♦Time, before and after.

♦ How I will make the most of it ♦ And how it will make the most of me.♦


Welcome.

The best way to read this blog is from beginning to end

Please use the sidebar's archive index which has been created showing the original post first

with each post successive afterward.

First Post is "Time" January 11th, 2012

SOB = short of breath


Friday, February 10, 2012

No Room For Wrenches

Feb 1st, 2012

Tools are good for keeping things maintained. Every tool has a place to be. Wrenches are usually numerous, and there are many types.

Each type has a use.

This is not about the wrenches we use to tighten things or to loosen things. These are a different type of wrench.

And do not mistake the term wrench to mean “to wrench something from one’s grasp” though at times this terminology can come inevitably close to what I am referring to here.

I am referring specifically to a type of wrench that has no use.

The throwing wrench.

The throwing wrench has no purpose but to be thrown. It has no nut to hold, no bolt to fit. It isn’t used for anything. It has no adjustor wheel on it. Ironic that for having no use in a tool box, nothing to fit onto, it probably has the widest latitude range of any of the wrenches.

Yes, the throwing wrench.


A throwing wrench can be of any size, too. It can be so teeny tiny that no one can even see it, or it can be so large that no one can ignore it. A throwing wrench at times can also be related to its cousin the proverbial fly-in-the-ointment.

But one thing is for sure, one cannot get by without feeling it or its ripple effect as a bystander, once a wrench has been thrown. For what goes up always comes down.

And let it be known to all, everyone gets a wrench thrown their direction every once in a while. If you say you haven’t ever felt that wrench, you lie…like a rug, or you actually are one that believes that denial is a river in Africa; or you are just plain oblivious.

Sometimes denial and obliviosity ride side by side. Ignorance is bliss, but not obliviousness or denial. They’re just plain ol’ things that some people can’t admit to. But even to deny a wrench being thrown constitutes that wrenches in fact, do exist, and the denier probably just got hit by one, which rendered the denier to be just as plain as everyone else. So much for those rivers in Africa. You might as well have said that you have a special wrench than to say you’ve never experienced a wrench at all. At least more people will believe that you know what you are talking about.

I’d like to say that I won’t be getting hit by any wrenches in the next several months, but that’s not likely to happen. There are never any free rides. We pay for what we get and we get what we pay for. I’d like to think that my next several months will breeze past me with no fouls called, no bumps in the road, no air turbulence and especially no wrenches hitting me in the head if at all possible. At least let me have my way when I call them little teeny tiny wrenches. We don’t have to worry about my denial, mainly because I know they exist. I will try not to become exasperated when my loved ones see those wrenches as huge Open-end adjustable Plumbers wrenches, if they do appear to be that way to them. Let me see them as being small.



So here’s my first wrench:

I got my “Call of My Life” last week. I was told that we would be proceeding right along now, and that I needed to have one more cardiac test, and that the case manager would be (both) faxing and writing up an order for this one last test to be done locally (a catheterization or something like that). Of course, in my mind what I see is a scene from the movie The “Exorcist” when Regan is in the hospital and the heart test is being run on her, the needle jabs into her heart and she freaks, ripping the catheter out and then the bleeding starts, blood squirting everywhere, Regan flailing on the gurney….. this whole scene broadcasts through my mind in an instant flash. Of course, I know that’s not the same test I will have, but my mind still goes there, because that’s the imagination I was born with. So be it. I talk myself down again.



So I was told that I would be getting the call to come in within a day or so…….that was 8 days ago, and today we checked from our end, going backwards. No one has been told anything, no one seems to know anything, even though the case manager said she was going to write it up as soon as we were off the phone a week ago, Tuesday. When we ask about it at the Cardiac unit, we are looked at with blank eyes. I could have been a vase of flowers and received a better reaction. Don’t get me wrong, no one was upset, not even me. Everything was just blank.



It’s OK really, because once that test is done, the future becomes inevitable. They say I can still back out of surgery if I want. What?

I won’t be doing that because where have I got to go? Downhill? But that doesn’t stop the fright from invading my senses. I can avoid thinking about everything until the phone rings again. I am not immobilized either; today, after I came home from the gym, after we had checked the status of this test that never materialized, I did call up to Washington to let the case manager know. She’ll probably immediately send another order, and call me back, too. So I am not putting my head in the sand, not at all. I just have the liberty of having my head turned the other direction until I hear more, because the case manager’s voicemail says that she will always return calls by the end if the following day. So I have one more day of not thinking about it. I have the liberty of enjoying this teeny tiny wrench for at least 24 hrs.


ummm Baba ghanouj and Samboucik

I’ll make a good time of it. I think I’ll embrace this little wrench and have sambousek complete with accoutrement for lunch tomorrow in celebration of my 24 hr reprieve from the future.