So this morning, around 10 am, I woke up feeling absolutely terrible.

Np big whup. This happens to me at least once a day. “Bad” sleep kicks my ass and I I wake up with that lovely “just ran a marathon underwater feeling, along with confusion, disorientation, a diffuse tingling all over my body. a feeling like i have been rolled flat then reinflated like a cartoon character, bleary eyes, overheated, sweaty, and last but not least, that special fatigue that I assume also overtakes religious visionaries feel after they have a spell.

So far so what?

But today it was different. For one thing, the effect was far stronger than usual. I was super extra crispy toasty. Utterly incoherent. Could barely string two thoughts together.

And for anothing thing, it wasn’t going away.

Usually it only takes around ten minutes to roughly 90 percent shake it off, but this time it just keept going and going.

I waied over 40 minutes for coherence to show up to play before giving up on and getting dressed so Julian could drop me off at the ER.

Yup. Oh lord, stuck in the ER again.

We all know what happened next. Tons of waiting only for them to never find a definitive answer. Le sigh.

Oh well. Not like I had hot plans anyhow.

Knee still hurts. Was totally going to take it into Urgent Care today but then I woke up feeling like death’s dirty underwear and had to go to the ER instead.

And now the knee’s acting up, so I have to go lay down some more.

Because it would spoil me if I was still able to just sit here quietly using my computer without brutal fucking agony.

Hell, I haven’t eaten in over eight hours. Boy. I am really firing on all cylinders today.

Be back in a bit.

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Hopefully, I will make it to Urgent Care after I do Wound Care at the Community Care clinic tomorrow morning at 8:45 am.

I’m lucky to have so much Care in my life!

Still pondering the problem of how to cash my frigging check. Julian was wonderful and thoughtful enough to get me the form for switching my monthly check to direct deposit. So that will take care of that from now on.

But I have still got that one last check to contend with.

Plus I have to take the form to the bank and get them to fill it out. But I know how I will crack that problem : bring Julian into the bank with me and ask HIM to wait in line.

I figure that should do the trick

There will also be the minor hassle of figuring out how to pay Joe my rent every month. Right now I cash my check then pay him in cash, but in Direct Deposit Land, I will have to sign up with Venmo or Pismo or Pepto-Bysmal or whatever.

Not a major hassle.

Heck. maybe I will find a way to spend money online directly from my bank account and skip having to buy these silly credit cards!

More after the break.

The miracle of food

You know what I hear is good for uour health? Eating regularly.

Well I guess that’s et another healthy habit I have failed to acquire. Because here it is, 8 pm or so, and I am only finally getting around to eating my second meal of the day now.

And I know things were not always so. I am positive my habits used to be somewhat regular. But even my routine has degenerated lately.

The center cannot hold. Entropy always wins. Sooner or later, we’re all worm shit.

Fine, and you?

Hopefully I can get my knee fixed soon. Of my various issues, it’s the one that is causing the most ongoing problems.

My sporadic back pain is worse when it flares up. but at least I can lay down to relieve it most of the time.

But it’s tricky to find a position where nothing is putting pressure on that kneecap.

One positive note : I am proud of myself that just when the ER doc was about to give me the “remember, you can always come back to us if things get worse” brush-off when I said “So we don’t really know what happened, then. ”

And that forced him to hem and haw a bit then say that he thought it was probably an infection, given what he saw in my bloodwork and X-rays.

I am getting way too familiar with getting chest X-rays,

It pleased me greatly to at least set one of these breeze ER docs back on theirs heels for a moment by reminded them that they had not, actually, solved the problem.

But we had, at least, ruled out all the big stuff.. Not a heart attack, not a stroke, not pulmonary thrombosis, not COVID.

Yup. They did the Rapid Antigen Test on me. They wanted to give me the “real” COVID test, but I had that once before and when they jabbed that freaking killer Q-tip so far up my nostril that I lost most of the third grade, it hurt so bad that I saw stars.

And I couldn’t help but give the young nurses a look of innocence betrayed.

Poor dear. Not her fault. But motherfucker, did that hurt.

So yeah, I probably “should” have taken the “real” test just to be absolutely sure I don’t have the’Vid. But I need to be way calmer and better rested to be able to be that much of an adult on short notice.

Glad I don’t seem to have it, though. It might be just last a nasty case of the flu to healthy triple-innoculated folks but to walking petrie dishes like me it could still fuck us up real, real bad.

Like, early days of the pandemic bad. *shudder*

So ends another day in the hell of deteriorating health.

Tune in tomorrow, when my head will burst into flame.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I think I’ll miss walking.

Well okay. I’ll miss being ABLE to walk, at least. The actual walking itself, not so much.

I’ve never been a fan.

But the writing is on the wall. Every day, the time I can spend standing shrinks and the pain I feel when I do grows. You don’t need an advanced degree in n-space mathematics to see where that trend goes.

Before too long, I won’t be able to stand at all and the pain will be constant. I will finally well and truly be a cripple.

The death knell for my locomotion was sounded today when just the trip from the parking lot to the office at Wound Care @ the Community Care Clinic in the elevator damn near killed me.

Turns out that god damned wheelchair is catching up with me a lot faster than I thought it would. My ambulatory days are numbered.

The final world will come when I finally manage to get my busted ass into Urgent Care to get this damned knee looked at. If I am SUPER lucky, these doctors might actually be able to do their jobs and figured out what the problem is.

Maybe even fix it. But one crisis at a time.

It’s a harder question than it seems because a lot of the most likely answers have been checked over and over again at the ER in the last month.

Especially my heart. By now, RGH has enough chest X-rays of me to mount an exhibition. I’m thinking…. fall 2023?

Assuming I am still alive by then, of course.

So what next? Crutches, wheelchair, or cane, just like before. All these options suck in their own very special way.

I want Professor X’s floating wheelchair, damn it. Unless it is powered by his amazing mental powers. In which case it would kind of suck as a wheelchair.

Let Jubilee keep it. Or give it to a Morlock.

Morever, specific mobility issues aside, I will not handle being helpless very well. I have far too high a need for autonomy for that. I will stubbornly insists upon doing things myself until I can’t even rise from the bed any more.

And even then it will drive me nuts. To say am used to doing things by myself would be an understatement. It would be easier to say I am not used to doing almost anything with anybody else.

That could make a transition to a legless life rather tricky.

Although to be honest, and this is staggeringly sad, maybe not as tricky as you might think. Truth is, I don’t use my legs a lot anyhow.

It would mostly complicate my feeding and elimination. Tragic.

Shit. Something just occurred to me. Some of my symptoms match those of low blood pressure. I could have the opposite problem I think I have.

Well, one of them, anyhow.

But over the last month my blood pressure has been tested dozens and dozens of times and it came out as high every single time.

So IDKWTFBBQ. I am going to need to have a deep think about this. It certainly feels a lot more like insufficient bloodflow than excessive, what with bits of me going numb, falling asleep, and tingling.

I will think it over.

More after the break.

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And we’re back

Still no idea what could make someone have high AND low blood pressure.

I mean, not at the same time, obviously. That would be too much.

But it gives you the flavour of what I am up against. All my blood pressure readings at the hospital were high. So I must be wrong about having low blood sugar.

Man I wish I had a way to test my blood pressure right now. Break the tie.

Oh well, whatever. I will continue staggering around as I am dragged backwards through the orifices of life, protesting feebly.

There is no rising without pain now. When I am lucky I can skip the dizziness, or at least the worst of it, but there’s is no escaping that bond-grinding pain.

Well, at least, not until I buy more Alleve, anyhow. That seemed to get things under control for a while.

Makes me wonder if the real problem is arthritis. Or some other inflammatory condition.

Today has been reasonably okay, at least after I got home after Wound Care.

Was funny seeing the old familiar Wound Care room after my three week antibiotic treatment vacation at Richmond General.

First thing I noticed was how quiet and peaceful it was. At RGH, even in Ambulatory Services, which has a big steel blast door type thing between it and the rest of the hospital, there’s always a hubbub.

More importantly, hospitals are always full of bad vibes just waiting to pounce on vibe sensitive types like me.

We suck that shit up like a Shop-Vac.

Like I say, I am the world’s only rationalist materialist mystic poet. To an outside observer, my combination of things like science and New Age speak. evolutionary psychology and modern anthropology, and astronomy and astrology might seem contradictory, but it’s all just knowledge to me.

As an intellectual elitist snob. I eschew all those sloppy pseudo-logical shortcuts favoured by the weak-witted masses.

But rest assured, groundlings, it’s not that I think I am BETTER than you.

Perish the thought.

It’s that I know I am SMARTER than you.

And that’s completely different!

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My are the words coming hard at the moment. I feel like I have been writing the last 100 words of this thing for the last hour.

Just 65 more words and I can lay back down and rest this benighted knee of mine.

Hopefully tomorrow Julian and I will make it to the Urgent Care place and I can get the ball rolling on fixing THIS crisis.

And while I am out there, I will get more Alleve.

Taking the bone hurty pain away should do wonders for my mood.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.