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One Two Eight
Jul. 16th, 2003 03:33 amI'm taking a break from sleeping to write this. I woke up with a bad taste in my mouth, the pressing need to pee, and the thirst that doesn't end. So I'm taking a brief break from sleep to take care of all of these issues, plus some. The "plus some" being the journal entry I've been meaning to put down for a couple of days.
Kill This Leg
I went back to the physical therapist Monday. This is going to be a weekly thing. And apparently the root of my troubles isn't the fact that my leg is shorter than the other leg, that's just a side effect of it being broken that might cause other problems. Nope.... Monday we got down to the real nitty gritty... In my first visit we dealt primarily with the trouble the back of my leg's been giving me... Monday we dealt with the knee. After some feeling around and some questioning, he seems to think I've got some torn or scarred cartilige in my knee. This is allowing bones that aren't supposed to be touching to touch, which is causing pain, stiffness, and the occassional loss of use. He then treated the knee with a form of ultrasound that was supposed to loosen any scar tissue that might have built up inside of it. He stopped short of recommending that I actually go get the fucking thing X-rayed or checked out by another doctor (though I think this is a logical thing to do). He is purely working from hunch, and I don't like that. I know he knows a lot of things I don't, but I've been to this guy twice and so far he hasn't told me anything that I didn't suspect anyway (aside from having legs that are two different lengths, and I still can't tell the difference). Also, there's been nothing but pain in this thing since I left that place Monday. We didn't work it out or anything -- only thing we did was diagnose me and hit me with the ultrasound stuff. Doesn't seem like either of those things are too strenuous. But what the hell do I know?
So I'm pretty annoyed by the leg. Annoyed by everything about it, from the circumstances it was broken under, to the fact that I had to pay for everything with my own money, to the fact that it still hurts, a year and a half after the fact. I want a cybernetic knee, like Ben Santini has. Go Black Razors, go.
Soulless vs Jaded
Something very uncomfortable happened today. For a while it had me questioning my ethics. Gonna write about it.
I was in Blimpie's, getting lunch, when a heavily pregnant girl dressed in rags and carrying a small child came in. Immediately she started putting on a show. There were, at most, three customers in the place, and three employees, other than this girl. As she walked in, she started panting and saying, very loudly, "WHOOOO! It's HOT out there!" She then started to explain that her car was out of gas (should be noted that this Blimpie's is in a convenience store with 12 gas pumps), her air conditioning had quit working earlier that day, she was going to give birth any day now, the kid she was carrying weighed a ton, her husband was in another part of the city and couldn't come pick her up, it had been a bad day, and it was just so HOT out there. She was working the sympathy by telling anyone within earshot about all of her problems. And sprinkled in the most? "I'm out of gaaaaaaaas."
Finally the manager of the Blimpies made one of her employees take four dollars and buy gas for her. Just to get her out of the store. Notice she didn't give the girl the four dollars. Notice no one else volunteered to cough up any change, either.
Which kind of brings me to the point. Kind of. Now... it was obvious that the girl wasn't in the best of shape. Yeah, she was pregnant as hell, she looked like she was gonna explode at any second, and I have nothing but sympathy for her on that. But I also have sympathy for the kid that she's gonna have to raise, because it's going to have a whining, spineless mother. Had that girl taken a different, direct approach with me -- "Excuse me sir..." would have been a nice start -- she might have gotten what she was looking for. Well.... she obviously did, but she made an ass out of herself while doing it. Or maybe not... maybe she's shameless.
In any case, for a while afterwards I felt like complete dogshit for not helping this girl out, if only because she was pregnant. Then either one of two things happened, Im not sure which -- either my sense of decency took a hike or common sense came back to me -- because I remembered, "Fuck her. Human shit's the same as any other kind of shit. Now get on with your life." And that's what I did. And I'm still not sure if I'm soulless or just really fucking jaded, and to be honest I don't care.
Back to sleep. Right-o.
I went back to the physical therapist Monday. This is going to be a weekly thing. And apparently the root of my troubles isn't the fact that my leg is shorter than the other leg, that's just a side effect of it being broken that might cause other problems. Nope.... Monday we got down to the real nitty gritty... In my first visit we dealt primarily with the trouble the back of my leg's been giving me... Monday we dealt with the knee. After some feeling around and some questioning, he seems to think I've got some torn or scarred cartilige in my knee. This is allowing bones that aren't supposed to be touching to touch, which is causing pain, stiffness, and the occassional loss of use. He then treated the knee with a form of ultrasound that was supposed to loosen any scar tissue that might have built up inside of it. He stopped short of recommending that I actually go get the fucking thing X-rayed or checked out by another doctor (though I think this is a logical thing to do). He is purely working from hunch, and I don't like that. I know he knows a lot of things I don't, but I've been to this guy twice and so far he hasn't told me anything that I didn't suspect anyway (aside from having legs that are two different lengths, and I still can't tell the difference). Also, there's been nothing but pain in this thing since I left that place Monday. We didn't work it out or anything -- only thing we did was diagnose me and hit me with the ultrasound stuff. Doesn't seem like either of those things are too strenuous. But what the hell do I know?
So I'm pretty annoyed by the leg. Annoyed by everything about it, from the circumstances it was broken under, to the fact that I had to pay for everything with my own money, to the fact that it still hurts, a year and a half after the fact. I want a cybernetic knee, like Ben Santini has. Go Black Razors, go.
Something very uncomfortable happened today. For a while it had me questioning my ethics. Gonna write about it.
I was in Blimpie's, getting lunch, when a heavily pregnant girl dressed in rags and carrying a small child came in. Immediately she started putting on a show. There were, at most, three customers in the place, and three employees, other than this girl. As she walked in, she started panting and saying, very loudly, "WHOOOO! It's HOT out there!" She then started to explain that her car was out of gas (should be noted that this Blimpie's is in a convenience store with 12 gas pumps), her air conditioning had quit working earlier that day, she was going to give birth any day now, the kid she was carrying weighed a ton, her husband was in another part of the city and couldn't come pick her up, it had been a bad day, and it was just so HOT out there. She was working the sympathy by telling anyone within earshot about all of her problems. And sprinkled in the most? "I'm out of gaaaaaaaas."
Finally the manager of the Blimpies made one of her employees take four dollars and buy gas for her. Just to get her out of the store. Notice she didn't give the girl the four dollars. Notice no one else volunteered to cough up any change, either.
Which kind of brings me to the point. Kind of. Now... it was obvious that the girl wasn't in the best of shape. Yeah, she was pregnant as hell, she looked like she was gonna explode at any second, and I have nothing but sympathy for her on that. But I also have sympathy for the kid that she's gonna have to raise, because it's going to have a whining, spineless mother. Had that girl taken a different, direct approach with me -- "Excuse me sir..." would have been a nice start -- she might have gotten what she was looking for. Well.... she obviously did, but she made an ass out of herself while doing it. Or maybe not... maybe she's shameless.
In any case, for a while afterwards I felt like complete dogshit for not helping this girl out, if only because she was pregnant. Then either one of two things happened, Im not sure which -- either my sense of decency took a hike or common sense came back to me -- because I remembered, "Fuck her. Human shit's the same as any other kind of shit. Now get on with your life." And that's what I did. And I'm still not sure if I'm soulless or just really fucking jaded, and to be honest I don't care.
Back to sleep. Right-o.
