It’s been a kind of tough week. First, my truck gets sick, which results in a sizable repair bill (yeah, it was the clutch). I guess maybe before first, my body has not felt well for a couple of weeks now. I have periodic bouts with abdominal discomfort, colon unhappiness, limb aches, and esophageal irritation. The last week it has been pronounced, which has made me realize I need to make an effort to fine a new doctor.

I would gladly visit a doctor if it wasn’t for the whole doctor finding game.

Because I have a certain kind of insurance, I have to go through their system to just pick someone who might or might not be right for me, and inevitably, you have to go through this whole courting period. You have to go visit one or two or three of them, paying for each visit, hoping that you can find one who is both personable and professional. Unfortunately, based on my experiences with doctors in the past (including a year’s residency as a chaplain), my enthusiasm for physicians is not high. Undoubtedly there are good old-school ones who are both attentive to the body and the soul, but most of those are weeded out with modern medicine and its profitability push and system of impersonalization. I have been lucky in the last two rounds of physician changes to end up with two who have been decent caretakers, who I had good runs with over the last 7 or 8 years. Now, having to start over because my insurance dropped allowing us to go to the medical network my physician was in, I have to turn the roulette wheel and see what comes up. I hate this whole process, and much of the Western approach to medicine as it stands: treating symptoms instead of discovering causes of issues. But treating symptoms has largely been my experience of working with doctors, particularly since my body has developed a range of discomforting symptoms over the last 5 years that have, as of yet, not been tied to a particular problem.

So there has been a cloud over my life the last few weeks. I’m sure some of the cloud is also darkened because of the spate of deaths I’ve heard about lately of friends or friends of friends dealing with cancers.

Some of the cloud is also darkened simply because of the way I live my life these days. I am just feeling life darkly.

I need to take more assertive and better care of myself.

The lingering clouds are unsettling.

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Photo Credit: “Dark Clouds” by Jo Naylor (Flickr). Under Creative Commons license.