Met a new doctor today. I think I just met myself, or what I would be like if I were a bald man with an MD. He was casual, friendly, and he listened completely. I'm sold. I always get nervous before I go into medical appointments, wondering how much I will have to say or do to justify my existence and my desire to have care administered to me. I've been dismissed too many times over the years to be arrogant or assured enough to expect to be believed on first blush. But I had my banter worked out well today. I gave a full accounting of my recent personal history. I promised that records of scopes and surgery would be on the way from South Carolina, once they got through to the offices back there. And I provided a clear picture of my family tree, of which members had difficulties that matched this new doctor's specialty (three were relevant). So I didn't have to fight. All I had to do was check my calendar and make plans for follow up testing to come. The good news is that the one scope that No One Ever Wants can wait six months, unless we discover something clearly out of the ordinary before then. But I will have an upper GI endoscopy in just over a week and an ultrasound of my liver on Monday. I don't recall ever having that done before, but I have heard often: "hm, your liver enzymes are a little off." Nobody ever seemed interested in following through on that thought, though. I guess a little off isn't unusual.
I am feeling in every inch of my body how many days in a row it has been since I had one of those "all day in pajama pants, never even managing to brush my teeth" days of absolute rest. I don't know when the next one might be, but it is starting to become imperative that I find time for one before it co-opts my life without warning. I ought to collect a handful of pretty pictures to keep in reserve for the next time I don't set foot outside the house.
The only pictures I got for myself today were of an experiment spawned by the internet. My father shared one of those things that claim cats are so hard-wired to sit in boxes, which they regard as safe spaces, that they'll sit in a taped square on the floor. I didn't feel like affixing tape to the floor, but I did find a spool of lightly wired ribbon in my craft cabinet. I made a sloppy "box" out of it, and set it on the carpet to wait and see what happened. Alfred looked at it immediately, but was more interested in asking me to cuddle than to climb inside of it. Several minutes later, after I was distracted by Twitter or some such nonsense, I noticed Athena and Alfred back at it, but rather than sitting inside the square, Athena set about chewing on the wired ribbon, destroying the cat trap. And now, when it's too dark to take a picture and I'm out of inspiration, Jackie is draped across a total knot of ribbon. No trace of the box is left. So as experiments go, my results are that yes, cats notice it, but no, they're more interested in the human who made it or in destroying it than in validating an assertion from the internet.
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