Yet another day of medical activities.

This morning I went to see Doctor Vaezi. No big whup there. Got the standard eye drops for the standard tests, including the ones to violate dilate my pupils.

Along with the usual amount of sitting in the waiting room, waiting.

Oh, so that’s why they call it that.

And reading, of course. I finished Dragon Tales.

So now I am enjoying reading an issue of a very old school digest format science fiction magazine called Worlds of If.

That’s such a clumsy title I can’t help loving it.

Anyhow, after the testing and waiting. came the actual visit with Doctor Vaezi. There’s still some swelling in the left eye so he gave me another injection.

And once more, despite the freezing drops, it hurt like hell. Not as much as without the drops, of course, but still. Ow, my eye!

And yet, the first time I got this shot, I didn’t feel a thing. It was magical.

The difference is that the first time, they gave me way more of the freezing drops and waited a while between applications and the other two times he just put like three drops in the eye and didn’t even wait before it was stabby time.

So no wonder it fucking hurt.

I think I am the victim of both being taken for granted and the Doctor’s impatience. The first time, they saw how scared I was by the prospect of being stabbed in the eye with a needle and went out of their way to make sure I felt no pain.

But the other two times, I wasn’t scared, and I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter, so they did the bare minimum.

So if I end up needing a fourth shot, I am going to put up a fight and raise a stink. I’m going to ask some very pointed (like a needle, lol) questions about the pain factor and insist the Doctor try harder to minimize it.

Because that shit seriously hurts. And the pain lingers a while too. Grr.

We had some time to kill before the IV antibiotics appointment at 9:30 am, so we went to 7-11 so I could do some shopping.

And in addition to my usual 2Ls of Diet Coke, I got myself a little breakfast (I hadn’t eaten yet) consisting of apple juice, a little sachet of trail mix, and a turkey and swiss on cranberry bread sandwich.

It was pretty good. The Swiss tasted more like generic white cheddar but the harmony between the cranberries made up for it.

I ate this modest meal as I was waiting to be hooked up to the IV. I made sure eating there and then was cool first, of course.

Wouldn’t want to cause a problem.

After that, it was smooth sailing. One of my favorite fellow travelers was there. An older guy with a very nice “Cherman agzent” and old-world charm and a lovely alto voice.

His name, of course, is Hans.

Odds are very good that tomorrow will be my last IV antibiotics trip. And I will miss it. Gave me something purposeful to do every day, nice ladies, and all that.

I have my official first appointment at the Wound Care Clinic this Saturday. This is also a place where nice ladies will look after me, so it will ease the transition.

What with my stasis dermatitis, the wound is going to take a very very long time to heal.

So that will keep me in business for a while.

More after the break.

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Under the weather

First, the obligatory (for me) Rheostatics song :

Like the lead singer of that song, I am feeling under the weather.

In fact, I think I am coming down with something.

I have been feeling that specific kind of energy-drain tiredness that I only feel when my immune system is in a state of total war against something nasty.

I keep getting periods where my lungs feel heavy and full, but then it goes away.

Ditto for a scratchy, swollen throat and the weirdest taste in my mouth.

Like metallic and meaty at the same time?

So when I am asked (twice) whether I have new Covid symptoms tomorrow at the hospital, I will be sort of lying when I say “no”.

The question is sort of useless, to be honest. They are basically saying, “Would you like to get to do the thing you came here to do, or would you like to publicly identify yourself as a modern day leper and be shunned by everyone and get kicked out of here too?”.

I’m a pretty honest dude but I am not volunteering Covid symptoms unless that is literally why I came to the hospital in the first place.

And even then, maybe not. There is a sign at the entrance to the ER that says, basically, “Don’t come in if you have or might have Covid!!”.

And I can’t help wondering where you go if you actually have Covid, then. I mean, when you have a deadly disease, you go to the hospital, right?

That’s where I went with my pneumonia after all.

And I somehow doubt that there are flying squads of doctors and nurses in Hazmat gear just waiting to come treat you at home.

So what’s left? Leper colonies? Concentration camps? Politely and obediently reporting to the nearest disintegration booth?

There has to be some kind of loophole.

Oh, and the irony of possibly getting an infection after two weeks of IV antibiotics is not lost on me.

Maybe the antibiotics just killed the weaker germs and made room for the toughest ones to take over, like with the Russian Mafia after the USSR fell.

Then again, this could all be allergies. I ran out of antihistamines five days ago and I have been suffering ever since. My nose is a faucet, my head feels like a water balloon half-filled with tapioca, and I am going through Kleenex like they’re…. um, Kleenex.

I am too tired to think of a better simile. Sorry.

So I am going to lay down and concentrate on trying to recharge my batteries. I have two appointments tomorrow, one for what is probably my last IV antibiotics treatment at 11:30 am and then Ray from Coastal Sleep at 1:10 pm.

And then Doctor Caswell on Thursday.

Why is being sick so much work?

I will talk to you people again tomorrow.

More making with the words with a French fried brain.

Oh well. I talked with Ray from Coastal Sleep just now and we are on for 1:10 pm on Wednesday to get me some brand new CPAP stuff that could potentially make a massive difference in my life.

No more waking up all addlepated from hyper REM-dense sleep accompanied by smothering dozens of times an hour.

Can you imagine that?

Heck, if the stars align and God grants me mercy, I might even start waking up feeling better than when I went to sleep.

Seems impossible but science says it can’t be ruled out.

There have even been rumours that it is theoretically possible to wake up feeling fully rested, relaxed, and ready to face the day.

That has almost never happened in my life. Even when I was a relatively healthy teen, waking up was always a slow and somewhat unpleasant experience.

The number times I have woken up feeling rested and relaxed and good could be counted on one hand and it’s always been something that happened out of the blue like a passing angel decided to throw me a bone.

The idea of increasing those odds is tantalizing. It seems almost too good to be possible, like Xmas all year round or returning to childhood.

Not that I’d want to return to MY childhood. It sucked.

Then again, at least I would be young again. And I would bring all that I have learned and a much tougher attitude toward life and some really primo stock tips.

Might make a better go of it the second time around.

And the erotic possibilities are amazing. Having adult lust in a child’s body could actually be kind of fun.

There must be some other “weird” kids in my home town. Ones with unusual upbringings that opened them up to certain possibilities.

And it’s perfectly legal for kids to “play doctor”.

Plus I could always try to find a friendly neighborhood pedophile.

Best move on before I incriminate myself further.

Today’s IV antibiotics sesh had a bumpy start. First there were no chairs free when
I got there, so I had to sit in the hall for a bit.

The nurses were a tad embarrassed about that. Fair enough.

Then Nurse Nola caused a bit of a tangle-up when she accidentally wrote down my vitals in the wrong chart as well as ordering bloodwork from the lab on the wrong day.

Both mistakes were discovered when the phlebotomist showed up to draw my blood and I was not the person whose blood she was supposed to be getting.

I knew that was going to happen because as far as I knew, my bloodwork was scheduled for tomorrow so it would be ready for Wednesday’s talk with Dr, Vortel.

I hate to say it, but I think Nurse Nola might be getting a little senile. And nurses have to stay sharp because they have so much information to deal with and it’s all important.

Nurse Janice, the wound care nurse, was there and decided to take a look at my wound while my dressing was being changed even though she wasn’t scheduled to see me until Wednesday afternoon.

She didn’t think there was much she could do. The wound looked pretty much exactly like it did the last time she saw it.

Because I don’t heal any more. I got zombie legs.

Oh well, Life goes on. Hope I live long enough to get healthy.

More after the break,

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The Big Baby Brain

Now that we’ve met The Trog, let’s talk about the Big Baby Brain, heretofore referred to by the handy mnemonic BBB, or 3B.

3B is comprised of a brain the size of a small asteroid and a human sized vestigial body clad only in a massively padded cloth diaper.

And all the Galaxy agrees that 3B is the smartest, wisest, kindest, most caring, most compassionate, and most just plain good being alive.

Leaders in crisis come from every part of the Galaxy, from the bionuclear unipods from farthest tip of the longest spiral arm to those strange high-energy beings that eat gravity from the glowing heart of the Galaxy, come to 3B for solutions to their crises.

They do this knowing the proceedings will be public and all will know of both their problem and 3B’s solution.

Thus, a certain sacrifice of pride may be involved.

And 3B always listens carefully then with great sensitivity and compassion and then offers a solution that all who apprehend it immediately know to be brilliant, morally perfect, and fundamentally correct.

Other than that, 3B steadfastly refuses to offer any opinion on anything happening in the Galaxy except when the people involved come ask him.

When not solving people’s problems, the 3B contemplates the Galaxy and the role of sentient life in it, its vast mind gently and unobtrusively sampling the thoughts and emotions of all living things and building its picture of the universe from that.

Truly, 3B is a holy being, and an enormous force for good in the Galaxy.

But there’s a reason for the diaper, and that’s because 3B has almost no sense of what is happening around it, or even in its own body.

In terms of wisdom, it is a titan.

In terms of morality, it is an angel.

In terms of basic awareness, it is an infant.

Thus, its continued existence is contingent on its thousands of followers and attendants and worshippers who work tirelessly to take care of the 3B’s most basic needs.

Without them, the 3B would starve to death covered in its own filth. And it is (dimly, but sincerely) aware of this and grateful for it.

Thus, 3B is both magnificent and pathetic. Both wise and clueless. It is all powerful, and completely helpless. It knows all but can’t even tell when it is hungry.

To it, all biological demands are mysterious random afflictions that it neither understands nor knows how to solve or prevent.

It is a god. It is a saint. It is a perfect being.

And it shits itself many times a day.

Truly, a study in contrasts.

And from just the right angle, it looks a lot like me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So lemme tell you about a certain incident I witnessed.

So I am sitting there with the IV in my arm, getting my antibiotics, when one of the nurses (a very nice older lady named Nola^[1]) answered the phone and ended up on there for ten minutes or more because of someone I will call Nurse Karen.

It was around 3:30 pm on a Friday and from the side of the conversation I could hear, I deduced that Nurse Karen wanted Nola to admit a patient to the IV antibiotic program despite the fact that a) such an admission would obviously be a weekend admission given the day and time, and b) the nurses were not allowed to admit anyone to the weekend IV program without Doctor Vortel’s approval and he wasn’t around.

Simple, no? “I want you to do the thing. ” “I can’t. ” “Oh, OK, thanks, bye. ”

But noooo. Nurse Karen just kept trying to convince Nola to admit the patient anyhow and Nola had to keep trying to explain why she could not in different ways hoping one of them would get through to this moron.

At one point, Nurse Karen actually hung up on poor Nola. Can you believe it?

But alas, she called back 5 minutes later and resumed the harangue. When the assault was finally over and Nola came over to change my dressing, I said “What’s HER problem, huh?” and she laughed.

Score! I love making people laugh.

This is definitely a situation where my temper would get me in trouble because once I had tried politely explaining it two or three times, I would have just said “Listen lady, it ain’t happening, so get over it!” and hung up.

I hate repeating myself and I REALLY hate not being listened to, so having to repeat myself because someone isn’t listening to what I am saying is a shortcut to my shit list.

Speaking of the ladies what do my IV antibiotics and such, I had a pleasant experience this morning when I went in for my infusion as I was their only client at first and so I had all three nurses attending to me.

It felt quite luxurious. I felt positively pampered (small p) It reminded me of that scene from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and the gang have been let into Oz as the honored guests of the Wizard and are thus being pampered and spoiled with beauty treatments and such.

What a gay reference!

Otherwise, the only notable thing is that they removed my IV port today because I am due for a new one tomorrow, so currently, I don’t got one.

Feels kinda weird, to be honest. I’ve had one in for a couple of weeks now. For a moment I was tempted to ask them to leave it in to maintain continuity.

If all goes well, Wednesday will be my last day on the program. I am 90 percent sure the infection is long gone, and so therefore is the need for antibiotics.

And I will miss it. Sad but true. Gives me something to do every day, etc.

After that, it will off to the Wound Care Clinic. which is now located in this massive new public medical center. They have done a good job of making the place soft and friendly by having nice carpets in the corridor as well as warm lighting and a fabric treatment as well as art on the walls, but it still can’t totally hide the fact that you are in a huge concrete spiraling labyrinth, so the place is still oppressive.

Oh well. I shall endure.

More after the break.

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Meet the Troglodyte

I’ve started to visualize the sick part of my mind as The Troglodyte.

Let’s call him Trog.

And all Trog wants is to squat in his deep dank dark cave far, far away from the harsh heat and light of day, and hide from the terrifyingly overstimulating world up above.

It is very cold in Trog’s grotty little grotto, and that’s how he likes it. The cold keeps the hated heat away and keeps Trog nice and numb to all the voices and feelings that might want him to leave his grotto and move closer to the light.

Such voices are clearly insane and only want to destroy him by making him destroy himself in a suicidal act of warmth and humanity.

Trog knows that moving closer to the light will destroy him. Not that he would die, exactly. But he might stop being a Trog, and that’s the same thing to him.

Instead, he writes on the wall of his cave about how lovely it would be to walk in the light and how he is sure to be doing that Real Soon Now and he basks in the imaginary warmth of his fictional sun because it’s the only kind of sun he can stand.

If anything even looks like it might actually take him out of his homely hole in the ground and bring him into the light, he squeals and squalls and fights like a trapped animal until he can squirm away and scuttle back to his filthy alcove and settle back down to writing on the wall and wishing there was someone – anyone – who could set him free.

Poor, poor little Trog. Stuck in his hoary lair because he can’t see that freedom has come for him many times and he’s fought it off in blind terror every single time.

The idea of freedom and living a whole and wholesome life in the sun-drenched meadows that lie under the big blue skies of his dreams is very comforting.

The actuality of it is scary and overstimulating and means having to change.

And who would our little Trog be if he wasn’t Trog any more?

He doesn’t know. And when he doesn’t know if someone is safe or right, he assumes that means it is crazy and/or wrong.

And that doesn’t allow for doing much of anything.

And that’s exactly how he likes it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My worries about my potential heart problems caused me to walk myself over to the ER after my IV antibiotic session today.

Spoiler : I am fine. You can relax.

I talked it over with one of the nurses at the IV antibiotics ward first. She thought I had more than enough cause for worry to warrant the trip.

So I willingly subjected myself to the loooong and tedious trip through the ER system. Lots and lots of waiting,

Although at least once you’re admitted, you’re waiting lying down in bed. And I had a book to read, which helps.

I always bring my current book to the IV antibiotic sessions. You end up just sitting there for 20-30 minutes and there isn’t always something interesting like a dressing change, a visit from the wound care nurse, or a chat with Doctor Vortel going on.

So I have been working my way through Dragon Tales, a compilation of science fiction and/or fantasy short stories involving dragons.

The quality varies, naturally. As does draconic content – one story doesn’t have a dragon until literally the last sentence and quite frankly seems tacked on just to make it technically qualify for the anthology.

Oh well, the book’s still a good read.

Notable occurrences while I was there :

a. Some poor Asian lady crying her eyes out due to pain. I’m talking the real deep wounded animal crying. I felt so bad for her. So I did my best to send all the happy healing protective vibes her way that I could.

b. Me drinking a Pink Lady. Sadly, not the very tasty cocktail.

This isn’t the 60’s and cocktail therapy has been almost completely discredited.

No, this was a “shooter” of Pepto-bismal and lidocane. Woo, party!

This was to treat my heartburn. And wow, that lidocaine was potent stuff. I was warned to down the whole thing at once because otherwise the lidocaine would make my mouth very very numb.

So I downed the thing and STILL it left my lips and tongue numb for a little while.

Can’t say it had much of an effect on the heartburn, though. Took way some of the burning but that’s it.

Oh well, I feel better now that I have eaten.

c. A triage nurse whose accent was so thick and whose voice was so high that I felt like I was talking to a Frank Welker character.

Like, I am 90 percent sure the last thing she said to me was in Ewok.

She was tiny, too. So it’s not entirely out of the question.

d. More than enough testing to lend me confidence in their diagnosis. Chest X-rays, blood work, an EKG, blood oxygen monitor, plenty of in depth questions, and to top it all off, being hooked up to a heart monitor for a couple hours.

So yeah, I’d say they covered all the bases.

And I do feel guilty for having wasted everyone’s time and effort over heartburn, but only a little. Because when your heart is as messed up as mine, “better safe than sorry” has got to be your guiding principle.

Because overall, I would rather not die.

And that’s progress.

More after the break.

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Frogs aren’t that dumb!

So that prompted these comments to come flying out of me :

A minute and 40 seconds of vaguely interesting frog info and then the rest is pointless environmentalist harangue about stuff we all already know because apparently we all need to suffer for not being as pure and righteous as you. Are you sure you’re not actually David Suzuki?

Anyhow, if you want some ACTUAL SCIENCE about the frog boiling thing, what happens is that the heat of the water eventually exceeds the frog’s *sensory threshold *, which is an absolute value representing how much stimulation it takes to trigger a conscious experience of events. From the frog’s point of view, the water “suddenly” got way too hot. Right now, global warming is exceeding the sensory threshold of the nascent global consciousness of the human race. We are increasingly willing to jump out of the pot. But we do not yet have the fullness of consciousness to form a global consensus. It, sadly, will take things getting much, much worse before we are shaken out of our sense of indolent helplessness and pushed into the necessary sense of urgency required to make us realize we are not safe unless we act.

me, youtube, today

Clearly, this bullshit struck a nerve in me.

Partially due to my own raised expectations. The bullshit nature of the whole “you can boil a frog if you heat up the water slow enough” has been one of my many tiny peeves for a very long time. And so when I saw the title of the vid, I was like, “Oh great, smart, science minded people who will agree with me!”.

What more could a fella ask for?

But no, it’s 100 seconds of badly and blandly explained near-science and then the usual “humans are horrible and we’re all going to die” bullshit that turns people away from environmentalism and does way more harm than good in the war for the hearts and minds of the world’s 7.5 billion humans.

Besides, as I have amply illustrated, the problem is not awareness or caring or an understanding of what’s at stake, the problem is the self-serving belief that there is nothing you can do about it.

And like I said in my comments, that will persist until things get bad enough for enough people to feel personally threatened by global warming and thus reach the ignition point where all revolutions begin.

Namely, the point where the average person doesn’t feel safe in their ordinary lives and knows they will not feel safe until things change.

Essentially, once you wake the sleepers, they will do whatever it takes in order to get to go back to sleep again.

Remember that phrase, you billionaire bastards : whatever it takes.

In other words, by any means necessary.

What that entails is up to you. But know that nothing is off the table.

So ask yourself this : would you rather lose 10 percent of your income, or end up with your bloody head on a pike?

Because the human race is not going to just lay own and let you destroy modern civilization simply because of your laws and lobbyists and political toadies.

So don’t be surprised when the people roll right over your army of sycophants that your money has inserted into the system.

Pretty soon, it will be help, get out of the way, or die.

The choice is yours.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Man, am I sick and tired of writing these things through a fog of the effects of bad sleep.

Dizzy, disoriented, floaty head, faint tingling throughout the body, and all the rest.

Oh well. I came home from the hospital to find a message from Ray from Coastal Sleep (my CPAP people) saying he wants me to call him back and book an appointment.

Hopefully, this means the funding for new gear came through and we can move on to me getting back on CPAP and not waking up feeling like I ran a marathon underwater wearing a two ton anchor around my neck ever again.

Here’s hopin’, anyway.

Speaking of the hospital, I had another odd attack while I was there. Again, there way no pain, but a chill went through me and suddenly I felt weak and anxious and I had that “heartburn” feeling that worries me so much.

And I really have no excuse for not telling anyone about it because I was in the freaking hospital surrounded by highly competent medical personnel who would have reacted immediately and maybe told me whether there was something wrong with my heart or whether it was something else or even just my imagination.

Heck, at the end of my session. Doctor Vortel was sitting at a desk right in front of me. It would have been trivial to ask him about it.

Might have gone nowhere, might have led to my suddenly being admitted amidst a flurry of concerned activity. And anywhere in between.

But I would at least have done the medically responsible and sane thing for once.

Alas, no. I was too miserable and eager to GTFO and go home to think of it.

I am really not cut out for survival. Which is bad because surviving is getting harder every fucking day.

All I can say it, I do what I can.

Maybe I will tell someone about it when I am at the hospital tomorrow. I know it won’t be easy for me to speak up and demand attention due to my social anxiety and/or avoidant personality disorder’s bullshit fears.

Stupid petty limitation. I deserve better.

After all, I’m awesome.

I know that when I am done here, I will need yet more sleep.

And let me tell you, knowing you have n choice but to go back to sleep even though sleep kicked your ass last time and will do so again is…. not fun.

Gives one a feeling of being doomed if one dwells on it too long.

Oh well, I shall just fall back on my fatalism. All I can do is what I can, and whatever is going to happen is gonna happen.

I’m not in charge here. All I can do is play my hand the best I can, and hope that it will be enough to keep me alive.

Really feels like I am trying to beat the house, and that’s not good, because axiomatically the house always wins.

But I don’t want to die, or end up in a wheelchair, or in a hospital bed fulla tubes and in constant intractable pain, or anything else like that.

So all I can do is play the best game I can, and hope.

More after the break.

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Too sick to have fun

What I was worried about has come to pass : I was too sick and frail to go out to McD’s with my friends tonight.

Worse, I was even too sick to virtually attend Felicity’s comedy show tonight, and I was really looking forward to that, but both my physical and my emotional coping resources are far too depleted for it.

And I am worried about my health. That strange feeling from before has not gone away. I still have this weird cold feeling in my chest, right about where my heart is, and I feel weak and frail and anxious all the time.

And that “heartburn” feeling just won’t go away. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I ate, so it could be acid reflux or the like.

But I do not have a history of such ailments.

So I am monitoring my situation very closely. If things get worse, like serious pain starts happening or my heart starts racing or whatever, I am calling 911 and getting my ass to the ER pronto.

Heart conditions are too serious to fuck around with.

Serious like a heart attack, in fact.

I don’t think I have mentioned this yet : I called a Doctor Lichtenstein. Turned out to be the wrong one. Of course.

But the wrong one’s secretary gave me the number of the right one. I called that number and got their voice mail. The voice mail message listed three different doctors.

None of them were named Lichtenstein.

So I left a very confused voice-mail saying I was given this number for the right Doctor Lichtenstein (Kevin) and was sorry if this was the wrong number and so on.

About an hour later I got a call from somebody’s secretary telling me that my surgery had, in fact, been transferred to its fourth surgeon, a Doctor Paul Bui, pronounced “boo-ee”, of all things.

The secretary then told me I would be hearing from Doctor Bui’s office Real Soon Now and he would schedule my surgery then.

I have my fucking doubts. When I got my angiogram results I got the distinct impression that I needed surgery right away. And yet the people over at Cardiac Surgery are displaying a shocking lack of any urgency on the matter.

I thought that maybe once I got my echocardiogram (heart ultrasound) things would start happening, but all that happened was that my surgery got handed off to its FOURTH surgeon and nobody at St. Paul’s seems to give a shit about this purportedly serious heart condition of mine.

And it’s getting worse.

I swear, if I end up having a heart attack before they get around to fixing my heart, I am going to sue the fuck out of these bastards for letting it happen.

There is definitely something very fishy going on at St, Paul’s. Something on the administrative side. That one time wasn’t the only time I have called a number and not heard the name of the doctor I was looking for. My surgery getting passed on from surgeon to surgeon is a very bad sign. It seems a lot like task-shirking and I do not consider my remaining alive to be shirkable.

Let alone shirkworthy.

I have Doctor Bui’s number now and I am going to call his office on Monday and I am not going to be particularly polite.

Time for this wheel to start squeaking. I want to talk to the surgeon himself. I want to know what the timeframe for my fucking surgery is going to be. I want some indication that they grasp that I would prefer not to die and that it’s their fucking job to prevent it so they need to quit fucking around and get the job done.

I am willing to go full Karen on this shit.

Because this is literally my life we’re talking about.

It’s very important to me personally.

I will make it at least as important to them.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the hospital thang.

IV went as usual. I’ve become very used to it. I can completely ignore it and concentrate on my reading or just a productive round of spacing out.

Don’t laugh. It lets me get caught up on my thinking.

Also had a dressing change, both for the one on my leg and the one on my (sigh) head.

In retrospect, what did I expect nurses to do when they saw that weird wound thing on my head that looks like someone put their coffee cup there right after fishing it out of a pool of blood?

So I got a dry dressing there now. I don’t think it’s doing a thing to help the damned thing heal but at least people don’t have to see my Ring of Blood any more.

But it does look like I got a doily on my head.

The main event today was a consult with Doctor Vortel. He says he doesn’t think I will need to be doing the daily IV antibiotic thing after one more week.

That’s cool. To be honest, I’ve been enjoying it. Having something to do every day has been great, especially because when I am there, nice ladies take care of me.

I am such an infant. Sigh. What the heck happened when I was a baby? I clearly have some very very basic unmet needs.

For mothering, more or less.

The big news is that when I told Doctor Vortel about the discolored area around my latest wound, he told me I suffered from something called stasis dermatitis.

Sadly, this does not mean my skin exists outside of the time stream.

Trust me, I checked.

Instead, it’s a condition caused by insufficient circulation in the affected area, in my case my legs. It has the following symptoms :

• Skin that appears thin, brown and tissue-like, with possible skin lesions (macule or patches), red spots, superficial skin irritation and/or darkening and/or thickening of the skin at the ankles or legs
• Weak skin may ulcerate in some areas and legs, ankles, or other areas may become swollen
• Open sores, ulcers
• Itching and/or leg pains

I got all of the above. At least I know where the lesions on my left leg came from. The skin on my legs is only sorta alive.

This is a non-surprise. I more or less expected this. I didn’t have a name for it but I knew there had to be a connection between my leg issues and my diabetes fucking with my blood flow as well as my sitting in front of this computer all day.

It is not healthy to sit this much, with my weight bearing down on the bottoms of my legs. I really need to move more.

And Doctor Costin thinks it is safe for me to lightly exercise even with my heart issues. So I don’t have that excuse any more.

Plus, and this should be enough reason on its own, exercise releases stress and helps me calm way the fuck down.

And that feels good. Very good.

And what more reason does anyone need to do something?

More after the break.

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Life support system for a brain

This topic has been trying to land for a while now.

Time to finally give it clearance so it can stop circling the tower.

Man do I love my metaphors.

Anyhow, in my continuing effort to somehow integrate my awesomeness into my self-worth as well as my sense of self as a whole, I have recently taken the first tentative steps into making my outrageous abilities central to my self-conception.

So yeah. Finally developing that huge ego everyone was so worried I would get when I was a kid. So worried they completely destroyed my self-worth as a precaution.

Thanks for that.

But the thing is, I really am amazing. Like, objectively. My first drafts are better than most of humanity’s final versions. I write hilarious stuff, as verified by the praise an laughter of people who don’t even know me. I have a top tier mind that demolishes college level coursework and testing with contemptuous ease. I have understanding and wisdom beyond the understanding of the wisest of the ancients. I am a workhorse who loves being busy and who can do enormous amounts of work without breaking a sweat. I have a natural flair for organization and inherent leadership skills.

All that and I am cute, too. And charming, and lovable, and charismatic.

When I look at it like that (something I should do more often), I can only conclude that I am one extraordinary human being and all my self-doubt about also being kind of clueless, rather clumsy, and bad at ordinary tasks melts away.

Sure I need help to get by. So did a lot of geniuses. We genii tend to be fragile hothouse flowers because in order to have brains this big, our entire being has to specialize along those lines and it leaves little potential left for being rugged survivalists.

And that’s where I am in this journey to self-worth and confidence – I am finally starting to realize that my flaws are trivial compared to my strengths and that my future can be very bright indeed if I can only get myself to someplace where I might attract the attention of people who can help me, like an audience, or a sponsor.

Or a pack of exceptionally tech savvy hyenas. I don’t discriminate.

That’s where an attitude of smug self-assurance will come in handy – as the antidote to crippling self-doubt and social fear.

It’s perfectly safe for me to go to this job interview or apply for this position or try to get funding for my thing.

Why? Because I’m awesome. So of course I will succeed.

And maybe that attitude will ensure that reality smacks me down hard. I am more than fine with that. I’ve wanted a challenge my whole life.

But maybe it won’t. And even if it does, I might have a lot of fun and make a lot of money before it does.

Seems like a win-win to me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today has been soothingly quiet.

First, at 11 am, 40 minutes before my appointment with Doctor Caswell, her office called and asks if she could cancel my appointment due to a personal emergency.

I said yeah sure! and went back to sleep.

I’ve been sleeping an awful lot lately. Enough that I am wondering if I should be worried.

It’s nice to not have insomnia any more. Like I said before, I had gone weeks without getting more than three hours of low quality sleep a day,

So I am very glad that ended and that I can now sleep whenever I want to sleep, and it is reasonably decent quality sleep.

But I am wondering if I’m getting too much of a good thing. I am sleepy most of the time and it’s getting hard to stay out of bed.

I keep hoping I will catch up on sleep at some point. But not yet, apparently.

Speaking of sleep, had my appointment at Coastal Sleep yesterday. Sadly. did not come home with a brand new CPAP mask that only covers my nose.

That’s because the folks at Coastal Sleep are waiting on the provincial gubmint to grant them the funding for new stuff for me, and they are taking forever to do so as usual.

So the Coastal Sleep folks won’t have the funding till the middle of this month because it apparently takes them 30 days to make up their fucking mind.

I honestly think that if some logistics genius figured out how to change the system in order to let them give people prompt and immediate service, the bureaucrats would absolutely fucking hate it, and do everything they can to sabotage it.

After all, without the ability to smugly make people wait long and arbitrary periods for basic operations that should only take ten minutes, the public would be able to make the bureaucrats serve them like some kind of… public servants.

Thus, the eternal war of bureaucrats versus the public would continue.

After all, you can’t afford to let the public get the upper hand. Then they might get the idea that you work for them.

And we can’t have that.

If I was ever Premier, I would probably be murdered in my sleep because I would not put up with any of that bullshit. I would burn all the deadwood, eliminating every unnecessary position. I would reform things to make the system truly work for the taxpayer. And I would ruthlessly enforce my new philosophy of government.

Guess what? When you pompously preen your feathers by going on about how you are only there to serve the public, you’ll actually mean it!

Today’s hospital visit was uneventful. When I first got there, it really seemed like there was only one nurse on duty, which would be nuts.

But just as I was going to ask the nurse why she was on duty all alone, another nurse stood up from her desk and actually started doing stuff.

Glad I didn’t say anything. But hey, second nurse! Don’t leave Nurse 1 hanging like that. She was starting to get really stressed.

I mean, you weren’t even answering the phone and it’s right there on the desk next to you! Get a wiggle on!

More after the break.

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Next up : depression!

Well the waves of despair are back. As are my breathing difficulties.

There’s probably a connection.

Sometimes when I lay down, I start to have trouble breathing, and I have to sit up again in order to breathe properly.

It feels like my lungs are filling with blackness. This would fit with my long-held theory that the main action of my sleep apnea is the accumulation of CO2 in my lungs due to some fundamental problem with exhalation.

The blackness, therefore, would be the CO2 filling up my lungs and occupying the space where fresh oxygen is supposed to go.

If only I could learn photosynthesis, or even electrolysis. Then I could just take the oxygen straight out of the CO2!

So then I have to sit up and empty the air out of my lungs with sustained deep exhalation in order to get that nasty CO2 out so enough oxygen can get in.

I suppose I should tell someone about this.

I think my OBA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) has become OWA (Obstructive Waking Apnea) as well. The same relaxation of certain tissues (mostly likely in my throat) that cuts off my breathing when I sleep is doing it during the day when I lie down too.

Wish I knew what I did to make this shit go away for a while. Sigh.

What I am going through now is bad enough but obviously life could become my worst nightmare of constantly fighting for air if it gets much worse.

So again. Should probably get that looked at. I just have so much going on already.

Still, beats smothering on my own flab. I guess.

Makes me wish I didn’t have to wait on my CPAP stuff. I suppose I could try to make my current face-covering mask work.

After all, I’ve gotten somewhat used to wearing a mask in public for Covid. Maybe I can use some of the same techniques to acclimate to the face mask for CPAP.

They mostly consist of telling myself, “You were breathing fine five seconds ago and nothing has changed therefore you can breathe fine now, too!”.

Or something to that effect. Once more I conquer my fears with hard logic.

It’s not for everyone but it works for me.

I haven’t called either Doctor Lichtenstein yet. I keep sleeping instead. Maybe I will get it done tomorrow after I get back from IV antibiotics.

Tomorrow should be fun. A dressing change AND a consult with the doctor! With a small possibility of a visit from the wound care nurse! SCORE.

Why, I’m so excited, my hear is all a-flutter.

Should probably get that looked at, too.

I have too many problems!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

One person’s worth, what else?

Right now the world is dying. The summers are getting hotter and dryer, the winters are colder every year, and the threat of a world no longer friendly to human life looms closer by the minute. We face the very real risk of a coming ecological Dark Ages where modern civilization is shattered by constant extreme weather events, sea levels rising, ocean acidification, and giant mutant caterpillars crawling out of ground to be the instruments of Gaia’s righteous fury.

One of those isn’t real.

And today I am going to tell you what you, personally, can do about it. But don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a dry list of things you can do to make your home more eco-friendly while saving on those energy bills.

Mostly because that shit is worse than useless. It actually makes people feel like they are doing something when they are not. Nothing you can do as an individual consumer can make the tiniest of goddamned dents in the problem.

It’s mere ecological masturbation. Green kabuki. Environmental theater.

We all know what the real problem is : a small number of rich assholes who will gladly set the world on fire if it makes them a few cents more.

And they and their quislings have convinced us all that we are powerless when in truth, we easily have the power to stop them and stop the destruction of the planet while there is still a planet left to save.

But doing so will take personal risk and sacrifice and the courage to stand up to the rich parasites and, if necessary, drag them out of their mansions and their towers and force them to deal with life the same way the rest of us do.

I’m not saying kill them. That’s too kind. I want to do something far crueler :

Make them poor.

So here’s the answer to the question, what can you do?

You’re gonna hate it, but here it goes :

What can you do? Something. Lots of things, in fact. There are a myriad of ways to help end this tyranny of madness.

And people hate this answer because it means they actually have to do something. Either that, or admit to themselves that they don’t actually care about the future of our planet and our species.

That’s why people repeatedly tell themselves that there is nothing they can do. It makes them feel better about not doing anything about the doom hurtling towards us.

We like that answer because it’s easy. Phew, almost had to face the prospect of actual effort, risk, and the loss of our precious free time just to save the planet.

Not worth it, we say as one. Call us when all we have to do is click something.

And that’s why the planet can be destroyed by a couple thousand ultra rich people while we sit idly by and let it happen.

It gets worse. What the question, “What can one person do?” is really saying is that being one pebble in the avalanche of change isn’t good enough for me. I demand personal recognition, glory. and sex. I must be the hero who saves the world and if I am not, if I am indeed going to be just one drop of water in a tsunami, I’m staying home.

I am sure that as our grandchildren sift through the ashes of a civilization that now seems as unreal as Shangri-La to them, they will really appreciate how hard we fought to avoid even the slightest personal inconvenience.

More after the break.

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Another sick day

I am sick of being sick and tired of being tired.

Had to pass on hanging with Felicity et al tonight because I felt very sick. Nausea, like there is something cold and slick and slimy laying in the put of my stomach. Dizziness and headache, which feel like they are part of the same thing. A great and heavy tiredness like someone turned up the gravity.

And most worrying, a heartburn like feeling. Heartburn itself is, of course, not that big a deal except in the most extreme cases of things like acid reflux.

But I have seen enough TV shows where the person who is about to have a massive heart attack looks pained but waves it off as “just heartburn” to know that anything like heartburn is something to really pay attention to if you have heart issues.

Plus I have no history of heartburn to speak of. My digestion fucks up in many fascinating ways but they are all intestinal, way past the stomach and its acid.

So let’s just say I am concerned.

So where the fuck is my fucking operation? I feel like the clock is ticking on my ticker and yet I have heard nothing.

I will ask Doctor Caswell tomorrow if she knows anything. Shot in the dark but it’s the only shot I have.

Well, I can try calling Doctor Lichtenstein. Ask him WTF. If anyone should know, it’s the guy who is actually going to be carving up my heart-meat. And I think I have his number in my notes.

Um, nope. Damn it. Well, I suppose I could look him up on the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons website. There can’t be that many Doctor Lichtensteins out there.

Turns out there’s three. And two of them are cardiac surgeons, dammit. And male. And they both practice at St. Paul’s.

I may end up having to call both and use my sweet but hapless charm to get someone to tell me if I have the right one.

There’s a 50/50 chance of me getting the right one the first time, after all.

Well at least I have a plan of action. A way to get things moving. I will likely do it after my appointments tomorrow or maybe the day after if I am too tired.

I’m so sorry I couldn’t hand you your birthday gift myself, dear.

Being sick sucks.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am writing a shocking number of these posts in a post bad sleep brain fried state lately, and I am beginning to worry.

Like right now. Got all the symptoms. Dizzy, with accompanying floaty-head feeling as well as disorientation and headache. And trouble staying focused on the screen.

On the one hand, this means I am sleeping. This is good because I hadn’t been, For a couple of weeks my sleep had been of low quality and even lower quantity.

But somehow, the threat of my taking a sleepy pill put an end to that. Something in my mind finally relaxed and I am sleeping quite well now.

Or at least more often.

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Speaking of dizziness, something… happened last night that has me worried.

It happened when I was getting ready to go to the usual shopping and McD’s. I had just gotten up out of bed to go get the clothes I was going to wear and then sat down on the edge of the bed to put them on.

That’s when I felt a twinge in my chest. There was no real pain but a definite cold feeling spreading through my torso like I had ice water pouring through there and afterward I felt kinda funny.

Which I am.

By funny, I mean I felt very dizzy and weak. It was like I’d had a blow to the system. When I stood up, I couldn’t stand straight. Instead, I sort of lolled around like I was subject to a stiff and highly variable breeze.

And I kept feeling that way for much of the rest of the night. It only really stopped after I got some sleep and switched it for the more usual symptoms.

And it makes me worried that I had some kind of cardiac event. A very minor one, given the possibilities, but still a troubling sign.

And I still haven’t heart jack shit about my operation. Maybe they are hoping that if they dick around and delay for long enough, I will save them all a lot of trouble by dying.

And then they can start worrying about real patients with lives worth saving instead of some slobby fat dude.

It would make sense, given how my case got so casually tossed to one surgeon and then to another. Nobody wants to work on such a worthless heart.

Or maybe I am just bitter and paranoid. I dunno.

But they have my echocardiogram and my angiogram an all the rest, so what are they waiting for? A candygram?

Don’t they know I’m diabetic?

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Today’s antibiotic treatment was uneventful. Nice nurses, pleasant and professional. Both had Eastern European accents. Pleasant ones.

Was late because the car wouldn’t start. Looks like the battery is dead.

At least I hope that’s the problem because otherwise it’s the started and that would cost a hell of a lot of moolah to fix,.

Mostly though, I hope it is fixed by tomorrow because I had to pay $20 to taxi to and from my appointment and I can’t afford to keep doing that.

Well, that’s my word count. Time to go back to sleep.

More after the break.

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These powers of mine

I should be grateful for them. Very grateful. And I am. Sometimes.

Other times. I revert to seeing them as either an ironic burden that exists solely to make my situation all the more pathetic relative to my potential or as a strange curse that puts far more power at my fingertips than I can possibly take responsibility for.

Honestly, I wish I was a less responsible person. I wish I was the sort of person who can blithely stretch and express their personal power without worrying about the effect on others and thus both grow it and learn to master it and hence become stronger.

Then again, maybe all my worry about hurting others with my massive power is just another way my depression bullshits me into staying small.

Maybe I could let loose completely and everything would be fine. I mean, I’m not Godzilla. I’m not Gulliver in Lilliput. I don’t have to worry that the slightest action of mine could crush people by the dozens, leaving them permanently broken.

Perhaps my sense of my own power relative to others is widely exaggerated because my depression knows I have a strong sense of responsibility and exploits that to keep me under its fascist regime.

Or maybe, growls my id, I should just do whatever the fuck I want and let the world worry about how to stay the fuck out of my way.

I could leave a wide trail of destruction in my wake.

I could have a lot of fun doing it.

I could turn into a monster.

I could turn into a real human being.

I could finally let go.

I could finally let myself grow.

I could finally grow up.

“I could”, michael bertrand

What the hell, I write poetry here all the time, might as well mark it as such.

My id craves release, that’s obvious. It has been stifled for far too long and as a result my personality is radically unbalanced towards the ego and superego.

I need someone to come along and restore balance to the Force.

I need to learn to integrate the id’s raw power into the rest of my psyche in order to make me a fuller and more functional being.

I need to let myself act without forethought, relying on my realtime intellect and instincts be my guide instead of trying to live life like it’s a game of chess and taking my board and going home if I can’t.

I need to learn to embrace my energies and let them feed and sustain my frostbitten soul instead of associating my energies with anxiety and suppressing them hard.

Talk about a cure being worse than the disease. I’d rather be anxious and functional than calm and worthless.

I need to pay a hell of a lot more attention to my needs.

I need to treat myself like I am worth something.

I need to love myself so much more.

I need to forgive myself for everything.

I need to let it all go.

Is that a poem? Kinda. But whatever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So I was watching a Reddit AITA^[1] video when I came across an entry where a man aske if he was TA because when a woman who was walking ahead of him suddenly turned around and screeched at him to stop “following” her, he told her to fuck right off.

Bad enough. But what really pissed me off was that same dude, presumably after getting yelled at by a lot of women, later added, “Oh, geez, I guess I was insensitive and lacked empathy because I had no idea what women go through and next time I will be sure to do everything I can to keep from making a woman feel unsafe!”.

And that pissed me off so bad that this came pouring out :

Story 3 : FUCK. THIS. NOISE. Women today are oppressed by fear. The media makes them view every man as a threat and that is horrible and cruel. Sure, that random guy MIGHT be a rapist – BUT HE PROBABLY ISN’T. Violent crime against strangers is extremely rare. All crime is rare, for that matter. Realistically, there are so many things more likely to harm you than some random dude. Car accidents. Cancer. A falling piano. And yet women all over the world are terrified in situations where they are perfectly safe. As long as I draw breath, I will fight this culture of fear. Ladies, don’t believe the hype. Odds are, you are just fine. Life is not a horror movie. And gentlemen, push back on this. OP Was perfectly justified at being treated like a psycho killer rapist merely because he has a penis. It is completely unjustified and sexist AF. You don’t have to own the crimes of a very tiny number of men merely because you possess a Y chromosome. Women expecting men to bend over backwards and forwards again to make women feel safe just perpetuates the idea that women are weak and helpless and need men to protect them. It is never acceptable to view someone as a threat base on race, religion, ethnic origin, political affiliation, OR GENDER. What if that women had felt unsafe because OP was black? Or Muslim? Or ugly? Everyone would agree that was wrong. So why should gender be any different? Fight the fear, ladies. Recognize that you are safe. The shadows are not full of rapists and 99.9999999999 percent of men are perfectly harmless as you pass them on the street. Escape the sexist box media fear traps you in. Odds are you are just fine.

my righteous anger on youtube

As you can see, it’s a tad schizophrenic. I oscillate between speaking out against misandrist hate and mistrust of men and attacking the underlying problem of women being filled with unwarranted fear by the media and a culture of fear.

They are both valid, but ideally I would have argue them separately.

But I am seriously pissed off at being considered a monster for the crime of having testicles. It is the definition of sexist and we men need to start pushing back on the issue, and keep pushing back till we get equality.

So yeah, the dude was totally justified in telling her to fuck right off. He did absolutely nothing wrong and she went all psycho Karen on his ass for no reason.

If it is wrong for a Karen to call the cops on someone for being black, and it’s wrong for some panicky bigots to call the FBI on their neighbors for being Muslim, it’s wrong for a woman to accuse someone of “following” her for being male.

More after the break.

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Happy Smoke Season!

Don’t you just love this time of year?

That special, magical season where the air is filled with the enchanting aroma of woodsmoke (aka the smell of millions of trees dying) and breathing outdoors produces a burning sensation in your lungs that you just know is giving you lung cancer (hey, why should smokers have all the fun?), and the sun is a festively malevolent glowering red ball in the sky judging us all harshly for this completely avoidable apocalypse?

Why, it brings tears to my eyes and puts a lump in my throat just thinking about it.

Then I cough up the lump. What is that, creosote?

And just think of all the fun we will have in future Smoke Seasons! Because this is the new normal, folks. Get used to this, because Smoke Season is a permanent part of the year now, and will probably only get worse over time!

Maybe one of these years. the sun will be blotted out entirely!

Ah well, serves it right for nourishing the plants that went into the ground and became the oil and coal that fueled this whole mess!

And just think of how much fun it will be to father the kids around the ol’ air filtration machine and tell them the heartwarming story of the very first Smoke Season and how once there was a time when people could breathe outdoors and nobody wore filtration masks all day and there were long stretches with no extreme weather at all!

They won’t really believe you, and you’ll be thankful, because then they won’t ask you why you didn’t do anything to stop it from happening!

Who broke the world? Well after all, it was you and me.

“But what can one person do?” said five billion people as one.

Guess it’s never too early to get out excuses ready?

“But um… corporations and rich people…. or something?” is not going to cut it.

And just think of all the fun new seasons we’ll be adding to the calendar!

There’s sure to be Thunder Hell Season, with thunderstorms so severe that between the fist of god level thunder, the lightning strong enough to melt granite, and the rain so hard it washes away a million years of topsoil overnight, nothing but bare bedrock will remain and all that lives will perish!

And don’t forget Fire Tornado Season, where what the tornados don’t destroy is burned to mere traces of carbon by the continuous rain of flaming debris!

Oh, and don’t forget Christmas! It will come at the beginning of Icy Demon Season, where the temperature rapidly drops to below the freezing point of people and we all have to huddle together around our burning dung piles in order to keep our frostburned flesh marginally alive till spring!

Oh, and Spring will bring such wonderful things. New flowers, baby animals, and plagues! Yes, with all of us malnourished and barely alive, the pathogens will thrive and there will be so many new and exciting things to die from!

Yes, it’s a wonderful, magical time to be alive, and I can’t wait to see what fresh hell Nature visits upon us next!

Better start working on that underground civilization!

Hey Mole People,,,, can we crash with you for a while?

Happy Hellscape, everyone!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

(P.S., sorry for all that, but I had a lot of bitterness to vent.)