The joys of hanging upside down-if you're a bat. Or a monkey.

I'm actually able to see to blog. I'm actually able to see to walk. Miracles happen. I had the second journey on the upside down chair-which looks suspiciously like it came out of Men in Black 3. If you know the film, you'll know the chair-only this one is white. And the person who does the hanging has to do it manually.

I'm told that the thing is on loan from somewhere in France. They lend the hospital the chair, and all the data goes back to France. Fair deal. I suspect that whoever invented the chair is the same person who invented the speculum. And all women know what a joy that is!

This week has been relatively quiet-except for the news, which is filled with more terrorist attacks and more stabbings. Children as young as ten are being arrested for stabbing other people. Stabbings, shootings, acid attacks, and just plain, ordinary beating the crap out of other people. It's like the wild west-and they smugly tell us all that the US has more crime than Britain. Hmmm.....

I now have an MRI coming up next week-two, actually. I've bashed my knee (by falling) so many times since the gentamicin debacle that I've lost track. Now some genius thinks that it's so damaged, it needs replacing. As if. I asked what people used to do before the (very lucrative) advent of knee surgery. I was told that they suffered. And limped. I'll limp. I'll pass. When it comes to the medical profession in this country, I've learned a very hard and painful lesson: never trust anyone. They're like lawyers. I don't trust them, either.

I went to see my acupuncturist friend on Thursday. It's a long journey: about 3 hours each way, sometimes more if there's traffic. But it's been worth it. I've now been twice since my spectacular fall on my head, which was seven weeks ago (yeah, I'm counting. These are things you don't forget easily). And it's helped with the headaches and the extra dizziness. Even the chair helped with the extra dizziness-and the wobbling eyes. So, I'm on the mend, although two consultants told me this past week that it's going to be a long road back. There are a few consultants whose opinions I trust. I've now seen all three, and they all say the same thing: you did WHAT??? Yeah, I know. I could have made better choices. But I didn't. Boohoo.

Part of a major concussion (so I'm told by the neurologists) is the tendency to be depressed and fearful: fearful of it happening again without warning (like last time), and depression, because this has been a major setback. But also I've been noticing things again. I notice other people. I notice my surroundings. I begin to notice as much as I can, and then I get depressed-because I can feel my life whizzing by, and I don't feel like I've accomplished much. I've developed this underlying dissatisfaction with my life-and watching the news (or reading it, or hearing it) makes everything substantially worse.

Today the students who survived the most recent killings over in the States have mobilized-and there are around 500,000 demonstrators who are in Washington today, protesting against the incumbent moron and his pals in the NRA-and government-who pay lip service to being upset over needless killings but yet do nothing to change the laws to stop it.

And now we have shooting crimes here, too. And nobody does anything. It really hurts me to see what is happening in my own country, and it hurts even more to know that we could have elected a baboon and it would have done a better job. What is going on with this world, I ask.

Best to keep our heads down and just get on with the business of living, being cautious but not paranoid, and taking every day and living it to the best of our ability. Am I able to do that? I've never been able to do that! I'm still looking at the past and the future, and forgetting that the present is the only thing that matters.

Wasn't that deep...enough philosophizing, I'm off to Starbucks.

And I'm going to blame all this over-thinking on the concussion. What the hell, I'm going to milk that for all it's worth!