Black Ass

I shouldn't be writing.  Yesterday, everything was off.  I can tell today is every bit the same.  Maybe it's the planetary alignment.  Maybe it is climate change and the fallen world.  Some days you are faced with the unavoidable, the uncontrollable, and you just have to decide how to cope.  It is called a test of character.  Maybe.  That's the theory.  But like all theories. . . .

The ortho said the next step is to shoot my knee up with hyaluronic acid gel.  If that doesn't work, all that is left is knee replacement surgery.  I asked some questions.  It seemed to piss the ortho off.  He looked at me like I was a dumb shit and said, "Look, I can explain a hundred decisions a doctor has to make when replacing a knee."  He began to enumerate.  "Really, you just have to trust the surgeon."  

"That is similar to what my wife told me when we got married," I said.  No, I didn't say that.  I just thought it. But I knew he was right.  Still, I thought, I have questions.  This is why doctors have P.A.s now.  They DO NOT want to talk to patients.  It is a waste of time.  It changes nothing on their end but for the pace of their day.  

He has to sell the idea to my insurance provider, and if they approve it, his office will call me and make an appointment for the injection.  

I am hoping it will work.  

But when I saw my friend at the gym, a retired nurse, she smirked and said, "I've been watching you limp around for a month.  Do you think 12ccs of a gel is going to fix that?"

Well, shit.  That didn't cheer me up at all.  

I tried to avoid people at the gym.  I didn't want any interaction.  Again, it may just be the stars, but my interactions have not gone well of late.  Maybe I haven't been right in the head as my mobility depreciates and my pain increases.  I made a litany of all the things I could no longer do.  I was told I shouldn't do that.  Maybe it has been my lack of sleep, but I don't know which came first.  I've been irritable in traffic and quick with my mother.  My reaction to things seem to have changed radically.  I'm emotionally withdrawn.  

None of this makes me happy.  

So, yea. . . I probably shouldn't be writing today.  

It will pass.  Surely it will pass.  Hemingway called it the "black ass."  

We know what happened to him.