January 17, 2022, 11:30 a.m.
It’s been two years and one week since my last in-person appointment with Francis, the Pain Physical Therapist at Union City. I felt guilty for asking Linda to drive me there since it was her birthday, and especially because she just had her COVID booster yesterday and wasn’t feeling well.
The parking lot by Building C was essentially empty. The disabled parking had been resurfaced, and we both remembered that all groups had been relocated to Building A at the beginning of 2020 because they were going to make physical renovations to the interior of Building C. (I didn’t notice anything different once I got inside the building, however.) The security guard was at his post inside the front door. He asked me if I had an appointment. When I said “yes,” he motioned for me to squirt hand sanitizer on my hands.
The waiting area was completely empty. The receptionists’ area was totally behind Plexiglas shields. One receptionist opened her window halfway and asked for my Kaiser number. I gave it to her verbally and asked her if she needed to see my Kaiser card and she said “no.” Then she told me to wait and Francis would come out to get me.
I barely had time to take a picture of the empty waiting room. Then Francis appeared. I felt amazingly at ease, probably because I had seen him every Tuesday at 4 p.m. from June 2020 to October 2021 for the Online Pain Group. We talked easily as I followed him to his office–the same office where I had had my individual appointments from 2018 to January 10, 2020. His office looked the same except that he had a Plexiglas divider between his seat at his computer and the patient chair where I sat, but the divider was pushed back toward the wall.
I reconfirmed that I was now, indeed, walking every day, 30 minutes, with Emily in her stroller, and that on warm sunny days we sat by the duck pond where I read. I asked him when he was planning to retire, and he reconfirmed that it would be August 2022, although he would be taking his final vacation days so he would probably leave his office in July. Silently, I calculated that I probably wouldn’t be able to see him in July if Linda and I are going to be able to take a cross-country road trip to Orlando.
I told him about Linda’s scheduled hip replacement surgery at Stanford on the last Friday of January.
At one point (and I can’t remember what led up to it), he asked me if we were able to go to church in-person yet and I said “no.” I told him that the church we were going to had disbanded at the end of 2018, mainly due to lack of funding. He asked me if it was a Catholic church, and I said, “No, it was non-denominational. Most members were Christian, some were Jewish, and there was one Buddhist. It was more like a book club, as we were given assignments to read and then discuss.” I told him it was books like those by Richard Rohr (who I thought I remembered is Catholic) and Francis smiled and brightened, saying how much he loved Richard Rohr’s books. He told me about a small Catholic church in Oakland, Lady of Lourdes (I think), and he said it was quite progressive and affirming. I explained to him that we almost never went anywhere other than medical appointments and weekly grocery shopping and farmers’ market because of Linda’s constant pain.
Of course, I told him how much I missed the Tuesday Online Pain group. I mentioned specific people–Avtar, Cora, Dan Dolgin, and others. I said, “I’m guessing Avtar is Indian” and he nodded, and “Cora is Filipino,” and he nodded again. Then the topic shifted to my last place of employment where I had a boss for 10 years that was African-American and she retired and the new boss was white and she never liked me from the very beginning and I didn’t know why except that I wasn’t white.
Near the end, I asked him if he and his wife had specific plans for retirement. He said she would be retiring about 6 months after him. Then he said they have some real estate properties in the Sacramento area, some short-term and long-term rentals and some sales. Then, of course, they will continue their long-distance bicycle riding. I asked him if they were still going on their mission trips in January, and he said they had been cancelled for the past two years but he thinks they have found another agency to go on mission trips with. He looked pensive. “I’ve been in this position, this office, for 15 years.” I tried to make a quick mental calculation. “That would’ve been 2007?!” He affirmed that was the year. “That’s also the birth year of my Chihuahua!” I exclaimed.
At the very end, he asked me if I wanted to get my weight since it’s the first of the year. I remembered that he always did that. I groaned but I agreed and took off my jacket and followed him to the electronic scale out in the hallway. I chattered about how I was always 2 lbs. more dressed with shoes than I was first thing in the morning without clothes. “I was 138 this morning,” I told him, “and that’s 8 lbs. more than I want to weigh!” And, sure enough, the scale in the hallway showed 140 lbs. Well, as discouraging as that sounds, I was 141 lbs. in January 2020.
During our talk, I mentioned that I was considering going on a carnivore diet for Lent. He thought that was a good idea. We also talked about intermittent fasting. Oh, yes, I also complained about Dr. Chan saying, “At your age, there’s nothing I can give you for your pain,” and that’s what got me started on my quest for the Pain Management Program, which was first suggested by the young physical therapist in Oakland. “She was very good,” I said, “even though she was probably young enough to be my granddaughter!” Then he saw (in my medical record on his monitor) that Dr. Sunatomen (sp?) had prescribed Flexeril (muscle relaxant).
I told Francis I was fortunate to have had individual sessions for acupuncture with Sophie, and only a few group acupuncture sessions since the pandemic started. I asked him if I could schedule another appointment in maybe March or April. “My calendar only goes out through February,” he said, “but I’ll make a note that you want an appointment in March or April.” I made another silent mental note: possibly only two more appointments with Francis: April and June.
In our discussion of my current pain, I reminded him that I “cured” my migraines in November 2017 with CBD/THC tinctures. He didn’t seem to remember that! “Well,” I told him, “you can forget that I told you!” I related the one pain group session with a woman who discussed pain medications and made it very clear that if we, as a Kaiser Pain Management patient, were “caught” using medical cannabis we would not be allowed to have any pain medications. “That’s only if you’re on opioids,” he said. “Well, I’m taking tramadol, which is a synthetic opioid,” and he nodded. “When the pandemic came with its lockdowns,” I told him, “I wasn’t able to go to Harborside for 3 months, but I still didn’t get migraines.” (We were walking out the door of his office by this time.) I went on. “I figured it was because my own endocannabinoid system had been sufficiently ‘fired up’! Now I take the sublingual tinctures but only about 1/4 the dosage of what I took for two years.”
I found my way out of the building through a side door (which buzzed when I opened it). Some things never change. Linda and I had a nice talk on the drive home, as we always do, but she didn’t feel like going to Subway for her favorite meat ball sandwich. Maybe tomorrow.
*****
At home tonight, I found this picture of what the waiting area looked like in 2018, Day 1 of the Pain Management Program, Level 3:
