Starting somewhere.

A couple friends have told me i should write a book. I'm not sure i agree. It's hard to be convinced it's all worth reading when I wasn't that enthused about living it the first time around.

September 10, 2001 I started a temp assignment in the Maine Department of Education. I'd been out of work for a while, so that was great. The next day, of course, things went somewhat awry. I remember being thoroughly pissed when we all got sent home. I didn't fully realize what had happened, of course, but was more concerned with the fact that I as a temp didn't get paid if i wasn't working.

That friday, the 14th, i was back in the ER and the attending doctor mentioned in passing that due to my diagnosis with diabetes, they'd be admitting me. She thought a nurse had already told me. We all had a rather awkward moment when wife and I explained that no one had told us anything. I refused to accept such a thing and decided i'd just go home. At that point I'd only been in the ER 2 or 3 times, and the idea of being admitted still scared me.

Come to the end of 2011. I've been working for the state for 8 years or so, which i find a bit hard to get my head around in and of itself. I spend a week or so in mid-december in the hospital, but it's really no longer even noteworthy. I spent 1/2 the year out of work due to one medical issue or another and getting admitted is such a regular thing that the unit nurses greet me by name.

It's such a cliched way of putting it...But this is not at all how I expected things to turn out. When people ask how i'm feeling now, i say i'm pretty good, that i haven't been in the hospital yet this year. It generally seems to elicit laughter, but i mean this in all seriousness. Currently "good" means i'm usually tired and often sore, but I can generally still get up and go when i want/need to. It means i don't venture into large stores without hitting a bathroom first, cause i know if i get partway through and have to go, i can't bend my knee enough to crouch down and hold it in. It means getting IV infusions of fluids and iron weekly, but regular lab work showing my blood count hold flat or decrease. It means it sucks a lot of the time, but it beats where I have been, so I try to remain grateful.

There's more than this to say, I suppose, but that will work as a start.