Finally remembered to do my weekly Ozempic ^[1] injection, which I was supposed to do Tuesday but forgot until today, Thursday.

Oh well. Better late than never, in this case at least.

And it felt oddly good to do the injection. It felt… clean. Like I had done a very successful act of self grooming and now I feel all better.

Well it’s not self grooming but it is self CARE, so I suppose it falls under the same broad category of activity,

And it feels good to be able to do SOMETHING for myself. I have been so helpless and weak since the incident that led to my hospitalization last August.

To refresh your memory (and mine), this whole shebang started when I awoke from a late afternoon nap to find that my legs simply would not hold any weight.

They still had feeling, but the muscles just hung there like old, worn out rubber bands.

This struck me as bad.

So I called 911, and told them about it, and the ambulance came, and took me to the ER, and that’s what led to sixteen unpleasant days in the hospital with nothing to do but read, do crossword puzzles, and listen to my next bed neighbour Helmut be a total pain in the ass to all and sundry.

Including his long-suffering sister, who wondered why she bothered to come visit him when he was so difficult and demanding.

Dude was an asshole but I must admit, his antics entertained me. And I needed that desperately because I did not have my tablet yet.

Anyhow, they kept me there for sixteen days not because they knew what they were doing but because that’s how long it would take to complete the course of antibiotics I was on, which had to be administered four times a day.

That made doing the outpatient antibiotics thing impractical.

At no point did they have any idea what made my legs go boom like that. As usual, they checked all the usual things and when it was none of those, they shrugged and sent me home and moved on to more rewarding patients with easier to solve problems.

And that’s been the pattern ever since. Nobody gives a damn what it actually wrong with me. Not even my GP, who seems like a really nice guy but who does not appear to have the attention span or working memory space to stay focused on the problem for longer than one brief office visit.

I’m telling you, if I end up in the hospital again, I am going to be a nightmare to those fucking people becaue I am going to hold their nuts (or ovaries) to the fire until they actually do their job and figure out what the fuck is wrong with me.

I mean, I hate to have to be “that guy”, but I hate the idea of losing my ability to walk or breathe on my own out of politeness a hell of a lot more.

I will make them fear my wrath, if that’s what it takes to save what is left of my legs.

More after the break.

---

Stop trying to escape

“Well baby…. ” said Jonny to the smoky blonde bombshell in the bed beside him, “I’ve loved every minute of our time together, but you know I’ve got to keep moving on. A guy in my position can’t afford to stay in one place for too long. ”

“I know, Jonny. And believe me, I understand.”, she said. ” Just promise me you’ll try your best to be safe out there, okay?”

Jonny shined his killer smile on her. “Don’t worry, baby. Safety’s what I am all about.”

“I know. “, she said. “Oh, and can you do me a favour?”

“Yeah? What is it, baby?”

In a voice not quite her own, she said, “Stop trying to escape. ”

Jonny reacted instantly. He threw the remains of the orange juice he was drinking in her face, rolled off the bed into an alert crouch, kicked the glass out of her bedroom window, and dove through it onto her fire escape.

Once there, he descended the fire escape rapidly by eschewing the slow and clumsy stairs in favour of using the railings of each floor like a ladder he could shimmy down.

And as he did so, he barely even noticed that the giant billboard on the building opposite now showed a picture of the smoky blonde, orange juice dripping from her face, saying “Stop trying to escape” in a bold but sincere font.

Once in the alley below, he hid for exactly 88.3 seconds in a (thankfully clean) dumpster until he heard the all too familiar sound of a patrol car driving slowly through the neighborhood, PA system playing the usual loop of various people Jonny once knew and loved all imploring him to stop trying to escape.

When it got to his mother, tears in her voice, plaintively pleading for him to come on home, all is forgiven, I just want my baby to be safe, and so on, Jonny knew there’d be enough space between the patrols for him to cross the street, ascend three other fire escapes, cross half a dozen rooftops in a random zigzag pattern, and then suddenly duck into a tiny alcove created by a very subtle overhang on an ancient office building that Jonny had noticed on the way in.

Now he had some time to think.

As usual, his conscious thoughts came in a jumble of voices.

“Like my real mother would ever do something that maudlin. ” said one.

“:She almost had me fooled, ” said another wistfully. “They are getting really good at programming conversation into these things. ”

“But they all turn into robots eventually. ” said another, harsher voice. “No exceptions. ”

None of it was anything Jonny hadn’t heard a thousand times before. By now, their litany was soothingly familiar to Jonny, and so, like an old familiar record, Jonny listened to it to help him get to sleep.

And as he drifted off, he heard a childlike voice say, “But my name’s not Jonny. And they know that. ”

“So what?” he thought sleepily before the darkness overwhelmed him.

---

Woo! Fiction. That was hella fun to write.

I won’t promise to bring you more of that plot because we both know I probably will not. Suffice it to say that “Jonny” is not in reality as we know it.

And no. That’s not his real name.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.