Doctoring...

I'm in St. Helena, California. Staying a couple of days at the hospital, doing doctoring. Today I had more injections (steroid) in the muscles behind my right scapula. For a bit, these things seemed to be doing better. Which brings hope. Then pain again. Which brings despair. The best thing about these injections is the temporary anesthetic, lidocaine, which takes away all pain. It is then that I remember what it was like to have a pain free body again. It takes a few days for the steroid to kick in. I'm lying on a hot water bottle as I write this. Hot water bottles are to painful scapulas as Bud is to Weiser. They work well together.

Tomorrow I have the day free here in the Napa Valley. I didn't bother driving home as I have to meet with the Workers' Comp MD on Wednesday. Should be interesting. I haven't had a whole lot of buy in from Workers' Comp on this injury. As I've written before, they don't exactly think neither my pain or my injury is real. "Ribs broken? Two months to heal. Max. Next! Oh, your lungs were scarred and deflated but we didn't discover that until 10 days after the accident? Oh well. Won't mention it. But your clogged coronary arteries are probably causing your back pain. You just have to learn how to work in pain. Ignore it. Oh, and by the way, you are getting too old to do your job; you should get buff or get out." Things doctors say when they've never had to deal with severe pain or are frustrated by a client that doesn't just bounce back to work.

Met with the cardiologist last week about the results of my stress test. He said I'd live another forty years and that there is no sign of any pathology in my heart. Good news!

So what are my goals for healing from this injury: 1. to not be in unbearable pain at work and 2. to not take medications that interfere with my ability to exercise good judgment at work.

And I have the Cover and Feature story in the Chico News and Review that comes out on Thursday to be inflicted on 100,000 readers. The article went a different direction than I had hoped (they wouldn't let me rant)---but none-the-less I am proud of how it turned out. It is a good little piece of writing, in my view. I'll post it on Thursday. Feedback welcome.