

I’m not saying all those things are in any way related, but I can’t help but feel like there is, perhaps, a vague connection between the never-ending parade of doctor’s appointments and the increasing number of times I’ve been around the sun. None of these appointments are for critical care issues. Just a bevy of regular appointments, follow-ups, and treating some minor issues.

My inner historian can’t help but note that our caveman ancestors right up through our dark age predecessors had a life expectancy of about 35 years. From the Tudor era right through the dawn of the industrial age, expectancy creeped up to almost 40 years. Over the last 200 years, expectancy has raced upward into the low to middle 70s. So yeah, we’ve managed to eliminate or at least mostly control many of the common causes of early death – ranging from accidents to disease – but we’re still walking around in meat suits that evolved over millennia with the expectation to get no more than 35-40 years of service.

From that perspective, it’s not hard to understand why there are occasionally bits and bobs that aren’t working quite right or how waking up in the morning so often reveals a new and unexpected pain somewhere. Sitting here looking at 44, I’m well past my warrantee date and from here on out will apparently need increasingly skilled mechanics to keep the whole thing cobbled together and running tolerably well.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here reading reviews on hyperbaric chambers and researching gene therapy.

The Scotsman’s Church of the Sacred Sausage Sandwich…

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I was checking in at the doctor’s office a couple of days ago and the receptionist asked if I wanted to note my religion in the file. No one had ever asked that before. Maybe they’ve got a new block to fill in or something. In any case, the question caught me off guard. I’ve spent very little time pondering the issue as an adult. Sure, I was raised Methodist, but even back then I was more interested in hanging out at Scotty’s on Sunday morning to watch and listen to the grand old men of my hometown smoking their cigarettes, talking shit, and drinking copious amounts of coffee than I was in whatever was happening in Sunday school or church.

Scotty Orr. An institution unto himself.

Like the poet said, “Mama tried to raise me better,” but the formality of institutional church never really took hold in me. The older I got as a kid, the more my Sunday learning took place right there in the side booth of the best and only greasy spoon restaurant in town. Over the years, Scotty’s and the people in it have become a core memory, likely even foundational to how I think of myself as a person.

None of that answers the question about what religion the nice lady at the doctor’s office should write down, though. It’s not like I could ask her to put me down as a disciple of the Scotsman’s Church of the Sacred Sausage Sandwich or a parishioner of the Midland Temple of the Holy Cheeseburger, French Fries with Brown Gravy, and Strawberry Milkshake. Although, it’s the 21st century, so maybe I could have them plug that into my file without much argument.

The real answer is probably more complex. I tend to believe in the things I can see or taste or touch. I’ve never seen God or Jesus or an angel or any of the thousands of other gods scattered across human history. It’s awfully hard to prove a negative, though. My lack of seeing those things isn’t proof against their existing somewhere in the unknown universe.

If I had to distill my philosophy of religion into a single salient point, I think there’s probably just one universal commandment: Don’t be an asshole. If you can navigate life without doing that, or doing it as little as reasonably possible, I expect you’ll have done well in the eyes of an almighty. If that doesn’t satisfy some all-powerful sky lord, well, honestly that sounds like it’s more his problem than yours anyway.

So yeah, I stumbled on my response this week… but I think I know what I’m going to say the next time anyone asks.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Coffee, black. I had blood work done this week and received instructions not to eat or drink anything prior to the appointment. Black coffee was excepted. I appreciate that I was allowed to get caffeinated and avoid the inevitable withdrawal headache, but honestly, even good black coffee is bad. I’m sorry, it just is. I mean I don’t want 10 times more cream in my go juice than coffee or anything, but I like it to come to a nice deep tan before pouring it down my gullet. I know there will be a chorus of “real coffee lovers drink it black,” well, you’re welcome to your bitter bean water, but I’m going to insist on something more civilized.

2. Hand wringing about corporate profits. “But companies are posting record profits,” they whine. Yes, they are…. and those companies are going to do things like invest in their infrastructure, identify growth opportunities, and return a big slice of that profit to their shareholders through increased value or directly by issuing dividends. If you follow the average news report you could be forgiven for thinking “shareholder” is just another word for the evil 1%. In reality, of course, shareholders reflect every single American who has a 401k, or an IRA, or a Health Savings Account, a 529 plan, or yes, even one of those old school union-backed pension plans. Big corporate profits are a good news story for the 55%+ of the population who have invested for their future. Sorry, but in a free market I’ll just never see businesses making a profit as anything but a good news story.

3. Anti-streaming. Look, if you’re going to have people schlep to the office and spend eight hours there doing work that they could be doing from the comfort and convenience of their own homes, the least you can do is unblock some music streaming options so we can make an honest effort at ignoring those inane conversations going on around us. Unless, of course, sitting around listening in on six conversations at once is the “organizational culture” it’s so important to preserve. I mean I know there are people who really dig being in the office, but I can’t for a moment imagine why. There’s not a single thing there that works better than its counterpart in my home office… myself included.

I’ve been referred…

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I went into the doctor’s office this morning expecting the normal checkup and regular drubbing for being too fat, too in love with salt, and hating all forms of exercise that aren’t yard work.

I got those things, of course, but I also got three unexpected referrals. The first involves an as yet undetermined amount of physical therapy for a back that never entirely quits hurting. The second is for a dermatologist to take a look at a stubborn bit or rash on my arms that the doc now thinks could be an acquired allergy to one of my medications. The last, well, that’s the one that just adds insult to injury.

The final referral is for a consultation with a nutritionist. Apparently, the idea of most of my collected recipes being directly from the 1950s and 60s is abhorrent and “not at all” recommended.

Yeah, well, they all taste good. Which is inevitably more than I’ll be able to say about whatever diet cardboard with lite vinegar sauce I’m about to have recommended for me. I’ll try to go in with an open mind, but the first time someone tells me cauliflower is an acceptable substitute for bread, pizza crust, or rice, you’ll be able to hear my eyes rolling from wherever you happen to be in the world.

I’m not convinced healthy people really live longer so much as it just feels longer because they’ve sucked every ounce of joy out of living. Anyway, it looks like I’ll be burning off shit tons of sick leave in the near future, so at least I have that to look forward to.