A Near-Constant String of Apologies

I thought summer was weird, and that fall would be normal because summer was so weird. “I’m so looking forward to things calming down,” I thought to myself at the beginning of September, “because this summer has been a lot.”

Summer was a sprained foot, and an unexpected trip for a funeral, and another unexpected trip to be with a friend in a medical crisis, and two surgeries in the family, and a planned trip with my mom that went all sorts of ways. It was also spending time with friends on patios, and reconnecting with a beloved friend from high school, and other great stuff, but what it wasn’t was routine. It wasn’t steady or calm. (Which is fine! That’s great - that’s life! But also I was ready for things to be much more even-keeled.)

But no.

I thought I had sprained my other foot in September - good news, it wasn’t a sprain. Bad news: it’s gout. LOVE to add another chronic medical issue to my growing list, especially one where the treatment plan is essentially “talk to a dietician (and, by implication, let them tell you all of the foods that you won’t be able to eat going forward).” I don’t have my appointment until late November, and I’m not looking forward to having to guard myself against the utter insidiousness of diet culture (and my own reactions and susceptibilities to that) and also acknowledge that some of those rules/guidelines that I followed out of societal pressure and self-hatred might actually be necessary to manage this condition and make it so it doesn’t hurt to walk.

I also started a new medication for my Crohn’s disease last week - not because I had been experiencing any symptoms, but because there was some active inflammation on my last scan, which is a sign that my previous medication had stopping being effective. (This is pretty common for the meds I take for Crohn’s - I’ve had to change medications every 3-5 years pretty much since I got diagnosed.) The new medication itself was fine - so far, only mild side effects, and I feel like that’s just my body getting accustomed to the meds - but I had forgotten about the rigmarole of it all. Office appointments, lab work, phone conversations with various nurses, prior authorizations for insurance, denials, appeals, etc. And, like, this is all very manageable and not even that onerous, especially right now when I’m not symptomatic / dealing with feeling awful, but it’s so inconvenient and time-consuming. I told a friend that it’s one of those times where having a chronic illness feels like having a part-time job, because the medical profession just does not really exist in a world where patients have other things to do besides deal with their medical business, so all of that is happening during the same part of the day where I’m trying to do the rest of my life stuff (like, for example, my paying job, or making my lunch, or whatever).

AND my oncologist is weirdly very concerned about me having low potassium levels, which is seemingly unrelated to every other medical condition I have, so we’re managing that, too. Working with ALL the doctors this month.

I spent a week in the office at my job (something that happens very rarely - I work from home almost entirely) and moved over 150 boxes of other people’s crap and got so mad I almost cried. And that was before one of my coworkers asked me, “so, are you going to wear that mask for your whole life?” and I had to reply, “well, I like being alive and healthy, so yes.”

It wasn’t all frustrating and inconvenient, though - Peter asked me to throw him a birthday party for the first time ever in our 20-plus-year relationship, and it went so well and was so beautiful. I hit a new personal best on my back squat (250 pounds! I’m strong!). I discovered some new delicious places to eat and got very into The Great Pottery Throwdown (and particularly Keith Brymer Jones, the big British dude who cries with joy and pride almost every episode). We got a new roof put on our house (which is great because now there won’t be a drip when it rains that lands directly on my bedside table, and because we are very lucky that it wasn’t our financial responsibility). I made really delicious potato leek soup.

So here’s crossing my fingers that “Fall 2” (aka Halloween to Winter Solstice) is calmer, slower, in a more regular rhythm. Here’s hoping.