This is the fourth time I've tried to write a daylog. I keep starting them and then they sort of ramble into something other than an account of how my days going and I find myself thinking "Jeez, I like what I'm writing but it really belongs in it's own node." Then the start of my shift rolls around and I'm off to work without posting anything for that day. This is not a new pattern but to happen three times in a row seems like the sort of thing I should be able to avoid. I've got today off and then I move to weekend shift and I'll have two days during the week to write which will hopefully get me back on track to writing thirty by the end of November.

Other than IRON NODER, what's going on in my life? Well my media diet is still to avoid the news and information as much as I can practically. I don't like my cultivated ignorance but every time I do otherwise I feel bad about the decision. I've been watching a lot of video's on nuclear power and they've gotten me kind of hyped for molten salt thorium reactors and nuclear power generation in general. I understand a lot of peoples issues with nuclear but it gets a way worse rap than it deserves if you just go by hard numbers. I might try to do a write up for it but I don't have any real expertise and it would be time consuming to do it in enough detail. More than anything I've been listening to podcasts while I work. I sort of hate my relationship with the whole work podcast cycle because when I'm at home I often find my self pining for my parasocial relationships but at the same time I often hate the work. It's a weird Catch-22 that's given me a kind of employment Stockholm Syndrome. I don't want to lose the opportunity to listen but most jobs don't afford a ten hour a day podcast habit. First world problems, eh? Actually, the Cold War is over so it's really developed world problems.

IRON NODER XIV: THE RETURN OF THE IRON NODER

Yesterday diminutive and delicate came up.

"Yes and no." says B.

"Mmmm?" I say, making food.

"Diminutive, yes but delicate, no."

Oh. I grin. Yes.

This is good. I am 5'4" and right now 132 pounds at the doctor's office with clothes and shoes. So I dunno, 126? 124? Sold my clinic doctor scale. Oh, well.

But it means that B has decided I'm not delicate, in spite of being sick as shit from March through July. With all the appended psych stuff. He was horrified that I was sick and then even more horrified as he understood that it's probably a chronic illness, even though only one of the docs ever wanted to call a spade a spade. A chronic illness that I have been pretty lucky not to die from.

On the other hand, I've only gotten really sick from it four times in the last 21 years. And each time triggered by grief: my mothers death/marriage death. Sister's. Father's. And then the death of my clinic. It just killed me to have all those people come in to say goodbye.

I am on oxygen part time now. I apparently have sleep apnea but am one oxygen point shy of having the stupid insurance pay for it, so I have to pay for the stupid machine. I've been wearing oxygen at night for months, so it shouldn't be that bad.

We have gone up above 3000 feet and I am fine without oxygen. My muscles are still f'ed up and if I overdo, I get the diverticular symptoms again. Ooooo. Not good. I am backing off on anything that triggers that. I just don't like patronizing our local ER and I've already been there twice this year.

I am like a patient I had, P. I wrote a poem about her and have a signed consent to publish it. P had MS, took two people and a crane to get her out of bed. It didn't matter. She was all over town in her electric wheelchair. I do not know if she is still alive. She moved down to the nursing home in the bigger county south of us. Good decision, I think, the ones here are too small for her. If she is alive, I hope she is still raising hell.

I suppose my lungs are delicate. Or my health is. If I can get my muscles working again, I hope to ski in January. So there!

#28: Iron Noder

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