Tag: health

Wobble Like Crazy

I’m back in the writing space following some unpleasant medical issues. In the last three days, I’ve averaged two thousand words each. It’s delicious to feel like I’m moving forward, no matter how word counts fall upon the writing spectrum in regards to their importance. I didn’t plan any word counts but they’re proof of something happening, a minor validation that I’ve been doing more than daydreaming.

After some arguing with the muses, me interrogating them to explain every thread, decision, and insight, and them laughing at me, I followed their instructions to, “Just write.” Some of the writing could be permanent but some of it might be delicately sculpted away or blown away with heavy explosives. Doesn’t matter. What I’ve written before during other writing projects may not help me this time. Each time that I write another novel, it’s a new adventure in learning how to be a better writer. I must write to have the material to shape, an interesting cycle. Write, edit, write, re-write, write, revise…where am I?

Well, I’m on the novel-writing spectrum. I slide along, following paths, retracing, forging new paths, falling off cliffs, and climbing back up. So it goes until there’s finally enough coherency for a novel to take shape, and then, finally, enough satisfying story in a reasonable order arrives, and then, at last, I pick a place where it can be comfortably ended with reasonable reward for readers who ventured through my thicket of words.

Can you say run-on?

I’m permitted a cup of coffee a day. I apply my allowance to my writing.

Illness is depressing, not because I have it, but because of its limitations. Bending down to pick up a piece of paper, scratch a cat’s chin, or put on my shoes and socks is slow and tedious and brings a measure of stinging discomfort. Walking remains uncomfortable and difficult, but not impossible. Of course, I have a history of rushing the healing processes. Press on, regardless, right? When I had a broken neck on Okinawa and wore a halo device, I pushed to go back to work and ended up dislodging that metal mother twice, sending me back into hospital. Anyway, I wobble around at a slow and careful pace, watching the ground to find the threads and seeds that the muses leave, then trying to parse their guidance.

Yeah, just write, baby. Stop critiquing, doubting, wondering, fearing, worrying, and questioning. Just get ‘er done. Pitter-patter.

Done writing like crazy for at least one more day. Sloshy, my drain-collection bag resting against my calf, is filled. Time to wobble on and empty him.

0

A Modified Process

I live now with a catheter in my bladder, draining my urine into a bag that I drain several times a day. I have a night bag and a leg bag. The holding bags and their tubes offer their own challenges about swapping and draining them. Given the catheter’s retention location on my upper thigh, it also makes bowel movements an interesting exercise. Bending and walking are also problematic.

Getting the catheter in was an experience. Living with it is another. Having it helps me respect the medical events and treatments that people endure. I’ve had it good as such things go. Although they sound like they’re something — broken and displaced wrist, broken neck, stitches in my skull, ear lobe stitched back on, hernia, toe-tip cut off by a lawnmower, bronchitis, mono, broken ankles, broken teeth, etc. — they’re small things in the greater order of existence and endurance. Better, they’re temporary, with end dates.

Our warfare kills on large, constant scales, and the warfare results in people without limbs, scarred by burns, and shattered by trauma. Many people endure chronic or terminal diseases, relentless illnesses that erode their strength and energy, chipping away from who they were and what they could do, haunting them until they’re dead. Others are abused and betrayed, resulting in destroyed mental and emotional faculties. Others are born with handicaps and genetic deficiencies. I’m fortunate. My afflictions are short-lived and allow me to observe and learn from them.

This catheter is expected to be in me seven to ten days. It impacts my writing process because I can’t walk as I’ve done for lo these several years. Yet, I have to write. I must find a way to sit down and put words into the computer. I’ve not written in four days. The need doesn’t go away. It builds as the muses feed ideas that I explore. Scenes explode into my mindscape. Dialogue is heard.

I originally developed the write and walk process to enable my writing efforts in my military career’s final year. I expanded on it when I was working for startups, and then for Tyco and IBM, the companies that swallowed the startups, carving out time for myself and putting writing as a higher priority in my daily to-do list. I needed a process to remove me from sales, marketing, and product development, and put me in a frame of thinking to create fiction.

A new process is needed because the dream and desire to write remains. Got my hot tea. I’m in my home office. A cat is snoring nearby. Another is asleep on my feet. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Personal Daily News

Awoke at two in the morning with some issues with urinating, went to the hospital at seven, was referred to another hospital at nine, and was discharged and home with catheter in my bladder by one fifteen.

When I awoke at two, I was thirsty. Had a drink and a pee. The pee was problematic because it was a tiny trickle. Drank more water shortly after that, and entered a prolong state of tiny trickles and increasing pain. The pain was in my lower back, flank, and groin, and shut down my ability to sit or stand in comfort. I headed to the hospital with my wife shortly before seven.

Once there, I went into emergency care. I stripped naked, put on a backless hospital, and introduced to a bed. A bladder scan showed my bladder holding eight hundred plus CCs. A full bladder is about one hundred CCs.

My blood pressure was two-thirty over something. A pain med was injected into my right ass cheek by my hip, and an anti-nausea med was given. Attempts were made to enter my bladder with a catheter. First, a size sixteen was employed. It was painful having a catheter pushed up my urethra through my penis. Everyone kept telling me, “Breathe through it.” My wife said, “Pretend you’re giving birth.”

The med team met a wall which appeared to be an enraged prostate gland. The sixteen wouldn’t go into the bladder, but I pissed out a bunch during the attempt. A new bladder scan showed I was down to six hundred CCs. Between that reduction and the pain meds, I was comfortable, and my BP was down to 180/130.

With a numbing agent first injected into my urethra, another attempt using a smaller catheter was made, and failed, and resulted in some bleeding from my penis. The fourteen size catheter lacked the strength and rigidity necessary to reach the bladder. Consulting me, they decided to try another sixteen. This time, a doctor would try. After having the same results, a call was made to a urologist at a sister facility and a transfer referral to the other hospital’s emergency room was issued. I then puked several times. More anti-nausea meds were given via an IV. I was discharged forty-five minutes later.

It was a ginger walk back to the car.

I’d been warned to keep my eyes closed during the thirteen mile drive to avoid nausea. I ended up retching five times once I was in the next emergency room. My stomach didn’t have material to puke.

One again, I was led to a room, took everything off, and put on a backless gown. A new bladder scan showed I was down to five hundred eighty-three CCs of urine in my bladder, but I wasn’t having any pain, thanks to the meds. BP was lower. A new attempt to reach my bladder was attempted. This time we went up to a twenty. Yowza, that hurt. It failed, but more urine was drained out. Hurrah. A urologist arrived with a plan to put a camera up my urethra to see what was going on and determine why they couldn’t reach my bladder.

I was given Fentanyl. The plan was a long, messy, and painful effort, but attempt number five worked in the end. A guide wire was introduced. The guide wire managed to reach the bladder. With it and the camera in place, a catheter was inserted. At last, my bladder was emptied. After that, a nurse gave me my new tube and bag with instructions on how to use it. I was given a cloth to clean up and then dressed. As before, my bed and garments were soaked.

That was my morning and early afternoon. Back home, I tested my movement limits while my wife made me a small meal of scrambled eggs with toast. We joked about how little my poor pecker had looked during these procedures, and how many strangers had handled it that day. I drank twelve ounces of water, ate, and then explored my new catheter and bag arrangement. Some fluid was in my bag, but more was in my tube. Gravity wasn’t letting it empty into the bag. Removing the bag and tube and examining it, I realized it the bag was reversed, which pinched off the receiving end. I fixed that, and now have a steady flow going into the bag.

Through it all, my med team were professionals and polite. They communicated with me about everything, constantly apologized for my pain, and checked on me. Most supporting and powerful, though, was my wife. She made a huge difference by being there with me throughout the day, talking to me, holding my hand when possible, or rubbing my feet.

All this curtailed any writing and walking efforts today. That’s the downside. The upside is that I’m not in any pain, although there’s a small pain where the catheter is in my bladder and bending over and walking have their difficulties. I should have this out in ten days, and then will proceed with addressing the prostate issue.

5

Less than Six Degrees

They — you know who they are — are always talking about how closely we’re connected. Here’s close for you. You cough from your chest, spewing out air, phlegm, and sputum, and at the same time, you fart, and a little urine squirts out of your urethra.

That’s connected.

1

“This coffee tastes like piss.”

I wonder, as many probably do, how my piss tastes. I also pondered whether I’d ever eaten my boogers as a child. Mom has never mentioned it, but many children do, and I was a child who did a lot of things because I was curious.

I’m not sure how I feel about eating baby feces.

This isn’t a gross-out post. Honestly. Perhaps it is, from your point of view. That’s why I bring it up, not to gross you out, but to bring the subjects into the light.

The three subjects, tasting urine, eating boogers, and eating baby poop, are part of a larger subject, the human body, and trends. Thinking about them came from conversations and reading. I finished reading An Instance of the Fingerpost this week. Book One is about a doctor. He mentions tasting people’s urine as part of the examination process in the sixteen hundreds. Yes, I remember from other reading, doctors tasted urine when they were examining patients long before the sixteen hundreds.

I don’t think many doctors do that these days. Most people are probably horrified about it, but I dipped my finger into my stream this morning and gave it a lick. I thought, why not? I’ve tasted my blood, sweat, and tears before, because I wanted to know how they tasted, so why not my pee?

I have ideas about how urine should taste, based on statements like, “This coffee tastes like piss.” I’ve read a few things about it, and we’d discussed it once while talking about survival training. Today’s piss reminded me of a bitters beer. I don’t know if that’s normal. An ongoing cold and head congestion are sabotaging my taste experience this week.

That done, I turned to the question of eating boogers. A friend, talking about his grand-daughter, mentioned that she often picked her nose and not infrequently ingested her boogers. Another friend present, a retired doctor, talked about that and said that some booger eating can be beneficial.

That second person is also the one that talked about eating baby feces. He and I had read about probiotics in infants’ fecal matter, and he’d read other periodicals about how a small amount of baby poop could be therapeutic restoring digestive systems. I pondered what kind of beer or wine would go with baby poop.

Well, I didn’t eat a booger, and I haven’t sampled baby feces yet, that I know. Tasting my piss was my step forward today.

 

4

Another Complaint

I’m one of those people who look into the hankie or tissue after I blow my nose.

Apparently, this offends or horrifies some people. The very idea of blowing their nose seems terrible, terrible, to them.

I’m surprised. That stuff coming out of my nose offers clues about what’s going on inside my body. As often as my body frustrates me with its secrets, I need to do everything I can to find clues about what it’s up to.

It’s the same thing about having a bowel movement and checking out what’s in the can afterward, but I won’t go there. I can already imagine the horror spreading across the net. Then there’s menstruation, which I’m sure has many crying, “Enough!” I don’t menstruate but I’ve learned from my wife that menstruating can offer a lot of clues to what’s going on inside.

Admittedly, I had a hard time considering it when she was menstruating. Yes, it was blood, and that was part of it, and it’s coming out of her was another part of it, and from that body part contributed to my initial discomfort and revulsion. Then I started thinking, why did I react like that?

We really need to re-think how we socialize ourselves about our bodies and its processes. Some steps have been made. Everybody Poops has been out for years. Period. End of Sentence., a film about menstruation, won an Oscar this year. So, yes, progress is evident, but we’ve got a long way to go.

Next: “Let’s Talk About Farting”

 

3

Friday’s Theme Music

Was singing to my cats yesterday, “I got the rockin’ pneumonia, and the kitty-cat blues,” a flex on the lyrics to “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu”.

I don’t have the flu, but some respiratory issues associated with stagnant air, according to my self-diagnosis. It happened to strike when my energy was low, and I was slippin’ into my monthly trough of darkness and depression. Two days of rest was taken. My energy is better today. The stagnant air remains so I’ll probably be limited in my outside movement, unless I don a mask to filter the air.

Movin’ on, here’s Johnny Rivers’ cover of the song from 1972. It’s the one I know best.

BTW, love that little piece on the forty-five record label on display: “Use the Power. Register and Vote.” Sweet. Wish more people would use the power. That they don’t is not so sweet.

Cheers

1

Fitbit Progress

Reviewing my Fitbit YTD, I found that I’ve walked over twenty-eight hundred miles, averaging 7.85 miles a day.

I was wondering about it today because as I went to walk, part of me whined, “Do we haft to?” in its best three year old voice. “Can’t we take the day off?”

With a grudging grimace, I imitated Mom and said, “Let me think about it.” That quieted the quitting part of me while I checked my numbers. I hadn’t done that in a while. Yes, I check daily to see what I did the day before. Once in a while, I look at the weekly total. I always have a general feel for how much I’ve done without getting into details, but I don’t really look at the ongoing cumulative numbers.

After checking the numbers, I felt pretty good about my average and agreed to the partial day off. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. Maybe with an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon, I can make up today’s shortfall.

 

4

Rude Interruption

I was sitting and chatting with a friend the other day when my body said, “Pee.”

“Excuse me,” I told my body, “but that was very ru — ”

“Pee!”

“I was talki — ”

“PEEEE!”

“What are you saying? It sounds li — ”

“PEEEE!”

“In a minute. Let me finish this conver — ”

“PEEEEEE!!!”

Sighing, I stood. “Excuse me a minute,” I told my friend, and went off to the restroom.

Honestly, sometimes my body is like a spoiled, willful child, and it gets worse as I get older.

 

3

A Wishful Dream

There was a lot of action in the dream’s early acts, but I want to jump to the part that was sharpest when consciousness gained the upper hand.

Relaxing at last in the dream, free from the previous battles, I discovered that I had a healing power. By looking at someone, I could focus and heal them. When I did that, a light red beam flowed from my eyes and engulfed them.

The first beneficiary was a sick cat, but I soon started testing the envelope’s boundaries. Walking around on a warm, sunny day, I discovered my eyes’ healing powers worked on any animal, humans included, and any disease or injury. It also worked on plants, trees, broken shoe strings, broken windows, and damaged cars. I just kept walking around, healing and fixing everything. Pretty soon, I had a following and people asking me for help. I didn’t turn anyone down, healing everyone and fixing everything. Everyone was happier and happier.

Now, the two weird parts is that I was wearing a sky blue jumpsuit with a white dickey, and I looked like Gil Gerard as he looked in Buck Rogers.

It was a laugher of a dream.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑