Mortality

Here's the Grim Reaper, trying to figure out what else he can do to try to kill me.

Let's see, in the past two or more years, we've had Despair and Grief in overabundance, more than I'd ever thought I could bear. And then cold after cold after cold all winter long, with a short break for my birthday in June, and then another cold. Pneumonia multiple times.

Thinking to head off the dastard, I got a pneumonia shot as well as a flu shot last fall. Well, that worked inasmuch as I have not had pneumonia this year. The flu vaccine missed the mark, though, so after the New Year's Cold Virus, and the Excruciating Pain of "Pinched Nerve", the whole family got the flu -- it would be funny, unless you laughed and the five of us came after you with baseball bats.

I was able to get through the pain of the "Pinched Nerve" by virtue of physical therapy, and we all survived the flu, albeit with some ugly complications. Now, clear sailing into summer, wot?

Not. The time had also come for me to have my periodic cholesterol checkup; the doc added some other tests into the mix, and lo and behold, I turned up as deficient in Vitamin D as one of my father's leather shoes from 1968. (Oh, and of course the cholesterol was insanely high, but that's genetic, so who cares, Crestor is my buddy forever.)

Too old for rickets, I'm still tremendously at risk for bones that turn to powder at impact. Great, just great. The doc gave me a prescription for super-mega-'mungous doses of Vitamin D, and an order for a bone scan to see how far gone I am.

Not going in for a bone scan until I wrap myself around and accept the diagnosis from my MRI: a herniated disc in my neck was what was causing the hideous pain that sent me to the doc in the first place. Damn it. I'll see a specialist at the end of this month to determine a course of treatment. I'm hoping that he will recognize that the physical therapy is a viable option to surgery.

And then there is fatness, and the repercussions thereof.

Because I was laid up with the neck and then the flu, I did not exercise, and so gained about five pounds, all around my waist, because that's where I pack on the blubber. I asked my daugher if she had any Fat Pants from last year when she was bulging, and she obligingly gave me several pairs of pants. A pair of jeans fit like skin, and even had a comfy elastic waist. I wore them often, all day comfort, felt like a dream.

It was only when a strange blister broke out on the top of my foot that I became concerned. "Gnat bites?" I thought. "A new reaction to mosquitoes?" Then another blossomed on my ankle, and then another on my calf, and one on the opposite knee, one on my waist, one on the back of a thigh, two more on an ankle -- and only then did I grab the comfy jeans and look at the content label -- oh, my God, there was Spandex in the mix. Allergic? Oh, yezz. In my aged days, Spandex is poison to me. Not all the time, mind you, I could wear stuff with it for a couple hours with no ill effects. But the wearing of the jeans set off a major allergic reaction, and I will not disgust you by telling where-all the blisters appeared nor what they look like.

Do you know how many items of undergarments are free of Spandex? I can count them on the fingers of my knee.

Now I know why hippie women were all for burning bras.