A Week in My Shoes

Monday
8:30 AM - Wake up, not because I’m rested, but because my spine made a weird noise and I can’t feel one leg. Or because I have to pee.
9:30 AM - Call the insurance company to argue about why my specialist isn’t in-network even though they were yesterday. End the call, still unsure if I have insurance or just had an elaborate game of gaslight bingo. Schedule to call again later.
11:00 AM - Doctor’s appointment. The waiting room smells like broken dreams and hand sanitizer. The chair is made of stone wrapped in pleather, so now the pain I’m not even here for is flaring.
11:15 PM - See the doctor for four minutes, get the incorrect lazy diagnosis. Tell them that’s not it, and explain the long list of things we’ve tried with other doctors.
Bonus: Maybe I’ll get jabbed by many needles as a temporary fix.
1:00 PM - Hobble to the pharmacy to pick up three prescriptions, all of which have “may cause fatigue, anxiety, explosive diarrhea, suicidal thoughts, and sudden death” in the notes.
3:00 PM - Research for hours whether this new medicine will interact with, or cancel out, any of my other 17 medicines.
8:00 PM - Cuddle and whimper with my cat until she bites me.
9:00 PM - Lie in bed wondering if I’m doing enough to get better. Realize “getting better” is a myth, and I’m just working full-time at being disabled. No PTO. No benefits. No union.

Tuesday
8:30 AM - Wake up, not because I’m rested, but because I dreamt I was late for something. Wait, am I?
9:45 AM - Call to schedule an MRI. Hold for 32 minutes. A man named Kevin breathes directly into my soul before telling me they only do MRIs at the location I need on every other Thursday before sunrise.
11:15 AM - Fold laundry with exactly one working arm and a shoulder held together by stubbornness and duct tape.
1:00 PM - Clean litter box. Cat supervises judgmentally. I ask her to chip in financially to this household if she’s going to be a brat. She poops in it as soon as I’m finished.
2:00 PM - Pain flare! Cancel the plans I made in a moment of false optimism two weeks ago. Would have loved to have seen my friend, but I guess I’ll writhe in agony instead.
4:00 PM - Watch medical YouTube videos to understand what the hell the radiologist meant in my last scan. Diagnose myself with something new, probably cancer.
6:15 PM - Call insurance to check if a procedure I need is covered. It’s not.
7:00 PM -Existential dread.
9:00 PM - Attempt to vacuum, give up halfway through. It’s better than before… on that side of the room. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Wednesday
8:30 AM - Wake up, not because I got eight hours of sleep, but because my hip dislocated trying to adjust the blanket. Homophobic.
10:00 AM - Ultrasound! Try to sit in the waiting room chair. It’s aggressively designed to make pain worse, so I stand and sway and pace and do leg lifts because nothing hurts more than standing in one place for more than 21 seconds.
11:00 AM - Brain fog hits like a freight train. I spend over ten minutes staring at the microwave, wondering why I’m in the kitchen.
1:00 PM - Attempt to answer texts. Type a reply to two, but only one of them gets sent. I forgot to press the send on the other because I got distracted by that pop my shoulder did when I scratched my head.
4:00 PM - Shower? Consider just resigning myself to being stinky the rest of my life.
4:40 PM - I’m never getting out of this shower.
5:30 PM - Drying off is an Olympic sport.
7:00 PM - Ice pack roulette for three hours: neck, shoulder, hip, knee, back, ankle, tailbone, elbow…
 

Thursday
5:00 AM - Wake up for the cursed MRI slot Kevin booked. Damn you, Kevin, my archnemesis.
7:00 AM - Inside the MRI machine. Attempt to stay still while imagining all the things I could be doing if I were healthy. Spiral into a shutdown if I’m lucky, panic attack if I’m not.
9:00 AM - Stare at the wall. Question everything. Forget I was stretching. Un-stretch.
9:45 AM - Step 1: Hate everything. Step 2: Settle for the same thing as yesterday. Step 3: Regret.
10:15 AM - I have to eat. Will it be yogurt, air, or crackers that taste like childhood regret? Spin the sensory wheel and find out.
11:00 AM -Saltines count as a meal if you believe hard enough. 12:15 PM - My body gives out like I ran a marathon. In reality, I folded one shirt.
1:00 PM -Open laptop. Stare at the screen. Open 12 tabs. Close 11. Cry over the last one.
3:45 PM - Sit in a dark room and try not to scream because the fridge made a noise again.
6:30 PM - Spin the wheel: hip, shoulder, jaw, or mystery pain from another dimension.

Friday
8:30 AM - Wake up, not because I’m ready for the day, but because my sensory issues decided that bedsheets are too loud now.
9:00 AM - Call insurance again. Ask if they got the referral for the specialist I already saw last week. They have no record of me ever existing.
10:00 AM - Sort pill organizer. Refill prescriptions. Write calendar reminders for upcoming labs, imaging, and the 42 follow-up calls I’ll need to make.
11:00 AM - Go to physical therapy. Try to do simple stretches. My body makes Rice Krispies noises. They tell me, as they do every other week, that my doctor sent the order in wrong and they need a new script or they’ll have to cancel next week’s appointments.
1:00 PM - Call the doctor and ask for another script for PT. They’ll “have the doctor take a look and get back to [me].”
2:00 PM - Run out of energy. Cancel plans that I had already rescheduled once this week. (see Tuesday)
4:00 PM - Receive call that I need to schedule a CT scan, a blood panel, and a ceremonial goat sacrifice to figure out why my left eyelid has been hurting since last year. They need a pre-authorization from insurance.
6:00 PM - My brain declares mutiny.
7:00 PM - Lie face down on the sofa in pajamas, talking to my cat about how capitalism has failed us both.
8:00 PM - Watch comfort show for the 12th time. Quote it out loud and tell the characters they’re making poor decisions because that counts as social interaction.
9:00 PM - Pat myself on the back for making it to the weekend, where no offices are open, so I just get to focus on my pain for two days and feel like a failure for not being productive enough this week.