Into the heart of darkness

Yesterday I took a trip into the city for a medical appointment. It was a cancellation, so I only got the appointment the afternoon before and had to revise all my plans for the remainder of the day. I had planned to spend an hour or so working in the back yard—mowing and prepping one or two garden beds— but ended up spending more like four hours. Exhausting.

Anyway, we're not supposed to leave our communities except for essential reasons and a medical appointment qualifies as essential. Google mapped out a route for me that avoided The Rotary (every Nova Scotian's nightmare) so I was grateful for that. All along the highway were large handpainted signs thanking truckers and essential workers and flashing LED signs admonishing drivers to stay safe and not travel. Our numbers are going the wrong way, Strang and Rankin had expressed the hope we would see lower numbers at this end of the week, but not so. Third Wave Variants here we come.

My appointment was with a neurologist, a young woman. After applying nasty electric shocks to my arms and legs she told me my nerves are completely normal. But I still have nerve pain. She recommended Gabapentin. I said I had some leftover pills for my dog, could I use those?

She said, "I am supposed to say no, but my Mum was a vet and she supplied our antibiotics when we were little…"

She wrote a prescription for the drug. I tried one of Hapi's pills last night, and it was weird. Not sure whether I'll take any more. 

She mentioned that my GP had sent her a copy of a sleep study report that said I had severe sleep apnea.

I said, "What? She never told me that."

She said, "I can print out the report if you like."

I said, "Sure."

I read the report and what it said was that I had severe apnea in the supine position. Oh, that. I knew that. Right from childhood I had these awful nightmares about being paralyzed and unable to breathe. In the nightmare I would be struggling to move, I thought that if I could just move one toe or one finger then I would be able to breathe. Which was true. After many years, decades even, I put two and two together and realized that sleeping on my back caused the nightmares and they weren't really nightmares, they were actually happening. So I learned to never sleep on my back, and to avoid even sleeping on my side for fear of rolling over onto my back while asleep. The sleep study report just verified it. Apparently I spent one hour on my back and had enough apneas to qualify as severe. But once I got on my stomach, I was fine.

I had packed a lunch since I did not want to stop anywhere in the city if I didn't have to. I felt like I was at the heart of the plague and just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I even hesitated to open car windows for (the unfounded) fear of the virus blowing in. But I wasn't all that hungry and thought that if I booted it I'd be home before I got really hungry. Stopped once for gas and that was it, home in time for a late lunch.

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Called my Bubble friend to tell her about some puppy supplies on sale in the hardware store flyer and we chatted about the puppy, and about the recent death of a mutual friend. I read in the little newspaper that comes with the sale flyers a tribute to this friend, I had not known about her death. The tribute took up the full front page and included a nice picture of her and her husband and children and grandchildren. Everyone I know who is on Facebook knew about it but I did not. I 'lurk' on Facebook but have not acquired any 'Friends'. I've often thought since the pandemic started that I should get back on since these days that's the only way to keep up with folks, but the price I pay for being on there regularly still seems steep.

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My son is working on an online film festival, he said he could stream some films for us to watch if I wanted to pick out anything I would like to see. I went over the list online and one stood out for me. It's called Stray, about three stray dogs in Istanbul. In Istanbul you are not allowed to kill, capture or move stray animals: where they live is their home. Vets tag stray dogs to keep track of them when they get veterinary treatment and to find owners for them, but that's it. 

Another film I liked the sound of was about everyday life in the war zones of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The blurb said it was not about the atrocities of war but simply what the people are like and how they get along. It is an area of the world that I would have loved to visit were it not for the various wars there. Istanbul too. I was talking to a friend on the phone about these films and she mentioned that her husband had visited Afghanistan a couple of times and hated it. He is/was a cameraman for a major TV network, he's been to a lot of places for his job. In particular he hated the smell and the bleakness of the landscape. My friend said they had to wash everything he brought back from there because of the smell. But he was only in one small part of the country, a military base to be exact, so I think that his experience was unique to that time and place.