September 2017 – Page 3 – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I’ve written several books you might be interested in, ranging from short story collections to near-future science fiction to fantasy space opera to nonfiction, all available as ebooks or in print from Amazon. Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

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13-5 I did, in fact, manage to make it through my doctor’s visit yesterday without any invasive examinations, which I mostly wasn’t super interested in anyway. The part of me that was super interested was the bit that writes blog posts, though.

I discovered a new way that the world can degrade me today, though: I needed to visit the doctor mostly because she needed to re-up my refills for my blood pressure medicine, and she insists on twice-yearly checkups for anyone on maintenance meds, which I’m okay with in principle. The real reason, on my end at least, was that I’ve decided it’s time to start moving toward getting robot parts, and I need referrals for that. My knees are fucked up, guys, and fucked up in a way that manifests itself by my feet sticking out in directions that feet are not supposed to point while I’m walking. As you all know, because I gripe about it all the fucking time, I have three eleven-hour shifts a week at my job in addition to the two six-hour shifts, and at the end of those shifts I have to drive home. By the time I get home, half an hour or so later, my joints have locked themselves up so thoroughly that I can barely walk. I occasionally wonder whether the neighbor kids have made a sport of being by the windows when I get home from work so that they can watch me hobble down my long-ass driveway to check the mail. I’m fat, yes, but there are tons of people way fatter than me and my mobility issues are, I think, at the very least at the long end of the tail for people my size.

So, yeah: can I have a referral to an orthopedist, please? Or whatever a knee doctor is called, because I always feel like the word is the wrong word even if I’ve just looked it up to check? And most of the time I want the word “osteopath,” but I’m pretty sure osteopathy is voodoo, even if I like to say the word better?

Sure, patient, you can have an orthopedist. Which one?

(As an aside, the horrified look on both my doctor and the types-rapidly-on-the-laptop person who always seems to come into the room with the doctor nowadays when they really looked at my feet for the first time was hilarious.)

Well, my mom liked this one dude who replaced her knee. Can I use him?

Sure!

And then I wait a day, and then the degradation happens. Get this: I got a call from my doctor’s office today, from the incredibly apologetic person who drew the short stick and had to make this call, and get this: this orthopedist who I specifically requested said that he was not willing to treat me because I’m too fat. As in, I’m not allowed to even darken his fucking door. Not “you’ll need to lose weight before we do knee replacement surgery.” I’m not even at “you need knee replacement surgery” right now despite all the jokes about robot parts. I want a medical professional to tell me what to do about my knees, and yes, I’m fully expecting to hear “losing weight will help,” and yes, it will, but it will not solve the problem that my feet point the wrong fucking direction, and that’s not because I’m fat, even though the fatness makes the pain and stress on my knees worse. But maybe I don’t need new knees! Maybe I can just wear a brace or something! I don’t know, that’s why I need a doctor!

But no. He won’t even see me, because my BMI is too high. What’s my BMI? I dunno, but it’s apparently over 40, because he flat-out refuses to see any patients with a BMI of 40 or above. Ever.

So fuck that guy, gimme an appointment with someone who isn’t a dickhead.

(Which, by the way, I just GISed “40 BMI”? And holy shit I do not look like this:

BMI-Infographic-1 Anybody with the profile of the King Kong Bundy-lookin’ motherfucker on the right there has got to be pushing 500 pounds, if not more. I’m 5’10” and just over 300, which, granted, is probably the heaviest I’ve ever been, but my profile matches the gray one in the middle much more than either of the other two. Holy shit.)