I began waving to my neighbors. I've always been a little bit shy, though friendly, but in the time since I'd landed back in the southeastern suburbs of Cleveland, I hadn't spoken or waved to any of my neighbors, most of whom were retirees, older men who had seen me grow up. Leave for college. Return for breaks. Leave again. Work for awhile. Leave for grad school. That was supposed to be the big departure, the one I didn't intend to come home from. But no, here I was. So for a long time I didn't wave.

I had just gotten back from an exhausting pain management appointment, one which I woke up late for, then parked at the wrong building. After running to the right building, the doctor was running an hour behind.

So I wasn't happy. But I got what I needed out of the appointment, which was a rescue medication, something for the worst of the pain. Considering my past experiences with the Cleveland Clinic, this is miracle akin to Jesus feeding the masses with two fishes and five loaves.

(I could (and someday will) write an entire series of entries on the Cleveland Clinic. I have had mostly negative experiences there, including two awful experiences and I still have a picture I drew of a plane dropping H-bombs on their main campus.)

I have been very lonely lately and I think I decided somewhere to start making at least casual friends with everyone I see. A lot of people whose POTS symptoms are severe enough that they are homebound have a lot of online friends, but this isn't my style.

Born on the dividing line between Gen X and the Millennials (Hey, I remember when the Berlin Wall came down!) I've always have a healthy distrust of the Internet and as a college senior, did my senior synthesis paper in part on the works of Sherry Turkle who studies the way people relate to each other online. Her latest book is Alone Together, which I think I'd like to own.

In short, I don't think online friendships are all that ideal. On tests I often score as 100% introvert, meaning that other people sap my energy and I go to be alone to recharge. To be honest, when I was not ill I greatly enjoyed my alone time!

But this is the limit of all that.