He once reigned supreme but his sticky residue is now de-throned
For the foreign help desk at the electronics’ website
Is now a chat box with hours-long delays, okay, you win!
Just go ahead and try to get a new phone, I dare you twice, he warns
Your angst with paper stickers on produce that stick in your teeth
Can’t light a candle to the one you never see or can’t understand
Should the bot wizard become akin to a blood-thirsty human
About to challenge your mental stability as your life agonizingly slips away.
Go ahead again. Try to get your throw-a-way, $1,000-phone-on-a-20-year-payment-plan to work better, NOT!
I prescribe a lobotomy to cope since rationality isn’t a trait of a programmer abroad.
Think I am exaggerating? No, your turn is coming. It’s only a matter of time as they say.
One day we will all succumb to the Son of the Sticker Man, the Help Desk with forked tongue
Just bring your alcohol, chocolate, potato chips (family-sized bag please) and expect PAIN
And don’t even try to click over to a new window while waiting my dear friend. The torture will intensify with a prompt for password you don’t even know as you get blasted out of rationality again and again.
I suppose it all makes a flip phone sound really good about now, eh? JJ
Seems like there are more arrows pointing at the same target this time, but will the archer get it right? You know, the one in the white coat with the big degrees, fancy knowledge, and ticking watch?
Too bad that it was me and not one of them that pointed out that the pancreatic cyst mentioned on the CT report still needed some kind of follow-up! But maybe it’s alright that things happened in the order in which they did? At least my 32 year relationship with thyroid medication has ended and removed one more factor in an equally puzzling dance with hypoglycemia.
Peripheral neuropathy, heart disease, hypoglycemia, insulin resistance, pain, nausea, and a pancreatic cyst were all written down but no one put them together in the same story until I brought the report to my Doctor on September 11th. Let’s add daily seizure attacks for 7 1/2 years shall we? You know, the ones that we recently discovered can go away sometimes with a blast of sugar? The glucose monitor doesn’t scream answers yet as to why this occurs and how to manage it, try as I do, but some other labs are finally leaving clues.
An MRI and MRCP are behind me and an endoscopy ultrasound (EUS) shall commence but not a 72-hour fasting blood test (used to diagnose a particular type of pancreatic mass associated with hypoglycemia). Oh well. We opted for the local specialist to evaluate me but he only does the former test not the latter. I just hope it wasn’t a mistake NOT to return to the Mayo Clinic and the Pancreatic Clinic this past week. Travelling there is a big deal and trying to get home after procedures is a bear dontcha know.
I’ll try not to ruminate about the potential for pancreatic cancer and hope that this miraculous little finding is ordained by God for a time such as this, to point the new “archer” to a cure for my worst symptom. Who knew that these days when you have hypoglycemia they look for a cause? Decades ago the medical folks just had me eat small meals of particular food combinations; “it may or may not turn into diabetes someday” they said. Similarly I have seen just this year how medical treatment protocols change! Yes, thyroid nodules have not been treated with medication since the protocol changed in 1986! The researcher of that study turned out to be my endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in March, starting me out on a plan of action that ultimately calmed my fried nerves, weakening bones!
Keep your eye on the ball I keep telling myself. One step at a time: live around the nausea, pain, and increasingly unpredictable convulsive episodes. Figure out what to eat. Cancel plans with your husband and stay home where it’s safe. Yuck! Venture out when you can regardless of how you feel. Keep up with the IV fluids every 2 weeks and take 2 cherries before bed in case the sugar spike prevents the episodes that meet you there every night. Then try to sleep knowing that the tempest beast who has ravaged your neck and back and head thousands of times before is lurking before you fitfully pass out by morning . . .
This hell. The joy is gone. And yet as I have stated to myself before in the words of Moody Church pastor Erwin Luitzer, “when going through hell, don’t stop.” Count your blessings including some new ones here at home; embrace your beloved hubby dear who loves you so. Dwell in the presence of your Savior. Reach out to friends in Christ. Talk to Jesus . . . He is here right now, back there, and out there too.
Twelve more days will have passed and chemically-induced rest for the EUS will be here soon enough. You got this! JJ
Friday my Doctor recommended some new supplements to further my care and seemed pleased at some progress revealed in retesting of my gut health. But neither product is available right now; instead I had to crash in bed that night and most of Saturday.
Yesterday I thought I would work on trimming a sterile plum tree in our backyard that is riddled with black knot disease. We are trying to save it for a few more years of it’s flowering glory in the Spring and rich wine-colored leaves in the Summer. It was not to be so today.
Tomorrow I hope that my trial of THC-free hemp oil will resume with receipt of a shipment in the mail. I didn’t realize when I started it recently, how much I would need nor the extra timing needed for shipments across our country. This could help resolve the seizure attacks as soon as this week . . . if I get the dosing right . . . and if the next shipment arrives shortly thereafter. But there was a fire in a warehouse between here and there, threatening my continuity of care. Maybe I will have enough? Maybe not? Lord knows that one day we will have figured this all out!
When today came I thought I might clean our bathrooms and floors then complete an infrared sauna treatment before heading outside. Instead I was sick. Only the sauna treatment happened.
Then later and just when it looked like the core of my treatment plan was coming together, another infection sent me and my beloved to the walk-in clinic of our local hospital. Geez oh man. Steve offered to take me out to dinner last night but I could not make it. I was hoping to take a walk with him and the pup in the sunny, 50-degree weather. Nope, not today.
I cried a lot before proceeding with what we did need to take care of me today. Life sure is funny. Perhaps some medical appointments this coming week will clarify what I should do next to get well in addition to responding to urgent changes that seem to come along every few days. And maybe someday, one day, we will make plans for something fun and they will really happen!
In the meantime, date nights will be at a clinic or pharmacy at Walgreens or driving to the nearest metropolis for a fancy NeuroQuant brain scan. At least in the case of the latter, we got to see a dear friend, Mary, for a quick lunch at Freshii’s in Chicago’s Loop. Now that’s making the most of a day, eh?
Straining to trust in my Lord this night. Choosing to trust in His Word and promise to carry me through it all no matter what may be one day for:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil?10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 3
Jesus is for the Wounded 
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