Entry #678664, added on 12-04-09 @ 10:22 am EST
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I could go the usual route and type up an entry regarding my doctor visit of 12/2, but later that night had a dream that allowed me the perfect opportunity to explain it in enough depth, and it's much easier to just recycle that here from my dream journal rather than expend the time and energy on another entry when I have little energy to spare, so here you go.
No, at first glance this dream really doesn't look like it's related to my doctor visit. So this entry will do the double duty of illustrating how something so seemingly pointless can become more than a "meaningless firing of neurons" (see 3/25/09 and 10/4/09--no, I will never let that jackass live that comment down) once you really look at it.
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Obsolescence
Vague by now. I just remember fragments.
I was at home with my parents and it was daytime, bright outside, though I don't know the season as all the action took place inside. Basically, I found an old camera of ours, something from perhaps the 1980s, and was amazed at just how out of date and thus odd its technology was.
I remember standing or kneeling by the bed in my room looking at it. (My south window was covered (with a curtain rather than the blinds it really has?) but bright sunlight filtered through (one reason why I think it was a cloth covering), making me believe it was morning.) This camera was just way beyond bizarre for me. I can't recall what its basic structure was but it seemed to be of plastic and some color like red or orange, perhaps rectangular, but with parts sticking or extending off from it, perhaps where you would put the "film" or whatever held the images (more on that in a moment). Its size, excluding any of these protrusions, was about that of a small instant camera. Very tacky and cheap-looking thing. I believe perhaps we had found it in a closet in the utility room or some such. I remember taking out a small tray of what appeared to be glass microscopic slides. (The size of this tray and the slides was such that it would not have possibly fit in the camera itself so maybe it sat on something outside the camera's body.) The slides were about the same size and shape as the real item and there were at least perhaps a dozen of them arranged in at least two rows. I carefully pulled out one or two to look at them and saw that they had photographic negatives on them almost like etchings, and I realized with surprise that this was how this camera worked--these little glass slides were the "film" which held the negatives, which would presumably later on be developed in some way I could not determine. So instead of film, the camera used glass slides. I peered carefully at the little negative images upon them, perhaps old "undeveloped" photos of our yard and such. I seem to recall that there was something in addition to the slides, like bits of tissue paper holding them, but I'm not sure.
I just found this very weird and a very inconvenient way to take pictures. The glass slides were so bulky and bothersome, a pain to handle. Not only that but I realized that there was probably no way to develop them anymore--they'd been taken so long ago, using this obsolete method, that now there would surely be no photo-developing places that would handle them. The camera, from what I could tell, was still perfectly functional--maybe I even took a picture using these glass slides, just out of curiosity. However, not only would I no longer be able to find a place that would sell these photographic slides so I could continue using the camera once these ran out, but I also wouldn't be able to find anyone who could develop any of them! It was rather a shame we'd never had any of these images developed; I felt they were doomed to remain as negatives forever, since the technology to develop them was so obsolete as to likely be nonexistent.
I perhaps interacted some with my parents in the utility room or elsewhere in the house. Returning to my room, I seemed to be perusing either a foldout guide that came with the camera, or its original product box, or perhaps both. The foldout showed images of all the different attachments and bits that came with the camera and all their different uses and when I say "different uses," I'm not kidding--these attachments and whatnot could be used for all sorts of things aside from photography. I mean, it was just ridiculous, the things you could do with these camera accessories. I remember one image showing these little thingies that looked like little colorful nubbins or tiny balloons attached to the ends of metal (?) rods, and they were being used for something, then on another page there was this kind of rippled/ribbed, plastic collapsible/inflatable accessory which formed kind of a square or a frame or something and it was being used to support a toddler or baby, and even though its original intended use was for this camera, it could be used for this too, for supporting a baby, and that's what all this information was like, all these weird alternate uses for the camera's bits and attachments, stuff that had nothing whatsoever to do with photography. It was really weird. Even in the dream I was thinking, "Jeez, it's like everything but the kitchen sink!" I also thought it was just really tacky, all these alternate usages; I can't really explain my reasoning, I just found it rather lame. Like why would I want to use a camera accessory to support a baby?
Not sure what prompted this dream. The most immediate real-life occurrence of note was a possible diagnosis from a urologist of me having "interstitial cystitis," which sounds like it could be part of my problem (see "That Came Out Of Me??" and "Sulky & Left Out" for info), but I do not believe it is my main problem since it explains only the issue of urinary frequency and not urinary output (which I feel is my REAL problem--I wouldn't be urinating so frequently if my output wasn't so damn high!); I felt terribly frustrated that the doctor was evasive of my questions (when I asked, "Will this medication help lessen the amount of urine I'm putting out?" he would say, "It should help increase the ability of your bladder to store urine, so yes," which was not the answer to the question I asked!) and seemed to ignore my repeated attempts to point out this real issue. I'm to possibly try out another medication if my Medicaid covers it (the only medication approved for interstitial cystitis is not a generic and costs way too much, so is likely unavailable to me; I'm not sure about the other one) and it will take three months before I find out if it works, so that's another three months I have to put up with this, taking me into March before I see the doctor again, when I had really hoped for this to be resolved at least by summer; I feel like this is an immense waste of time that could be spent figuring out what the REAL problem is, if the doctor would only listen to me. (The detailed "voiding log" I had been asked to keep and then presented to him, he barely glanced at, taking note only of the frequency and not the output, before passing it along to the receptionist to stash away.) Plus I again ended up exasperated trying to explain why this upsets me so much to my mother, who feels there is really no medical issue or else no treatment for me and can't seem to understand that I really need her emotional support. PLUS I found out that my appointment with my psychologist had been cancelled without my knowledge, the second time in a row, when I really could have used her to talk to. So all this had me terribly depressed the night before the dream, and of course, since the issue was acting up before bedtime I worried I would not sleep well. (I ended up sleeping very deeply, abnormally so, though now as I type this, a night later, it's acting up again and sleep is again iffy; the possibility of sleep and dreaming has become a day-to-day issue for me.) I'm not sure how this dream relates to that issue (aside from the glass slides possibly relating to a medical matter, and a literal reading of the word "negative"?) but felt I should point it out; perhaps further rumination will clear it up.
A curious note, I originally intended to title this dream "Our Old-Fashioned Camera" before deciding on "Obsolescence." When looking this up in the digital dictionary to make sure of the spelling, I found a definition of "obsolete," saying, "BIOLOGY--undeveloped: describes a part or organ of an animal or plant that is undeveloped or no longer functional." This definition strongly makes me think of the state of my bladder if I should really have interstitial cystitis, or whatever this is that's making me urinate too much (something aside from the bladder)--I feel that something has just gone out of whack and stopped functioning the way it should be, and it frustrates me that I can't figure out what or why and that others don't seem to be taking me seriously. The little "nubbins" or balloonlike items were also vaguely reminiscent of a bladder; plus, when I looked up the approved medical uses of the generic medication I might be prescribed, there were lots of uses but treatment of interstitial cystitis was not among those main uses, similar to the parts of the camera being used for things not dealing with photography. Interesting how all these ideas pop up once I start mulling a dream over further.
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I ended up sleeping just fine last night. In fact, too well yet again--I woke up twenty minutes late and several times, again, didn't set my alarm. WTF's going on with me??
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