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.