Eggplant...

I awoke this morning awash in sorrow and loneliness from my dreams.  It was a welcome respite from feeling dirty, but was a burden in and of itself.

Sometimes my dreams linger for days and sometimes just getting up and moving about causes them to fade from my mind, from my emotions.  Of course, I prefer the latter.  Today, that was not to be.

It is strange to find myself weeping for folk who never even existed.  I wish that I were weeping for the little girl I carry inside.  I have not yet learned to do that.  I wonder if I ever will.

Just a bit ago, I had eggplant seven days out of nine because of the final harvest from my second raised bed.  I didn't mind because I have enjoyed eating fresh eggplant ever so much.  In fact, I was a bit sad to know I would have to wait 10 months before enjoying the same again.  Then, Friday, I discovered two that I had missed.

One was almost past ripe, so I picked it immediately.  The other I left to grow a bit more, since we are having an Indian summer.  Today, I had eggplant, roasted broccoli, and 15-bean soup for dinner.  Being a smaller one, the eggplant disappeared all too soon.  I am hoping the other one will grow larger before I need to harvest it.  I have yet to figure out what overnight low is too low for eggplants.

Having a surprise eggplant was the highlight of my day.

I did have a productive conversation with my sister, though it was difficult at first.  I was trying to tell her about my wretched Friday and she started giving me suggestions on how I should have corresponded with the cardiologist over the past month.  Her suggestions were things that I did.  When she suggests them, I feel criticized, as if I wouldn't already be doing such things.  But I know that she is only trying to be helpful.  Things were a bit tense as she tried to listen and respond whilst I grew a bit testy and terse in my replies.

But then she had a bit of revelation about how it was that more than a month could pass and I end up with being told that I was to make the appointment I had been assured the cardiologist was working on making for me.  Then, we came up with a better construction on why it is that the radiologist was asking for the documentation.  And, over the course of the next few minutes, the frustration that has been plaguing me since Friday faded away.

I had held off writing a message to my cardiologist about needing the documentation and being unable to make the MRI appointment myself because I didn't want to regret the words that I used.  My sister talked me through a simple message and I got it sent.  Just two sentences.  And she pointed out that I have not been in the business world for eight years now, so I wasn't seeing the issues with written communication that arise on a daily ... nay hourly ... basis.  She's right.

She also said that this could be a lesson for me.  She said that it should not have taken more than a few days to get that appointment, a week at the best since it is a busy practice and the added request from the MRI department.  So, next time an issue arises, she encouraged me to take my cue from what has happened and do whatever I thought needful after that week has passed.  In this instance, I could have driven over to the hospital and stood at the reception desk in cardiology and asked what was the delay with the appointment.

It's funny.  If someone else told me that week after week she kept getting wait-and-see messages back from her doctor, I would have said to march into the office and ask for what you need right then.  But I had appointment after appointment, bad news after bad news, as my sister pointed out, and I just let this go.

I think, too, it is that this has dragged on since last December, when my first MRI appointment was canceled.  Too many times, I was told that if I did X, then I would get my appointment.  I think that a part of me has given up and so it was just easier to wait on my cardiologist, even when the waiting got to be downright ridiculous.

And it was.

When I see him in December, I want to have a blunt conversation about the problems in communication with the nursing staff who manage the messages.  My GP reads and responds personally to my messages.  His go-through-the-nurses-and-they-summarize-both-my-messages-and-his-responses method of communicating is not working.  Thrice, now, those summaries have been wrong and have kept me from getting timely medical care.  Mostly, though, the stress of this has just been too much for me.

I feel such the failure, having parsed the situation with my sister and realized just how much I have not done to move the process along.  Gosh, even she is tired of hearing about it because she's been hearing about it since January.

Had I managed it better, I wouldn't have had the spinal tap.  That blasted $300 spinal tap.  Had I managed it better, I would have had the MRI as least by the end of June or the beginning of July once I learned about the Medicare memo on scans on patients with implanted devices that my cardiologist discovered at the end of May.  Had I managed it better, I would have then had the MRIs on my pelvis, left foot, and left shoulder so that my GP could know how to better treat them.  Had I managed it better, I would be drowning in the frustration and stress and angst of this whole mess.

I wonder ... now that I know exactly what the MRI department wants in order to give me an appointment ... how long will it be to get that documentation????

Yep, the eggplant was the highlight of my day.