Health Update

 

I have a walker now.

Our son and daughter-in-law kindly bought it for me.

I don’t use it all the time--not all that much in the house, where I know what's available to grab onto when Sir Dizziness arrives. But when I have to go out--for a doctor's appointment, an errand, a vaccine (we get Covid #2 on Thursday)—I must take it, or I'm in Big Trouble.

This walker is just a symbol of my continuing instability, my declining health.

My doctors haven’t yet figured out my dizziness. I’ve been passed from one to another like an unpleasant relative. From cardiologist to ENT to neurologist (2 of them, one passing me on to the next). I’ve had multiple scans and blood tests and inconclusive results. They have ruled out some bad things—no, some evil things.

But more such possibilities lie ahead: MS, Parkinson's. In upcoming weeks I have some more scans and bloodwork, a spine piercing. Sounds like fun!

But I’m still hoping for relief—even something that relieves the symptoms if not the disease.

Meanwhile, my metastatic prostate cancer lingers, perched on a limb above me like a hungry hawk. This week I’ll take more blood tests for that and will meet with my oncologist to see where things stand, to see what we must do next so that I can stay a little longer in this world with the people I love, with the things I love to do.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to obey the desperate urgency that my body has made so patent in recent months and years. Trying not to waste any time. Trying not to waste a single second with Joyce.