"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
This is Your Wife. This is Your Wife on Drugs.
chem-is-try Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -tries
1 : a science that deals with the composition, structure, and properties of substances and with the transformations that they undergo
2 : sometimes, a way to better living
Friday was, all in all, a trying day.
We had some really bad news that morning. Our 14 year old cat, Pookie, has terminal chronic kidney failure. The years have finally caught up to him, and he's fought them hard, but they are getting the best of him at last. I'll write more about him later, he deserves it.
My wife took this very hard. After all of the stress the past few weeks, the cat was the camel breaking straw.
When I got to work Friday morning, she called me as I drove into the parking lot. The vet had called her and told her that we would have to give our cat subcutaneous fluids at home three times a week and we needed to go and get trained on how to do it.
My poor wife was losing it. I came straight home.
I found her in a state that was, to say the least, very agitated. She was darting from one task to another, frantically trying to busy her way out of all of this, and failing miserably. I talked her into going to see a doctor about it, and we got an appointment that afternoon with a doctor in the same practice I go to, including getting a referral from our primary care physician on short notice.
By the way, the extremely nice lady that handled that referral is diabetic, and I brought her a bag of sugar free Jelly Bellies as a thank you. I think it really surprised her and made her day.
So we get to the docs, and he shows us into his office. This guy is incredible. He looks like a human ping pong ball, all white and round, but he's sharp as a tack at the same time. He goes through the basic question and answer thing, but does it in such a way as to keep my wife off balance. He is listening not only to the answers, but how she is answering it.
"What is the biggest stressor in your life?" he asks.
She points straight at me.
I grin and nod, because, well, thats true. Chronic illnesses and job stress can do that. I'm a stressor for her, but its all stress I bring in from outside. I never give her any stress intentionally, but I engender a lot of worry in her just as I would worry about her were our situations reversed.
He prescribes her two meds and hands over a lot of the control to her on when to take them. She is pleased, which surprises me.
She tells me later that she hates the fact that she needs to take something like these, but she will try it. So she takes her first dose.
Within 45 minutes, she has relaxed and has become the wife I remember.
And she has stayed that way since.
Better living through chemistry, huh? When it works, it works.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
