Older, but Not Wiser, So Much
So I am 33 now, and in just under a year I will beat Jesus, old wise. Which is hysterically funny to me, and pretty much no one else. And I have been making this proclamation, about when, precisely, I will beat Jesus, for years, and once I finally do so I have no idea what I will look forward to.Which, if the last couple weeks are any indication, may not be a problem, because I will be lucky to live just under another year, at this point. Because, as the title of this post notes, I may be continuing to get older, but I am also continuing to get dumber.
Two weekends ago, I had Nothing To Do. Usually, I have plenty to do, mostly work and client and lawyer related, and so I relish sitting on the couch and watching bad TV because then I am doing something, namely procrastinating, and I am kind of really good at that. But then the weekend came, and there was nothing to do, and I wasn't even getting any emails, including the automatic ones the firm usually sends out. So I promptly lost my damn mind, and started texting all of the people I know to come entertain me. But first, the Joker and I decided to get out of our house and go to my favorite brunch place. And it was eighty degrees and sunny and we ate outside and after some (several) frozen peach bellinis consumed by me, and one bottomless mimosa consumed by Joker (he will not even try a peach drink because peaches are "fuzzy", and this is apparently an abomination), we decided to go to Specs. This is a terrible idea, because Specs is a place that is basically a candy store for adults, and when I first showed up in Houston and found an entire warehouse consisting of 1. gourmet foodstuffs, 2. chocolate, and 3. ALL THE ALCOHOL IN THE WORLD, which they give away to you in free "sample" shots, I promptly named it "The Magic Store." And one should not GO to The Magic Store if one is drunk, because one will spend many hundreds of dollars on things such as an entire gallon of diet sweet tea vodka, several other vodkas, several bottles of wine, assorted flatbreads, bratwursts made of unusual proteins like elk and bison, beers, dip made out of bread and fish eggs, and British appetizers. And we came home and continued to drink, because in my BORED AS FUCK state I declared the day for Day Drinking, and then finally everyone paid attention to my texts and the Boys brought over a ping pong table and I had a beer pong tournament in my garage. Because that makes sense. Then I fell UP the stairs and went to bed.
This weekend was my actual birthday, and let's just say we all learned a valuable lesson about why car bombs are a terrible idea when you are old. But I also got my hair done, and my wonderful hairdresser is going through some issues that make her Brave, and my hair is purple now.
(I kind of love it, but my co-worker today was all, "Did you dye your hair? What... what color is that? ...Yes, yes it is dark, but it is also... is that red?" and yesterday night when I took a shower the red dye was washing out, and combined with the red shampoo I have, I looked like blood was just pooling at my feet.)
I have also discovered the glory that is shellac for nails, and for the first time in my life my nails are not bendy, and I can wear nail polish, and I went for straight up sparkles. Which again, I love, but again, I am 33, and there is some disconnect here. The good news is I can finally wear pants again. I have been wearing a stupid knee brace to try to bring down the pain, swelling, and inflammation I have from the injury I obtained from sitting down a lot*, and that has meant it has been all dresses and skirts for weeks. And I missed pants.
* Ok, seriously y'all. This thing with the knee? That whole DAY falls under the title of this post. Because Joker and I went to Disney, and I was fine, and then I came home and closed a deal and worked 17 hours sitting in the same position for weeks. And I started to notice that every time I got up I fell down again, because my knee was excruciatingly painful, and did not like holding up my body, or bending, or doing anything that knees are typically known for. So after I closed my deal we were slow, and I decided that since I was down to my last pair of contacts and they weren't the right prescription anyway, and also my knee no longer worked, I decided I would spend the day visiting various doctors. The plan was, run to the eye doctor, get a prescription, then go to the orthopedist and try to convince them not to laugh at me and tell me that maybe I should try NOT SITTING all day on my knee, and that would fix my imaginary problem. This should not have been a stressful day.
This was a stressful day.
I had noted the night before when I came home to Joker that "my damn eye was irritating me." Turns out, you should MAYBE PAY ATTENTION to those things, because I went to the eye doctor all, "I just need a check up and a prescription, lalala", and she was all, "and that GIANT FUCKING INFECTION IN YOUR EYE, RIGHT, THAT IS A PROBLEM?" and I was like, "um." And then she looked at the eye, and put some drop in my eye which she said would numb it, and then she explained that it was in really bad shape, like to the point that she could even give me a prescription because it was so inflamed it was messing up the eye machines. So she gave me steroid drops and told me to wear my glasses, which is awesome because I can't both wear my glasses and not fall down stairs.
So now I was one doctor down and not in a good place, and I still had to go to the orthopedist. On the way there I noted that while my knee was still a throbbing mass of pain, I felt kind of awesome, because that numbing stuff was working and I realized, right then, that the knee had only been sort of masking all the pain from the eye.
So I go to the other doctor, and they x-ray me, and I was completely convinced that everything was fine and they were going to accuse me of being a big baby. So the nurse downloaded my x-rays to the doctors computer, and left the room, and of course I decided to spy on my x-rays, despite having no medical training. And I saw one of them, and even I was able to note that the one bone there? Was kind of... sideways? And huh? But maybe it was just because my leg was bent, so... So the doctor comes in and I tell her about the pain and the sitting, and she goes, "Yep, I can see what is wrong with you," and turned around the screen, where low and behold, there was that x-ray with the sideways bone. And she explained that my kneecap? Was not at ALL where it was supposed to be, and so it was obliterating my cartilage with every step, and my leg was swollen down to the ankle, and everything was inflamed. And she told me I had Runner's Knee, and it was likely because I was sitting on it in a way that caused it Great Stress, and also, see here? Where the bone has gone all pointy? That was arthritis, but because I am young they don't call it arthritis, like THAT was a brilliant save of the medical community. And at that point I was relatively broken, because the day had not gone well and I was going to have to go to the pharmacy for the second time for more prescriptions, and also the clients had suddenly determined that the pile of work I had been told to go "pencils down" on was very much "pencils UP", and also why was it not done yet? And so I did all I could do, and looked at the doctor and made her verify to me that I had managed to give myself Runner's Knee from sitting down too much, and then I laughed until I cried.
So that happened. And so I have made it to 33 but beating Jesus is looking less likely as in the last six months I have broken my foot while walking and annihilated my knee while sitting, and there isn't anything left for me not to do. At this point my friends have decided I operate on some anti-risk curve, and should spend my life doing insane things like sky diving and mountain climbing and shark diving, because those activities are relatively less likely to hurt me.
As long as I NEVER lay down.
Labels: doctor, injuries, Old.
posted by Citycat @ 10:49 PM
<< Home