Pity Party Invitation Warning

Like a bag of rancid french fries or a fulminating diaper, I have to dump this somewhere......sorry to use the blog the way some people use the window on speeding vehicle. But I do find that if I have a good kvetch on-line it gets it out of my system. I try to leave my troubles at the foot of the Cross......this has just turned into the place where I exercise the inclination to discuss the troubles that I have so recently placed in God’s hands. (The friends who say I never complain about anything are obviously not reading what I write. Oh, well, sorry to take it out on you all....)

So........yesterday was my appointment with the orthopaedist to discuss my bad hip. As I saw one patient after another enter the treatment area and exit happily afterwards, I had a feeling that I was going to be the last patient seen. And wind up like Dorothy - watching the Wizard find something in his bag of tricks for everyone but me. The doctor wasn’t sure why my internist ordered the MRI since the X-ray so obviously showed what the trouble was: absolutely no cartilage left in the left hip. None. All that can be done is a hip replacement. Now. Or in five years. Or ten if I’m still walkiing. No matter how you slice and dice it, I am going to need an artificial hip that I will (God willing) outlive. And need replaced. Right now the big problem is that I cannot afford to take time off to get it done. I have sandwiched the doctor’s appointments in my free time. (Did I mention how great the MRI was........? It was quiet compared to the sewer cleaning being done on our street. And they had headphones with WXRT tempting me to wiggle my toes along with Phish and Lucinda Williams. Perhaps it is indicative of the chaos around here that I found 45 minutes in a cool, white tube with nothing but clanking and good rock music as good as a day-spa treatment.) The MRI wasn’t a total wash.......yes, I did joke that it showed that I had everything except worms........but that was just in the hip. The rest of the adjacent body parts look good. And I shall use the films for school stuff, since the orthopaedist didn’t want them. Of course, maybe these are body parts of which young fellows have no interest in seeing on films of their mother.

I had figured when my hip was really shot I could get Synvisc and be good to go. They don’t do Synvisc in hips (for a variety of good reasons that the doc explained to me....) He told me I could up the Celebrex for bad days.

Fran reminds me that she’s glad I’m not a dog. She knows what happens to dogs with such bad hips.

To bad I can’t get a copy of the X-ray. I’d like to have put on a T-shirt so people would stop asking me what’s wrong with my leg. I could alternate with a shirt that says, “THIS IS MY BAD LEG - THE GOOD ONE WAS STOLEN BY AN ITINERANT BIBLE SALESMAN” on the front and “HULDA” on the back.

AND....

My sister called last night to say they were making an emergency trip to Madison today to file extra pages of election petitions. There was some sort of SNAFU (let’s face it.......my family changed its name to Smith from Snafu) and she is short 4 signatures. If time permits she will bring Martha home to spend a few days with us. In this time we have to find a suitable vehicle so Martha can take her Illinois driver’s test and then return her to Wisconsin to finish her summer fun with my sister. I hope I can get home in time to make the house look presentable. Or maybe Martha will just take the 15 hour bus trip from Madison to Chicago.

Madonna Esther is appearing in Chicago. Blech.

And I think I have a zit.


There........all better. Thanks for listening.