“There's a road to everywhere except where you came from.” Bryan Charles

“Miss you....and worry about you...and miss you....”

It's one hell of a brace for an atheist.

I hope you like my new Goodwill PJs.

I don’t like talking about my health endlessly, but enough people have inquired that I feel badly for not checking in sooner. I have written a few posts about other things, but didn’t use them because I don’t trust myself to make sense. I thought I had done pretty good on a business letter, at least, only to be so embarrassed by it later that I wouldn’t even make a phone call for days. My memory is shot, and my thoughts run in non-sequiturs that I’m unaware of until later when they don’t make sense even to me. Making sense of other people’s thoughts is just as hard. I can read an email repeatedly and come away with a different interpretation each time without being able to understand how I arrived at previous interpretations. I think the Fentanyl might be to blame. The drug makes me delightfully high when I increase the dosage, but after a day or two I can’t tell I’m stoned until I try to think clearly. 

I’m taking naps for the first time in my life, sometimes two hour naps, two and even three times a day, but I’m still sleeping good at night until the customary pain in my shoulders awakens me. I often go to sleep during the day even when I don’t want to, which is something I’ve never done. I’m down six pounds, and, for the first time I can remember, am going days between showers.

Any medical bills accrued in January, I’ll have the pay the first $4,000 of (I go on Medicare in February, so that problem will go away), so I’m determined to not go to any doctors until February. My back doctor offered to see me for free if need be, but I’m optimistic that it won’t come to that, because I’m not doing anything to hurt myself. The urologist said the thing on my left kidney probably isn’t cancer, but there’s no hurry if it is since kidney cancer usually originates in the kidney and grows slowly (I didn’t ask him why a cyst three inches across couldn’t be a sign of advanced kidney cancer). The crushed thumb is healing nicely except that my sensation of touch is abnormal. The last time I saw my internist, I wore a big wrist brace and an arm sling along with my back brace and the large thumb bandage. I did this as a joke, because the time before last when I saw him, I was there for a broken back; then a week later, I came in for a crushed thumb, and he had kidded me about what I might do to myself next.

When he saw me in my sling, the two braces, and a large bandage, he asked what the hell had happened, and I told him the following, “I got bored—what with a broken back and a crushed thumb—and went for a ride on my high wheel unicycle. I was doing okay until I came to a steep downhill, and a squirrel ran out in front me halfway to the bottom. I tried to dodge the squirrel, but there was still ice on the road from the big snow, so I lost control and broke my wrist and shoulder.” It was late on a Friday afternoon when I told him this, and he just stood there with his mouth open, obviously tired and clearly at a loss for something to say to someone so unutterably stupid. I saw that things weren’t turning out funny like I intended, so I let him off the hook, at which point he pretended to have been onto me all along.

I can do light housework (dusting but not vacuuming, straightening but not lifting, and so forth), but I can’t seem to get it together to do it because I know the job would be half-ass when I was done, and because I would be putting myself in a position where I was constantly having to hold back, and that would tempt me to push the limit. I can do work on the computer, but that makes me stir crazy after a while. I’m not supposed to bend over or lift more than five pounds, so that eliminates damn near everything that I would call real work. I feel like a woos for lying around all the time, but I’m clear that I could worsen my condition quite a bit if I overdid something, and that makes me afraid to do almost anything.

I wish I could at least enjoy the drugs more. Marijuana had gotten to where it was pushing me ever more deeply toward psychosis, so I stopped it about four months ago, and now even Fentanyl won’t get me high unless I take so much that it might kill me, or else I combine it with liquor or oxycodone. I can understand how a lot of people die from narcotics, not exactly on purpose but not exactly by accident either. Not that I’m there or anywhere close to there.

The back doctor says that I should come through okay, although I’ll never be as good as new, and I might have to live with intermittent pain. I’m used to pain, so pain per se doesn’t scare me. It’s rather a question of how much pain. I have a limit, but I think that’s true of anyone whether they realize it or not. Most people seem to think there are drugs that will greatly reduce any amount of pain, but they’re wrong, and, of course, drugs have their side effects, and they can be hard to come by, what with doctors running scared that the Feds will raid them if they prescribe more than some drug cop—who makes his living raiding doctors—considers appropriate. Fentanyl is top of the line, and I tolerate it well, so I’m lucky to have it, but I know I won’t be able to keep getting it, and that’s a little scary right now if only because of possible withdrawal symptoms.

My stratagem regarding narcotics is to get all I can while I can because I never know but what I can’t get them at all tomorrow, although I might need them more then than I do now (if you ever need them, and can’t get them, you become almost phobic of being without). I doubt that it’s generally known that most heroin addicts start with legal narcotics, and only turn to heroin when their legal supply is cut off, and they find that it costs more to buy legal drugs illegally than it does to buy heroin. The system is set-up to make people feel weak and dirty for needing narcotics anyway, so that probably makes the transition a little easier...

I’m tired of sitting here, so I’m going to take some oxycodone and clean house...I think it’s it fair to say that I’m pretty bummed about my situation, but, hell, it’s winter in Oregon, so I would be bummed anyway. It’s impossible for me to sort my feelings out cleanly.