Cruel Shoes

It seems three times is a charm.

I dropped off my beloved husband at the Ottawa Eye Institute so the nice Dr. Dolan could measure the pressure his eye. The eye that has a bucket holding it together. The eye that ruptured a few years back while he was bicycling home from work. That eye.

I took the opportunity to sprint to the big Loblaws to buy my whole grain Ozery buns. It is the only place in the whole damn city that sells them. Other stores only sell the kind with icky fruit pieces that remind me of my grandma’s disgusting Christmas cake. Anyway, they are a must have in my house which is relying more and more on egg, meat and cheese sandwiches to fill the empty hours.

I was just getting out of the checkout when I received an urgent call from my beloved explaining that his eye appointment had been cancelled due to the fact that he fell before he could get to it. A lot of nice Ottawans with poor vision helped him up but the service elevator wasn’t working so he couldn’t make it to the third floor.

This was the third time he fell on hospital grounds and had to be scraped up by no less than eight people and set in a wheelchair while his wife was MIA searching for buns.

“You have to talk to your surgeon,” I said. “You can’t keep falling over.”

And so he texted the surgeon’s assistant, and whaddya know? They found him a spot on June 19th for his second knee surgery. Suddenly, there were calls and texts asking for blood work, physio consults and his wife’s remaining brain cells. He was also bombarded by questionnaires mostly concerning whether he was taking blood thinners (he was not).

Light at the end of the tunnel, as they say.

As his caregiver, I cannot wait. I realize the surgery will mean at least another three months of Scott watching terrible Netflix flicks, and grousing about his Wordle scores. Another three months being Viggo’s primary caregiver and paying for Viggo’s valet picking up his poop in the side yard.

Another three months of cooking, cleaning, endless dishes and laundry and making sure both the patient and his canine companion don’t go stir crazy.

Don’t get me wrong. I am truly grateful that it’s only his knees. He doesn’t have cancer, or ALS, or dementia or any of the other cruel shoes other people have to wear. Even if he’s a little wobbly in three months time, it’s not forever.

But it kind of is, isn’t it?

This whole experience is a mere preview of coming attractions, as we muddle through our Third Act fending off doctors at every turn and spending thousands of dollars on weird shit the experts give us to feel better.

I just spent $450 of my extended benefits on a bottle of mousse for my psoriatic scalp, and Scott forked out $250 for support hose that made the swelling worse in his knees. All this after a hilarious I Love Lucy episode with me trying to get the damned things over the tree trucks that are his legs. Where are Fred and Ethel when you need them?

It’s ridiculous to assume that a woman with two arthritic hands is capable of rolling up a pair of socks that are meant for a toddler onto the Jolly Green Giant while fending off a 110 lab offering a ball and trying to be helpful.

Neither the mousse or the socks were much help in the end.

My scalp still feels like it’s being tickled by a thousand mites. And the only thing positive to show for the support hose is a handy pair of high grip gloves I can use to open the maple syrup jar.

It makes me think we are all just amusing lab experiments for scientists and the pharmaceutical industry.

Ah, that goodness for God’s mystical sense of humor. What’s up is down, what’s down is up.

Isn’t it ironic?

I now believe Alanis Morissette is a stone cold genius.