Waiting: Endocrinology

(Me, Myself, and I) A two-hour drive in the November howl with NPR, a four-unit breakfast insulin intake and lunch in a rest area parking lot (also four units) so that I might sit in another pleather seat in a another small, comfy, yet sterile room, waiting, awaiting, a-waiting, my regular six-month checkup, Popular Science / Sports Illustrated on the walls, no TV. A few adverts for CGMS (someday I will let myself become part cyborg, sooner rather than later, it seems); a brochure or a dozen. Able to read here (new issue of The Economist), so long as I can ignore the mental chitter-chatter of certain personal, self-inflicted judgement of self based on an uncertain number (I AM NOT A NUMBER (6.5!) I AM A MAN!) and midterm election results (a tempered victory, a blue trickle that can and must grow on this, our long slog back to sanity, but a victory nonetheless (go Sherrod!)) on a day that I wasn’t able to run (breakfast normally one unit + six-mile run) thanks to my lack of scheduling prowess, but at least I could drink, unlike in 2016… Arrows and lines on the floor for easy reference and promotion of orderly order; bathrooms at end of a seemingly unsolvable labyrinth; thankful that everything that matters seems to be done on paper here as it instills a certain tactile confidence in the improvisational capacity of care given for a self-managed chronic disease, “See you in six months / get your eyes checked / let’s talk again next time about you becoming part cyborg…”