Don't pay the ransom, I've escaped!

That's the punchline of an old joke. He'd been out partying with his co-workers, and now he had to go home to his wife, so he yells that out as he enters the back door.

I don't know whether he got away with it, but I've been AWOE - absent without explanation - for quite a while, and I've been feeling guilty about it.

Agoraphobia Rules!

I've mentioned before that my agoraphobia doesn't completely keep me from leaving the house, but it sure binds up my gut when I do. Normally, if I leave the house on Monday, my gut will be working again on Wednesday, with the help of a laxative. It helps if I've been planning ahead; if I am aware on Saturday and Sunday that I will be going out on Monday, I can psych myself up for the ordeal, and it doesn't affect me as much.

Consequently, I've been going out two or three times a week over the last five years, and this disability hasn't been a really big problem. Things changed, though, when Blondie lost her driver's license. Her doctor said that because of her dementia, she ought not be driving.

That means I have to drive her where she needs to go. In theory, she could ride the bus, except that if she gets confused driving a car, she would really get confused riding the bus.

No Compromise? No Problem!

I've tried to negotiate a compromise with her, that she plan where she's going, and what she needs to do when she's there. I don't want to do four trips to Fruitville Pike in a given week; odds are really good that one trip will do it.

She chafes at that. It's terribly difficult learning to accept new limitations. I don't blame her. I rail at times at the universe for things I haven't been able to do since the early 1990s.

Doctors, though, aren't easy to schedule back-to-back, and even if you could, it's terribly exhausting to "break in" a new doctor. Week before last, we had 6 appointments on 4 days between the 2 of us, and last week we had 7 appointments over 5 days - and one of them, I sat in the parking lot for four hours, waiting for her, which was awfully stressful on me.

Olympic Achievements

Needless to say, I was world-class constipated. My doctor says to use Miralax. It's PolyEthylene Glycol, PEG for short, which is a stool softener and a lubricant. The directions say one dose a day, usually get results in 1-3 days, don't take more than 7 days without doctor's OK. After 14 doses in 5 days, I still hadn't broken free.

My baccalaureate degree included a major in mathematics, and they say when a mathematician has a problem, he works it out with a pencil. That doesn't work well for me; instead I lit an M-80 firecracker and swallowed it. Simultaneously, my wife belted me, at my request, in the gut with a 20-pound sledge. That didn't exactly solve my problem, but it seemed to be doing something, so we kept repeating it every 30 minutes, and after 4 hours, I started to get things moving.

It Takes A Big Guy

As you might imagine, carrying around 10 days of fecal matter in your gut isn't going to make you feel chipper. Even worse, it made my belly swell - and when I sat up, it cut off circulation to my legs. My legs, especially my left leg, developed the worst case of edema I've ever had.

It was painful to walk, but once I got traffic moving on Hershey Highway, the edema didn't go away immediately. I spent a couple of days in bed, and then a third. It wasn't just painful to walk on my feet, it was so excruciating that I couldn't even stand up. even after the edema went down.

I couldn't drive myself anywhere, and Blondie no longer has a license. I called my primary care physician to ask if I should have an ambulance take me to the hospital. I thought the pain was skeletal, from arthritis, and the discoloration of the toes was bruising, but I don't want to lose these feet to gangrene.

The Doctor Is OUT

She was out of the office. Day off. If I go in and deal with a stranger, the doctor will be unfamiliar with my set of problems, and won't know whether he can believe me, and he'll pooh-pooh me. I decided to wait another day. At the same time, I asked Blondie to put some footlets on me.

The snug footlets pulled the metatarsals of my feet together, and with an extra day to heal, it became possible, though painful, to walk on my feet. I appear to be healing.

Well, almost. The urine I've been passing has enough blood in it that it looks like watery Pepsi. It was a kidney stone, the last time this happened. I'm having a test in the morning that will tell us the answer.

I'm Not Complaining

Please don't get the idea that I'm being whiny about physical complaints. I'm trying to relate what's happened without whimpering. Believe me, there were many times in my teen years and my twenties that I had no acute symptoms when I felt much worse. While it hurt a terrible amount to walk, I had a ready remedy available: I didn't walk. Duh. Save your sympathy for someone young and lonely.

Although I've spent a lot of time in bed, I haven't done well at catching up on what TiVO has recorded for me. I am really aching to see "Invention of Lying" which I recorded on the 10th, but I haven't seen it yet. I ask myself "Am I going to be awake for 90 minutes to watch all of it?" and "Do I have the energy to follow what's happening?" and I choose something that's 30 minutes long, or a variety show like Graham Norton.

Do You Believe

This afternoon, there was a movie on that I wasn't watching, so I can't give them proper credits, but one character asks the other, "Do you believe in Happy Endings?"

I heard that, and immediately drifted away from the movie. Happy endings are those sundaes they offer at Friendly's aren't they? And of course, there was Gwen who used to ask a guys if they believed in happy endings, and then she said she was sitting on a happy ending, and offer him her phone number. I would have to say that yes, it was a happy ending.

Been There, Done That, Glad To Be Back

But I think growing old has a lot to do with happy endings. Over the years, I have learned to be contented with less. I used to have more, and a worked myself into a frazzle because it was never enough, and frankly, I see opportunities all around me that I'd love to tackle, were I young, had I enough capital, if I had the stamina to work 14 hour days, 7 days a week. I'm not kidding. Nobody works those hours unless they love what they're doing, and I loved what I was doing. But at this point, I have learned to accept reality.

And that's worth a lot.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
- agoraphobia - Aleve - arthritis - bed rest - diabetes - disability - Dulcolax - edema - happy endings - metatarsal - Miralax - nephrologist - NSAIDs - primary care physician - specialists - vascular dementia