Being without a computer for two days was bound to set me back, but the trouble really started after I got home with the new one.
Added to which, this past week was the busiest we’ve been since the great unpacking after we moved here 8 years ago, the anniversary of that adventure, on September 30th, having gone unnoticed as we rushed around.
Fall does tend to be a busy time as the leaves begin to change colour and we tear about the countryside trying to make the best of the annual spectacle which varies tremendously within a few short miles and in a matter more of hours than days.
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Apart from leaf-peeping, there have been a couple of time-consuming appointments.
It was my great good fortune to find a very good opthalmologist and conveniently, she practices in Greenwich, but I always find those appointments exhausting as we work through countless examinations and tests to derive the perfect prescription for my terribly mismatched eyes.
My most recent prescription seemed to stop being perfect within weeks and although I had the glasses adjusted a couple of times, I have mostly resorted to wearing them tilted. It doesn’t matter that this looks daft. The problem is that they constantly fall off, especially when Little Man jumps up.
Part of the problem, I decided, is that the frames turned out to be a poor choice. The “temples” (arms) often dig painfully into the side of my head, which I could really do without. It was important, therefore, to make a better selection for the new glasses.
My previous frames had suited me, but those are no longer produced. Something very similar is available but had to be ordered. Two weeks later, they have not arrived and until they do, the new glasses themselves cannot be ordered.
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The next appointment was less convenient being that it was in Albany. Luckily, confusion over my required arrival was straightened out in time to avoid us wasting an extra 75 minutes. Having been told initially to arrive 30 minutes before the appointment, I’d received a text which said 90 minutes and when I queried it, 90 minutes was confirmed.
“Time to get you ready”, they said ominously.
It made me wonder…! I had had a manometry test a few years ago and remembered it as fairly simple and painless. Perhaps things had changed? However, the day before I got a further call to say I only needed to arrive 15 minutes early. In that earlierntext message 15 minutes had become 1.5 hours.
Fretting about it would have been unhelpful, so it was as well I was unaware just how radically this particular test has changed.
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Some weeks ago my voice quite suddenly went hoarse, unrelated to a cold or chest infection. The Ear/Nose/Throat specialist suspected laryngopharyngeal reflux and prescribed Omeprazole but before I could evaluate its effectiveness, I developed an itchy rash.
In truth, I don’t think the rash was related to that medication which I’d been prescribed once before, but I wasn’t keen on it because of other, more serious side-effects. However, when I returned for follow-up, my vocal chords were reported to be less inflamed though I had acquired a polyp.
Long way around to mentioning that the ENT specialist employs a scope, this being a narrow, flexible tube containing a light and camera which is used to examine the internal passages of the throat and head.
As I have a high gag reflex, I am not fond of this examination, but I breathe deep and think of other things and it is really not a problem.
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The modern motility test is an advanced form of this procedure. It is one thing to have your vocal chords examined. Quite another when that probe continues its journey into the esophagus which is where my reflexes really kick in.
The clinician had warned me that this was the hard part, urging me to take deep breaths and keep calm. He had dressed me in a protective plastic robe! There was a good deal of spluttering and moisture, but eventually my body stoped trying to reject this foreign obstacle and we proceeded to swallowing.
This involved having saline solution squirted into my mouth. I think dirty ditch water would be preferable to that foul stuff. I detest it and by the end, I think if I’d had to take one mouthful I might well have thrown up, but luckily at that point the test was concluded and I was freed.
If I’d known what this test involved, I daresay I would have been anxious. Ignorance spared me. However, locating the clinic in itself got my heart pumping. This was somewhere I’d not been before and as it turned out, it was in St Peter’s Hospital which is huge and full of people milling about, corridors going off in all directions, signs pointing every which way.
One of the problems with my eyesight is that I am unable to process large volumes of information. It all becomes a blur. The other thing is that while I can walk perfectly well at home or in familiar territory, large stores, supermarkets and hospitals in particular have me shaking and wobbling pathetically.
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Having arrived in the parking lot we’d been directed to, there was no evidence of the building number I sought, so I set off toward the main hospital and asked the valet-parking attendant where it was. He jerked a thumb behind him: “In there!”
In there, I was further directed upstairs to the first floor, what in England we call the ground floor, where I was to check at reception, but here my overloaded brain went tilt, so I accosted a young man who obviously belonged, to inquire. He looked at me incredulous: “It’s right there. The big red sign!”
Ah yes. Indeed it was. I am long past being embarrassed.
Checked in, I was sent back downstairs via an elevator so slow in coming, I was wondering where the nearest set of stairs might be, but then the door opened and I was conveyed to what I would call the basement, where I followed the written instructions I’d been handed, down a long tunnel into the bowels.
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Leaving the hospital, we found our way to Crossways Mall where we dropped off my computers to have my data transferred.
Computers. Ah!