It is drizzling and chilly outside but it feels like Spring. After an unending, cold, dry winter, in the last couple of weeks, it must have rained three inches and the garden, Michele, and I are happy for it. Between rains, the sky is blue and the sun is bright, and the flowers are blooming. Everything looks fresh, and new, just like spring. And, after being in what seemed like an endless loop of medical problems, it is starting to feel like spring for me too.

The endless loop started, about the time Fall had turned into Winter and I noticed, after trying not to – a troubling open wound on my leg. I had always sort of held a mindset that whatever the specific problem was, it was a specific problem and could be fixed. But The Wound really rattled me. Holy Fuck, it is like I’m rotting from the skin in, like a rotting pear. Like a leaper, like an old leaper. Unclean, unclean. This was not a problem to be solved, this was just my old body giving up the ghost.

Up until The Wound, I didn’t really think of myself as old. That’s not quite right, I thought of myself as old, but not Dianne Finesteirn old, more like oldish with a lot of new parts. Most old people I know seem to be stuck in the past and I don’t yearn for the past at all. I feel young-minded, but The Wound rattled me. It made me feel very old.

This was also a time of backed up doctor appointments, a foot doctor who would, after a month or so of my thinking about it, remove part of my big toenail to stop it from being driven into my very sore flesh by the neighboring hammer toe, and a skin doctor doing a biopsy on my arm. Neither doctor ran screaming from the room when I showed them The Wound which was encouraging and both bandaged the wound in different ways but it kept getting worse. Finally, a couple of days later, I went to a rheumatology specialist that Michele had recommended and he recommended that I go to the wound center. Now! They recommended that I start wearing compression socks to mitigate my varicose veins and they put a new bandage on The Wound.

As an aside, and, since it came from the certified Wound Center, I’m going to call it a tip. They put a square of Duoderm CGF directly on the Wound. The Duoderm CGF is like an artificial scab over a wound that retains the moisture and I left it there for something like four or five days between changing. Underneath, a wound just heals itself. End aside.

About this time, at the apogee of my age-angst, I tore the meniscus in my left knee making it much harder to get around and then I gouged a hole into my left hand with a sharp fingernail on my right hand and I sank into a winter lethargy. The Wound Center also recommended that I get an ultrasound of my varicose veins to see if they were a problem that could be solved. The ultrasound led to my having a radiofrequency ablation of my varicose veins last week and I feel like the endless downhill loop is starting to end. Next week I’m getting a steroid shot in my left knee and my hand gouge has even miraculously healed under its Duoderm CGF scab all of which has led to my feeling much more spring-like this week.

So, Happy Spring.