The THING About Waiting Rooms...

Legs in training....

Since I promised to bring survival tips for my hoped-for readers, here's one 
that may appear to be a bit unorthodox but a real winner for me.

Anyone with any sort of chronic illness is very susceptible to germs and viruses 
from everywhere.  Obviously.  Duh!   With CFIDS/CFS/ME, our immune systems are 
hinky, thus the "ID" in CFIDS, the "Immune Dysfunction" syndrome part.  Our 
immune systems are over-active and under-active, both at the same time, so very 
contradictory in an illness full of contradictions.

I need to meet about every month or so with my long-suffering GP, who of 
everyone I've ever seen in my plethora of doctors over the past 37 years, from 
New York City across the good old USA, has been the best and most successful 
help in my care.  We make a good team, actually, as we've together tackled 
research and question seemingly everything that comes our way.  Some years we're 
gung-ho about learning every new thing, other years we just throw up our hands, 
give up and go into survival mode.  A small-town GP, he's more than a bit 
understanding and has more patience than I could ever dredge up, which is not to 
say we agree on all, but just that he's one of the best things that's ever 
happened to me.  Oh, he does sometimes see me as a bit of sport and I just know 
the man often revs me up to hear what will come out of my mouth next.  But 
compassion when need be, it's there!

However, I hate the germs and viruses that I seem to bring home each and every 
time I see him...or my dentist for that matter.  With my dentist we've agreed 
any work that needs to be done can start around April, once flu season is over, 
but must end by September, before flu season begins.  And the best part, 
perhaps, is that he's enforced these parameters at times when I've thought to 
myself, "flu season be darned," crazily thinking I was just too careful.

I can't exactly not see my GP, however, for so long.  So after many years, which 
included two serious bouts of pneumonia, we've worked out a system that seems to 
be the answer to some of the problems of my funky immune system.  My 
long-suffering hubby goes to the office, as I stay behind in the car with a book 
or my Kindle, signs me in, takes care of whatever finances need to be addressed 
and actually SITS in the waiting room for the moment when my name is called.  He 
then quickly runs out to the car and we go in through a back door, thus avoiding 
as many sneezing and coughing people as possible.

How I wish we had some sort of system like that when the kids were little and 
you'd take your children in for a "well visit," only to bring home three kids 
laden with chicken pox or some of the other childhood illnesses lurking in the 
pediatrician's office!  But I digress....

To tell you the truth I am always tempted to take some sort of germ-killer in a 
can and spray it at all within my reach.  Despite many outrageous things I HAVE 
tried, Lycol'ing my way to an exam room is even too much for me, SO FAR.

Yes, I may sound like a diva, but here is an example of why this has become a 
necessity.  I came down with a common bug going around one winter and was sick 
as a dog for two solid years.  Just as I was in the home stretch something 
strange happened to my legs...they turned blotchy and mottled with lovely shades 
of purple and red.  They've stayed that way for the most part, unfortunately.  
They are of huge interest to my doctors...they seem to love looking at them and 
speculating as to how the heck THAT happened.  I'm not so easily amused.  And 
poor hubby - my legs were what he'd first fallen in love with, only later my 
sparkling personality!  <wink!>

So, if your immune system is really wacko and you know that a needed or required 
visit to your physician may cause you to come down with everything down to the 
seven plagues of Egypt, consider my strategy.  Granted, it may be difficult to find 
someone in your life who's willing to sit in a waiting room full of sniffles and 
sneezes but it's a heck of a lot harder to come down with a bug that can take 
months and months to rid yourself of.  Plus I find that with each "flare," we do 
get more permanent damage to our bodies.  Ask my legs.

Loving my wonderful Kindle....

In front of Big Ben: badly centered!
Amazon.com has simply got to be one of the greatest places on-line, perhaps even on earth. And here I speak mostly about books, although as I get used to the 
idea that Amazon has expanded into almost everything short of booking (ha!) 
flights to the moon, I'm begrudgingly accepting the shared wall space with 
"other things" <snarl here, please> when I go to their main page. 
I've been in love with Amazon since the late '90's, feeling extremely guilty 
because our town has a truly wonderful independent bookstore, a dying breed. In 
fact, if I can, I really try to buy locally as much as possible across the line.  
And local independent bookstores should definitely be supported. 

Plus there's nothing like getting to know your indie bookseller. Talk about 
recommendations! I well remember the wonderful years when I took my Christmas 
list up to "Words and Music" and Alan, between other customers, spent most of 
the day helping me pick out the perfect book for each person on my list. One 
year his enthusiasm for Angela's Ashes, a brand new book no had heard of as of 
yet - for my very Irish fellow CFIDer from our St. Louis days - knew no bounds.  
It was a very hard sell, but he was HOW right?

As I've become sicker and sicker I turned to Amazon more and more often. And 
when you are a severe insomniac, it's great to be able to shop in the odd hours 
when the world sleeps. 

When Strand Bookstore in New York went on-line, I also ordered from them by the 
huge - and heavy - boxful. They have the most incredible stock. What an 
unbelievable bookseller - I have been known to be the last customer out, with 
sales personnel literally pushing me out the door while hubby pulled. I make NO 
apologies...the store is incredible and when you first walk in, there is so much 
there that your brain simply fries. You need to allot much time for Strand. It 
takes a while for your brain to come back to normal. My notebook of books 
already read is almost a necessity, I find, because my brain never quite makes 
it back to normal after walking in.  On-line is definitely the way to go.

But all along the way I've been falling more deeply in love with Amazon...it's a 
growing love affair.

So when the age of the Kindle came, I was extremely torn. To say I love books? 
Oh, I don't even know how to convey to anyone how much. But the house was 
getting squeezed by them and since I could never part with any books no matter 
how lousy, and because there were no more areas in the house to build more 
shelves, Kindle started being forced on me. It was a matter of "buy more books 
but get rid of the same number of books in order to have some semblance of an 
orderly house," or resort to Kindle. 

Heresy! I was very conflicted. But any time there was a discussion of the new 
Kindle from BookSpan to Charlie Rose to "Good Morning America," my ears were 
glued to what was being said. 

Another complication in this decision making was that anything mechanical, 
especially electrical, which includes clocks, watches and computers, seems to 
die on me, or at the very least constantly breaks down. Hubby still tells anyone 
who will listen about how Big Ben stopped for the first time ever on August 5, 
1976 on our honeymoon. Let's just say Big Ben was working when my new hubby and 
I sat down to have a late sandwich in a tiny square near Big Ben and fifteen 
minutes later he wasn't moving. 

I used to have three computers in my arsenal: one for in the shop being fixed, 
one ABOUT to go to into the shop to be fixed and one having arrived from the 
shop FINALLY fixed. My family will not allow me to even walk by their computers 
because suddenly their screens would start to do weird things. I've even seen my 
middle child see me coming, grab his laptop and flee. Putting the final touches 
on his PhD dissertation from our home, he was not about to risk losing precious 
data brought home from Australia. (Picky! Picky!)

So, why would a person with my history possibly want the hassle of a Kindle? 
Well, in order to keep buying and reading books, of course - silly! Our 
libraries here are very good and hubby makes frequent runs there weekly, but 
some books you just want to own and some books simply aren't instantly 
available. 

Furthermore, for many it is a wonderful way to go. Some of us have trouble 
holding a book, after all, and a Kindle really helps if you want to continue 
reading.

Thirdly, a real problem with CFIDS and Fibromyalgia is the cognitive problems we 
have. As much as I love to read - a wild understatement - I must admit that 
there have been times when I've forced myself to read, just in order to keep my 
mind from atrophying. I can't believe I'm admitting this, but there have been a 
couple of times when I resorted to harlequin romances...I needed to read because 
I love to and I needed to read to slow the brain deterioration process. 

I often call myself a "moody" reader but that's simply code for saying that 
there are times I can only handle this sort of book, other times I can only 
handle that sort. "Chick lit" one day, Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner the 
next. And when I read "Wolf Hall"? I love a really long book. But holding one, 
as I mentioned before, is a different story. Finally, being able to match a book 
to your mood in just an instant really helps that pesky "mood" problem.

Anyway, a few months into the second generation of my first Kindle, the 
inevitable happened. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or get mad at myself. 
Instead, I finally called the Amazon Kindle number to talk to someone and a few 
minutes later, talking to a really, really polite and kind young man, we 
realized that my Kindle was really and truly dead. Since the year warranty was 
still in effect (what WAS I thinking when I didn't buy the extended warranty 
with my history?) I was sent a new Kindle, free of charge. I just had to 
remember to mail back the old one within 30 days, which is not as easy as it 
sounds when you can do nothing, nor remember anything, yet ridiculously easy for 
the rest of the world. They even set it up for me by entering my old books into 
it and the heading on the top of the Kindle read "Irene's 2nd Kindle." Sweet!

Were we all in a group I might stop here and ask how many know where this is 
going! You may be right.

You see, the other night I received "Irene's 5th Kindle." To tell you the truth 
I was a bit uncomfortable calling about this fifth one...in fact, the warranty 
had run out. I knew the warranty starts anew with each new Kindle but I was 
just too plain lazy ("too sick" and "too tired"...remember our code words here!) to 
call and explain the dying process of my fourth Kindle. 

Finally, with the warranty over, I now had to choose from quite an array of new 
Kindles. Did I mention I have a hard time making decisions - a very typical 
CFIDS problem?  Well, finally Kindle number four died absolutely and completely.  
I was going to order a new one after much hemming and hawwing. But I wasn't sure 
that I'd be able to handle the library transfer and registration parts, so I 
wanted to order one from an actual human being. Amazon has them, you see...I 
suspect they're there to be amused by the senior crowd who have no clue as to 
what they are doing. 

I finally got around to calling. And in less than five minutes I was informed 
that by paying $60 I could have a brand new Kindle, the very one I was ready to 
put real money into. How amazing is that?

I must say that the support woman was a bit....shocked?...when she realized this 
was my fifth Kindle. I refrained from telling her about my Big Ben incident.

And England: I'm so sorry. I really didn't mean to hurt Big Ben. It was a 
totally innocent and unintentional act!  My sincerest apologies to all.