Tuesday, May 17, 2016

LENS and Life, week of 5/16/16

No sites this week, or for the next couple weeks.  I mentioned my deteriorating memory to my LENS-doctor, and my concerns about it being related to LENS.  Her response was this: "it shouldn't be based on my experience with other people, but we can stop for a bit and see if you notice any differences."  So we'll see.  I don't feel particularly better or worse yet, except for the next thing I'm mentioning here: blood tests.

I finally got my butt in gear and got scheduled for an appointment.  My primary care provider (not physician, because he doesn't have a doctorate) is a pretty cool guy, but he did initially balk at the laundry list of blood tests I wanted.  That's maybe not surprising, since I doubt people usually come in with entire lists of blood tests they want.  But he accepted my request after some discussion.  He even gave me a new phrase, accidentally: "loaded for bear."  In US history, on the Oregon Trail or other trails heading west, you would bring a certain amount of bullets and gunpowder to go hunting for food.  If, however, you knew you were in bear country, you would bring a lot more bullets and a lot more powder, to give your gun more "oomph."  So in the modern usage, you came prepared for trouble. 

I actually thought good and hard about that afterwards.  I kind of feel like I come "loaded for bear" to life.  He's just the first to comment on it in that way.  Life hasn't precisely been polite to me, after all.  It handed me a developmental disability from birth and then proceeded to bully me for it. Then it demanded more and more of me as the years have gone by, school got harder and harder, and then didn't prepare me for real life.  Seriously, unless you work in a school, you never get summer vacation in real life.  If that's not an argument for year-round schooling, I don't know what is.  School is supposed to teach you what you'll need for being an adult.  But it doesn't teach you how to balance a checkbook, how to register to vote, how to invest your money, how to dress and act at an interview...  But I still know how to calculate the area inside a triangle, which I've had to use so many times since passing geometry!  (hint: I haven't.  Not even ONCE.  Have a video on this topic)

Uff.  I don't think my memory has improved yet.  I'm late for my dentist appointment.  Sorry for the short entry.  Will do better next week!

No comments:

Post a Comment