Hmmm. I may have just been my own chiropractor.

My back was really hurting and it was driving me crazy. A very bad kind of crazy that happens when you are hounded by chronic pain past the point of endurance and you are dangerously close to doing something – anything – to make the pain go away.

Luckily, all I did when I snapped was go on a rampage of pushing my spine forward as hard as I could in an attempt to force it into the shape of a spine and not the diabolic punctuation mark it’s been assuming lately.

And hot damn, it seems to have worked. My back feels a lot better now. Not out of the woods yet by any means, but the amount of pain while resting has gone way down and I feel a lot closer to being human than before.

So… yay me, I guess.

I will likely push my luck by pushing it more later. See if I can lick this problem, or at least drool on it a little.

Would be ironic after all I have been through, including the failed Catheter Quest 2022 : The Quest for Fru’s Bladder, if I ended up fixing the whole thing myself with something I did in a fit of rage.

That’s fine by me. It can be as ironic as it wants to be as long as it brings me relief. The last five days have been brutal and I would really like to be rid of this goddamned demon before it reaches its one week anniversary on Wednesday.

I’ve still got plenty of the hydromorphone they begrudgingly gave me as I left the emergency room last Saturday. If I hadn’t asked for it, they would have happily had me leave there absolutely no better than when I walked in six hours earlier.

I am coming for you, Doctor Stitt the Illegitimate.

I just haven’t figured out how to describe my complaint medically yet.

Did the IV Antibiotics thang today. Uneventful. They took some blood for what I can only assume are legit medical reasons.

I mean, for all I know, they could want it so they can raise a demon clone of me that I will have to fight near the end of the game.

So frigging cliché.

Oh, and it was a mildly stressful session because for some reason I was really sleepy.

And yet I had gotten plenty of above-average quality sleep the night before. Guess I was not quite caught up yet.

So I spent the whole session in that maddening state I used to get into when I was sleepy in class at school, where I can’t stay awake because I am too damned tired but I can’t fall asleep because then I would miss the class and I have academic FOMO like a son of a bitch.

When I was going to VFS, the one thing that got me out of bed and off to class when all else failed was the thought of the rest of my class going on without me.

I get the feeling that a fear of being left behind was instilled in me at an early age simply by being the youngest of four.

Wait up! My legs are tiny and I am going as fast as I can!

Of course, there’s the fact that they DID actually leave me behind on three separate occasions. But that was not entirely their fault.

I was a very quiet and shy child who had a lot of trouble speaking up for himself and who did not exactly have much situational awareness.

Most children would notice that their family was leaving without them and holler.

Me, it was subjectively like one minute they were there, then poof!

This is what happens when you have, at best, intermittent contact with what laymen know as “reality”.

The world’s not safe for dreamers, that’s for sure.

More after the break.

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I remember when the word “ergonomic” first started making the rounds. The received definition was “designed with people in mind”. ^[1]

And my first thought was, “As opposed to what?? Robots? Aliens? Did I miss the part where everyone got genetically modified to work with machines that were designed without humans in mind at all?”.

Like seriously. How is this a thing?

All it really boils down to is “design that isn’t tragically fucking stupid”.

And that’s not much of a selling point, except perhaps by implication.

“Unlike the other guys….. ”

---

Way down in the hole

Provided for reference :

This back pain shit is really wearing me down.

I totally should be eating right now. But I can’t.

Because the pain I experienced just getting out of bed has left me nauseous and sore and I couldn’t make myself eat right now with a shotgun and a funnel.

And the really sad thing is that all I really want to do right now is lay back down. Why? Because that’s the only thing that relieve my back pain. Only taking all weight off my back can I get true relief.

The hydromorphone does help. Takes the edge off. But that’s all.

I could take two, but I am trying to make them last seeing as I don’t have a prescription so when they are gone, they are gone, and I am SSOL.

That’s probably stupid. I should just take two every 4-6 hours like it says on the bottle and enjoy a brief but blissful symptom-free period.

But no. I take one every now and then when the pain becomes unbearable and it tones it down just enough to prevent self-defenestration.

Of course, I wouldn’t be going through all this if Doctor Stitt the Hypocrite had managed to remember that despite my urinary saga I was there for my BACK or at least had he honor and integrity to admit he had forgotten instead of showing amazing dexterity by backpedaling while pulling an answer out of his ass.

I should go see Doctor Chao. He’s not perfect but he is not going to kick me out of his office out of panicky embarrassment.

I’ll git you, Doctor Stitt!

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Pain is really depressing.

We shall now pause while you try to get your minds unblown.

When I woke up a little while ago, I actually felt pretty good. The nap had done me some good, the sun was shining in the window, and I was relaxed and at peace.

Then came the panoply of agonies that I have to go through just to sit up from a prone position these days. and now I want to murder a lot of something.

It’s not just my back, by the way. I think I fooled myself into thinking that so that the problem would not seem so scary but no, it’s every joint in my body.

Ankles, knees, hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders. and neck. They all scream in protest when I bend them.

One little motion and the joint goes CLICK in a bone-deep and sickening way and I get a thunderbolt of deep tissue pain that I can feel in the pit of my stomach.

It almost always makes me whimper, moan, or curse, and having it happen multiple times when you’re doing something as simple as getting out of bed makes you want to break down and cry.

So live and let die.

I wish I had realized it was body-wide when I talked to that gitt Doctor Stitt.

Explain to me how a fall on my back made my knees stiff and painful as the rest of my joints and in the exact same way, Stitt you feculent fool.

It’s getting to the point where I don’t want to lay down any more because I know that means I will have to endure another agonizing ascent.

I actually checked out sleeping in my computer chair just to see if I could avoid having to lay down.

Sadly, it did not work out. I might be able to rest that way but there is no way I could relax enough to sleep.

Might try again some time though. Or figure some other way to work around this fucking torture. Something clever that keeps the weight off the big joints.

I keep imagining some kind of soft rope that I could use to haul myself upright. That would no doubt work but what the hell would I tie the rope to?

Not a lot of common household objects will support my weight in such a configuration.

I have at least improved my technique a bit. The secret is to take my weight on my arms as much as I can, so first I raise myself up on my elbows.

Sadly, I then have to get the rest of the way via the usual method, and agony ensues.

Overall, my life has gotten a fuckton worse since I fell. If this is the first act in my long prophesied slide into worse and worse health and more and more suffering, then things have certainly started off with a bang.

I wonder if I should get a second opinion from Doctor Chao?

More after the break.

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The dependent male

The dependent male is… not allowed.

Our cultural programming tells us that men are supposed to be, above all, independent. Self-sufficient. We take care of you, not the other way around.

Sure, we may have to begrudgingly allow ourselves to be dependent for short periods of time due to illness, grief, and other extreme cases.

But we’re supposed to hate every minute of it and be chomping at the bit to get back in the action the second we are ready if not sooner.

And there is a time limit of sorts even on that. Anything that takes more than a month to get over will make people suspect you are goldbricking – which is a terrible crime against the whole “chomping at the bit” thing.

If you are supposed to be eager to get back into the fight, then deliberately remaining dependent to avoid the fight is the worst kind of cowardice.

And what of the permanently disabled? Those of us so sick that getting “back into the fight” is simply not an option and we have no choice but to remain dependent on those around us if we are even to survive?

That’s what I have been facing lately : the possibility of losing my independence and having to rely on others to do even the most basic of things.

I will have an extremely hard time making that adjustment.

As patient readers know, I have a very high need for autonomy and.or control and dependence on others flies in the face of that.

I get the feeling that if I am placed in such a state of dependence, I will become extremely difficult to deal with for a while. The lack of control will hurt me and freak me out so badly that I will end up lashing out at those around me.

You know, the very people on whom I am depending in the first place.

It’s not a pleasant picture but it’s the one I see as of now.

Honestly, I would probably be one of those disabled people who goes to enormous lengths not to need anybody else’s help.

So like…. monkeybars all through the apartment. Specially adapted toilets and faucets. Wheelchair accessible everything. That kind of thing.

Tacking back towards the point, there is the deep and terrible shame of being a dependent male. It cuts right through my heart and is one of the biggest wellsprings of the deep deep underground river that feeds my deep reservoirs of self-loathing.

How can I have any worth as a human being if I can’t even support myself?

How can I stand being such a god damned liability?

Why should I live when my living is such a negative for all, including me?

Wouldn’t the world be better off without me?

Wouldn’t I be better off without the world?

These are the deep and terrible questions that haunt my soul and pollute my blood and take me to very dark places I don’t want to go.

But I know these things can be overcome. I can grow stronger than anything that darkest side of me can throw at me.

I can build up my fire till it is too hot for the icy beams of self-negation to effect.

I can shine so bright it banishes night and makes dawn of dusk.

I can overpower these paltry ghosts of mine and be reborn unto the light and warmth and spirit of a brand new age.

And I can leave this pathetic little town behind me.

The enemy is strong.

But I can still win.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I have an enemy now. A twitt named Stitt.

OK. so today I decided that after my IV Antibiotics session at Ambulatory Services, I would amble on over to Emergency to see about all this brutal back pain I have been experiencing since I fell last Wednesday.

And I lucked out because there was practically nobody there when I went. I spent practically no time waiting in the waiting room for triage and even less time waiting for the nurse to call me in after triage, so that was nice.

Plus I ended up learning a cute bit of trivia about the ER nurses : when I said “Wow, sure is quiet today!”, three nurses all said “Oh no! You said the Q word!”.

Apparently, saying “quiet” in the ER is like saying “Macbeth” in a theatre : very bad luck.

And sure enough, after me at least five patients showed up one by one, so they might just be on to something there.

So then I was admitted and changed into my little dignity-proof gown and painfully laid down on my designated bed.

Thus began a long afternoon of not peeing.

See, they wanted a urine sample. And my bladder flat out refused to cooperate. I spend most of the afternoon trying to will myself to pee.

Turns out I should have gone with my first instinct and just sat up, painful as that was. The real enemy was gravity. I just can’t pee lying down.

I wish I had known that from the beginning. Would have saved me a lot of time sitting with a cardboard pitcher clapped over my dick trying to make the waters flow.

Oh, but it gets much worse.

Once I sit up, I am able to make a respectable contribution. Problem solved, or so I thought. My nurse got her sample for testing.

But no. Then she breaks out an oddly primitive ultrasound machine that made these noises like a Geiger counter in bad need of a cleaning as she scanned my bladder.

Oh no, apparently I still have too much fluid in my bladder. “He” is not going to like that.

I assume that means Stitt the Shitt.

Thus begins Phase 2 of Operation Missing Gold, and this time no matter if I sit, stand, or turn cartwheels, nothing is coming out.

Lovely. Now what?

Turns out, it’s…. the catheter

Meh. Not welcome news but I have been there once before so I know that while quite weird and a tad undignified, it doesn’t hurt and so it’s not that bad.

Or so I thought.

Turns out that by some bizarre twist of fate, I am now catheter-proof. I had multiple nurses try many, many times to get a line through, and getting nothing but my screams of agony in return.

Finally, out of desperation, they asked me to try peeing again.

And I took to it with a will.

This time, I was successful. Honestly, I think the poking around with the catheter might have helped loosen up things.

Of course, the brutal irony in all of this is that when I am at home, I pee like eight times a day. It’s actually quite annoying.

But whether it was nerves, the chaotic environment, or my having offended the gods, my usually voluble bladder was practically a mime today.

Anyhow, once all that was done, and Doctor Fitt for the Pitt Stitt comes along and tried to give me the whole “Well we don’t know what’s wrong with you, so go home!” shit that I have gotten in that ER so many goddamned times.

Hell, before that, I had to remind him what my initial complaint had been. I swear he had forgotten completely like the paragon of competence he is,

But this time I fought back, god damn it, and I feel good about that. I took him to task about the fact that I still was in a lot of pain.

And he’s all, “Well most people as they age experience some form of back pain. ”

And I’m like, “NOT LIKE THIS. ” Ass.

And I asked about why I was in so much pain, he said “Well obviously because iof that fall you took.

And I wish I had said, “But you don’t know, do you? You’re just guessing. And the sad truth is that you don’t WANT to know. You don’t care any more. You have decided you are done with me because my case has become boring and hard and you have mentally checked out and quite frankly don’t give a shit what happens to me now and are actually visibly annoyed that I am even still talking to you. ”

I might complain to the Ministry about him. Or the RCPS.

But I am pretty pissed off right now so I am going to wait until I have calmed down and had time to think things over rationally before I get him in trouble.

Any way you slice it, I spent all day at the ER and got absolutely nothing for it. I am in just as much pain as I was when I walked in there.

I suppose they eliminated a lot of possible answers, but I was kind of hoping they could actually, ya know, heal me.

Or at least remember that’s what they are supposed to be doing.

Wish I had just come home after antibiotics. I could have spent this afternoon playing DOS2 and blogging and napping, like usual.

Instead it was a lot of weirdness and pain and boredom for nothing.

Fuck everything everywhere always. Shit just keeps getting worse.

And all I can do is endure it and try to survive it. I am too fucked up in the head to do any of the myriad of things I “could” do to save myself.

So all I can do is sit and wait for the next horrible thing to happen.

I am doomed, doomed, doomed, and it is no fun at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So I realized something about all pain I have been suffering since taking a tumble and landing flat on my back on the sidewalk last Wednesday.

The fall might have triggered it, but it alone can’t account for the symptoms.

To recap : basically, I am very stiff and sore all through my body. When I move in any large way, I get that kind of grinding pain that comes from trying to move a stiff limb.

If I’m lucky.

If not, I also get severe shooting, stabbing pains in my muscles that are enough to make me shout out and/or whimper out loud in pain.

That really sucks.

And so my mobility is even more limited than usual. My life has broken down to a series of challenges to my ingenuity and determination as I have to summon both just to get the fuck out of bed.

I am somewhat okay once I am upright. I can keep my spine stiff and avoid bending or flexing much of anything between the waist and chin as I sit or move around.

But getting there suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

I mean, it was hard enough to find the motivation to get out of bed when it didn’t hurt.

So the last two days have been extra brutal. The nurses always take my blood pressure (plus blood ox and temp) when I sit down to get my IV Antibiotics, and for the last two days they have been concerned about it being a little high, and ask why.

“Because just getting from the car to Ambulatory was brutal fucking agony!” is what I want to say.

Like I said, the fall might have triggered it but it can’t account for it all. I landed on my back but this state applies to my entire body, from toenails to temples.

And I have no specific pains on the surface of my back. I don’t feel any scrapes, bruises, or other impact injuries.

Mental note : get one of the roomies to check my back for signs of bruising.

So the symptoms and the injuries are not a match. There has to be something else going on here.

I think it’s some kind of body-wide inflammatory response. Not sure how the hell a fall could trigger one of those, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

If so, then an anti-inflammatory might do me a lot of good. Sadly, my beloved Tylenol is not one, so it can’t help me.

ASA is one, though, and I have my low-dose time-release ASAs that I take as a stroke prevention measure, so hopefully that will help.

Still, might order some actual Aspirin from 7-11 or whatever. If it could break the hold this bullshit has on me, it would be way more than worth it.

I keep dithering over whether this is the sort of thing I should take to the ER.

I mean, logically, it is. I mean, I’m practically crippled. Any sane or rational person would see that as an ER-worthy problem,

But I dunno.

I don’t want to go through another long boring wait in the ER so soon after the last one. And for all I know, it would all be for nothing because there’s nothing they could do.

Except give me a dose of a really GOOD anti-inflammatory, I suppose.

I dunno. Maybe after IV antibiotics tomorrow I will hobble over to the ER. See what they think of my condition.

More after the break.

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Another meal gone

Well it looks like I am going to miss another goddamned meal.

No supper for me tonight. Why? Because I slept when I should have been eating again and now it’s 10:45 pm and I haven’t had “supper” yet at all.

I could still eat, of course. “Midnight” snack won’t happen till 1:45 am or so, three hours from now. Plenty of time to eat and then recover my appetite. Right?

But I have zero appetite and my back is sore and life seems very dark and unpleasant to me right now and the bottom line is that I am just too depressed to eat.

I can’t find the motivation to even just go put some Smartfood popcorn in a bowl.

And that is both stupid and bad, of course. I know this. How could I not? There’s a voice in my head screaming it at me as I type these words.

But don’t let that fool you. It’s not on my side. It’s only saying that to make me feel worse. It knows that its words will do the opposite of motivating me.

They will make me retreat even further into myself and become even more depressed and make things even worse.

That’s life when you’re a sad little turtle, folks.

Whatever. I will survive, probably. I usually do. I will muddle through, have under-eaten yes again, and probably dealing with attacks of killer appetite and/or feeling cold, dizzy, and lightheaded until I manage to get a big meal into me and catch up again.

Just another day in the care of the insane.

I must make peace with the fact that I am a crazy person and therefore not in control of myself, ergo not responsible for my inability to behave sensibly.

I want to be the smart guy who does the sane and intelligent thing all the time, but I am not. I am, instead, a victim of mental illness trying to muddle through life with a head full of bad wiring, a heart full of shards of broken icicles, and a soul that knows nothing but the darkness of outer space.

Take that, Emo Kid.

So what do I do? That’s the eternal question. I know all kinds of things I could do – if I had a brain that worked. And I know all kinds of wonderful things I SHOULD do – and therefore can’t do.

But none of it matters because none of it is actually doable with my broken brain.

I need solutions for the brain I’ve got, not the one I want.

And I am not going to be able to come up with them by myself.

Because my brain is broken.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My life’s had way too much of it lately.

I am beginning to doubt I will spontaneously recover from all this back and muscle trauma. For a while, I thought I was getting better, but then I made the mistake of sitting down on the floor while I was doing my Thursday Therapy and the things I had to do to get myself back on my feet seem to have made things worse.

So I dunno. I am doing the IV Antibiotics thing again tomorrow at 9 am and I could just walk over to Emergency afterwards.

We will see how I feel then. But right now I feel pretty bad. Even sitting here in my computer chair I have some pain.

My body seems determined to twist my spine into a pretzel and I’d really rather not.

I strongly prefer it remaining perpendicular to the ground, thank you.

Spending half an hour on the floor trying to figure out how to get up was interesting but not good for the dignity. Kind of makes you realize how lucky you were back when your body more or less worked.

It’s easy to think you should be grateful for all the problems you don’t have, but that’s a dead end. There’s just too damned many of them, and so very little of you. You couldn’t even fit them all into your head at the same time even once.

And even if you could, then what? Live the rest of your life in maximum gratitude all the time just to be sure you’re sufficient grateful for all the bad things not happening to you?

No, it only makes sense to do like we do : focus on the problems we DO have, and be grateful when they go away.

And, of course, be glad it wasn’t us when it happens to someone we know. Amen.

Today my Therapy was decent. Told Doctor Costin all about my eventful week, which was cathartic. Then we wrestled with my lack of progress on the road to recovery and how all I can do is keep talking out the pain and hope that one day it makes a big difference and I am finally able to breathe free.

Or at least get laid.

I talked about how hard it is to fight this constant paralysis I feel whenever I try to make myself do any of the things I know will make me feel better.

You know, all those millions of things I “should” be doing.

Don’t bother lining up, boys, I will never get to any of you.

In fact, just by being there waiting you insure that your task will never happen. Don’t ask me why. I don’t understand it myself. And I don’t want to be this way.

But if I so much as glance in your direction, the cold of the interstellar void descends on my battered heart like a killing frost and I have to get the hell out of there before I die that final Midnight Tundra death.

Bury me anywhere. It doesn’t matter.

Nobody will be looking for my grave anyhow,

More after the break.

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The deal with babysitting

“Hey there kid! Here’s a new person – a very nice lady who will feed you and get you dressed and play with you and essentially be your mother in all ways while we go off and do things that are way more important than you will ever be to us. I mean, why else would we leave you with this stranger, right? We encourage you to love her and bond with her and learn to look up to her and in all ways be her kid. But the minute one of us gets home, you have to shut that shit down instantly because we fully expect preschool aged children to be able to turn love on and off like a light. And remember, if you can’t, we’ll get mad at you for hurting us! Oh, and lastly, remember that no matter how deeply you love and care about her, she doesn’t really love you back because to her it’s just a job like any other and the minute your parents think you are OK-ish enough on your own to not prompt anyone to call CPS, they’ll stop paying her, she’ll go away, and then she will go have kids of her own whom she’ll love instead of you. OK? Whatever. Bye!”

I know some of that is unfair and harsh but it’s honestly how I feel.

And nobody talks about this. It’s so bizarre. We just naturally assume this is all fine because otherwise we would have to face the possibility that in order to bond with our kids, we have to actually raise them ourselves.

When I started school, my babysitter Betty disappeared. This marvelous woman whom I felt much closer to than my actual mother because not only did she spend more time with me, she actually paid attention to me and did things with me, and my actual mother was always busy and distracted, and what little attention she did have to spare went to my siblings, who were much louder and more demanding baby birds than I.

And I didn’t complain because that was clearly what was expected of me. But having no more Betty in my life did not mean I got any more Mom. It was a massive loss for me and I couldn’t even talk about it with anyone without getting into trouble.

The fact that something’s normal doesn’t make it okay. The fact that a revelation has very disturbing implications that would imply that we have generations of mistakes to apologize for and that would require us to radically rethink a lot of our assumptions about raising kids does not mean that these revelations are not true.

The one saving grace is that it seems that we are naturally returning to the “one full time parent” childrearing model. Perhaps because us GenX’ers know what it was like to be the first latchkey generation and the first to grow yup with no full time parent, just parents too determined to “have it all” to worry about how little that left for the kids.

I’m sure cutting the amount of caregiving our kids get as compared to what we got at their age by well more than half won’t harm them in any way. right?

Because if it did, we might have to restrain our careerism and actually hang around the house raising our stupid children, which would be laaaame.

So it can’t be true. Right?

I will talk to you nice kids again tomorrow.

I am one broken down old pony.

So today was busy. I had IV Antibiotics at Ambulatory Care PLUS two at Medical Imaging, all at Richmond General.

Part one of the ominous sounding “Bone Scan” was at 9:30 am. Took place in one of the state of the art imaging bays which do X-rays AND CT scans AND ultrasound and for all I know, MRI too.

So very cool. God damn do I love good technology.

And that went fine. Imaging dude was upbeat and friendly. I can’t imagine being able to be that up all day.

Then I went over to Ambulatory for what seems to have become the daily dose. I don’t mind terribly much. My sad sick little animal appreciates the attention and care. And I like how the nurses and I get to know each other.

It makes me feel included.

Good gods that’s sad.

At Ambulatory, besides the usual IV. Doctor Kwok (AKA Doctor Kwoktapus) took a look at the wound and decided what was going on now was sufficient.

He told me that the swab taken Saturday did not indicate any need to switch antibiotics, which is good.

He wants the bone scan because he’s worried that the infection might have gotten into my bone marrow.

That…. is bad. Very very bad.

Anyhow, that was it for Phase 1. Julian picked me up and we went home.

But I had to do Phase 2 solo, which turned out to be a bad idea.

Getting there by cab was fine. Phase 2 of the bone scan was far more intensive and to be frank rather kinky.

That’s because it required various forms of tying my legs and arms together. All in ways that I could easily escape if I chose, so it only set of the faintest and perfunctory alarm bells in my phobia of being trapped.

Which Google just informed me is called cleithrophobia. Good to know.

It helped that it was a good looking and very pleasant young Asian dude doing it.

That helped a LOT.

So it was mostly just laying still and not moving while the various bits of The Amazing Scantron moved around me.

No big. I have, at all times, a substantial supply of chill on hand. I just mellowed out and let my thoughts wander, serene in a vast equanimity.

I didn’t even feel restless at all until near the end, and I was in that machine in various positions for like 45 minutes.

So then I called a cab to get home, and that’s when things turned dark.

When I went to sit down on a bench to wait for my cab, I felt a force slam me down flat onto the ground like the fist of an angry god.

Apparently, when I was dipping down to sit,. both my knees gave out completely , but that’s not what it felt like.

Luckily I was able to get myself up on the bench. That was not good, I said to myself.

Ha ha ha, that was nothing, says my future self.

When I got out of the cab, I unknowingly got out where the sidewalk dips down to let cars get into the parking structure of my building and so kaboom down I went over onto (luckily) my back.

That spread out the force of my fall enough so that I didn’t get anything more than a couple of minor abrasions from it. But now I was turtled again.

I’d fallen. And I could not get up.

Luckily I was once again rescued by the kindness of strangers. Me and two nice people couldn’t quite make it happen. I needed to be lifted higher.

But then Captain Competence showed up and took over and holy shit was he amazing. He clearly had training because he knew exactly what to do.

He had me grab him under the arm and that gave us enough leverage to get my sad self up onto his feet, then the guided me to the door of my building.

All the while, he is asking direct and pertinent questions and exuding an aura of alpha male strength and authority.

With his help, I got to the elevator, and then got myself into this apartment at last.

Which was NOT easy, I was sore and stiff all over,

But I was home.

The problem is, “Where do we go from here?”

Because clearly I can’t do things solo any more. My last illusions of physical independence have been shattered. I need someone with me in case I fall down and/or get dizzy and then fall down.

I am officially an invalid.

And that means that “I need a helper” shit just got real, dawg. I am going to have to figure out how to hook myself up with some serious help because while Julian is a wonderful person who does all that he can, there’s only so much he can do.

After all, he’s not a professional. Just a wonderfully helpful friend.

I think I need to find a disability advocate. Because while I have been psychologically disabled for a long long time, this physical disability shit is brand new to me.

Gotta be realistic about this shit. No more denial. I am a broken man and my life will get a whole lot better if I start behaving accordingly.

Good bye Healthy-ish Fru, Hello Full Time Patient Fru.

And the dirty little truth is that the sick part of me could not be happier. Look at all the comfort and caring and attention I am getting! Finally, the world sees how sad and broken I am! Now give me all that sweet, sweet comforting.

Oh well. I am going to ask my GP Doctor Chao about getting in touch with agencies that can help me when I talk to him on the phone between 10 and 11 am on Friday.

Now if I could only remember when my IV Antibiotics appointment tomorrow is.

Seems like it fell out of my head when I took that second tumble.

Time to lay this broken bag of bones down and hope that a nice long rest will let me recover enough to be able to get the door when I order in.

Wow. That’s all my words for the day. A rare one part entry.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,

And they’re not even from me!

Pretty good stuff, and not just because of all the Disney and Transformers references.

Basically, the pure evil villain is the id unchecked. They are us without our higher (human) minds holder our lower (reptile) minds in check. They subvert or ignore all of society’s checks and balances and give their ids a blank check to sate every selfish, greedy, sadistic, perverted, unwelcomed by society desire without pesky things like conscience or consideration for others holding them back.

Hence all the laughing. They are expressing the sheer joy of the lower mind finally given the run of the place. From Shere Khan’s deep throaty Mephistophelean chuckle to the Joker’s unhinged hyena cackling one thing is extremely clear :

The villain is having the time of their life. They’re having fun with evil, and this is why their evil requires no external motivation.

For them, evil is truly its own reward.

This obviously enhances their villainy because it’s bad enough to be victimized by someone without them obviously loving every minute of it.

Because of their id function, the typical “villain does a bunch of bad things then gets caught and goes to jail” plot structure is perfect. We, the audience, get to enjoy the liberating and cathartic actions of the villain as we live vicariously through them knowing full well that the hero will win in the end and therefore we don’t have to feel bad about the fun we had riding along with the villain, or even own that at all.

After all, it’s not like we ever approved of them, thought they were right, rooted against them, or aligned ourselves with them in any way.

We just passively enjoyed the liberated feelings they conveyed.

That is why the complex, motivated villain is much more rare. Complex motivation requires the high mind to understand.

And to the forces of Hollywood, that’s bad. Understandable, given what they think of us.

The lack of inhibition is also what makes them so charismatic. They have nothing stopping them from emitting pure unfiltered reptile appeal and our own reptile brains respond to that shit despite our more civilized instincts.

In fact, it’s our ego’s very rejection of our primitive emotions that give them so much power over us. What the Doctor Jekylls and Bruce Banners of the fictional worlds never seem to grasp is that the only way to defeat the devil inside is to embrace it.

As long as the two sides are trying to tear away from one another (which is impossible), the pain will grow and the more powerful the emotions will be.

Just imagine conjoined twins fighting each other and you begin to see the problem.

Finally, yes, this means that the classic battle of good versus evil is fundamentally a Freudian struggle of the id versus the ego.

That’s why by default, the good guys are always on the side of law, order, and restraint.

But it’s also why if the good guys are rebels. it’s always about freedom. 

The id’s not always wrong.

More after the break.

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Overcoming malignant shame

Not another super long video!

Don’t worry, like with Part 1, the video is included for reference purposes only and mostly just acts as the springboard for the discussion that follows.

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Shames me to admit it, but you all know my shame.

I was an unwanted and unplanned child and from the day I was born, my family let me know it with how I was treated.

Even when I was still the precocious cutie with the ginger hair and killer smile (my puppy phase), I was often treated as a burden, an afterthought, or a chore.

But once the puppy phase was over, I was worse than worthless I was a liability. I made things worse just by being around and taking up space and having needs.

How DARE I think for one second that I deserved ANYTHING EVER. Well too bad. We’ve already divvied up everything : food, clothing, love, warmth, attention, validation, parental attention, and of course affection, and we are not willing to give up half an iota of absolutely anything in order to give you a share, so fuck off!

You will have to learn to be grateful anyone gives you anything and never ever ever ask for anything because you deserve absolutely nothing ever.

Just fucking disappear. Blend in with the woodwork. Pretend you don’t exist. Never remind us of your existence.

We prefer to pretend you were never born. It’s our favorite game. We call it “Before”.

And you better learn to love it to, or you might make it worth our while to abandon you.

As is, work hard and some day you might graduate to merely being worthless.

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Well OK, that happened.

Got to let the bad stuff out sometimes.

So yeah, Lady in the Video. I know malignant shame. I feel a deep burning just for being alive. For taking up space, for using up air. For daring to use perfectly good atoms and molecules to make up something as worthless as me when they would be better used to make up literally anything else.

But I am fighting back. I know there’s nothing wrong with me. They were brutally and unforgivably wrong to treat an innocent child who never asked to be born in such a dismissive and disdainful fashion.

I was and am a bright shining wonderful being who deserves all the love and comfort and guidance he needs in order to thrive.

I never did anything to deserve to be emotionally abandoned. What child could? Anne, Catherine, David, and Mom (yeah you too), you did a terrible thing to me when I was a helpless toddler unable to fight back.

Larry did his damage too, I am sure.

But he was a raging arsehole. What’s your excuse?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Day started off bad.

Because I overslept. I had agreed to leave for the hospital with Julian at 9 am but then slept until 9:30 am, and no good day ever starts with me waking up, looking at the clock, saying “Shit!”, and then rushing to get ready.

Mental note, though : next time this happens, take just a couple of seconds to get a grip on myself and calm down before running off to try to catch up.

Hurrying is mandatory but panicking is not and taking a few seconds to find my center could go a long way towards making what comes after more pleasant.

Anyhoo, eventually we got going, and I went through the all too familiar^[1] rigmarole that is going to the ambulatory clinic at Richmond General Hospital in the age of Covid.

Here’s how it goes.

1. Greeted at the door by person at table who asks if you have Covid symptoms (like anyone is going to say yes) and makes you swap your current paper mask with the one she hands you with tongs. All justified but alienating nonetheless.
2. Then you go to what used to be the help desk but is now a central receiving hub through which all patients must pass. They tell you to go to this weird little area with two small offices, each with their own digital take-a-number sign.
3. You take a number then wait. When it’s called, you go into one of the two tiny offices where a hospital clerk gets your info, looks up your file, then prints out a form on purple paper and hands it to you.
4. You then take said purple form to the ambulatory clinic and hand it to a nurse
5. The nurse then shows you to your comfy chair where you will take your IV

It’s quite the process. Can’t help but think it’s all a tad old-fashioned.

Like surely whatever information is on the purple paper could be sent electronically. Or better yet, just accessed from Ambulatory Care in the first place.

It feels absurd to be conveying vitally important medical information via paper in 2022.

What next, carrier pigeons?

Anyhow, it was a busy visit because in addition to the infusion, I had to be seen first by a wound care nurse for the inevitable debridement of the wound then by Doctor Kwok, the infectious disease specialist.

The wound care nurse proceeded to remove a staggering amount of callous from the new wound. I honestly felt lighter afterward.

Doctor Kwok, rather frustratingly, didn’t have much to say. Apparently he is still waiting on the results of the swab test the ER doctor took.

Oh well. Back again at 1 pm tomorrow.

Bonus irony? This shit comes down just as the people at the Wound Care Clinic have switched me from coming in twice a week to only once.

And here I thought that meant MORE free time. Turns out it only freed up a slot for a more serious and interesting infection.

My life is a Petrie dish.

More after the break.

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The Lightness and the Dark

My mood has really been up and down lately.

Down for obvious reasons. I’m sick…. two different wounds and two different infections and one of the infections isn’t associated with either of the wounds.

That one probably has a wound under too, come to think of it. So three nasty wounds from three nasty infections on my nasty skin.

Oh well, that’s what happens when mental illness keeps you from taking care of your serious medical conditions.

The whole thing kind of makes me want to move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Unabomber style, with plenty of healthy food but no medications, and let nature decide if it wants me to live.

Emphases on “kind of”.

And down because I’m scared. The Bad Things are happening to me again and that feeling of being stalked by death is back.

That long black train is coming
I can feel it in my bones
Because these long grey rails are humming
And the air is full of dust and stones

And when the black train gets here
It will find me lying prone
Because I’m far too weak to get up
And I’m stuck here all alone

And when my loved ones come here crying
Asking why I didn’t move
Let my will read “No use lyin’,
Cause I got nothing left to lose

It’s ’cause I left the nest too early
Didn’t make it, couldn’t fly
And there was no one there to save me
So this little birdie died

Excerpt from the poem “black train” by michael bertrand

I call it an excerpt because it feels incomplete.

But yeah, that just kinda happens sometimes. I’m writing prose and the poetry just starts tumbling out. I figure it’s best just to let it.

Maybe I should send it to someone somewhere. I don’t know.

I write to get things out of my head. Anything that might come after that is secondary and despite my lifestyle and career goals I can’t quite seem to make myself really care about what happens then.

Like I have said many times before, the words have served their purpose and all I want to do is leave them behind forever so I can move on to the next thing.

I got too many goddamned words in my head, cramming the exit and making it hard to think, to worry about what happens to them once they’re out.

Good luck out there, kids. But um, don’t come back.

Knowing where you should be does not grant you the legs to jump that far.

Not the smart way to feel about things but that doesn’t change anything. It takes a lot more than knowing you’re being stupid in order to stop being stupid.

Maybe some day, if I find my saviour, I will be healthy and strong and capable of being the brilliantly well organized and effective and functionally intelligent person that I have always dreamt of being and felt was in me somewhere.

Until then, I will keep being the genius with the dunce cap on, stumbling blindly and stupidly through life until I finally fall and brain myself.

Amen and hallelujah.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I need help. We’re established that.

Where the bullet hits the bone (ow) is the question of who the heck can I get to help me.

The sort of help I was talking about yesterday – intensive and ongoing, with real effort and commitment involved – does not come cheap.

Ain’t nobody doing that shit for free.

And I would be willing to pay someone to play that part but I doubt I could afford to pay someone enough to convince them to do it.

On the other hand, it could be that once they help me get my poop in a group – CPAP and glucometer up and running smoothly, my sugars and my REM sleep level healthy, and me presumably feeling a whole lot better – I would be able to keep it going on my own from that point on.

I would not count on it, though. Become what is making me feel better would not just be the being physically healthier but thje nurturing I am receiving.

I haven’t had people paying attention to me and investing time and energy into my wellbeing much in my life. Not even as a child. My family pretty much emotionally abandoned their unplanned and unwanted kid when I stopped being cute and as a result I have a massive nurturing deficit on the books.

Still don’t know what to do about that. Spend a year at a spa?

Because the thing is, abandoned children abandon themselves. By default, children assume they deserve however they are treated and thereafter that becomes the foundation of how they see themselves in the world.

So when you are treated like you are less than worthless and should never have existed in the first place, you believe it.

And that’s not an easy setting to change. It’s hardwired pretty deep. All the logic and evidence and emotion in the world can do no more than fight it to a standstill.

At least, so far.

I know it’s not rational. I know it makes no sense. I have no actual sensible reason for feeling like I make life worse for everyone just by drawing breath.

And I would purge my mind and heart and soul of these toxic influence from my childhood if I could. I don’t deserve any of this self-loathing and my family was deeply and horribly wrong to teach me – um, I mean TREAT me – the way they did.

The way you treat your kids has a much bigger influence than anything you say to them.

And it’s good that I consciously acknowledge and recognize this before I get any professional caretakers involved in my life.

Because they could end up in the middle of a very complicated minefield of issues that neither of us are ready to handle.

It’s been so cold for so long in this little heart of mine, Papa. But we’re going to start thawing it out in earnest now.

And it’s going to hurt. Lord, will it hurt. Frostbite of the aorta is not cured easily.

But at the end of it all, I will be alive again.

Hallelujah and amen.

More after the break.

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It gets worse

Because of course it does.

So today I get up to go to my antibiotics infusion at the hospital and note in passing that I seem to be quite dizzy.

Oh well, I thought, I’m about to sit in a nice comfy chair for 45 mins or so and surely this dizziness will have passed by then. I probably just stood up too fast again.

The session ends and nope, just as dizzy was I was before. O shit.

And to be honest, I probably should have just gone right back to the admitting desk and told them about how dizzy I was.

But I was eager to get home, and I will be going back for another infusion tomorrow, so what the hell.

At that point, I thought maybe I was just dehydrated and all I would need to do is get some fluids into me and everything would be right as rain (or at least no suckier than usual) and I could go do shopping and Denny’s like normal.

Nope. Two very large glasses of water later and I feel, at most, only marginally better.

So no shopping and Denny’s for me tonight. Looking back, I probably would have been fine for Denny’s because it’s not too bad when I am not moving, but I was not thinking straight at the time.

And patient readers know this brand of dizziness. I’ve had it before. It’s the kind that makes it feel like I am on a ship in rough seas, or like there’s something really wrong with gravity. Every motion I make wants to just keep going past where I want it to stop.

Pretty sure it has something to do with my eustachian tubes, my sinuses, and my inner ears getting all clogged up. But I could be wrong.

So yay, vertigo. Takes controlled effort just to stay sitting upright. Like I said last time (probably), just sitting here, I am involuntarily doing the Triangle Wave thing the actors on Star Trek TNG did to convey that the ship was taking hits.

I think I conveyed that rather well. And here I was worried.

I think it’s getting better over time, though, which brings up the possibility that the problem will have vanished by the time I go back to the hospital tomorrow.

So do I still tell them about it?

Or should I stick with the plan to tell them about this infection on my shoulder, which seems to be going Cronenberg on me?

I know it should be both regardless but avoidant personality syndrome is a harsh mistress and social anxiety is making me worry that I will be asking too much of them, or that they will think I am super gross for having all these issues.

I’m telling you, being crazy is enough to drive you nuts.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So for the last three days the bottom of my left heel has been hurting really bad.

And not just in terms of the level of pain. The kind of pain was really disturbing too. Like I was walking directly on skin and bone.

Yeah. More about that later.

I was honestly scared to look at it myself. Scared of what I might see. So I did the manly and responsible thing and made my wound care nurse look at it instead.

She went, “Oh my!”, which is nurse for “HOLY SHIT!”

So off to the ER I went. The Wound Care nurse said I should go to the newly moved Urgent Patient Care Clinic, but I have no idea how one decides whether one’s problem is an emergency or merely urge, so to the ER I went.

Possibly a bad call. Because it was packed.

So I was there a very very long time. In Hospital Mode, so the first four hours were not so bad. In Hospital Mode, I lightly doze , and that makes the time pass faster and wth less wear on my nerves.

When I was still in the waiting room of the ER, there was this overweight lady who seemed to be having a hard time of it. In fact it seemed like the was freaking out. I know a panic attack when I see one.

And I wish I had mustered up the wherewithal to say something to her.

Something like : “Are you okay? Do you need some help? Do you need me to call a nurse for you, dear? Are you maybe freaked out by this loud bright place? You know what? Me too. I always hate being here. It’s all too much! Listen, is someone coming to get you? I notice you don’t have your shoes on… lovely feet, by the way. Listen dear, it’s all going to be fine. The doctors are going to take care of you and keep you healthy then you’ll be able to go back home. Okay? ”

Dunno if it would have help. She might have started screaming the minute I said a single word to her.

But my soul longed to reach out and comfort that poor woman. Her family should not have left her all alone in the ER like that.

Then there was my nemesis for the afternoon. Let’s call him the Little Raja, or LJ. He looked to be in his mid 20’s.

Everything was fine. We were all chilling in the IV lounge peacefully – me, LP, and his mother (early 40s amd gorgeous), who I will call Beleaguered Servant (BS).

But around 4 pm the price apparently could hold back his truculent douchiness no longer and he started actually whining to his mommy.

I’m talking Eric Cartman here.

“Moooooom! This is taking FOREVER! I have things I need to DO! I’m just going to leave, they’re never going to see us anyway!”

Truth bomb, kid, and I am deadly serious : grown ups DO NOT WHINE. Ever. You lose your whining privs at puberty, and that’s being generous.

There is nothing more appallingly infantile than whining to get what you want.

Seriously. Hard adult baby fetishists are saying, “Dude, sack the fuck up. ”

But the interesting thing was that the longer he whines on and forced his mother to *beg* him not to endanger his life by leaving (head injury) there more this angry father voice made me want to go Red Foreman on this little fucker.

“Listen, you entitled little puke, you’re here because your mother is worried and you are going to stand up, man up, and shut your fucking mouth before it has to be wired shut by a surgeon. You are dragging your mother through hell with your selfish behaviour and it’s going to stop RIGHT NOW or I swear to god I wil beat you so bad it’ll take every doctor here to put you back together again!”

Damn. DIdn’t know I had that in me. Not surprised, though.

More after the break.

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I can’t do this

I just…. can’t. That’s it. I give up.

I just can’t cope with my life as it is right now. If I keep trying to do it on my own, I will keep dying. Things like the infection on my foot will keep happening and one of these days they will gang up on me and finish me off, or worse, just cripple me to the point where my body is a living tomb and I am truly in Hell.

And that’s if the brain damage from my sleep apnea doesn’t get me first. One day I will have a TIA from smothering thousands of times a night every night and end up a goober in a wheelchair who only has the minimum number of brain cells left to remember back when he was ever so smart and did jack shit with it before it went away.

I don’t have what it needs to solve these problems and I am sick of trying without making progress and I am doubly sick of pretending that I will get better any day now.

It’s not going to happen, people. Your foxy friend is fucked. He’s going to die stupid young in a stupid way to cap of a stupid worthless fucking life, and all you poor people with the misfortune to love me can do is watch as I slowly self-destruct.

I know it’s not what you want to hear and trust me, it’s not what I want to be saying, but it’s the truth.

My only hope is to get help. My own resources can’t get me out of this mess. I’m too sick, I’m too crazy, I’m too weak.

There are no winning hands in this deck of cards.

So my own hope is to call in help from outside myself. And I mean serious help. The kind that does the things I can’t do for myself, like getting my blood glucose monitor working and my CPAP machine properly adjusted.

The kind that can help me stay focused and driven towards my goals, even if that means having to bitch at me when I am being difficult.

The kind that will keep on me like a shadow on a tall rock at high noon about my health and not let me pull any bullshit tricks.

Someone to be my backbone. My skeleton. My second skin.

Otherwise it is dirt city for this little red fox. And I will have died the way I lived :

Stupidly, despite it all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.