Good morning, @amkie,

Thank you for your post. For both posts. I hope it doesn’t surprise you to hear me say that I agree with you–how preoccupation with medical matters to the degree that’s all we can think to talk about––is both funny and not funny, NOT funny by a long shot. I’m guilty of that same preoccupation. If I’m not talking to a friend about my PN, then I’m reading something about my PN, thinking about my PN, or getting ready to do some balance work to counter the effects of my PN … darn near around the clock. On the one hand, I find my preoccupation amusing, but on the other hand, I don’t find it amusing at all: my preoccupation is a sure measure of how seriously I regard my disease.

What prompted my one-trick pony post was sitting with three of my best friends, all of them about my age (79), but none of them dealing with a chronic disease. Almost all of my friends are artsy types: theater, painters, poets, and the like––but it wouldn’t matter if my friends were chefs, auto mechanics, handymen, librarians. What struck me as odd was how none of us seemed able to talk about what they did for a living (e.g., paint portraits, bake cakes, repair plumbing); all we could talk about––or wanted to talk about––was my PN. Me, too, I fell right in with them, yakking up a storm about nerve numbness, alpha-lipoic acid, biomarker breakthroughs, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Only after my friends had left did I reflect on the one-trick pony-ness of our conversation. That’s when I chuckled—and got the idea for my post. But, as I said at the top, I understand my preoccupation with my PN to be both mildly funny and undeniably UN-funny all at the same time. I’m glad you called me out on this.

Cheers!
Ray (@ray666)