Mental Things That Are Centered in My Mind

Patient:  Willing to wait if necessary; constant in pursuit or exertion; persevering; calmly diligent.

Yesterday I figured that the smart thing to do would be to give my knee another couple of days to heal before going to visit a doctor.  I say this sheepishly because I'm virtually certain that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, a specialty of mine.  There's nothing of so little insignificance that I can't expand into something of great significance.  Then I decided that I would make the appointment for the end of the week - if my joint improved then I could cancel giving a fair amount of warning - in the hope that taking a little action - any action - would improve my peace of mind.  With me it's rarely the physical pain - it's the mental anguish of worrying.

Little Westside Jonny and I had a lively debate once - while we were floating in a canoe on a shallow, murky lake in the Amazon Basin - over the size of compensation that we would each require to spend one night on any of the little vegetation-choked islets that were scattered around.  I think I ended up as low as $50,000 as I detailed how I would clear the brush from the base of a tree, climb up as high as I could go, then sing at the top of my lungs all night, hoping to scare away most predators and lizards and insects and such.  It was sort of a white board, brain-storm about how to survive with a sound mind for a night in the jungle.  LWSJ refused to even consider a sum.  

"You couldn't handle the misery for one night?" I asked, incredulously.  "For a million dollars?"

"Oh, I could handle the physical part," he said.  "But I'd have no mind left when the sun came up."

I get that.  My mind is not my friend.  When I think of LWSJ I think of the man who coined my motto: "Prone to Anxiety."

Vis-a-vis the doctor I realized that I was dicking around, delaying the inevitable for vague, fear-based reasons, so I slid into a same day opening and went to see him.  My guy is what I would call a curmudgeon.  He doesn't tell me what to do, preferring to lay out possible options, starting with a less invasive, less traumatic treatment plan, and migrating step by step through to the end game, usually something like having my head lopped off and fed to pit vipers.  He doesn't encourage tests and drugs and MRIs and X-Rays unless they're clearly indicated and - because he does a lot of reading - he believes that the research generally shows that these things aren't all that helpful for most minor illnesses or injuries.  I can almost see him rolling his eyes skeptically when he's talking.

He spent a very fair chunk of time manipulating my knee and asking me to do some simple exercises.  An MRI would diagnose a soft-tissue injury which he was 99% certain I didn't have.  An X-Ray finds bone problems which he was also 99% certain I didn't have.  There's a test for arthritis you can undergo and he guaranteed me that I'd have some arthritis, adding there's not that much you can do about arthritis, anyway, that aspirin or ibuprofen, OTC medications, wouldn't address.  He brought up the phrase "a 61 year old male" a few times, in the context that things don't work so good as you age.  Not that they don't work at all or that they're never going to get better but that things start to wear down and become more problematic, more balky.  

I read once that in biological terms nature is done with you by the time you're 30.  Eat, breed, and die, basically, that's nature's game plan.  Nature doesn't care about a rich and fulfilling old age where you take up oil painting, reading poetry, traveling, and volunteering at the senior citizen center.

I had done the inevitable internet research, hoping for some reassurance that would keep me out of a doctor's office, and read over and over "one to two weeks" as an appropriate time frame for a normal soft tissue sprain or strain.  The less commercially oriented sites - the ones not as concerned at driving page views and selling products -  bump this up to "two to three weeks."  I stumbled on the website for The UK National Health Service which counseled seeking an expert's opinion if things hadn't improved after six weeks.  The Brits are less panicky than us Yanks.  My doctor repeated this: "One to six weeks," he said, inserting the phrase, a tad disdainfully to my ear, into some point he's making"as it has only been five days," the implication being that five days is somewhat less than the forty-two days that exist in six weeks.

"I don't really like that six weeks figure," I quipped dryly.

This guy is not real big on dry quips during a medical examination.  He's busy and this isn't a comedy hour.  So his response, one I've heard before . . . 

"Well, be that as it may. . . . ."  He's also says "as we age our bodies don't respond the way they used to.  One time I replied: "That's really not fair."  He didn't laugh then, either, and not because he was being unkind.  He's trying to reassure me while helping me get better, not lie to me and tell me what I want to hear.  Give me good news or leave me alone.

It's kind of like The Program, I guess.  I go to meetings to hear general solutions to general problems.  I have friends and cohorts from whom I will take specific advice to specific problems.

Did you know that there is an organization called The American Chronic Pain Association and they have a pain awareness month, that they have activities and an official color.  Christ on a stick, I hope I'm never in that organization.  That's just what I need - an organization that I can belong to that focuses on pain.  I should be president.  There's probably a banner there with my mother's picture on it.  I wonder if the activities are meant to increase the pain or mitigate its effects?

I mentioned the knee tweak to one of my older friends this morning.  He said:"Yeah, I got something going on with my knee, too.  I'm just working through the discomfort."  I remember a discussion I had with a doc friend many years ago, explaining that I had some kind of injury or another and had taken three days off from exercising: "Three days," he said, exasperated.  "Why don't you try three weeks."  This is a message that didn't sink in, apparently.

Jesus, these people with some perspective are my heroes.