October 23, 2024
So, Life, I was back seeing the eye doctor today,
mostly a glaucoma check, but also about how well my cataract
care’s holding up, four years after my eyes’ twin surgeries.
Yep, A-OK. A relief after my dentist visit two days ago,
when Dr. Brown casually remarked that my bite
was terrible, well, I knew that, which I didn’t.
So it’s in again next week for some quick repairs,
before this tooth and those start splitting.
I got such a bad case of the giggles playing it over in my head,
Your bite is terrible. Well, you know that, just how he said it,
I guess, that the hygienist had to lay down tools and wait
for me to stop. As I’m typing this impromptu piece
my RLS is, pardon the pun, kicking in—
which isn’t as much of a pun, actually, as actors I’ve seen
on TV shows make it out to be, as if Restless Leg Syndrome
were like the jitters in your feet rather than reeling about
in off-kilter circles knocking into chairs and elbowing pictures off the wall.
Man, I hate RLS. Mine sets in at about 8 or 9 most evenings,
and doesn’t quit till I take the pills that knock me out for the night.
In my 40s, when they started in on me, before I pleaded with her
to just let me try the goddamn meds and possible side effects
be damned, at least let’s just see first how they affect me,
I was fitfully dozing maybe two to fours hours a night,
every night, lying in the tub, mostly—it was nuts.
Sally had read about a guy in France who developed both
the scariest listed side effects, gambling addiction and sex addiction,
turning him from a faithful and financially responsible heterosexual
husband to a polyamorous sex maniac divorcee who owed
silly money to the mob—which true, would have been
pretty bad—but so, I reminded her, were the worst
case sometimes immediate effects: some people
end rather than spend any more of their lives
living with this shit. And hey, maybe I’d
get lucky and just get whichever side effect got me
the luckiest. As I write this (and yes, I took a pill; it takes
a while to hit) I’m stumbling around the room
between the lines of it, circling back
to the laptop to hit some keys,
and in the morning it will probably read to me like crap.
Hell with it, I’m posting it anyway. This was intended to be
about me post-cataract surgery, how pitiful I looked,
like I’d been robbed and my face kicked in,
(I’ll post a pic) but I hadn’t, and it healed soon enough,
unlike the RLS, which sometimes, for an hour or so,
makes me almost, thank God not quite, not yet—
I do so love the world—wish I were dead.
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