Every time I think I never have to take the squirrel-on-crack-effect prednisone steroid again in my life, they think up some new excuse. Short term but massive, they want now.
I argued with the nurse. *I’d had a doctor give me a bedside lecture last year that despite my reaction to topical iodine, iodine is an inert mineral that, he said, it is impossible to be allergic to. A medical myth. The stuff they mix it with? Sure. Iodine? No.
And so (just like last year just the same) they want me to take Pred and Benedryl for a CT scan so I won’t react to this iodine I can’t be allergic to.
I got nowhere. The nurse who called me to tell me had no idea. This is just how we do it, sorry.
Yes, and walking around with 80/40 bp and the like is how I do it, do you know how I react to Benedryl? Is it in my records? Do you really want to depress that?
You know? I think I’ve been more stressed about this than I thought I was.
Just before my first Stanford stay last year, when I was too sick to sit up, much less knit, the community at Purlescence filled a large basket for me of newly-picked oranges from Jasmin‘s trees and yarn and handknits to cheer me on and to give me something to keep me looking forward.
One of those things was two skeins of Mooi from Nathania, Sandi, and Kaye–a blend with buffalo and cashmere that was probably one of if not the most expensive yarn in their shop. I was alive enough to realize and hang onto the idea of what a treasure they were offering me: in my intense pain and weakness, being able to anticipate specific moments of joy in an as-yet uncertain future.
How do you live up to that intensity when you’re puttering around happily back in normal life? It has been bothering me that I haven’t done that great gift justice. It kept waving other skeins ahead of it, going, no, no, you go on, wool, you’re fine, no problem.
It’s time. I guess I can’t say I refuse to let this ongoing post-ops stuff buffalo me now. This is lovely stuff, with a brightness to it that I didn’t see in the ball and didn’t expect as it weaves around my needles, and it didn’t even hit me till I started playing with it that those women had picked the color in their stock that matched my favorite teal-blue skirt they’d seen me in a million times. Man am I slow on the uptake.
And now I can begin to really tell them thank you for that Mooi. At last. It’s gorgeous stuff and it is a great comfort. Again. A CT scan? I was worried about a stinking *CT* scan, fer cryin’ out loud?! What was I *thinking*!
(Edited to add five weeks later: I talked to my radiologist brother-in-law, and he said that while one might not technically be allergic to iodine, it is very common for iodine to bind with various cells that one then makes antibodies against–causing a potentially dangerous and yes, allergic reaction.)