Morning Thoughts--The continuing saga of my IMSS experiences

It is a quiet Sunday morning. It is extremely humid here this morning. I am sitting at this I pad with sweat running down my face. 

There is a little store just around the corner from my house. The owner buys his fruit and veggies in big boxes. He now has oranges, green apples and tomatoes. I liked the apples so I went up and bought two more and a tomato. But when I got home there was only one apple. I went back to the store to see if it got left on the counter. He had put my things in a small plastic bag. But there was no other apple.. He remembered charging me for the apple. Our only conclusion was that a man who was standing at the counter when I was buying my fruit took the apple. I remember how dirty he was and he had a look of desperation. He was holding a wild orchid, not in bloom. At the time I thought that he must have just come down from the hills with the orchid with the intention of selling it.  Anyway, I didn't feel upset about the missing apple when I thought about him. And the owner of the store told me to take another one from the box. So I was even less concerned.  The only problem with his method is that he buys things ripe. They are delicious the first day or so but in this hot weather, by the end of the third day most of the stuff is getting rotten.  The perils of owning a local store....

On Friday I took the bus into Chapala and walked the six blocks or so to the IMSS clinic to get my referral to see the knee specialist at the hospital near Guadalajara. This is how the system works. You cannot call anyone at the clinic. You have to go in every time you want to do anything. If you want to make a doctor's appointment, you must go in to do it and then come back on a different day. After weeks of waiting and you finally see the doctor, she/he tells you to come back for a referral to the hospital for any tests. So you wait another few weeks, which I did, and you go back to check on the bulletin board for your referral. I was told it would be up on that board in two weeks. Well, naturally it wasn't there. I have to keep going back and looking on that board for my referral. And no telling how many more trips it will take or how long it will be from then to the appointment at the hospital. And hopefully, I don't miss it before I find it up on that cluttered board. 

You are probably asking at this point why I continue with this craziness. Since my knee hurts to walk and I have to walk to get to the clinic and get back home. I guess it is just to see things through. I have a thing about that. And also I would like to get an MRI. They are expensive, even here and  I don't have to pay for that at the hospital or pay extra to see a knee specialist. Of course it might be next year before I finally get to see that specialist and get the MRI and in the meantime I am spending a lot of time and energy thinking about and going to and from the IMSS clinic.

I have so much respect for the Mexicans. They are patient and never seem irritated with the long lines and various difficulties of using IMSS or with life in general. I never see them complaining or getting angry at life's frustrations. Hopefully, I am being a little bit Mexicanized with this IMSS experience. I hope to get at least something out of all this time and energy spent.

  A friend asked me the other day what I do with my life. What is my daily routine like. I spend a lot of it dealing with this medical problem of my knee. I am stubborn. I don't want to admit that I am spinning my wheels... I always say to myself, Just one more time and then I will give up. But then I go to do that one more appointment and then another one....