Eight Feet Deep

Today turned out to be even stranger than the day before.

No, my truck wasn’t struck by a fly­ing con­dom trav­el­ing down the free­way like I believe it to have been yes­ter­day. Also, nowhere did I see Hous­ton Mayor-Elect Annise Parker being all Christ­masy by don­ning her gay apparel. Sorry, I just had to use that one. I didn’t see Houston’s first openly gay mayor-elect yes­ter­day either although I men­tioned her in this venue.

But the top of my wind­shield or edge of my truck’s roof did get struck by a brick-sized chunk of what appeared to be con­crete as I drove home from Hous­ton to Beau­mont on Inter­state 10. The piece of what­ever it was just seemed to come out of nowhere. It reminded me of a sim­i­lar inci­dent that I wrote of here. There were plenty of big trucks in the three lanes ahead of me so the chunkaroid could have come from one of them. I wasn’t close to any over­passes, which is good because I am con­cerned about hav­ing an over­pass col­lapse on top of me. I mean, I’m not obsessed with the thought, but with the state of our infra­struc­ture these days you have to keep on your toes. Peo­ple who are psy­cho­pathic or who oth­er­wise have noth­ing to do occa­sion­ally will like­wise throw objects onto vehi­cles from over­passes. I just threw that in to scare the hell out of you.

The strangest part of my day hap­pened as I stood wait­ing for an ele­va­tor at the Michael E. DeBakey Vet­er­ans Hos­pi­tal in Hous­ton. A vet­eran who appeared to be fairly dis­abled and was trav­el­ing in a rather speedy wheel­chair was kind enough to phys­i­cally accom­pany me to MRI after I had asked a VA employee in the hos­pi­tal how to get there. I had been there before and would have even­tu­ally found it but this con­sid­er­ate man insisted on show­ing me how to get there. It was as this gen­tle­man and I were stand­ing at the ele­va­tor that a robot rolled silenty up behind us and told us to move so it could get on the elevator.

It turns out this is one of the robots the hos­pi­tal pur­chased in 2004. The hos­pi­tal bought two of the so-called “Help­mate” robots which were named “Jew­els” and “King Tut.” I’m sure there is a cute story behind the names. Oh well. The robots are basi­cally rolling couri­ers that can deliver up to 200 pounds of med­ica­tions and sup­plies to dif­fer­ent loca­tions in the hos­pi­tal. They are pro­grammed with a map of the hos­pi­tal. When they encounter an obsta­cle such as today, they also have the abil­ity to announce – in either Eng­lish or Span­ish – that some­thing is in the way and then ask that the obsta­cle be removed.

 With the dis­abled fel­low and I being the obsta­cle, I found this walk­ing, talk­ing stor­age cab­i­net to be rather impe­ri­ous. But the way things have been going for me lately, I fig­ured if I said any­thing the robot might have done some­thing like zap me with death rays. Even if it didn’t I don’t think it is wise to cross a robot with an attitude.

Here is an update for those inter­ested in the rea­son for my visit to the hos­pi­tal. I met with the neu­rol­o­gist who turned out to be a good lis­tener. We went over my blood work drawn and ana­lyzed ear­lier this week as well as pre­vi­ous blood tests, for read­ings of areas which could indi­cate a cause for my neu­ropa­thy. None of the mark­ers, includ­ing thy­roid function, were  abnor­mal with the excep­tion for those tests that might indi­cate diabetes.

Despite my pri­mary doc­tors say­ing I was a “near-borderline” dia­betic although not fully over the line, an analy­sis found that my last test showed a some­what high read­ing and an aver­age of the last three tests indi­cated a bit higher read­ing than nor­mal. The higher read­ings appeared to coin­cide with a very unnerv­ing weight gain over the last six to eight months that my for­mer internist said could have been due to some med­i­cines I am taking.

The doc­tor also took note that I had been expe­ri­enc­ing a shoot­ing low back and hip pain which could indi­cate a pinched nerve, hence my trip to MRI this morn­ing for an appoint­ment which will be next month to get images of my back.

As I await tests the doc­tor is adjust­ing the Lyrica I am tak­ing for the neu­ropa­thy and I must seri­ously begin diet­ing, no small feat at Christ­mas sea­son, to see if dia­betes or another rea­son is caus­ing my pain.

I was frank but diplo­matic with the doc­tor in say­ing that with about a third of the cases like mine being caused by dia­betes, I was con­cerned about a physi­cian just see­ing some num­bers and imme­di­ately focus­ing on that dis­ease as the cause rather than some of the hun­dred oth­ers. And he indi­cated that he under­stood my concern.

So, I go into the hol­i­day sea­son still not know­ing what’s inter­rupt­ing my life but per­haps a lit­tle closer to find­ing out some answers, or not. As for now, I think I’ll be okay if I don’t have dreams tonight about pushy robots.