MARCH 5, TUESDAY

LAB CORE

I’ve visited Lab Core laboratory twice since getting back from India to have blood drawn to test me for the presence of a whole variety of chemical properties which mean nothing to me. Apparently my creatinine is up a bit and my potassium is normal my kidney doctor informs me. I have stage 3 kidney disease which has been stable for a number of years. Apparently my chronic kidney disease is not unexpected for a person of 86 and I shouldn’t worry.

I guess I am supposed to feel relieved that my potassium is normal and that my creatinine level has only inched up a little. But all I really know is that Dr. Jones is a nice guy and that I can trust him. It is really a matter of faith. All of his training and all of his experience is how to help people who have kidney problems. Yet if someone were to write to me and tell me that I am being conned by my doctor and that the lisinipril that I take for blood pressure is really part of a plot to slowly poison me to the point that I will have to take Jardiance, a very expensive drug that I see advertised often on TV, from which Dr. Jones will certainly get a commission before finally turning me over to a dialysis company of which he is a stockholder and that the reason I know nothing about this conspiracy to sicken me is because I’ve been brainwashed to believe whatever a doctor tells me which I obviously demonstrate by my blind belief in Dr. Jones. The greater my faith the more brainwashed I reveal myself to be and the more reason to distrust anything I believe.

Luckily no one I trust as much as I trust Doctor Jones tells me this. And luckily I am not so irritated by elite educated know it all experts that regardless of what they say I feel so dominated by them that I refuse to listen to them and will believe any theory that undercuts them, any conspiracy theory.

The fact is I have blind trust in experts and have no idea what Dr. Jones is talking about when he says my potassium level is normal. So what? Whatever he tells me I will do, and take the consequences and I’ll refuse to listen to conspiracy true believers.