I Should Prepare Myself

 

A drive to the old sod today.  I didn’t grow up in Rye Brook, New York.  Rather, in Harrison, the next town or so over.  I had an appointment today with a podiatrist, whom my osteopath had recommended.  Before visiting I needed to stop at Walgreens and get the necessary laxative pills and concoctions my gastroenterologist had required I consume before my colonoscopy tomorrow.  One suspects that this is what the future will be like, from now on. 

I considered the generic and the name brand goo in Walgreens.  My mom had made a face when describing the taste of what it was, I was securing.  I went for the top shelf stuff and checked out with a few bottles of hair conditioner which always seems to run out more quicky than the shampoo bottles do.  Checking emails, I noticed that the gent in Johannesburg, who’d missed a call with me an hour ago was asking if I could call him now.  Resisting the impulse to tell him “No.  I’m driving,” I fiddled around a bit and soon was chatting with him and marveling at the particulars of his accent as I drove down the New York State Throughway. 

 

By the time I got to Rye, I really needed to urinate.  Checking at the clinic, the door was, of course, locked but soon I’d gotten what I needed from the secretary.  When I returned I marveled at how loud the commercial radio station was playing and I pitied her, sitting there, needing to listen to this stupidity all day, whether she liked it or not, as though Virgil had just introduced Dante to one of the latter rungs of the “Inferno.”  I did what I could to ignore it and make headway in my book, but soon I was whisked into the room and told how it was I should prepare myself. 

The doctor was kind and professional.  He made a few, to my reckoning, obvious comments about the orthotics I had wearing down like tires.  Time for a new pair.  But is Xrays, and his examination and his questioning led him to the measured opionion that there was nothing wrong with my feet, one of which had been in pain for the last ten years.  Would I like to try some physical therapy?  I’d come today, all this way, on my other orthopedic doctor’s recommendation.  “He’s someone I can talk to.” He suggested.  Hooping this proves to be the case, because I personally derived next to nothing from this expensive consultation. 

 

I had every intention of driving over to Harrison after the appointment and stare for a while at my old house, on 25 Glenwood Road. Back in the car I set the GPS and considered the time of my next call.  There was no way I  would be on time for my call with Sao Paulo, unless I headed straight back.  On the way, I noticed the old-fashioned sign for Harrison the same one they always used to have, years ago.  It will have to wait.    

 

 

 

Wednesday, 04/28/21