Several years ago, when I got a diabetes diagnosis, I was going to doctors’ offices a lot. My primary care physician wanted to see me pretty often, making sure that the sky high carb count was going down, slowly, but regularly. And, because diabetes has such an impact on every other part of the body, I needed to see an ophthalmologist, and a podiatrist, and a cardiologist, and a nepherologist, and, of course, a dentist, and, oh, a retina specialist. At this moment, there are six little cards, clipped around my desk, that have the dates and times of upcoming appointments. (I only saw the cardiologist briefly.)

Because I’m unhealthy and because I’m a senior adult, Medicare pays for pretty much all my medical stuff, which includes a pair of shoes every year. So, when I went to the podiatrist, recently, I remembered to ask about a new pair of shoes. For several years, when I would go in February, I’d also go to another room in the podiatrist’s office, and look at my shoe choices and select which pair I’d like. The shoe specialist would make a mold of the sole of each foot, and a set of insoles would be made to go into the shoes that I ordered. In most recent years, there would be a computer program that would scan my feet to create those insoles.

When I went to my most recent podiatrist’s visit, I asked about shoes. Turns out that the regular shoe lady had gone some place else. The podiatrist said that they had someone who was doing shoes, now, and they were located in an office next to the podiatrist’s office. “Just around from our office,” she said. And I said, “The prosthetic place?” “Yes,” she said. “They’re doing shoes for us. We’ll let them know that you’re needing new shoes.”

And, sure enough, several days later, someone contacted me and said that they’d received my shoe request, and they gave me the date and time. Yay.

Then, on Tuesday evening, while I was walking on the treadmill, I thought, I have a shoe appointment! When?!? Soon!

Wednesday morning, first thing, I looked back through my phone calls and found what I was pretty sure was the right phone number, and called it. No one answered, but I got a beep, and I said that I knew I had an appointment, but I didn’t recall what the scheduled time was. A bit later, I got a text that said it was at 9:15 a.m. I looked at my phone. It was 9:10. I leapt up, grabbed my purse (and my recyclable shopping bags) and raced over to the office. I was just a few minutes late. When I tried the doors, they were locked. EEKKK!!! I called that number again. An amiable young woman recognized the phone number and asked what I needed, and I said that I was at the office and the doors were locked. She said, “That’s right. Your appointment is for tomorrow.” “Ah,” I said. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I got back in my car and thought that I might as well go on to Wal-Mart, since we needed milk. I shopped around Wal-Mart for a while, picked up some groceries, and decided not to get the milk, since I needed to go to Target to get a prescription filled, and didn’t want to leave the milk sitting in the car, even though it wasn’t very warm outside.

And, I went to Target. I asked for the prescription to be filled, and then walked around Target, shopping, for a while, and reminding myself, several times, to get milk right before I went to get the prescription. After fifteen minutes, or so, I went back to pick up the medicine and went to check out. When I got home, I emptied out my bags, put things away, began to work on dinner, and, oh, two hours or so later, when I went to the fridge to get the milk, there wasn’t any. I’d forgotten to get milk.

I got in the car, drove over to Drug Emporium, and bought milk.

And, first thing this morning (Thursday), I showed up, at 9:15, to choose my new pair of shoes.

These are the shoes that I got last year. My new, this year’s pair, are just like these, only black. There aren’t many choices for diabetic shoes. They’ll get ordered, and the insoles will get made. And, in a few weeks, I’ll go pick up my new shoes. Not exactly glamorous. But quite serviceable. (It took me four tries to get “serviceable” spelled right.)

I am grateful, every day.