Tag: health

Categories
life

Hail Eris!, it’s a different game of chance for once

CT scan of lungs showing a ground glass nodule of 10mm

i’m trying to quit vaping because my pulmonologist grimly insists it’s gonna kill me, and the context for this is that i do have a growing >1cm growth in my lungs that the doctor, of late, seems more panicked about than i am. My wife is panicking about this even more. Everyone in my family (except my fabulous SF queer icon uncle, who died of AIDS) (and my mom, who is a dead junkie) got their first cancers at almost exactly my age; they almost all eventually died of cancer (only my fabulous NYC queer icon uncle, who got his later, is still hanging on). I’ve been getting CT scans every 3 months for the past year (of which i guess i should have already been a little alarmed about the frequency), and now my Dr ordered a PET scan, which has just today been denied by my insurance (Caresource Ohio Medicaid).

Oh, right: i should mention i fully deserve whatever is happening, because i smoked 4+ packs of smokes a day for 23 years. (For the last 15 i’ve been exclusively and enthusiastically vaping, mostly my own tobacco-based DIY concoctions on a high-mid-shelf vape rig using voltage or temperature control on stainless steel coils and cotton wicking. I’ve steadily lowered the nicotine level to where it’s currently less than 1%. It’s the best setup. I highly recommend it, but only if you’re currently an addicted smoker.)

I only have a single close friend these days, and i’m leaning toward not telling her at all, ever. This is a little chancy considering i’m hitting publish on this little blog soon, which gets picked up by my social media, but IIRC it’s always just a link back to the post and nobody ever follows the link. I’m pretty sure nobody knows i even have a website. It’s ugly and illegible enough that anyone who ever finds their way here gives up before attempting to gouge out their eyes reading anything. Maybe it’s too risky, but maybe i should be selfishly asking people for some kind of support. I just absolutely hate to burden anyone. If you see this, B, god i’m so sorry. It’s all a lie. Experimental fiction. Please don’t read any more and don’t believe any of it. I’m just a drama queen. I’ve always been like this. Everything’s really fine. It’s actually very likely things will be perfectly fine very soon. No worries. Trust me. I’m lucky as fuck.

My poor anxious wife, the proof of my excellent luck and the only other person on Earth who knows about this, won’t stop freaking out about it all. To be very frank, it just makes me want to pick my ridiculously awesome Batman-grade vape rig back up and hotbox that fucker for an hour straight. I love her so much it nearly hurts, but unfortunately she loves me back just as much. I absolutely cannot stand the idea that i’m putting her through a bunch of my stupid horseshit.

My nerves are on a razor’s edge. I fight the black, terror-pregnant horizon taking up nearly all my inner vision just to look at something, anything else in my mind. I already just want to give completely the fuck up, go back to drinking heavily and using weird drugs, have a wicked laugh, and die, hopefully with something very grim and horrifyingly hilarious on my lips (if i can think of it). I outlived Douglas Adams and Jack Kerouac, so maybe that’s enough. I’ve already reached the point where even the dimmest sliver of beauty has youthfully (and perhaps rightfully) galloped beyond my grasp forever. What’s the future going to look like at this point, anyway? Certainly not *Star Trek*.

Maybe i’ll get pissed off about it and fight back, but right now i’m just too fucking beat by the last half century to do anything.

And maybe this will turn out to be nothing. Both bad luck and impossibly great luck (again, evidenced by my beautiful and witty life-mate Holly) have always walked just in front of me. I’ve skated by and (you better believe it) cheated death a million times already. Maybe this fucker will just shrink and go away and that’ll be the end of it. Who knows? Who knows.

I’m publishing this here just to scream into the void about it, because i know hardly anyone is going to take the trouble to click on a link on a barely-followed and even less-engaged-with social account and end up on this ancient and irrelevant, traffic-free blog reading this massive, whiney, woe-is-me diatribe. If anyone has read this far and wishes they hadn’t: look man, i’m sorry. Just ignore this. I’m just a drama queen is all. Don’t worry so much. This doesn’t mean anything and everything has a way of working out one way or another anyway. It’s just a minor health scare that’ll turn out to be nearly nothing. You have no idea how many times i almost didn’t see another day because i did something idiotic for kicks. This’ll be just like that, even to the extent that it’s all down to my reckless irresponsibility and total lack of ever having a full accounting handed to me with which at last to reckon. Probably i’ll just be bitching all the way to my 80s still, and finally get my number punched doing something stupid for one final laugh.

Sincerely, i’m sorry, but i just had to get all this bullshit off my chest before things get weird. I know everyone’s already got far more than plenty on their plates already. I’m not asking for anything. This really is just intended for posterity.

Categories
life

How i traded smoke for vapor

Here’s my tobacco harm reduction success story I shared at CASAA:

I started smoking around age 16; I am 41 now. When I quit smoking three years ago, I had been smoking for 22 years. That’s nearly a quarter of a century. In fact, that’s very close to a full third of my projected lifespan. For the first year, when I would run around telling people how I was “not addicted,” I would smoke a pack in a few days. By a couple of years later, I was smoking a pack a day. Within a couple more years, I was up to three and a half packs per day. At my peak, in my early twenties, I could easily be into my fifth pack of cigarettes by the time I went to bed. For the last several years of my smoking life, with great effort, I got myself down to about two packs a day. For the longest amount of time however – well over a decade – I averaged two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half packs a day.

I have on several occasions attempted to quit smoking cold turkey. This was always most convenient when I was sick with a flu. It never worked for more than perhaps a day at most. About seven or eight years ago, and over the course of the next few years, I tried lozenges (yuck!), gum (difficult to find cinnamon flavor), Chantix, nicotine patches, and so-called “zero-nicotine” cigarettes. Mostly, it was a combination of at least two, sometimes three, of these methods. The most I was ever able to completely live without smoking was a couple of days. I was a nervous wreck.

Finally, I decided to take a chance on a new idea. A personal nicotine vaporizer, also known begrudgingly as “e-cigarettes”. I can’t even remember where I got the idea or what I knew about them then. I did a ton of research into price-versus-effectiveness, and settled on a brand (Joye) and a vendor (Cignot) which seemed like a satisfactory and trustworthy combination and took the plunge with about $100 – roughly the cost of a week’s supply of Camel Filters. I got two medium-sized bottles of e-juice, a USB passthrough device, a car charger, a PCC (Personal Charging Case), and a box of two Joye 510 personal vaporizers, plus cartridges.

The moment I took it out of the box and assembled my vaporizer, I quit smoking tobacco. I am not kidding. Well, I tried it first. It felt like smoking. It really did. But it wasn’t. It was just delivering nicotine via atomized infused liquid. But the sensation – from the inescapable muscle-memory of hand-to-mouth which all smokers adhere to even after quitting, to the feeling in the back of my throat and in my lungs – was close enough to inhaling tobacco smoke (minus the coughing and burning and infamous “eye-hits” of the secondary smoke wafting about) that I did not have to light another cigarette ever again. I started at around 26mg nicotine; within a few months I got down to 18mg. Generally, I puff all day, when I am thinking about it. Often, I don’t even think about it; sometimes for an hour or more, such is the loosened grip of my addiction.

In one day, I quit smoking cigarettes completely. In three years, I have not had to smoke. I have smoked maybe five times since then, but only to see if I could discern a difference. I could. Compared to vaporized nicotine, burning tobacco was horrible. I could not believe I smoked up to five packs a day for over twenty years. So, maybe five times I tried to see what I had been doing. Five times I only got halfway into a cigarette before I was done. The last one was probably two years ago now.

The biggest changes since I stopped smoking in favor of the low-risk alternative of vaporization has been the lack of waking up with what I call “lead-lungs,” which for years daily caused me to self-medicate with that horrible subtly-pain-relieving smoking tobacco. Every morning I used to wake up and the first couple of cigarettes would eliminate the pain I felt breathing. Now I have zero pain in my chest.

I can smell things – including cigarette smoke, when it’s around (wow – sorry, non-smokers!). I also no longer burn holes in clothing or cars, or singe my hair, or accidentally set small fires by carelessly letting my cigarette burn unwatched in an ashtray. The stigma is gone. I’m no longer a social outcast because of my stupid “cool” addiction. In essence, I’m free, or nearly there.

I do still use my vaporizer frequently, but it’s causing me no perceivable negative health effects at all. If anything, I can run short distances again. As an asthmatic smoker, that used to be impossible. Exercise is something which is no longer practically impossible for me. It has changed my life in so many positive ways. And, as long as this method is legal and safe, I will never have to go back to the slow suicide of smoking, ever again.

Categories
life uncategorized

Who am i?

Lately i’ve been thinking of the central question which occupies all of us who seem to be lost: who am i? It’s something which, i think, every great person probably knows, or which every person who would like to have been great, once they reach their end, should know if they want to have accomplished anything at all in their lives. Now i am getting older, i find i need to know who i am, because i never really figured it out; hence, i never finished college and never collected any sort of work history which would qualify me as having ever had a thing like a career. So: who am i?

I have come to the conclusion that this important question boils down to two factors: what makes me who i am, and what is my hidden talent?

So, what makes me who i am? Is it the deaths of loved ones, which forever haunt my ravaged, ragged psyche? Is it that backpacking jaunt around Europe in my twenties? Is it my childhood passion for visual art, now long-since nearly entirely abandoned? Piano lessons, for fuck’s sake? Trips to Kansas with my grandfather to visit his Alzheimer’s-stricken father? What made me?

Was it discovering i’d been born of some woman whom i’d never met? What about when i finally met her, and learned she was a junkie? Does it involve the infant brother my mother killed, or the sister she abandoned to the father’s family?

What made me who i am? Was it my grandparents raising me in the absence of my alcoholic, often homeless father? Or the times he showed up and we rode his yellow ten-speed around before the police arrived to take him away from me again?

Does it have something to do with the period from my late teens to my early twenties, when i expanded my consciousness far beyond the usual, rational psychic horizon with mind-altering chemicals? Is it because i figured out, on long nights with friends, staring into a fire, that the universe is all one thing, and us humans merely a small part of that one single thing?

Is it the terrifying asthma (seemingly a hereditary gift from my father, who suffered from it so greatly it became part of what makes him who he is), or the terrible allergies, these things which caused me to practically grow up in Dayton’s Children’s Hospital, surrounded by doctors with names and specialties i still can’t pronounce?

Is it simply the odd quirk that i consciously avoid using the word “that” wherever possible because i view it as the most superfluous word in the English language?

Was it something terrible, or something wonderful? Is it something equally both?

Does one (the cause) have something to do with the other (the talent)?

When i was in my late teens, i noticed i had a gnashing pain in my left fourth finger. At the time, it took whacking it against, or with, something to make the pain appear. It was like a toothache then. Within a few years, it would be an on-and-off constant pain, triggered by anything from an imperceptible change in g-force to temperature/humidity changes, to tactile pressure. You could feel it, like a hard pea under the skin, although all you could see was a slight mound which you had to stare at to perceive. But the pain… I remember thinking there was no way any woman could feel much more than that during natural childbirth. The pain was sheer; it was literally mind-erasing. Many times i’d end up collapsed on the ground, writhing in powerful agony and curled into a fetal position, grimacing like a victim of some horrible wartime violence. The only pain reliever i’d ever found to have any effect at all was Orudis KT, which was discontinued in the U.S. just a few years after my discovery of it. Just as well; it was negligible at best.

For over twelve years i carried this thing around with me. There was rarely a day without intense pain. Eventually i nearly totally gave up playing the guitar, although i also re-strung a twelve-string guitar with six strings, leaving enough space between the strings so i could play a little bit more comfortably. When i did play, i played Django style, with two fingers, throwing in my fifth finger as a lame substitute for my fourth. I could in fact play nearly anything that way, and when i absolutely had no other choice, i even used that fourth finger.

But the guitar was my greatest love and i had to let it sit for far longer than i wanted, or needed, between playing sessions. That alone did a lot to kill my spirit.

I had to adapt a lot to avoid angering It. Most activities i performed with my left arm at my side, or held up on my belly if too much blood caused throbbing pain. Driving was easy; i’d just hang my left arm out of the window and use my right arm for steering. I lived in Florida for much of this time, and i drove an automatic – no big deal. But i could not endure rapid temperature changes or excessive humidity. I often even stuck my arm out of the shower. Vigorous activity was out of the question.

Often times i thought – very, very seriously, i’m afraid – of cutting my finger completely off. At least the tip. There were in fact many times i was so painfully desperate that the idea seemed absolutely plausible to me. I’d do it myself, if only i could figure out how best to do it, on a practical level. But i’d always back down from it in the end, because i knew damn well i’d be permanently left with one less finger, and most likely a lifetime of phantom pain to show for it regardless.

Early on, i went to see a “sports medicine” specialist, who happened to be the brother of a famous talk-show host. I only went to see him once. His conclusion, lacking any real evidence (i’d only had an x-ray to go on then), was i had tendinitis; his treatment involved putting my whole arm into a stainless steel tub filled with cold water, and plugging the fucker into an electrical outlet. Essentially. It’s called electro-galvanic stimulation. Only i shouldn’t have been stimulating the goddamn thing! This only angered It.

The drive home was… difficult.

From then (sometime around 1992 i believe) until around 2005 or so, i didn’t see any other doctors about it. I knew damn well it was not tendinitis. Eventually i figured i had gout. After all, avoiding certain foods seemed to cause less pain, or to extend the period between “events.”

But at some point, the pain was just too much to be constantly bearing. I finally went and had some good images taken and the verdict was far more accurate. I had a glomus tumor.

So i had the fucker cut straight out of my finger. The pointed, mind-numbing ache i’d felt for a dozen years was replaced for two weeks afterward by the searing pain of rent flesh. But i got over it and finally started playing guitar like a normal goddamned human being again (although i still often find myself favoring my other three fingers). The doctor said glomus tumors often grow back. It is. I can feel it; it feels much the same as it did when i first began to notice that that finger seemed to be slightly more susceptible to pain than any other. Oh well. At some point, i’m sure i’ll have to deal with it again. However, i know better now, and i will deal with it much faster this time around.

Oh yeah, my hidden talent: i can do nearly anything using only one hand. Not incredibly useful, you might think, but it comes in very handy when i have both hands full and need to, for instance, open a two-liter bottle while simultaneously holding it. I can’t think of any way to capitalize on it though, outside of being maybe an astronaut or something (but my eyesight isn’t good enough for that i’m sure, among many other flaws in my character, detriment, and intelligence).

So i guess, until something better comes along, that’s who i am. My one-sentence biography is that i am a guy who stupidly lived for over ten years with the most painful and debilitating tumor a person could ever have, and adjusted as best he could to it, and tolerated it about as much as a human being could, and ultimately overcame it to live a normally-abled life again.

I’m pretty sure whoever reads this will immediately want to get into a pissing match with me over it, whether consciously or not. “That’s like the time I hurt my leg” (not, it is not), or “It couldn’t have been worse than when i broke my arm in half” (i bet it could), or whatever. That was a time. Mine was close to fifteen fucking years of horrible blood-curdling pain. No doubt a great many people have had much, much worse to endure than i. However i am not interested in comparing or contrasting my personal hell with anybody else’s. (So if you even start in with it, be prepared for me to just get up and walk away, or to say something unacceptably impolite about it to your face.)

Everyone has had something happen; everybody goes through shit. This, i’ll warrant, is precisely why we should all be kinder to one another, to think about each other’s stories, to consider how our actions might affect somebody else who perhaps may be going through hard times and not be completely able to cope with things as well. Perfectly good, decent people who may not have even done anything to deserve having to go through things worse than one might be prepared to imagine. So take care, always, to think of other people as not only having to go through the same horrible shit you do, but also having to endure very personal hardships of their own. Everybody has an intimate relationship with some form of personal inner torture, whether physical or mental, or both. Walk softly. And carry a big heart. Perhaps some extra ibuprofen.

(Hopefully something better than this will come along.)

Categories
life

E-cigarettes, a rough intro

I recently had a friend ask me about electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes (known to their users as personal vaporizers). Actually, lots of people ask me about them. I switched from traditional (“analog”) cigarettes back in August, and basically haven’t smoked since.

Mainly people want to know if they’re cheaper. There’s really no question about whether they’re healthier. They’re not healthy, it’s just that they’re far, far less dangerous. Basically, a traditional cigarette contains thousands of chemicals, a couple dozen or so of which are known carcinogens. The fluid you vaporize in an e-cigarette generally contains just a few ingredients: nicotine (in varying strengths or it may even be absent), food flavoring, and either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin.

They’re extremely cheaper than regular cigarettes – however, there is an initial buy-in, and you do have to continually purchase replacement parts. I’d say that since August, i’ve spent maybe $200 – $250 in total on supplies. That includes extra parts (batteries, atomizers), fluid (what you “vape”), and accessories (some which i highly recommend having due to the extra convenience, some which are completely unnecessary but make vaping more enjoyable).

On the other hand, i was smoking 1-2 packs a day. One carton of crappy cigarettes in KY costs around $35 right now. That’s well over $100 a month right there, and that’s on the extremely LOW end – in practice, i was actually spending more like $160 a month; in Ohio that would have been over $200 every month! Compare that to the $200 or so i’ve spent on all kinds of crazy vaporizin’ crap in the past FIVE months!

HOWEVER, most people only think they spend $4.50 on cigarettes over the course of their entire lives, because that’s what a single pack costs them right now. Try to convince someone just how much they ACTUALLY spend and they just won’t believe you. But tell them they could spend all that money on something COOL (that still exists after one use), and they might pay a little attention. So, the price to start vaping scares the crap out of most smokers, unless they actually take the time to think about it and compare it to what they actually really spend on cigarettes.

The etailers i’ve used so far are:
http://cignot.com
http://avejuice.com
http://www.madvapes.com
http://route66vapor.com

I did lots and lots of research and wound up having extremely positive experiences with each one, especially Cignot, who are extraordinarily fast and helpful.

A great starter kit would cost around $35 (that’s for an “unboxed” Joye 510 model from Cignot), and that includes 2 batteries, 2 atomizers, and 5 cartridges, plus a wall charger for the batteries.

Extra batteries for the 510 model are ~$10. Batteries last a couple of hours, so eventually i splurged on a couple of batteries for the Joye eGo model (aka the Riva), which fits onto the 510 atomizer. They cost around $20 each. I just got it today and i can’t seem to make the damn thing die. It’s been well over 12 hours now. Batteries are said to last through around 300 charges or so.

Extra atomizers cost about ~$10. It’s always good to have a few on hand, as this is what makes the whole thing work. Atomizers should last around a month or more if you know how to take care of them. Many people complain that this is a big weak point and they often last just a few weeks before needing replaced. I’ve got a couple that i’ve had since August. It’s kind of a hassle to care for them, but i’m a cheapskate and don’t want to pay more than i have to!

Cartridges don’t really need replacing that often, but you can generally get a 5-pack for around $5 or so. Cartridges contain the fluid, and they need to be constantly refilled, but it’s not much more bother than taking out a cigarette and lighting it, and they should generally last a bit longer than a few cigarettes’ worth of time.

Fluid: this can vary pretty greatly. Expect to pay around $10 for a 10ml bottle, up to around $20 for a 30ml bottle. You can get different strengths of nicotine, and just about any flavor you can imagine (and i’ve seen some really, really weird ones). For me personally, i get ~18-24mg strength nicotine, and a 30ml bottle lasts me maybe a month or so.

As for accessories, i can’t recommend having a Personal Charging Case enough. These suckers will let you leave the house and still be able to charge your spent batteries while you’re on the go. One case can fully charge a battery about 3 times or so. That second battery comes in handy, but i recommend having at least three, unless you go with a big battery like the eGo. Then there are USB chargers, car adapters, and USB “passthroughs” (allowing you to hook up your vaporizer to a USB port and save your battery power). Then there are all the really crazy things like weird parts and add-ons and mod kits and stuff. Anything you can think of, somebody sells one, or the parts to make it yourself.

HOT TIP: never, ever buy from a kiosk at the mall, or in a convenience store. Those things they sell are HORRIBLE. And never get a “disposable” anything, ever. You pretty much have to buy this stuff online for now. Which is a great reason to stock up, because anything you run out of, you have to wait to have shipped!

For lots more information, see http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/

Hope this helps!

Categories
uncategorized

E-cigarettes, a rough intro

Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

I recently had a friend ask me about electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes (known to their users as personal vaporizers). Actually, lots of people ask me about them. I switched from traditional (“analog”) cigarettes back in August, and basically haven’t smoked since.

Mainly people want to know if they’re cheaper. There’s really no question about whether they’re healthier. They’re not healthy, it’s just that they’re far, far less dangerous. Basically, a traditional cigarette contains thousands of chemicals, a couple dozen or so of which are known carcinogens. The fluid you vaporize in an e-cigarette generally contains just a few ingredients: nicotine (in varying strengths or it may even be absent), food flavoring, and either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin.

They’re extremely cheaper than regular cigarettes – however, there is an initial buy-in, and you do have to continually purchase replacement parts. I’d say that since August, i’ve spent maybe $200 – $250 in total on supplies. That includes extra parts (batteries, atomizers), fluid (what you “vape”), and accessories (some which i highly recommend having due to the extra convenience, some which are completely unnecessary but make vaping more enjoyable).

On the other hand, i was smoking 1-2 packs a day. One carton of crappy cigarettes in KY costs around $35 right now. That’s well over $100 a month right there, and that’s on the extremely LOW end – in practice, i was actually spending more like $160 a month; in Ohio that would have been over $200 every month! Compare that to the $200 or so i’ve spent on all kinds of crazy vaporizin’ crap in the past FIVE months!

HOWEVER, most people only think they spend $4.50 on cigarettes over the course of their entire lives, because that’s what a single pack costs them right now. Try to convince someone just how much they ACTUALLY spend and they just won’t believe you. But tell them they could spend all that money on something COOL (that still exists after one use), and they might pay a little attention. So, the price to start vaping scares the crap out of most smokers, unless they actually take the time to think about it and compare it to what they actually really spend on cigarettes.

The three etailers i’ve used so far are:

http://cignot.com

http://avejuice.com

http://www.madvapes.com

http://route66vapor.com

I did lots and lots of research and wound up having extremely positive experiences with each one, especially Cignot, who are extraordinarily fast and helpful.

A great starter kit would cost around $35 (that’s for an “unboxed” Joye 510 model from Cignot), and that includes 2 batteries, 2 atomizers, and 5 cartridges, plus a wall charger for the batteries.

Extra batteries for the 510 model are ~$10. Batteries last a couple of hours, so eventually i splurged on a couple of batteries for the Joye eGo model (aka the Riva), which fits onto the 510 atomizer. They cost around $20 each. I just got it today and i can’t seem to make the damn thing die. It’s been well over 12 hours now. Batteries are said to last through around 300 charges or so.

Extra atomizers cost about ~$10. It’s always good to have a few on hand, as this is what makes the whole thing work. Atomizers should last around a month or more if you know how to take care of them. Many people complain that this is a big weak point and they often last just a few weeks before needing replaced. I’ve got a couple that i’ve had since August. It’s kind of a hassle to care for them, but i’m a cheapskate and don’t want to pay more than i have to!

Cartridges don’t really need replacing that often, but you can generally get a 5-pack for around $5 or so. Cartridges contain the fluid, and they need to be constantly refilled, but it’s not much more bother than taking out a cigarette and lighting it, and they should generally last a bit longer than a few cigarettes’ worth of time.

Fluid: this can vary pretty greatly. Expect to pay around $10 for a 10ml bottle, up to around $20 for a 30ml bottle. You can get different strengths of nicotine, and just about any flavor you can imagine (and i’ve seen some really, really weird ones). For me personally, i get ~18-24mg strength nicotine, and a 30ml bottle lasts me maybe a month or so.

As for accessories, i can’t recommend having a Personal Charging Case enough. These suckers will let you leave the house and still be able to charge your spent batteries while you’re on the go. One case can fully charge a battery about 3 times or so. That second battery comes in handy, but i recommend having at least three, unless you go with a big battery like the eGo. Then there are USB chargers, car adapters, and USB “passthroughs” (allowing you to hook up your vaporizer to a USB port and save your battery power). Then there are all the really crazy things like weird parts and add-ons and mod kits and stuff. Anything you can think of, somebody sells one, or the parts to make it yourself.

HOT TIP: never, ever buy from a kiosk at the mall, or in a convenience store. Those things they sell are HORRIBLE. And never get a “disposable” anything, ever. You pretty much have to buy this stuff online for now. Which is a great reason to stock up, because anything you run out of, you have to wait to have shipped!

For lots more information, see http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/

Hope this helps!

Categories
uncategorized

i am hurty

Well, the puncture wound on top of my thumb is nicely infected. I’m going to find someplace to treat it before it gets worse. I keep checking my inner arm to see if a red stripe appears along the path of my blood vessels which would indicate blood poisoning, which is not incredibly likely at this stage.

Unfortunately, i’m not insured, so this will cost more than i can probably afford right now.

Next time you’re railing against socialized medicine, think about me. If you’re truly committed to fighting universal health care, then i want you to wish with all of your might that i had died today from the infection spreading to my bloodstream.

Categories
life local uncategorized

latest events

  • House suddenly infested by trap-avoiding mice.
  • Found new house in Huffman Historic District; will probably take it. Rent much higher.
  • Lungs shot to shit. Quitting smoking.
Categories
creative current events life local memories music uncategorized

stuff and things

Holly- we went to the ER a couple of weeks back. She’s back on insulin. She’s been really up and down a lot lately. It’s rough for us both, but i can’t imagine having to be her and go through that. She’s getting better, though.

Music- i’ve been making music again. Funny thing is, i started trying to rework a 10 year old song of mine that i’ve always loved that i’ve never been able to get a good recording of. It’s a dark ballad about love gone badly wrong; very much in the Afghan Whigs tradition. I did arrange a brand new piano part for ambience, but stranger than that is that i was fooling around and stumbled onto a new chord that just completely breathes new life into a chorus part that was definitely in danger of being a little too comfortably numb. I changed a G to a Em/G in the third position, like a Cmaj7 but with a G root. I think it saved my song. I’ll have a recording of that in a few days.

Residence- we have yet to meet the new owner of the house we’re living in. We’re dealing with some tough issues with that. Like what happens if he decides that we’re not paying enough rent to live in a crummy but huge house? What if he wants us out right away? We have no idea what our near future holds with regard to our living situation. And that blows, big time.

Locally- It’s been so hot here that the glue holding the rear-view mirror onto the windshield of my grandpa’s Alero has melted and the mirror fell clean off!

Categories
family life uncategorized

terrible happiness

My grandfather’s back home now. We’re all, basically, on Death Watch. He’s home; home to die. I hope he knows he’s home, anyway.

He is now beyond being able to communicate. I remember this part all too well from when my dear sweet Grandma was at death’s door. It’s the most frustrating thing. You sense that they want something but have no way to determine what and give it to them.

Not only that, but it seems like my grandfather is thinking on an infant level. Maybe not; in a way, though, that would be preferable. I hate the thought of him knowing full well the extent of the damage to his verbal and motor skills. But the oxygen deprivation from last Thursday’s terrible ordeal virtually guarantees that he’s brain damaged.

It’s horrifying, and heart-shattering, and there’s not a god damned thing that anybody can do.

The poor guy has been through so much. To think that he’s laying there with his ribs all broken, just fading out, piece by piece… I’m completely heartbroken.

Sometimes, when he’s awake, he’ll just stare and stare at you. No words. No words. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he knows who I am. My bud, my lifelong best friend, my teacher and mentor… is he in there somewhere?

So I’m trying to get on FMLA so I don’t lose my job. After giving them 50 hours of every week of my time, I have earned a whopping $0.30 raise, which I do need, since Dayton-area employers seem to think it’s completely fair to pay a person with over 10 years of call center experience $9 an hour. Unfortunately, I have to prove that he was my legal guardian.

Much easier said than done.

So I’ve been digging through countless drawers and boxes of memories. Ever have a moment of terrible happiness? That’s seeing a picture of my grandparents, young and sweet and smiling, knowing that one is gone forever, and the other is leaving soon.

My grandparents raised me, so this has been exactly like losing parents to me.

But I cannot prove it.

I think that I am going to lose my job very soon.

What could be worse than that?

I know that I am going to lose my grandpa very soon.

Categories
family life uncategorized

Grandpa’s pain

Today was another mostly shitty day.

My grandfather was due to be taken to Hospice at around 1pm. Getting up around noon, I didn’t want to show up at the hospital just to turn around, pay $2 parking (let’s remember that I really have no income right now), and leave again. So I waited around at home for the call to action.

Finally, at 6:30pm, he was moved. I could have been at the hospital the whole time with my family. So that was irritating, and now I feel guilty for something I didn’t even cause.

At hospice, he was settled in and Holly and my uncle Kent and I went out to get Subway. We came back and finished our food. I went out to smoke and came back to find Holly sitting in the dining area alone. We went to my grandfather’s room and this is what we found:

The door was shut. After knocking lightly, I opened the door and beheld four Hospice staff and my dear uncle standing around in some vague state of chaos. Here’s what was going down:

They needed to change the dressing on his wounds (he’s got pressure sores – essentially bedsores, having been in bed for pretty much the last 2 1/2 years), and had just given him morphine so they could roll him over to change them without excessive pain. Remember that he’s got multiple cracked ribs from chest compressions, when the doctors in the ICU brought him back to life a few days ago.

So the bones in his chest are probably killing him when they do this. They’ve got to be. I heard him loudly moaning. “Oahh! Ooh! Aaahh! Oooah! Ohh!”

So what’s the problem, exactly?

My father and, mostly, my uncle want him to not have morphine. My uncle made no friends in that room tonight. He was aggressive. I do not blame him for that, since many health care workers have failed us terribly in the past. Still…

I’m not at all certain what alternative they want, exactly, because my uncle tonight did not want to elaborate with me on the other side of that coin. He only wanted to emphatically and adamantly defend his position that Grandpa NOT be given morphine.

At the end, after trying to voice my understanding of things, he simply walked off. I told him: “I’m not trying to fight with you or anything, I only want to understand all of this.” This he would not hear.

He said that Grandpa made more noise when they were moistening his nose. I remember: “Dad, dad!” It was not as loud. It was not a horrifying sound. Not like when he was being turned over. “Ohh! Aaaah! Ooooh! Aaa-ooh! Ohh!”

He would not hear anything that I had said. It was Know-It-All vs. Know-Nothing. Many times, my voice goes unheard, or, worse, talked over. I am not to be taken seriously in any opinion that I give. This fact has been presented to me in practice many, many times in the past, and in the present. I’m just this perpetual sixteen-year old kid.

I used to wonder why I felt so inconsequential, so ineffectual. I have been treated like this all my life. One thing leads to another, and soon enough everybody else does it, too.

(I am a densely angry thirty-five year old man. I understand more about people, and about the way the universe works, than anybody else I know, including the blow-hards who only claim to know. I understand the great “mysteries” of life. (There is no mystery, only cause and effect. There are only events, in varying orders, at various frequencies. People behave according to their chemicals, steered by their recorded experiences.) I can do any task presented before me, and have proven this many times over. I am tougher than many. The things that I have seen and experienced, other people only emptily brag about. I am far more powerful than I let on – I am only weak because I am not usually brave enough to try.)

So I left, too. I walked right out of that place, and I drove home. I wanted to smash something. Had Holly not been in the car with me, I would have driven fast and crazy and mad. When I got home, I changed into shorts and a tank top and ran as hard as I could. I found an abandoned shopping cart and threw it to the ground: “chank!” I punched a street sign: “smak!” I wanted to beat the holy living hell out of something – to break something, anything into tiny little pieces. I broke nothing, and maybe that means something, or not.

The more I think about it – and why not think about it? What I think doesn’t matter! – the more I think this: “So what if he’s stoned out of his poor, already-crippled mind for a couple of hours, every other day or so?”

Think about having your ribs broken. Then think about having someone forcibly roll you onto your side. Think about the raw, cracked bone rubbing up against bone, under your meat. Surely bone, muscle, and sinew must all scream with pain!

One good thing: possibly the only coherent sentence my grandfather spoke today was when he looked at me and said, “I love you.” That was maybe the sweetest moment of my entire life.

Categories
family life uncategorized

the long goodbye…

spent something like the last 20 hours in the ICU. grandfather: “help me” – phlegm, breathing rattley; some suction helped little. not oxygenating enough (level should be ~100; under 90 not good, under 85 bad – he was dropping to low 80s). concern raised: due to leukemia problems=platelet count low, trache tube could be fatal if laceration occurs. had to wait outside for several extraordinarily tense minutes. dad on his way. Doctor comes out, says they got the tube in his throat, but his heart stopped. he died. they revived him with CPR, breaking ribs (par). oxygen level bottomed out at 45.

my god how i cried and how i loved.

that fighter, that ox, that superhumanly strong man – his vitals are god damn near normal and have been for several hours. that is exactly like him, too. i hold no great hope, though.

need sleep now will return to hospital later.

you=regret nothing starting now!

Categories
family life uncategorized

My Grandfather’s long boat, sinking downly

My grandfather is exhibiting end of lifecycle signs. My dad told me last night that he’s been having some rapid breathing episodes, among other things, which some nurses have agreed are signs.

Signs never have good news. It’s always warnings, bad portents of some sort. “Don’t come here,” “Ingredients: poison,” “Keep away,” “Bad juju involved,” “No more running over retarded children allowed,” “The end is nigh!” and the like. You never see a sign that says “Today is not so bad when you think about it, is it?” or “Welcome invaders!”

Last night we had him ambulanced to Grandview for uncontrollable bleeding around his feeding tube and congestion, which the hospital now tells me is pneumonia. My work is probably not going to let me take any additional time off, but we’ll just have to wait and see. My grandfather was my primary father figure in childhood and until he took off later on, raised me with my grandmother, who died about six years ago now (i was there when she left).

Between being overworked and working over to compensate for the expenses we have with an uninsured diabetic, Holly and i have not been able to be around my grandfather much. On my days off, i have been taken over by an unshakable funk which prevents me from leaving the apartment, much less going over there. Plus, there’s some guilt and shame for not having more time off to help my father and grandfather, and the general weird vibes re: his caretakers, who are all very nice; it’s just that i really wanted him to have licensed health care professionals, from an agency, people who could take shifts so nobody would have to sleep on the job – but we’ve had so many complications in that department. So there’s a lot of complicated feelings swirling around within me, not the least of which is a deep, deep feeling of regret for not having spent more time with him, especially back when he was more coherent.

One last thing: it’s been utterly, utterly heartbreaking watching his health decline. He is so incredibly skinny now. I mean you could wrap a single fist around his thighs, for fuck’s sake. I’ve always known him to be this big strong powerful (and cogent) ox of a man. Now he thinks it’s 1975 and he’s not sure what the President’s name is, and looks as frail and helpless as an infant.

These next few weeks are going to be pure, absolute hell no matter what.

Categories
current events memories uncategorized

Marijuana vs. Alzheimer’s: FIGHT!!

Marijuana May Slow Alzheimer’s

THC, the key compound in marijuana… blocks the formation of brain-clogging Alzheimer‘s plaques better than current Alzheimer’s drugs.

Janda’s team found that THC blocks an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase, which speeds the formation of amyloid plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

The Alzheimer’s drugs Aricept and Cognex work by blocking acetylcholinesterase. When tested at double the concentration of THC, Aricept blocked plaque formation only 22% as well as THC, and Cognex blocked plaque formation only 7% as well as THC.

I’m not a marijuana smoker, but I do believe that it is just plain stupid to maintain its currently illegal status. We smoke cigarettes, which do nothing for us but kill us in the end, or at least reduce our life span; we drink alcohol, which makes us stupid and often violent, impairs our reflexes, and causes cirrhosis of the liver. Cannabis has shown time and time again that it is a valuable plant which should absolutely be legalized. Having had a great grandfather who had Alzheimer’s, I’ve seen first-hand what a truly horrifying thing that disease is (note: not “can be,” it simply “is”). If there’s a better-than-with-current-drugs chance that I may be able to stave off the potential onslaught of a slow, mind-reducing, soul-killing, life-crushing disease like that, I may just start toking myself. Better yet, I may start eating the stuff. Trust me, there are very few things worse than dying over a period of several years from a disease which eventually completely eradicates all memory and personality from a human being’s life.

Screw glaucoma (which I may one day develop as well), I want to see more research on this!

Categories
internets media uncategorized

Video: evolution

Dove video, Evolution: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”

Cheers to that! Above link is a video of a beautiful but freckled model being made up beyond recognition, then photomanipulated to look like… well, to look like the image that we hold up as the standard for beauty for women. The bar is a little on the high side, don’t we think? I absolutely applaud this campaign. The industry in which I currently find myself laboring within could certainly use a little dose of reality. Ok, a whole hell of a lot.

Every day, I see the signs of a scarred self-image in the clients with whom I do business, and I am unnerved by it by much more than a little bit.

Women! Stop doing this to yourselves! You already ARE beautiful! It is necessary to eat healthy; it is unnecessary to starve and try to uphold yourself to a standard which is literally impossible to meet. Who do you fool but yourselves? Who will love you less, who deserves your love in return?

Categories
current events media memories

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson, extraordinary thinker and writer of such classics as the Illuminatus! Trilogy and Cosmic Trigger, is not doing so well these days. He’s currently under hospice care at home with his family. Unfortunately, he is not as well off as you or I would like to believe. You can PayPal his account at [email protected] to help with his financial burden.

Categories
family life Speck uncategorized

How to dismantle an atomic bomb?

Holyfuckingshit! 7am, Holly vomits. Blood sugar way low. Run around getting shit to test & raise her blood sugar.

Minutes, and i mean mere minutes later, the dog starts puking up what smells like really nauseating, pungent poo, with pieces of dog food and plastic and things I never saw him ate and cannot identify. And again. And again. And again. Lather, rinse repeat. Ad, no pun intended, nauseum. And diarrhea. And more and more vomiting.

I feel like a fucking atom bomb was dropped on my head. Battle stations! Brace for impact! Emergency power!

My fingers are sore and my stomache is hurting, I’m exhausted and I’m stressed out and I’m sure my blood pressure’s high; I feel like i’m falling apart. And I’m the only one here who’s in good shape these days!

Categories
family friends life uncategorized

Holly: ER2 update

Holly went to the ER the other day with a high blood sugar level of three hundred and something. She only spent maybe 3 hours there and came home with a new plan (twice the insulin dose) and has been feeling much better since.

Categories
family friends life uncategorized

and…

back to the ER we go…

Categories
family friends life uncategorized

Holly is home!

Holly’s home. She’s doing so much better but isn’t 100% yet. If i had to pin it down, i’d say she’s about 66.2%, give or take about 1.3% or so. Roughly.

We had a tough time today. Since my blood pressure is somewhat high, i’m just going to cut open an artery and let it vent for a little bit and hope that you, good reader(s), don’t mind too much. Maybe you can even empathize.

2 pm: I get to the hospital about ten minutes after they told her she’d be released. Maybe an hour later, i’d stepped outside for a cigarette. When i got back, there were suddenly about 6 or 7 whitecoats standing around her bed, brandishing clipboards menacingly. I’d missed most of the sermon, so i’m of little help now and have to do a lot of reading. Their leader advised her that they’d need to get a quick blood sample from her before she left so they’d be ready for her appointment on Monday. The throng exited as one shortly thereafter.

Another hour and a half passed before a nurse came in and said that they already had blood from earlier that day that they would use and that we hadn’t needed to be waiting all that time. The lab rats (probably Umbrella Corporation sleeper agents), from their cavernous, heavily fortified underground lair deep beneath the hospital, never called the nurse to inform her of this fact. Being the messenger (and thereby the bearer of bad news), we shot her dead on the spot and ran out of there as fast as our little legs could carry us.

We got to the pharmacy a short time later. I was starving, but i acquiesced to Holly’s unreasonable demand for insulin. She is, after all, a diabetic, i suppose. Here’s what happened at the pharmacy:

First (to back up just a tad in order to give some indication of the trouble that was to follow soon enough), we found that the hospital had greedily stolen her temporary insurance card. I’d noticed most of the staff eyeing it covetingly, then glancing at us with great contempt, finally turning back to stare, drooling, at her little 2×3 piece of the American Health Care Industry Pie. Each of them followed the exact same pattern and had the same hungry, insurance-card-addled look in their hollow little eye sockets. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now that i know for sure that there are indeed addicts working there, you bet your ass i’m going to report it to the FBI.

Needless to say, we got to the pharmacy, dropped off the prescription, and then had to trek back to the apartment to print another insurance card. The printer, obviously, jammed on us, leaving us with a crooked, besmudged piece of crap that no pharmacist, in their right mind or not, would (or indeed should) have taken. Luckily, the pharmicists were all definitely drug addicts and definitely not of the correct mental state required to do their job within the boundaries of good sense, as evidenced by this next bit, and by the fact that they were all shaking and jerking violently, and babbling in some foreign moon-speak among themselves.

Then… the idiot girl taking the prescription couldn’t spare the mental resources to navigate the tricky, tricky phone prompts while calling Holly’s new insurer. Since she couldn’t verify the coverage, she simply handed the card back to us and advised us of her incompetent state, albeit more vaguely than that, and not in so many words. She also made a big damn deal about not knowing what brand of lancets the doctor had prescribed, telling us as much as that she was entirely without the power to ask us if we knew what brand monitor we, obviously, already had. We showed them the monitor and explained that that wasn’t a big problem, but that we needed to get test strips and couldn’t find any; so being that Holly’s a newly diagnosed diabetic and since they must have them behind the counter, would they please give us more information? Not hearing this, they continued bickering about the godforsaken lancets.

Holly called the insurance “people” [citation needed] and straightened everything out, telling the pharmacist that she has to be reimbursed and that her coverage is only for $100 a year anyway. I wish like hell that the previous sentence was just some kooky hyperbole, but it’s not. Holly plunked down $160 and we were on our way to grab some quick dinner and head the hell home.

Except that we didn’t get the test strips. The god damn test strips that every diabetic from Moses to B.B. King must have to keep an eye on their blood sugar level. The things that keep a diabetic away from the brink of danger. The things we already made a big deal about, while they were busy making a big deal about jack shit.

We got the test strips. $95 for 100 of ’em. It wasn’t pretty, but we got them all right. Don’t tell Homeland Security you read anything here about the, uh, incident that happened at the Walgreens in Bellbrook, ok?

Categories
current events family friends life uncategorized

More Stem Cell sites…

Stem Cell Action Network
http://www.stemcellaction.org

Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research
http://www.stemcellfunding.org/