[at-l] Growing Old and Other Medical Mysteries

[janl2 at mindspring.com (Jan Leitschuh)]

So there I am, just minding my own business, with an itching calf and 
a sore that won't heal. I'm careful to itch around it though, and am 
puzzled as to why it won't stop weeping and heal over. It's been a 
week or better.

This morning in an awakening fog, I scratched the scab off. I put my 
reading glasses on to see what the damage was and saw a little piece 
of scab left... no... not scab... it's flat and flapping - it's .... a 
tick! Damn, a deer tick has been on my calf a whole week. Must have 
picked it up walking through the grassy meadow atop my woods.

I got out my tweezers and peroxide and proceeded to dismember the 
nasty little arachnid.

My intention was to remove the bass turd whole and put it into a vial 
and have it checked. Normally I am a good, even great, tick remover. 
At my peak best, I have tick removing skills of a caliber poets write 
songs about. S'true.  But my eyes aren't what they once were, and it 
was in an awkward place on the back of my calf. What I really needed 
to do was place the back of my calf on my lap, with a good strong 
light and even stronger glasses. However, I have not yet received my 
certification of Advanced Yoga, in fact am getting LESS limber by the 
decade. So I just ripped the dirty speck limb from limb.

(So now I am researching tick diseases. Interestingly, I DID have what 
I thought was a cold and headache last week, with fever, but I feel 
fine now. No rash. I put it off to hay fever, but I figured I should 
read up a little too. Fascination with disease and hypochondria - 
another sign).
My girlfriend Cricket, an EMT, is on her way over here right now (sans 
ambulance, she's off work today) to surgically extract the mouth parts 
I believe still to be locked into the fat of my calf. She has better 
eyes and access, as well as no lack of compunction about digging the 
suckers out. I have a sterilized needle at the ready.

Then today, as I was walking down the streets of my little town, I saw 
an old man of mid-to-late 70s walking toward me. Neatly dressed. You 
could tell he took special pains to put himself together with care. 
Holding on to his dignity and standing as he walked about the 
community. Our eyes meet, we smile, say hello, walk on, pass by.
And then my attention was drawn to his shoes. He had on brown and 
white saddle shoes. They were newly shined up - that care again, that 
preserving and attending, that fighting back of dissolution.. The 
brown parts were newly brown with brown polish, and the white was 
shiny white.

And the I saw the wobbly edges of white shoes polish that had bled 
over its proscribed margins, into the brown. Like a little kid trying 
to color inside the lines but lacking the motor skills. A triumph of 
white shoe polish over dignity and eye sight. I was struck in the 
heart and nearly cried. I wanted to.

I sure wish I understood things better.


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     	AT Journal:
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	Jan Leitschuh Sporthorses Ltd.
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