2 recent Lady statuses on Facebook…
her new poem 4.12.2020, and eye status yesterday.

~ ~ ~

I cup you the habit of our automatic mornings
your sidling up to me from the murk of 4 a.m.
your plump warm lips

There’s the essence reconstructed when I’m grounded
from the meta meta meta-ing: I feel you as an animal friend,
a mammal, the surprise of a smile

I’d purchase an inch of your plucky chest flesh
touch my lips to your silk clay skin sprouting
productive bristles of salt and pepper beard

In particular you are a lean-to of a man
a codger, an otter shaking its beard
in the water a duck a bear scratching its back
or sometimes you quicken like a snake
and howl at the dogs
who bite you on the head

Words fall from you like rubble, like skin cells,
your casual casting aside, your
quizzical scratches, natural gravity,
my feel good lazy boy companion

~ ~ ~

The doctor who gave me the eye injection yesterday is an understudy of my doc. He’s a bit unsure of himself and also did not give me numbing swabs (which help a lot) initially. He gave me two numbing drops and right away proceeded to inject me with another numbing shot before the big needle. I wasn’t expecting the numbing needle as usually they do the swabs first! So I jumped and the needle pulled out!

He said he’s sorry, that he couldn’t do anything, and that I needed to be still. I was absolutely sure I could not have that needle applied without jumping again, and I felt like throwing up. I said, “What about the swabs?” He got the swabs (about 4% lidocaine) and applied them and we waited 10 minutes.

Then he marked my eye with a pen for the big needle, and it hurt! I was panicked again at this point and asked for more swabs, so he applied more swabs. Then he was able to give me the numbing shot, no problem, and then another 10 minutes later the big needle, which this time was no problem (it had been before).

The numbing shot provides a bubble of juice through which they inject the bigger needle for the steroid. Crazy! The first time I had the big needle, I could feel it at the end point pricking *inside the eye.* The docs know when to pull the needle back out because there’s a release when the capsule goes through, a click.

He told me to tap my feet as I was given the big needle, that it would provide another focus for my brain and I would not notice the needle as much. I’m actually the one who told him about this trick last year.

The difference between this needle and the one I’d been getting initially is that they are actually inserting a dissolvable steroid capsule, where before they were injecting fluid. I much prefer the fluid, because of the needle size, and because I can see the capsule bobbing around in my eye for a month after they put it in (it’s yellow!). But the drug makers make more money with the capsule, so they have made the liquid steroid scarce.

Ever since my main doctor stopped giving me the shots and has had understudies do it, it’s been pretty traumatic and I get upset the rest of the day. I want the understudies to gain experience though, and I’m also actually too shy to ask my doc to do the needle rather than them.