Fatigued Fool

[An entry produced mostly for procrastination's sake. I have an essay to write, "How I'll Use My Public-Interest Law Degree," or somesuch. Yep, even though I have less than two months to go, there's one more scholarship to hunt down. Also, today's the last day to register for the California Bar Exam without incurring a late fee. So, I've got stuff to do.]

[First, though, the update. The other night, I induced the lovely and famous Jhames, late of several well-known and now sadly defunct weblogs, to join me in the TenderNob for Indonesian veggie delights and conversation. (The conversation was neither Indonesian nor veggie...) I hope the fact that I'd attended happy hour with Allen just before J. appeared didn't make my company too soggy; his company was, as always, a delight.]

[Yesterday, I woke up and couldn't make a fist with my left hand. Combined with the ongoing pain caused in my right wrist by the Return of De Quervain's Tenosynovitis (last summer's bizarre ailment, which began to make its presence felt again a couple of weeks ago), this new development had me in a bit of a panic. Without useful hands, there ain't much one can do. With my right hand, I managed to dial Kaiser and made an appointment for the afternoon. By the time I was ready to hop on the 38 Geary bus, my hand seemed to have got mostly better, but I could still feel a tingling in my forearm and wrist. I decided to keep the appointment, just to find out what happened, and to ask if there's anything beyond the cortisone shot I got last week to alleviate the Right Wrist Issue.]

[I began to get a little teary as I waited in the examination room for Bill and John's Excellent Nurse Practitioner. She's been seeing us since shortly before The Diagnosis in 2001, but this was my first visit since I moved out of the bedroom late last December. It's not as though she's a parent or a friend or anything, but I found myself full of emotion as I realized I needed to talk to her a little about what has happened between John and me. I hadn't known how much she, with her marvelously sympathetic manner combined with no B.S., had come to symbolize both my adventures with HIV, and how those adventures dovetail with my relationship with John.]

[As usual, she was great, asking just enough questions, listening to my answers, and acting as though she respected, or at least understood, the decisions I've made and the processes I've gone through to get where I am. After the exam (turns out my left wrist is just extremely fatigued...writing, other stuff; it just needs rest, which I'm not giving it by typing this), I fled and my emotions overflowed as I stepped into an alley next to the medical center and bawled for a good sixty, maybe ninety, seconds. (That's a long time in hard-cry-in-public time.) Some people are cathartic, while others have catharsis thrust upon them.]

[That's it, I guess. No April Fool's fun for me: I've never liked practical jokes (my hold on reality is tenuous enough, and April Fool's has always felt unsafe, somehow), and the fact that it's John's birthday made the day's other significance a verboten topic chez nous. I'd get tired of all the jokes, too, I guess. Now, it's just another day.]

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