{Science delayed again, sorry folks. Soon!}

Or at least, it sort of feels like my finger is off in outer space right now.

This morning, or really, last night, I concluded that my finger was not getting better, had gotten in fact far worse since I saw the doc on Tuesday, and it was time for me to go to the Emergency Room and get the nasty thing taken care of before something really bad happened.

I will admit, the god damned pain had a lot to do with my decision as well. It had gotten really bad. It burned so bad that it felt like my fingertip was dipped in boiling oil. The ache in the finger joint was making all the other joints in that hand, including the wrist, ache in sympathy. And slight motion would make the whole infected area throb and vibrate with agony. It would throb so hard that it felt like an invisible force like magnetism was pushing at it in deep pulses.

There is only so much of that anyone can take before they seek relief.

So at around 7:30 AM, Joe (the saint) dropped me off at the entrance to the Emergency Room. And I must say that it went a lot better than my previous blog entry’s embittered riff would have predicted.

(I seriously had no idea I had all that in me until I started writing it. Turns out I had bitter feelings about emergency rooms all bottled up and waiting for release. Who knew?)

The three initial hurdles were a breeze. No waiting to talk to the admissions nurse, only around a five minute wait until the triage doc saw me, no wait for the intake guy, and then another five minutes waiting for someone from the ward to come fetch me.

While waiting, I read an article about the trend towards urban chicken farming in Canadian Geographic. The idea has some charm. I am very curious about what a really fresh egg tastes like. I am a fan of fresh organic low-travel food. And having pet chickens who also happen to make food for you out of table scraps has a certain appeal.

But it still seems like a lot of trouble to go through to get fresh eggs. Plus, you know… poop.

Anyhow, eventually I get a bed on the ward, and then the waiting begins. I manage to do some reading despite the pain making that hard to do, but mostly, I end up listening to the conversations happening on either side of me.

For me, eavesdropping is not really voluntary. Not when the conversations are that close to me and I am already in an emotionally vulnerable state. It takes a very specific and intense act of will for me not to listen to what people are saying when I can hear it that clearly, and I was bored and alone and in need of distraction anyhow, so listen I did.

Weirdly, both my neighbours had to have catheters put in. Synchronicity strikes again. The fellow in my right hand side has been unable to pee for a whole day and was in dire need. Poor old duffer. Old age is so damn injurious to one’s basic human dignity.

The fellow on the other side of me was in worse straits, because his catheter was in wrong somehow and he was in a hell of a lot of pain. I could hear his agonized cries quite clearly.

Sometimes it sucks to be so sensitive. I really felt bad for the guy.

Eventually, I was moved to the seated patient waiting area, because, as Lindsay the nurse said, “it’s just a finger”. Meaning I did not need to be occupying a bed when the doctor could see me as fine if I was sitting. I understand and even approve of the reasoning, but part of me still resented it.

Finally, they stuck me in a real room on the ward, a treatment room I think, and eventually, Doctor Wong came along and injected three needles worth of freezing into my finger. And while the needles hurt like a bitch, it was totally worth it almost right away, because finally I was free of the fucking pain for the first time in days.

The relief was so profound that I wanted to go to sleep right then and there. I was almost giddy from the release of tension. I felt like I could float away.

But the doctor would be back when the freezing was fully in, so I had to stay grounded.

And let me tell you, that finger was totally frozen. I barely felt it at all when she opened up the boil and let the bad stuff out, and as far as I am concerned, that was marvelous. I have had experience with the “only mostly dead” kind of anesthetic, and let me tell you, it is no fun.

After the doc was done, I had to wait a while, then a rather cute male nurse came along to dress the wound so I could go. We chatted a bit. He says I look like a guy named Mike on a show called Orange County Choppers where they make custom motorcycles. I will have to look that up because I have to see if that is true. Out there on TV, a doppelganger of me. Freakay.

And so now I am home. Doctor Wong wanted me to get an appointment with my GP ASAP, and she wanted it to be Monday, but Tuesday was the best I could do.

I took a nap when I got home, and somehow during said nap, the dressing on my finger vanished. Cannot find it anywhere. Whad dee fug. Luckily, the cute Asian male nurse gave me some gauze and some tape so I was able to fashion a very crude one of my own.

Trust me, nobody wants to see the Zombie Finger underneath, least of all me.

So not out of the woods yet, but out of pain, which will do for now.

The battle goes not in our favour, my Lord.

I have reluctantly concluded that my antibiotic is not only failing to solve the problem of my severely infected finger and its sac of pus, the problem is getting worse. The boil grows larger and uglier by the minute and I am getting really worried about it.

For one thing, it is horrifyingly ugly. It is a bloated sac growing out of the last joint (the one with the fingernail and fingertip on it) of the right hand side of my right index finger, now almost as big as the joint to which it is attached. The upper half of the boil is now covered in a grotesque milky white discoloration, with nasty looking black bits here and there. The rest is reddish pink with what look like black veins shot through it,

Honestly, you guys should thank your luckiest of stars that I do not have a digital camera, or I would totally be posting pictures of it to go with my graphic descriptions.

In summation, it looks utterly horrible. Ghastly, even. Like I am turning into a zombie, or like some alien implanted its seed into my finger and now it is gestating and getting ready to burst out and attack my jugular or something.

So now I feel embarrassed to have anyone who is not a medical professional see it. That is not the kind of emotional input a guy like me, who is already a shy agoraphobic with depression, needs. I already feel like a horrible ugly creature who offends all who look upon him and who should hide from the light of day and the gaze of decent people, even without having a hideous deformation of flesh hanging off one of my primary fingers.

Me and my friends goes to Denny’s on Friday nights, and now I am not so sure that I want to go this time. That is how ashamed I am of this horrible invader on my finger. I usually really enjoy our Denny’s dinners. They are the highlight of my week. But i may forgo it this week because I do not want people losing their appetite when they see my disgusting pus sac.

I suppose I could just cover it up with some bandages or something. I will still look weird and gross but it would save people a trip to the bathroom to puke, anyhow.

And besides the appearance, there is the sheer body horror of it all. Having something like this happen is just fundamentally horrifying. Everything about it screams “something is very very wrong here!” on that deep primal level where our fear of disease and injury lives.

And to think, not that long ago I was all flippant and cool about it, like “Oh right, this…. I have had this before, it’s no big deal, I will just go get it fixed at the doctor. ”

Well it has ever been anything like this before, I can tell you that. I have never experienced anything even remotely like this before. I have had injuries and infections before, but nothing this virulent and horrifying. And painful.

Have I mentioned the pain yet? Because it is still there and still bad and still wearing me the hell down and making it impossible to ever totally forget that I have this disgusting thing attached to me and growing bigger and grosser all the time.

But the biggest and darkest cloud blocking out the sunshine of my soul is my fear for my health. I know for a fact that this sort of thing can be very bad if it bursts and the bacteriological and toxic goop gets shot into your bloodstream all at once. Then it attacks your body like the poison it is, and kills whatever organ it hits first. Kidneys? Liver? Heart? Heck, there is enough toxic horror for everyone.

And then you die in horrible agony. Fun, huh?

And that is the scenario with someone with a healthy immune system. Who knows what would happen to a person with an immune system compromised by diabetes like myself?

So unless there is a sudden miraculous recovery in the next 16 hours or so, I am going to call my doctor tomorrow and ask him what I should do about this.

I get the feeling it might be time for that trip to the emergency room after all. Whether or not the doctor says so. This thing is a ticking time bomb and by the time I could see him (after the weekend) it might well be too late.

Nobody likes going to the emergency room, but if I know I am going, at least I can throw some books and snacks and drinks in my bag so I will not get too bored through all the interminable waiting.

“Wait for triage. OK, now wait for admitting, OK, now wait in this random room. Then wait in another random room. Then wait on the ward. Then someone will come by and you will be all “Finally!” but that person is just there to hook up your IV or take blood or something. Then wait on the ward some more, looking pleadingly at every person who looks even vaguely medical. Then someone else will come back, and even look sort of like a real actual doctor, but guess what? They are just the nurse practitioner, and they are just there to take your history. Then wait to the point where you are sure you can actually hear your sanity beginning to crack, and only when you are giving serious thoughts as to which direction you will go when you run away screaming, only then will the doctor show up, smile at you, talk to you for around 18 seconds tops, check off three things on a clipboard, and then vanish from your life forever. Then more things may or may not happen, then after a long long period of nothing, someone will wander along, evince mild surprise that you are still there, and tell you that you could have left ages ago but nobody bothered to tell you anything till they needed your bed for some other poor sap. ”

Yeah. Fun. But ya gotta do….

Yup. Gonna talk about my gross painful tormenting infected finger some more. Sorry.

As expected, no real progress today. It’s pretty much just as bad as it was yesterday. If anything, it might be slightly worse. The bulge of the pus fulled sac on the right side of my right index finger is quite obscene now. I would say it’s around the size of half a grape, and has developed a quite disturbing smooth reflectiveness, as well as mottled areas and white, flaky looking areas. It is a hideous spectacle as well as being very painful, and the whole incident is really wearing on me.

But I knew this would be the case for today. The lady at the pharmacy (everyone at the pharmacy at the Shopper’s Drug Mart next door is female, which I find oddly comforting… guess I trust women to have my best interests at heart more than men) said the antibiotic would take at least three days of four doses a day before we knew whether it was working or not. So I will not even know if I am taking the right stuff or whether I need to go back to the doc and have him prescribe something else for me.

If that happens, I am going to demand that he lance this motherfucking thing right there in the office. I have tried the soaking in warm water then applying some pressure twice now, and all I got was an infected finger that was now also wrinkly. Apparently, the pus really wants to stay in there and can’t be tricked out by softening the skin.

And my ability to tolerate the pain is wearing down like a dune in a sandstorm. I almost wish I was still on the super high dose of Paxil again, because then this would not upset me so much.

But no. I like feeling things again, even if some of the feelings are negative. I want to learn how to deal with my emotions in a positive way, and put myself on the right path, and keep myself there. Paxil saved my life when I was super depressed and anxious. But in cutting off the bad emotions, it alsop cuts off the good ones, and I want the good ones bad enough to endure the bad ones now.

When your foot falls asleep, waking it back up is painful and unpleasant, but you do it becase you want your foot back in working order instead of sitting there cold and useless.

That is how I feel about my life now.

Got some neat stuff to share with you today. Like this modern take on epic 80’s cartoons.

That would definitely be a show I would have watched when I was an 80’s kid, although then as now I would have been quite disappointed about the lack of furry content in a show with stallions in the title. Even the Mother Mustang is just a statue. What a ripoff! It could just as easily have been Space Cowboys or Space Rabbis, for all the furry content it has. Dammit,

But hey, anything with a guy paying keytar on the back of a robot unicorn while flying through space can’t be all bad, can it?

And I would say they got the look, feel, and sound down pretty good. The animation lacks fluidity in the more complicated human oriented shots. It comes across as a little stiff and unnatural as a result. But considering the low animation quality of some of the actual 80’s shows that this vid is paying homage to, I suppose it might be a deliberate “effect” they were going for.

But nah. Cheap 80’s animation sucked in different ways.

In more local news, check this shit out : Real Housewives Of Vancouver.

Oh god, they are going to do it to us now.

And seriously, who cares? Doing this in Beverly Hills makes sense. That’s the most famous and coveted neighborhood in North American culture after all, and people are really curious about what actually goes on in the lives of the people who live there.

But Vancouver? I live im the Vancouver area, and even I do not care what rich stuck up crazy “housewives” (because it’s not like these women do housework or anything) get up to during the day.

I mean, I know we call ourselves Hollywood North, but we need to face facts : Canadians and glamour just do not go together.

Call me when it is Real Television Executives of Vancouver, or something.

Also of local interest is this story of a Miss Universe Candidate named Jenna Talackova who got disqualified for being a post op transsexual.

Needless to say, I am pretty pissed off about this blatant discrimination. My best friend is trans, and I have a strong feeling for that community. Considering what Jenna must have gone through in order to get where she is right now, to have her tossed out by a beauty pageant after maing it so far is an intolerable slap to the face for her and for the trans community.

And here is the thing that bothers me the most : moralistic and transphobic arguments aside, the bare truth is that legally speaking, she is a woman. The case law on this is quite solid. In all legal aspects, a post op transexual is their post-op gender, period.

So their rejection of her is not only offensive, but from a legal point of view, it is nonsense. They rejected her over a distinction which does not exist in law.

This should make the ensuing court case or cases pretty interesting.

If she was pre-op, that would be different. Legally speaking, there is no such thing as being between genders. You are always one or the other, except perhaps during the actual op.

But no. She is a she in all legal senses, so to hell with Miss Universe Canada.

And would it not be awesome if she won?

Beauty means a hell of a lot to trannies.

Giving it more talk, that is. Although right now, I would give the whole damn finger away to someone who really needed a right index finger just to get rid of the damned pain.

People get by with only nine, right? I could even replace it with cool cybernetic finger with built in attachments, like Inspector Gadget.

Go Go Gadget Laser Pointer! Now I am Lord of the Cats!

As expected, my doctor, Dr. Kelvin Chao, has put me on a rigorous course of antibiotics. In this case, it’s some stuff called Keflex on the street, but when it’s home its mother calls it Cefalexin. Nothing particularly weird or scary in its Wiki entry. Of course it might cause a bunch of digestive issues. It is probably going to kill the fuck out of intestinal flora. But I do not give the tiniest of shits. As long as it gets rid of this infection, it could give me radioactive mutant snot for all I care right now.

Basically, right now, I would like to give my finger the finger.

The Wiki entry for Keflex does explain a certain mystery that has been kicking around way back in the back stacks of the old noggin for quite a while, though. For decades now, on those rare occasions when I needed an antibiotic in order to get over something, I would notice a certain distinctive sickly sweet odour emanating from the pills. I would describe the smell as “over ripe corn”. But the pills all had different names. So I figured I must be imagining it, or I was just smelling the binding agent.

(Fun fact, kiddies. The vast majority of the mass of the pills we take is a binding and bulking agent, usually some form of modified starch. By weight and be volume, the actual medicine is a tiny percentage. The binding and bulking agent is necessary both to make the pill large enough to handle and swallow, and to make it digest slowly enough for your body to absorb the medicine properly. )

But now that I have read the Wiki entry for Cefalexin and learned that it is marketed under a whole slew of names, suddenly the pieces click together and the puzzle is revealed. I was probably taking Cefalexin every single time, just under different names! No wonder they all smell like that.

The doctor also gave me the usual requisition sheet filled with the usual blood and urine tests. But even though I had fasted specifically in preparation for the inevitable testing (one of the blood tests requires a ten hour fast), after the therapist then my GP, I just did not feel up to getting a poke in the arm and peeing in a cup.

In fact, in general, I have been very bad when it comes to actually going and doing the medical testing I am assigned. That is why I had the idea of doing it right after it was given to me, so that I could not forget and/or fall into a gumption trap where getting it done will require asking Joe to drive me, and I am too timid to ask, and blah.

In fact, if the medical testing was like educational testing, I would be flunking out from lack of doing homework and extremely poor attendance.

Funny, I usually test so well.

My solution is to tag doing the testing onto the end of next week’s therapy session on the 3rd. We will just go from therapy to lab, and get’r done. Means fasting again, but what the hell.

I have been doing pretty good on the old getting things done thing lately. Yesterday, I did my taxes online (pretty easy when you are dirt poor, and damn do I need that refund cheque), ordered a new CareCard (ID for the health care ’round this neck of the woods), and learned that my prospects for getting a new BCID (local government photo ID, kind of like a driver’s license that only works as ID, not as actual permission to drive) were not as bad as I thought.

Turns out, it is only $15 to get a replacement, and I might not even have to pay that if I can prove that I am on government assistance. I was thinking I would have to pay the whole $45 I paid the first time all over again, and that would be rough to come up with in my current financial situation.

So that will be a trip to the local ICBC branch in the future. It will be nice to have proper ID again, so I can prove I exist.

Next up, making an appointment with my social worker so I can look into going from the halfassed disability I am on now (PPMB, or Personals with Persistent Multiple Barriers… basically welfare plus a few bux) to full disability, which would mean more money per month plus access to a ton of programs that are for the disabled only.

Plus, to be honest, it would help me psychologically, because it will help me to banish the feeling that I am “supposed” to have gotten better by now and it is all my fault that I am still sick because I am so lame and pathetic and etc etc etc.

Instead, I will feel like society has said “Relax. You have serious problems. We know you will not get better any time soon. You have our permission to be sick and nonfunctional, and you will now be graded by society on the disabled person’s curve. ”

That could go a long way to shoring up my self esteem, and ironically, probably help a lot with my recovery as well.

Plus, I am almost positive there are programs to send disabled people to college, so it might just be the key to me getting to the academic environment where I can shine and grow and such as well.

Sadly, it is too late in the day to do it now. But soon.

Well, that is all for today, See you tomorrow, you wonderful people!

I am having a pretty bad day.

Why? It’s simple. I have a finger infection, and it seems to be getting worse, and it’s becoming more painful, and the pain is really wearing me down.

Plus, I have a bunch of writing to do today, and the pain has gotten to the point where I can’t use that finger at all, and so I have o hold the infected finger up and use my middle finger alone to type with that hand, and it really slows me down. It also makes typing seem like a heck of a lot more work, and of course, I am making far more typing mistakes this way.

But mostly, it is the pain that is getting me down and putting my mood into a bad place. In a resting state, the finger merely throbs slowly and painfully. But that is only if I am sitting absolutely still, I am not moving any part of that finger at all, and it is not touching anything.

And of course, that does not happen too often. Simple things like reading, cooking, or even just walking around involve moving the finger somewhat. Even the way I am typing right now moves the finger around a fair bit. And when it moves, it throbs harder and I can really feel the pain from both the throbbing and the inflammation, as well as the tightness of the skin from all that swelling.

The finger is now distinctly discolored and swollen, with a reddish purple tinge and a bulbous appearance. I am hoping that the swelling is mostly inflammation rather than a buildup of fluid, If it’s inflammation, it won’t get much worse and I can safely leave it till Tuesday when I see my doctor.

But if it’s fluid, it will just keep getting worse and I will have to get it taken care of pronto before it does something horrible like burst, and maybe wreck the finger and/or put infectious gunk into my bloodstream and cause much worse problems than a mere painful finger.

Having a vivid imagination and just enough medical knowledge to be dangerous is such a nasty combo.

So tomorrow will be the determinant. If the discoloration gets worse, if the swelling gets worse, if the pain gets worse, I will consider getting Joe to take me to the emergency room. Odd to end up there when I was just there on Thursday for admitting to the sleep study. But life it like that sometimes.

Honestly, a big part of me wants to go there right now just based on the pain. It’s not the severity of the pain that is driving me crazy, although at times it is fairly bad. Especially when I accidentally whack my infected finger against something, which happens three or four times a day. That really hurts like a son of a bitch and his three biggest puppies, let me tell yeah.

But no, it’s not the intensity of the pain, it’s the constancy. It hurts all the god damned time with no respite at all. I don’t have any pain relievers to take, and I can’t afford to go get any, or to look for a topical anti inflammatory pain reliever of some sort. No doubt, one of the pain relief creams or other solutions would do the trick. But those require money.

So all I can do is suffer, and that is what is wearing me down. Long term pain is a serious bitch. That animal inside us will always see all pleasure as reward and all pain as punishment, and so long term unalleviated pain cannot help but make us feel like we are bad animals being punished for something, and we do not know what. And pain without meaning or possibility of relief is the definition of depression.

And so I feel that sick animal feeling, like I want to just curl up in a dark corner somewhere and whimper. I am already prone to depression and so a (relatively) small thing like this is worse for me because my mood, and especially my positive mood, is hardly strong or stable enough to withstand it.

So we shall see how this all turns out. Probably all that it will amount to is a short, painful, unpleasant interlude of illness like having a three day flu or a minor strain, and then it will be taken care of and I will go back to normal life with great relief.

And that relief will fade over time, as it must for things to go back to normal, but for a while, I will thank my stars every day for my lack of throbbing pain in my finger.

Until then, though, I will just have to cope. After I am done writing this diary entry, I will attempt to rest for a while, then write a few other things I have promised to write before the end of today.

I am glad I have this forum to use to express my feelings. It helps a lot. I am not temperamentally inclined to vent my feelings via grumpiness, as so many less self-aware (and possibly more healthy) people seem to do. I hold myself to an extremely high standard of self-control on that score.

And I have not been able to seek solace and sympathy from my Internet friends either, because they are all on IRC (I am such a dinosaur) and IRC means typing and typing, right now, is hard.

Says something about your life when a finger infection keeps you from talking to your friends,

So being able to pour it out here helps a lot. I feel a lot less freaked out about the whole thing now that I have once more spilled my guts onto the page and put it up on the web to dry.

Tomorrow I will decide whether this damn thing warrants a trip to the emergency room or not. Hopefully not. It’s a depressing place to be.

But what the heck. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

(Don’t worry, science fans, tomorrow I will bring you a bucket full of science new. But for today, it is time for a post adventure report. )

I ended up not sleeping a wink.

That is the summary of my grand adventure. Went there to sleep for a sleep study, could not sleep, whole thing was futile, but what the fuck, it’s over.

Details to follow.

Arriving at the Scene

Because of my habitual loathing of lateness and paranoia in general about hospitals and time, I ended up arriving at the hospital around 8 pm for my 8:30 pm appointment. This turned out not to be a big deal, which was good. Also good : the admitting nurse confessed didn’t bat an eye at my total lack of ID. I suppose that happens a lot in a hospital, and being a hospital, it is not like they are going to turn you away just because you lack ID.

Sure, the letter of the law says they should. After all, I could have been some border jumping American looking to get decent health care for a change. But they still are not going to do it.

Then I ended up getting slightly lost because the nurse said I was to go to the third floor of the North Tower of the hospital and I ended up going to the South Tower because I’m a moron. A nurse or possibly a female orderly set my straight, but she was really brusque and rude about it. She seemed very stressed out. Heck, maybe she was just a particularly bossy patient. I don’t know. Her clothing matched.

While going from one end of the hospital to the other, I passed a hospital security guard who was chatting with a couple. As I passed, he said “Guess who’s birthday it is today?”

The girl of the couple said, “Yours?”
The security guard (he was quite young) nodded shyly. “Uh huh!”
The girl and her boyfriend said “Happy Birthday!”

This was at the exact moment I was passing, so I too said “Yeah, Happy Birthday!”

All three of them found that funny. And it must of been pretty funny, honestly. Some randomly passing fat bearded guy wishes the security guard a Happy Birthday in perfect timing with their conversation. It’s like something out of a sitcom or a wacky movie.

And I feel really good about that. I created a Moment for those people, something they will remember for a long time as a source of unexpected, almost magical delight. That makes me feel so damned good. I wish I could do that all the time.

Eventually, I found the Sleep Lab.

Glue and Wires

So then I arrive at the Sleep Lab, and am greeted by a very sweet and perky girl with a Latin American accent of some sort (maybe Mexican, maybe Central American) whose name I have completely forgotten (for shame!) and so I will call her Carla, because she reminded me of one of our favorite waitresses at Denny’s, who has now moved on to a better job.

She admits me, and then begins a rather lengthy process of attaching various electrodes and other sensors all over my body, including so many on my shaggy head that it was like I was wearing a skull cap made of paper and wires and glue.

And when I say glue, I mean lots of glue. She wanted to make sure she did not have to wake me up later because one of the sensors came unplugged. So she used big globs of the stuff for each electrode and whatnot.

Now don’t panic, this isn’t crazy glue or anything, it’s nice benign and easy to live with medical paste. It’s non toxic and water soluble. It is, in fact, only slightly different from those Uhu Sticks we all used in elementary school.

Still, it made me sticky, and I haaaaate being sticky. To me, stickiness is like harsh, grating static on my over sensitive sense of touch. Luckily, I did not feel the stickiness while the electrodes were on, and as soon as I got home, a hot shower melted the stuff right off me.

Why Am I Here Again?

Oh right, to sleep! Well, that never happened. I spent eight hours trying to sleep. But I just could not get there.

Why? Various factors. My hospital bed was really firm. It felt like a stone slab wrapped in Kleenex. There was a lot of noise from the rest of the lab. One of the nurses, not Carla but the other one, just could not seem to stop talking. Plus there was this weird device in the ceiling, sort of like a smoke detector, with two green lights on it that flashed at random intervals. Very distracting. Plus it was sort of cold in there. Not cold enough for me to feel cold, but cold enough to make it harder to go to sleep. I have trouble sleeping when it’s cold.

But there is also the bad place in my sleep cycle. I had a big bad sleepy day recently, and usually after that, I have a period of not being sleepy for a while. Hypersomnia to hyposomnia and back again, over and over again, fun

The Long Trip Home

Then to top it all off, I had the Bus Taker’s Nightmare when I went to take the bus, when the bus you want pulls away RIGHT as you get there. So I sit down to read and wait the for the next one. It’s bitterly cold and dark out.

Luckily, just as I finish the chapter of the book I am reading, my bus arrives…. and does not even slow down, let alone actually stop for me. I scream obscenities after it, and so now I have to stand at the pole marking the stop to make sure the next bus stops for me, meaning I can’t read and have nothing to do but stand there and dwell on how cold and miserable I am.

Then when I get on, the bus driver hassles me for not having the change out and ready in my hand already. Fuck you pal, in order to have it out already I would have to have taken off my gloves then held metal change in a bare hand until your sorry ass showed up.

And all to save you five seconds of time. Fuck that, fuck you, and fuck the fucking bus.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to get some decent sleep.

Well here it is, the day of my hospital nap… OF SCIENCE, and I have nothing particularly on my mind that I want to write about. I am feeling lazy and self-indulgent, and finding it hard to concentrate on any one thing for all that long. It’s a nice sunny day out, and I am feeling silly.

Plus, I have this infection under the fingernail of one of my primary typing fingers, the one between the middle finger and the thumb of my right hand, and that is making typing a little painful. Also using the mouse, as that just happens to be my primary clicking finger. Talk about hurting me where I live.

So that has thrown me off a little. But what the hell, the doctor will take care of it when I see him on Tuesday, and until then I can shift my typing a little and try to both type with less force (and therefore less pain) and favour the middle finger a little more.

I could theoretically also move the mouse to the other side of my monitor and use my left hand for mousing. I have used both hands to mouse at various times. But it is always painful and awkward to switch and it doesn’t seem worth it just for a temporary illness.

I will just muddle through somehow.

As predicted, I am no longer super sleepy. I got that out of my system yesterday. I feel kind of lazy, but that is nowhere near being the same thing as my periods of hypersomnia. Usually, this kind of laziness merely result in taking an unusual amount of pleasure in lying in bed, just daydreaming, or sleeping very very lightly.

And seeing as I will be lying around in bed for science (well, and my own personal health… mostly that, actually) tonight, I supposed being in the sort of mood where that is enjoyable is a good thing.

A lot of little thoughts run through my head in anticipation. Will I be in a private room? I sure as hell hope so. This is supposed to be as much like my “normal” sleep as possible, and I do not usually have one to three other people in my room with me, with only curtains for privacy.

Worse would have to be trying to sleep on the ward. I am being admitted through Emergency, and that conjures up visions of having to try to sleep not just covered in sensors but in the loud, cold, scary, depressing, and weird-smelling emergency room.

I have never been admitted to Richmond Hospital proper before, but I have had to go to emergency there a couple of times and like must emergency rooms, it is not a nice or fun place in any way.

So hopefully, I will not end up trying to sleep there. A “semi-private” (to me, that’s like being semi-pregnant… it’s private, or it isn’t) room would be okay, as long as my roommates are not loud or otherwise disruptive. If I am lucky, this will be one of those random lulls in hospital demand and I won’t have to worry much about other patients.

Another little worry : if I am going to be covered in sensors and possibly have tubes stuck places, how the heck do I get up to use the bathroom? At home, I go pee like five times a day. There is no chance I will be able to go all the time between 8:30 pm to possibly 7 am without needing to take a leak at least twice. So uh… how do I get up and go wee?

I get a terrible feeling that the answer is that I do not. I will be expected to make use of a bedpan, something I have avoided entirely in my life up to this point. Even when I had to spend ten days in hospital after my gall bladder operation, by far my longest hospital stay since I was born, I managed to avoid using the bedpan. I made it to the bathroom somehow, or held it in till I could. I have very strong feelings about bathroom dignity (I don’t even use urinals, for God’s sake) and I refuse to use a bedpan unless there is literally no other possible choice.

But if they have mt all covered in a million sticky sensor pads, all of which are wired into a console of some sort, then they are not exactly going to want to take them all off me just so I can go have a pee and then do them all back up when I get back, are they?

And the only alternative to the bedpan in that case is the catheter, and while, like I mentioned, I have been there before, I would really rather not go there again.

So I may have to finally surrender to the bedpan. I hoped to go my whole life without having to do so, but if it’s bedpan or catheter, I guess I will have to go bedpan.

Honestly, I would rather just pee in a bottle. Seems slightly more dignified.

But whatever. Whatever happens, happens. It’s just one night of my life, less then twelve hours, and when it’s done, it’s done, and I will have some anecdotes and some memories and hopefully some medically useful information added to my medical files.

Apparently, the province has stopped paying for CPAP machines, so even if my sleep apnea is clinically confirmed, I have no idea what will be done about it.

As far as I know, CPAP and other related tech are the only treatment that works for sleep apnea. Even the surgical techniques of the past had only limited success. There is no pill or brace or dental device that can keep your airways open when you sleep if you are a fattie like me.

So it might be that the takeaway from all this medical monitoring is simply “Yup. You got sleep apnea. Sucks to be you, pal!”

But whatever. Wish me well, folks!

Had another of my deep down dark dreamtime sleepy days today.

I judge that I have spent 16 of the last 20 hours asleep, roughly. As usual when I am going through one of these period, I am only able to stay awake long enough to eat, hydrate, and eliminate, and then it’s right back to the bottom of the cold black ocean to drown in my dreams for another little while.

Still, I knew it was coming, so it didn’t come as a surprise. I knew I had not been sleeping very well lately, getting only shallow and unsatisfying sleep when I did manage to actual catch a wink or ten. Obviously, there’s only so long that can go on before the Sleep Bank forecloses on your sleep debt and you have to pay the balance in full before you can do anything else.

As usual in these scenarios, caffeine is implicated somewhere along the line. I have been drinking Diet Coke with my nightly popcorn lately, and no doubt that propped up the low-sleep part of the cycle past its usual crash terminus and insured that today’s crash would be a spectacular one.

But I am not complaining. This is just how my life works. I am glad it happened on a day when I had absolutely nothing planned and nothing that needed doing. So there was no stress. Just lots of sleep and lots of dreams and the occasional islands of consciousness upon which to rest and resupply.

I am pretty sure that I am out of the woods now, or at least within sight of the end of the path. I have developed a feeling for what is going on during these periods, a sense of how much of the candle is left to burn. (Boy, I switch metaphors a lot, don’t I?)

And this internal sense tells me I have discharged most of the sleep debt. From this point on, I will likely get some more normal sleep (a rare thing with me) and then the clock will be reset and it will all start again.

There’s an outside chance that I am just between sessions. It has happened before. I have thought I was out of the woods and found out it was just an exceptionally large clearing. But I doubt it.

And speaking of sleep, the next thing on my tiny agenda is that sleep study thing.

Thursday night, I will be checking myself into Richmond Hospital for a full night sleep study. Not sure exactly what that means, but presumably, I will be checked into the hospital, covered in various kinds of sensor, and then be expected to take a nice clinically typical nap.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

I am fairly nervous about it. I don’t like being in hospital. It’s too far from my usual sources of comfort, and such a cold and uncaring place for the most part. I have occasionally entertained Munchausen’s Syndrome fantasies of how nice it would be to be in the hospital and have all your basic needs taken care of for you and be absolutely free from all sense of expectation that you will do something with your life.

I mean, give the guy a break, he’s been in the hospital!

But in reality, I would likely hate it too much to enjoy it. It would just be too damned boring. There is only so much time I can spend reading and doing crossword puzzles and napping before I just cannot stand it any more and I have to do something else.

And while this might sound odd coming from a guy who spends his entire life either in his bed, in front of his computer, or watching TV, I really can’t stand to be in one place for too long. And that does triple if that place is my bed. There is a reason why I spend my day in three places and not just one. If I really wanted to do so, I could no doubt centralize everything around my bed. Get my own TV and Wii, install those and my computer within reach of my bed, and have a perfectly sedentary, oral retentive heaven lifestyle.

But the idea disgusts me, to be honest. Moving around the apartment might not count much in terms of exercise, but it is way better than nothing. I already face the problem of developing this weird sort of antipathy to my own bed on a periodic basis. Hence my fantasies of living in a hotel and having fresh bedding whenever I want it. In fact, in many ways, the hotel fantasy is like a swankier and more indulgent version of the hospital fantasy. Way more expensive but with far more dignity and comfort than being in some crummy hospital bed.

Oh well, some day, I hope.

Also making me nervous is that I am supposed to have two forms of ID when I show up, and I don’t even have 1. This is becoming a real problem, and I am going to have to find some way to get some cash together so I can get a new CareCard and BCID. I had to attend VancouFur with a badge that said “underage” (opposite of an overage) on it because of my lack of picture ID.

Plus, there is a distinct feeling of existential incompleteness in lacking proper ID. Like on some abstract but deeply personal level, you don’t quite exist. Or at least, you can’t prove it.

So I suppose there is a small chance that I will show up without the proper ID and they will just plain turn me away. I would be both disappointed and relieved. Disappointed, because I want to get this done and it took like four months to get the appointment in the first place, but relieved, cause I could just go the hell home and sleep like a normal person.

So we will see what happens tomorrow. I will bundle up my clothes, my dying laptop, some books, and head off to the hospital.

I am trying to think of it as more of an adventure than an imposition.