So what’s been going on with me since I got out of the hospital in mid-April, knowing my cardiovascular system was OK? Went to my primary care physician, where we kvetched together about public education. She’s going to schedule me for a stress test.
Meanwhile, I went to an orthopedic practice. My left knee has hurt on and off since I tore the meniscus in 1994. Now I have a touch of the bursitis. (My grandmother always used the definite article before all ailments, such as the arthritis, which she called the arthuritis; don’t think it had anything to do with Kiwis from Chicago.) The bursitis and the arthuritis, which I had in that knee before, sound like an old person’s ailments, but then I took a look at my date of birth on my passport, only to be surprised to find how old I really am! Got a cortisone shot in the knee, which helped some.
I’m supposed to go for physical therapy for my left elbow. Not sure if I have tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow – I don’t play either sport and certainly not with my left arm. The brace does aid me a bit.
Then I went to the gastroenterologist’s office in anticipation of getting a colonoscopy in late June. It’s been 10 years. Not incidentally, my wife gets one every five years because her brother John died of colon cancer at the age of 42 back in 2002.
While my wife and daughter went on a 4.5-mile CROP walk against hunger this past Sunday, I rode my bike nearby. It had been so cold and overcast for so long that I did not prepare properly and got a bit of sunburn on the top of my head, and even worse on the back of my hands, where the vitiligo is prominent; it has been red and itchy for days, and lotions aren’t helping.
Meanwhile, why is it that I’m so stuffed up? Could it be the stuff floating around here? And what ARE those things that look like snow flurries or spent dandelions? I decided to ask my Facebook friends. A couple of them said it was cottonwood, but Lynn Moss, a longtime reader of this blog, added: “It’s probably not the cottonwood that is causing your allergies, but something else coincidentally releasing pollen.” She even provided this video. Another said, “It is the pine pollen. Coincides with the release of cottonwood seeds in our area…” The picture above may or may not be the culprit, but someone sent it to me, so what the heck.
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Here’s some sage advice about the problems with self-diagnosis.