Sarasvati - Of Art and Knowledge

Ugh, feeling unhappily gross today. It's foggy outside and I'm stuffed up like crazy, with a rough throat to boot. Not a pleasant day. I should be doing all sorts of productive things, even while I'm sick. There are books that need reading and reviewing, I have I don't know how much writing that I need to catch up on, or I could even be wild and crazy and wash some dishes!

But I'm not. I'm sitting on my butt playing Persona 3 (FES, because I recently acquired it in a trade), and maybe later I'll do some knitting while watching reruns of That 70s Show, but beyond that, I don't feel like doing a damn thing today.

Especially not important lifey stuff like going to the gym or getting groceries. That stuff can wait until tomorrow, after I've had a day of rest and tea.

It's funny, but Rei and I sometimes wonder why Cass does so much crazy stuff in her life. (I'm going somewhere related with this, so bear with me.) This past weekend, she got a grand total of 8 hours of sleep over 3 days, because she worked and went to a master screenwriter's workshop. This is not abnormal for her. She often does stuff like this, like pulling double shifts and then going out for some social drinking with friends, shorting herself of sleep to do so. Sometimes it gets to be too much and she'll take a bit of a social hiatus to compensate, but she's nearly always doing a thousand and one things, and we wonder sometimes how she manages to do it.

Then we remember. She, like Rei and I, are in the "prime of our lives" stage of things. We're at the age where we are supposed to be able to do that sort of thing to ourselves and not suffer much for it beyond needing a really good night of sleep once in a while. But because we have chronic illnesses to deal with, we can just barely handle having jobs and a few hobbies that aren't very physically taxing.

Makes me wonder what we could do if we were in really good health. If I lost weight and didn't have to worry about my heart and lungs going screwy and could get over the severe social anxiety. If Rei's workplace would give him a regular schedule so he could control his IBS, or if his social axiety stopped being so much of a problem too.. We could rule the world!

Okay, maybe not rule the world. But we could probably do so much more than we're doing right now, so much that people our age take for granted. We could have a massive cleaning blitz of the apartment, so we could pack things up and have them all ready for when we move again. We could do yoga the way we've been talking about for months. We could spend entire days outside without worrying about whether we're going to be in so much pain that we can't move.

We could pull all-nighters and write, or just hang around and play video games.

For so long, I didn't really think of my life as abnormal. Sure, I have some physical limitations, health issues I need to worrty about, social and mental issues that make some things more difficult, but I figured heck, this is what most people are like, right? My life isn't that different from Joe Random's life.

Then I really take a look at the most 'normal' person I know, and I really begin to understand just how much I can't do because of my health, and how much Rei can't do because of his.

Hell, doing a 24-hour amateur acting bit last year was a big thing for me, and I didn't even go through as much as some others in the group. I slept late the day that it started because I knew I'd be up late and wouldn't get much sleep. I spent the day not doing too much, to conserve energy. I slept for 5 or 6 hours that night, then was on the move all the next day until the evening, rehearsing and dancing and singing and then performing in front of a bunch of strangers.

(It's easier than you'd think for me to be able to act, in spite of social anxiety, because I'm good at getting in character. I become someone who's not me anymore. Let nobody tell you that RP sessions don't do anything for you!)

Most of the other people in the group had been going for a full day on the first day, as they had another performance they had to act in. Then they get little sleep that night, and are on the go all the next day too. I couldn't do that. I'd be tired and cranky and my lungs would be twitchy and I wouldn't even be able to give myself any caffeine because of the risk to my heart.

I didn't think about it much before now, but I got off pretty easy on that, even though it was hard. I couldn't do what the healthy people did. I know I couldn't.

It's not because I'm lazy. It has something to do with my weight, because my weight is probably aggravating my lung and heart problems. But being fat and lazy isn't the ultimate problem in me, though I'll bet that's what a lot of people see. I have conditions that prevent me from leading the life that others my age live.

Right now, I don't feel like I'm missing a hell of a lot. It's not like I'd do what Cass does, booking up almost every spare minute of my timeand then crashing when it all becomes too much. But I wonder what I could be doing if I was fully healthy, the way I'm supposed to be at this stage of my life. What might I have discovered that I love, but haven't discovered it now because I know I couldn't handle the experience? What might I have done that could make people go, "Hey, that's really cool and I wish I could do it"? Would I be tanned from being out in the sun and the wind more? Would I wear different clothes? Would I read less?

I wish I knew what I was missing. I wish I knew how much of what I'm not doing is something I'd actually do if I had the chance or the ability. Maybe I'm missing nothing at all. Maybe everything. I don't know, because I'm always sick and have to consider carefully just about everything I do that involves physical activity and the time of the day. (Getting up early makes my lungs twitchy and stands a good chance of screwing my gut up in a painful way.)

I guess I also wish there was a point to this entry other than just me ranting about what I can't change yet, or can't change ever.

Through torachan, I came across this post by kaz, on the subject of disability and the curing of disability and how that relates to identity.

Reading it helped to give form to a lot of thoughts that I've been struggling to deal with for a while now.

I don't consider myself disabled. I consider myself challenged. I have problems, mental and physical that require some readjustments to my life, and even though they may make things difficult for me, they do not directly prevent me from doing anything. I can't, in all good conscience, consider them disabling, as I feel that comparing my problems with, say, the problems of somebody who requires a wheelchair to get around or who suffers from chronic pain is just doing them a disservice. Thus, I call my problems my challenges rather than my disabilities.

Moving on...

I've spoken to people, friends and family, about these problems before, and nearly always, the topic comes around to how they can be fixed. Losing weight to hep me breathe and sleep better, which will possibly take away pain and comprehension issues. Wouldn't it be great if there was some sort of quick fix to my problems?

The thing is, I'm not sure it would be so great. And I feel like a terrible person for thinking so. I feel that by not being enthusiastic about wanting to be rid of any issues I may have, I'm a bad person for clinging to them, like I'm somebody who wants problems just so that I can have something to complain about. If I don't want to be perfectly healthy in all ways and forms, then I'm malingering, I'm trying to be special, I'm just looking for sympathy and attention.

That feeling is worse sometimes than anything that my issues make me go through.

I'm not 100% sure that if some miracle cure was offered to me, something that could fix my lungs and heart and my eyes and my brain and all the senses connected to it, I'm not sure I'd take it. And people treat you like you're stupid and attention-whoring for it, but here's the thing: my problems are a part of me. I may struggle with them, but for the most part, they're a part of my life and I've learned to deal with most of them enough that I can lead a pretty normal life without having to resort to some drastic miracle cure thing.

I've worn glasses all of my life. I can't comprehend what it's like to see clearly without something to help. I take my glasses off at night, and in the morning I put them back on. It's part of my routine, it's something I've adjusted to just fine, and it's a hassle some people wouldn't want to deal with, but to me, putting on my glasses is no different than pouring myself a cup of water.

One night, a long time ago, something wonky happened that I can't explain. My glasses were off as I was about to go to bed, and so the world had returned to its mass of fuzzy blobs and blurs of pseudo-colour. Then I looked at the clock on the bedside table, one that was 6 feet away from me, and I could see the display clearly. No blurriness around the lights making up the numbers, nothing of the sort. Something that shouldn't be able to happen.

I panicked. I felt my face for my glasses to confirm that they were off, multiple times. I looked around the room at other things to see if they were blurry too, and how blurry they were. My eyesight had, for a brief period, seemed to recovera significant amount, and it scared me. Not because I love having to wear glasses and think they make me special, but because seeing anything clearly when my glasses weren't on my face was not something I did!

Imagine someone who's badly agorophobic and stays inside all day, working from home and paying the bills and doing all that everyday stuff that people do. Now imagine one day this person feels absolutely no fear at going outside. They're not about to burst into song and go gallivanting around the local nature park, no matter what happy-go-lucky media portrayals would like you to believe. They're going to sit inside and stare at the outside and wonder why this is happened now, all of a sudden, and what it means, and how they're going to cope with it because it's not normal for them.

Just the same sort of reaction somebody might have if they had never exhibited a fear of the outdoors and then suddenly found themselves unable to leave the house one morning.

Long-term problems mean readjustments, shifting things in life so that life can go on in spite of the problems that exist. Having those problems suddenly lifted requires as much adjustment as suddenly having those problems descend upon you. Your life needs restructuring again. The identity that you built for yourself around your problems (the things you deal with every day, remember, and so are no more weird to incorporate into an identity than enjoying going for a run every morning or knowing you like to drink coffee) suddenly doesn't apply, and you need to re-examine yourself and form a new identity around your lack of problems.

And people expect you to be grateful for this. Sure, you may be able to get up and walk to the corner store instead of using a wheelchair, or you may now be able to digest food indescrimately instead of having to have a specialized diet, but there are still changes that need adjusting to, and aspects of your old life are going to creep back in. How many times have new amputees tried to use the limb that's no longer there? How many ex-amputees who had arms grown back by medical science (or some such thing) leave that limb unused or favoured for the very same reasons?

Your life still changes, no matter what the cause of change is. It's hard to deal with. Change is hard for everybody, whether abled or challenged or disabled. Expecting people to be happy about a major life adjustment is selfish. You're asking them to be happy that they have to struggle to restructure themselves because they're not longer an awkward inconvenience, they're "normal again."

Identity is also about how people see you as much as how you see yourself. It blows if people see you as "the disabled one" and treat you like crap for it, but at some point, the disability becomes a part of your identity. Losing it means you lose a piece of yourself.

I have a character that I RP with Rei sometimes. This character is blind, has been so almost from birth. He's happy. He's well-adjusted, loves his life, is in a loving and caring relationship. Rei once suggested that it would be awesome to come up with some way for Nathaniel to get his sight back, and then seemed annoyed and confused that I wasn't all for it. Nathaniel doesn't want his sight back. He's happy being blind. His life works well around it. It's a part of him, and he's okay with that. The thought of having to learn to rely on a sense he doesn't even remember ever having scares him quite a lot, because it's so alien to him. But in Rei's mind, it was a problem to be solved, an obstacle to be overcome.

It had been. Just not in the way that Rei, and a lot of other people, expect.

I think this mentality is at the heart of all the "fat wank," too. People who have been overweight for their entire lives have formed an identity for themselves that incorporates being fat. Lately, it's become a lot more acceptible to be proud of who one is, in spite of problems. "Accept me for who I am, problems and all, or else you're just being a dick." But the world is still telling them to be different, telling them they have a problem to be solved, telling them that part of their identity needs to go away. It's not too surprising that people get their knickers in a twist over it.

I don't think that enough people see things like this as something that can be part of an identity without connecting that to the thought that people just like to have something to bitch about. They can't see something not of the norm and think that it doesn't need fixing. "That poor girl needs a cane to walk," thinks the woman who doesn't even think about the glasses on her own face. "Her life must be so dreadful to have such problems. She'd be happier if she was normal."

What about my identity has been built around my problems? Let's take a tally of just some of them, shall we? I won't mention my reasons for them. I'll just list the adjustments I make, which have become itegral parts of myself.

1. I don't go outside on very cold and dry winter days unless I have to.
2. I don't drink coffee or energy drinks. I allow myself a cola if I'm at a restaurant. I allow myself tea at home.
3. I don't eat spicy foods because they don't agree with me. I also don't eat potato chips late at night, and am careful not to eat anything in the morning until I've fully woken up.
4. I prefer communicating online to talking face-to-face.
5. I watch movies and TV shows with the subtitles turned on.
6. I drink a variety of herbal teas.
7. I need to save a certain amount of money each month, which varies depending on what kind of job I have at the time.
8. I try to take a short walk every day, but sometimes I stay indoors instead.

Oh noes, such terrible things I have to do for myself! If I just posted that list of things I have to do in my life, people would wonder what point I'm trying to make, and act like it's no big deal. Why even mention it? But tell them that it's because of health or emotional problems, and the tone changes, and that list becomes a sinister one, listing all the restrictions I have to make and detailing, subtly, all the things I can't do because of my problems.

1. I don't go out much when it's cold and dry because my lungs spasm and I wheeze and cough and have to fight for breath.
2. I limit my caffeine intake because I've found that it's a trigger for my heart spasms that make it, for a few seconds, sometimes beat as fast as 200 beats per minute.
3. Those diet restrictions are because I have some sort of digestive disorder that requires unpleasant trips to the bathroom as well as pain.
4. Social anxiety, sensory problems primarily relating to hearing and speaking, shyness, awkwardness around people seeing my Tourette's make my twitchy, and trouble making eye contact makes me prefer distance communication to the other kind.
5. Hearing comprehension problems mean that turning subtitles on makes the movie easier to understand.
6. I've found some herbal teas that can treat a lot of my problems, from chronic sinus congestion to the pain and problems associated with that digestive disorder. They're a damn sight cheaper than meds, and sometimes more effective!
7. Money gets put aside so I can afford the meds I need to take. The amount varies depending on whether my job gives me health insurence.
8. I walk to try to get exercise for my lungs and heart and to lose a little weight, but sometimes the pain from my infected ingrown toenail, or perhaps bad weather that my lungs can't handle, means I stay in sometimes.

There are other, more obvious adjustments made for my health. The infected toenail was so painful for a while that walking anywhere required a cane for balance. I need to carry my asthma meds in my pocket, just in case. It doesn't escape anyone's notice that I'm overweight or that I wear glasses. Sometimes I have panic attacks.

But I am me. My challenges are a part of me, whether you like or not, whether it's convenient for you or not. I am not looking for a "quick fix" to being myself. I am not looking to have to reorder some parts of my life, and some parts wouldn't get reordered anyway. I like the taste of those herbal teas. I don't want to go out when the air's cold and dry anyway. Spicy food burns my tongue. Walking's an enjoyable activity that I like to do. Even if I didn't have Tourette's or social anxiety or autism-like symptoms, I'm still shy and prefer keeping my own company, so I wouldn't go out and become a party animal.

That isn't to say that I wouldn't be glad to be rid of some problems. I'd love to not be in pain. I'd love to be able to be broke without wondering how long I can go without meds before my lips start to turn funny colours. It isn't all positive stuff that comes along with my problems, or they wouldn't be problems.

But it's not all so terrible. It's not all something that's waiting for a quick fix. Not all bald men have hair transplants or wear wigs. Not all people with bad eyesight get corrective laser surgery. Nobody thinks badly of them for those choices, even if it would "fix their problems." So in that vein, nobody should look down upon the blind man who's content with being blind, or the woman with Celiac disease who doesn't suffer any for having to eat a gluten-free diet.

Or the person smiling as they limp down the street leaning on their cane, laughing at a joke their deaf friend just signed to them.

I wonder, if people looked closer, how many people they'd see with problems. People they know, whom they see every day, and of whom they never would have guessed suffered from anything at all, because they're so used to making all the little adjustments that allow them to live normally anyway.

On another community site, I was reading a complaint by a woman with severe chronic lung problems, who was talking about her latest bout with illness was due to a coworker coming in for his shift when he knew he had bronchitis. She wondered why he'd do such a stupid thing, working while sick and risking the health of others around him as well as his own, instead of staying at home and recovering and sparing everybody else.

Why did he do it? Likely for the same reason that Rei suffers through pain every day, and why I work at call centres when I have a hearing problem. We can't afford to do otherwise.

Let me put it this way. Where I live, working 40 hours a week on minimum wage can get a person a little over $1000 per month. As I have learned recently through searching for a new apartment, a 1-bedroom apartment in a not-so-great area of town, one that needs work done on it, often goes for between $500-600 per month, with only some utilities included in the rent if you're lucky. That's 50-60% of one's earnings, and most financial experts say that typically one should only be paying about 30% rent or mortgage. Here, that would be $300 a month, and for that I believe a person could get a run-down bachelor apartment in a place that's well known for its drug dealers.

Get a bad case of the flu and get told by the doctor that you need to take a week off work? Feel just generally crappy and want to take a shift off in order to rest? Too bad. You need that shift because you can't afford to pass up the $50 you'd earn that day.

And those are just the immediate paycheque-to-paycheque considerations. Most jobs allow you a certain number of sick days each year before they start getting on your case. Taking more than than the number of days allotted (usually around a single week out of the entire year) can be grounds for punishment or even dismissal, unless you have a doctor's note. Your very job could hang in the balance, which makes for a very compelling reason to push past your illness and go to work anyway, no matter how bad you feel, no matter how sick you risk making those around you.

Want a doctor's note to cover your ass? You'd better hope that you either have a doctor you can see in less than 24 hours, like one at an after-hours clinic. And if you have something like stomach pain or dizziness, they demand you go to the hospital because it could be something they can't treat. (Even if all you want is a doctor's note to shut your bosses up.) That means that you sit in the hospital waiting room for hours because you're likely to be low-priority, infecting all those people in the waiting room with you, only to be told that yup, there's nothing the doctor can do and you should just go home and rest.

Here, some clinics charge $20 for a sick note. That's $20 out of pocket, plus whatever you're going to lose by not going in for your shift.

That's why people work when they're sick. Unless they have a very well-paying job, no debt, and don't mind living in a bad area of the city, they can't afford to do otherwise.

It sucks for all involved. It sucks for the woman who got sick because her coworker came in with bronchitis. It sucks for the man with bronchitis because he has every reason to work while sick and so few reasons to stay home. There is no way of winning. There is no right decision. Every decision you could make is wrong for a thousand reasons, and everybody loses.

Rei is sick again. He wants to stay home today. He wanted to stay home yesterday, but couldn't afford it. He can't afford it today either. He won't be able to afford it tomorrow. He will go in to work, spread his cold around, and work through pain and weakness and feeling awful, because he needs to eat, and he needs a place to live.

If I get offered another job at a call centre, I will accept it. My ears and brain don't function together the way they ought to, but that kind of work pays well and I need that sort of money. I will suffer through the frustration and humiliation and stress because I need to. When my lungs start to twitch and I cough like mad and can't sit up without gasping, I will push myself in for my shift and do what I can for as long as I can, because I won't be able to afford to do otherwise.

It comes down to money, but not greed. It is not a malicious attempt to infect people, but a desperate attempt to keep the bills paid.

I personally feel sorry for everybody in that situation. I've been the person who comes in to work sick, and the person who gets sick because others come in to work sick. It's hard. It's a never-ending battle of illness. But it has to be done because the alternative is being homeless and hungry.

Which, I imagine, won't do much good for my health either.

Inspired by this post, I decided to bring over a rant that I first posted on Livejournal, regarding public perceptions of overweight people. It was written in January 2010, when I had little else to do all day but watch videos I found online. (Not that this has changed much, given my employment status...)

I'm watching Supersize Me, and thus far it's definitely an interesting watch, but I've found one quite objectionable thing that I feel needs addressing. The comparison of smokers to fat people.

The comparison wasn't that both smokers and fat people are in unhealthy situations. No, the likeness being drawn is that they both intentionally put themselves in unhealthy situations. The person being interviewed mentioned seeing one guy start heckling a smoker about his habit, and how that was socially acceptable, but heckling a fat person for eating too much wasn't. He said he could draw no distinction between those examples.

Nice to know that some people are really effing blind.

For one thing, outside of stupid tabloids, babies aren't born with cigarettes in their hands and mouths. A child can be born obese, on the other hand. It isn't common to see parents pushing cigarettes on their kids. It is increasingly common to see parents pushing unhealthy fatty food on their kids. Smokers don't make appointments with doctors and are suddenly told that they have a "smoking condition" which will make them smoke for the rest of their lives. Some people, on the other hand, end up with metabolic disorders through no fault of their own, which makes them gain weight easily and shed it with great difficulty.

I think comparing fat people with smokers is unfair. Comparing compulsive overeaters with smokers might be a little closer to the mark, but the insinuation is that every single overweight person is overweight because they choose to overeat.

It may even work that way in the majority of circumstances. But not all, and it's not fair to tar everyone with the same brush.

In media, it's still a gag to have a fat character who's obsessed with food. Heckling smokers in public may be more acceptable than heckling fat people, but smoking is also more accepted in the media. Nobody blinks an eye if somebody lights up a cigarette in a movie. But everybody laughs if a fat character dives after another piece of chocolate cake.

I'm overweight. I also eat for comfort more than I should, and eat more junk food than I should, and I don't eat as many vegetables as I should. And some of that is my own fault and I hold myself to blame. But some of it is because I have not yet broken down all the habits of childhood, where my parents thought it was better for me to drink Coke than orange juice, where they'd allow me to eat 3 burgers from McDonalds when I was 8 years old, and where vegetables other than potatoes were a rare occurance in the household. I haven't always been this large, but I have nearly always been a larger than average child, and I'm sorry, but when my eating habits are under the control of my parents (mostly my dad, who's still largely overweight), there isn't much a child can do to stop developing bad eating habits and to avoid putting on excess weight.

In the obesity crisis these days, people tend to overlook that aspect of things a lot. They see an adult who's fat, and who has been fat all their lives, and they blame the person. It doesn't cross their minds for a second to remember that for many years, that person's food was under somebody else's control. My father once tried to force me to eat bad eggs or else go to bed hungry, not listening to my complaints that the omelet tasted horrible and metalic. How am I to blame for the weight I put on during those years?

And yet somehow I am. If anything, people will look at fat adults and hear that they were fat children, and also instantly make the assumption that once the person got out from under their parents' thumbs, they should have worked out every day and dieted like a fiend and lost all that excess weight very quickly so that they could avoid being blemishes on society any further.

Here's a newsflash to all who think like that: IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

I'm not defending everybody who's overweight. I'm simply saying that all overweight people are not the same as all smokers. And I'd appreciate it greatly if people would stop saying that.

If you want to look at it from an overeating point of view, how about this: implying that overeaters are as publically reviled as smokers makes them feel bad. Which makes them want to eat for comfort. Which makes them larger. It's a load of bullshit, but it might fit better into some heads to phrase it that way.

Very very narrow heads.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I had an explosion of fanfic ideas last night that I really must write down before I forget about them.

Here I am, awake at half past 6 in the morning, unable to sleep any longer because Rei and I went to bed early last night in preparation for his pointlessly early shift at work today. Only he won't be able to go in to work for that shift because he's in so much pain from the chronic health condition that his workplace refuses to accommodate. And he can't call in sick yet, despite his shift starting in only half an hour, because despite the fact that people should be there right now, nobody's answering the phones.

There are no words. I truly despise his bosses for being so negligent and dismissive and outright cruel. It isn't as though they haven't received two doctor's note recommending they give him certain considerations to help with the condition. It isn't as though his condition isn't recognised. It isn't as though he's just pushing for accommodations and not showing any signs of illness, as he was forced to take 30 sick days last year.

Those were days when the pain was so bad that he couldn't really walk without assistance. Pain any less than that, pain that maybe only caused him to double over every once in a while and break out in sweating and chills and be forced to sit down and rest every half hour... That, he'd work through*.

The condition that shouldn't be so disabling has practically turned into a full-blown disability for Rei, because his workplace won't make a few simple schedule adjustments and allow him things like predictable work hours or regular eating and resting times. This is a day when his pain is so bad that the standard procedure for us both is to carry around our cell phones, in case he needs help doing such "trifling" things as walking three feet from the bathroom back to bed. Today is a day I won't leave the apartment unless it's with him, in case I'm needed to get him a drink or his medication or any number of little things that healthy people take for granted the ability to do.

He's in the process of taking this matter to higher powers. The Human Rights Commission can do nothing until he's taken this as far as possible within his company's politics, so he has to contact the regional office to see if they can force him particular store to to stop being ass-backwards about accommodating for a chronic health condition. If they insist on not doing anything, only then can he take this to a government committee instead. It could take a year to sort this all out because of beaurocracy, another year where Rei has to worry about spending days in pain, worrying whether he'll be able to make it in for his shift, wondering whether regular eating and resting times will even make a difference when he's too sick and tired and hurting to eat anything.

I hope it stops when the regional office hears what's been going on. Realistically, though, it won't. His workplace is one that follows in the grand footsteps of Wal-Mart, complete with human rights violations, health code violations, low work hours, and corporate bullshit. I hope it will stop, but realistically, this issue will probably have to be taken as far as it can possibly go to get any results at all.

A person shouldn't have to involve the Human Rights Commission to get simple accommodations like this. It shouldn't have to go further than the workplace manager. But this time, it has to, because it seems that the higher up on the ladder of command one goes there, the less people are able to tell their asses from their elbows.

They disgust me. It's thanks to them that Rei is now going to spend today feeling guilty about not being able to go to work, filled with almost twice the recommended daily dose of painkillers, probably an anti-nauseant, two different kinds of prescription medication, potentially a few kinds of other pills to manage additional symptoms, lying on the couch with a heat pack on the worst of the pain, getting most of his hydration through an herbal tea that we've discovered helps with pain and inflammation.

All because of a condition that, when properly managed with such simple things as a regular living and working schedule, a good diet, and regular exercise, shouldn't cause more than an occasional bout of discomfort.

* Rei said that if he stayed home every time the pain was only that bad, he would have actually worked for 30 days last year instead of being absent that amount.

The receptionist for a gastroenterologist just called for me, to see if I still wanted an appointment relating to a referral they had received from the hospital.

It took a bit of digging to find out what was going on, since she didn't say she was calling from a gastroenterologist's office at first, instead giving the name of the doctor (I'll call him Dr. C). The referral was in regards to a hospital visit last August.

I'm not sure if I should be relieved that I finally have an appointment, or disgusted that it either took the hospital so long to send the information or the gastro's office sat on it for so long. Right now my reaction is somewhere in the middle.

Either way, I have an appointment for early October. Hopefully this will help with one of the more distressing health problems I suffer through.