Hospital

Hospital stay :

the whole ordeal began with a trip to Doctors Hospital's emergency Room.
I couldn't pee. I couldn't #2. I desperately needed to do both. After two hours, I got in.

A blood test showed an elevated white count, a chest xray showed that the bottom of my lungs were stagnant, not surprising for an ALSer. A scan showed I had a nasty bowel impaction.
I entered into the world of catheterization, a rude and crude humiliation only bested by the formidable pain and embarrassment of a "manual depaction" performed by a marine turned doctor.
After pissing 1200 ml down a tube into a bag at my side, I was released with a Foley in my bladder and instructions to finish what the doctor started. I was given the name of a urologist to advise us on the catheter.

The previous occurred on April Fool's Day. Fuck.

On April fourth, a Friday, we saw the urologist, Doctor Holden, who unstrung the Foley and checked my prostate, which was apparently normal in size. He sent me away to see if I could pee.

By the middle of Saturday night, I could not.
After waiting two hours at Doctors Hospital's emergency Room, we left for another hospital, Presbyterian, where we go in immediately. Ironically, I peed my pants on the way. I was carefully fitted with another "one size fits all" Foley, apparently the current catheter of choice in America. Lucky me.

On Monday, Amy called the urologist and explained that we needed to have another Foley installed. We were informed then, on April seventh, that a test would be performed on my bladder on April twenty fifth, where the catheter would continue to suck urine from my bladder via tube inserted in my pee hole. Fuck that.  We went a week with it in, and on Tuesday, we visited the urologist and insisted he pull the hose and teach Amy to be my nurse and install an in/out catheter as needed. It wasn't. By Wednesday the sixteenth I began to get really sick. The vomiting/diarrhea bug had hit everybody in the house but me. I'm of the belief that if I vomit, I might very well aspirate into my lungs and die, so I physically suppressed the urge all night long. By morning, I was convulsing and spastic, feverish and extremely anxious. I told Amy to take me in. I hadn't felt that bad since a year ago when I spent a week in the hospital with an unidentified infection generically labeled as sepsis.

When I entered Presby, my temperature was 103.4, my blood pressure was 158/110, my heart rate was 128 and my blood oxygen was 92. I was a mess. After setting me up with IV medicine and visits from several excellent doctors, the best being Doctor Kamali, I was admitted. To spare you any more sordid details of incontinence and sponge/water nurse care, bedside commodes and soiled sheets, I won't mention them.

Pseudomonas. A potentially deadly bacterial infection that started in my bladder and spread to my bloodstream. Highly resistant to antibiotics. Eight years ago there were none for this.
Originally, my stay would have been the course of the two weeks of IV medicine. Fortunately, pill form is available and I'm home.

The likely cause: catheter. Never again. Never. I'll learn to pee out my eyes. Just yellow tears with a little whang.

Part three : Minnesota

I'll tell you about my hospital stay at a later date.

Part three of many :

Minnesota. Three months.

I remember :

living a month in a train car in a train car park
catching a salamander there
talking with my mom about Martin Luther King there
moving to a four square house near railroad tracks, living on the first floor
the smell of mom's Aquanet
crossing the tracks to visit the corner store
buying wax lips
buying wax pop bottles
buying candy cigarettes
buying blue bubble gum cigars
putting pennies on the track and waiting for the train
stealing straws for spit wad shooters
shooting toilet paper wads on the ceilings at school
making a couple of friends
hanging out around the tracks
having a friend who lost a finger somehow around the tracks
learning how to hop a moving train from that friend
hopping a moving train with that friend
being scared to death until the train stopped in the freight yard a quarter mile down the track
peeing out of the boxcar

I don't remember :

our car
seeing my dad
our kitchen
much about school
getting in trouble
any girls
what my sisters did
having any rules

We finished my third grade there and moved to Glendale Heights near Chicago into an Italian populated townhouse style housing project while my dad managed a Mcdonald's in Maywood. I would begin fourth grade there, but finish the school year bouncing through a couple schools in the Los Angeles area.
This was the year where my parents began their belated, failed attempt at parenting, long after I'd become my own mother and father. It also marked the beginning of the end of their marriage. I never for one second thought my sisters or I were responsible. None of us were more than collateral damage. I was the least scathed.

Back soon with more.

Over the hump

Over one hundred thousand reads. Lift your beer and pray I run out of things to say long before I reach a million.

Epic part two

I missed a bunch of memories from early childhood.

I remember :

eating so much watermelon that my tummy distended and the overfill ran down my face and stuck my shirt to my neck walking the half mile to Ruthy's farm to play in the hayloft and look at the cows
watching at least two of our dogs get killed while chasing cars traveling along the gravel road in front of our house making a fort at the juncture of two old fences
lying flat, face up in our clover field under the midday sunshine
spitting on everything
peeing outside all day long
inhaling the smell of fresh washed sheets hanging on the clothesline
never visiting dad at work
the old rusty backhoe or crane outside my cousin's living room window
the smell of goats at my cousin's house
endless Pepsi at my cousin's house
chickens at the Brennan's house next door
the babysitter always saying "keen"

I don't remember :

birthday parties
riding a bike
owning a bike
having a slingshot
shooting a bb gun
being cold
being hot
being scared
being lost
being bored
being sad
being lonely
being mad

All in all, a pretty cool early childhood. From the middle of third grade on, everything changed. My life would become a living emotional roller coaster of which there was no end.

Good? Bad? Character building? Whether any of these questions can be answered is still up for debate. Let you be the judge. I'm too close to the situation to be objective.

Expect a continuation of my life's memories ad nauseum. I will pick up in Minnesota. Stay tuned.

Epic post fail part one

This had better be a post of epic proportions, the length and breadth of which should span and devour all that exists within my world. I expect nothing less than gargantuan.

Hang on.

Here goes.

Everything I can remember. From birth. Yeah. That's right. Out from liquid abyss.

Birth was a bitch. This much I assume, using as evidence all the lumps my skull has retained these many years. If they are lumps of knowledge then I'm the smartest human ever born. Somehow I feel this is not true.

I remember :

doing math problems during nap time in kindergarten
making paper Christmas chains while eating the paste, also in kindergarten
swinging on the playground set, parallel to another kid and hollering "Hey! Get outta my bathtub! ", still in kindergarten reading "Dick and Jane"
riding a trike to the toilet
writing my first book, about a brontosaurus, in first grade
spending most of first grade in the second grade classroom
climbing a fat rope in the gym
rolling giant grass coated snowballs on the playground
ice skating after school in a low place across the street
having a crush on Ruthy
raising, lowering and properly folding the American flag at school
taking an IQ test and creating waves
loving the cafeteria smell
being fascinated with the planets

I remember :

Kennedy being assassinated
the long funeral on TV
my dad ripping the phone out of the wall and launching it in a fit of rage
getting whacked with a brush, with a belt
seeing my dad divining for water
giant green tomato caterpillars
my mom ironing while attempting to explain Playboy magazine to a six year old, me, after I found one in the bathroom
playing in the cornfields all day
rocking my bed for years
hallucinating through two weeks of hard measles
finding my Christmas present behind mom's bed
bridling our Shetland pony when I was seven
catching and decapitating my first chicken, also at seven
helping mom drag dad out of the garage after he nailed the overhead shut, started the car and crawled under it trying to kill himself
briefly owning a soft shell snapping turtle the size of a trash can lid
mom's garden
jumping and bouncing around untethered in the back seat of whatever car we happened to own
opening my big mouth and getting docked down to two bucks to spend at Toys r Us
killing ants with a magnifying glass
edging the lawn with hand trimmers and hating it
finding out that my dad is switching from carpenter to McDonald's management trainee
hanging with my cousin Mark at along the creek behind his house down the road
playing at the old mill and finding a hand print with three fingers embedded in concrete, thinking it was prehistoric
poking a stick in a dead, bloated pony
catching tadpoles and not knowing what to do with them
catching bullfrogs
catching leopard frogs
catching garter snakes
catching bull snakes
catching lightning bugs
catching spiders
digging up night crawlers
digging up salamanders
hosing gopher holes
fishing for carp
fishing for bullhead
fishing for bluegill
destroying bird nests and chucking the eggs at trees
squishing baby mice
eating wild rhubarb
eating wild asparagus
eating walnuts
eating wild raspberries
eating wormy green apples and having to poop in the woods
eating young field corn
eating cherries and having to poop in the woods
crawling through a pipe under the road
losing my first box kite to a low flying airplane
finding a treasure of rocks and glass chunks in a nearby creek
watching Nana clean trout at Berryland
continuously listening to "Satisfaction" on the jukebox at Berryland
exploring the thirteen lakes on my own at eight years old without a clue as to how to swim, at Berryland
following my granpa around to learn a thing or two, at Berryland
fishing, at Berryland
exploring, at Berryland
Nana and granpa's house with the cool fireplace, at Berryland
watching Nana clean a stinky rabbit on the front porch
finding out that my cousin Jody got bit in the stomach by Nana and granpa's German Shepherd, Zorra
watching Christmas wrapping paper burn in many colors in the fireplace
seeing granpa work his puzzles

I also recall :

climbing sappy pine trees while mom got her beehive hairdo at some lady's house
watching a tornado pick up my sisters' playhouse and flinging it out in the field
watching my Uncle Rich load the playhouse up, take it away and perch it in a tree on his property
dad pulling the wood stoop from beneath the door in the garage so we can all scramble into the crawlspace after we'd risked our lives watching the playhouse imitate the beginning of the Wizard of Oz
standing with mom in the family room during an electrical storm as a lightning bolt appeared to enter the laundry room window and exit the living room window
learning about sex at age five from my mom
getting a crew cut with my dad at Bob's Barber Shop and receiving a Tootsie Pop
trying baseball in second grade and sucking
getting hit in the eye by a fastball while playing catch with dad
riding in granpa's little jeep
riding in the back of Uncle Harley's Stingray
rollerskating in the garage, falling backwards, cracking my skull and seeing stars
running through the Huff's barnyard, clotheslining myself on an electrified strand of barbed wire, puncturing my neck and scaring the shit out of mom
jumping in a corn bin at the Huff farm, cracking my skull on a cross beam and scaring the shit out of my mom
walking to the Ringwood General Store to buy root beer Popsicles and candy dots on paper
always checking out the really fat man across the street from the store
watching guys destroy an old car with big hammers at a lake party
drinking kiddy cocktails at the Mill Inn
eating shrimp at the Mill Inn
eating Pizza at a place where a guy played a banjo
getting a whippin' for something I did
getting a whippin' for something I didn't do
listening to mom and dad fight
talking my sister into eating a boxelder bug
hating cooked carrots but having to eat them
hating liver but having to eat it
plucking a chicken
feeding and watering our pony, Peanuts
making a spear out of a broom handle and a knife, a birthday gift for Mark, bridling Peanuts, heading out pony-back and breaking the spear on a tree on the way to the party
riding out of control in a two wheeled buggy

Almost 100,000

I never expected to live long enough to reach 100,000 reads on my blog, instead certain it was destined to oblivion long before my own demise, of which I would have wagered to have arrived sooner than this late date. As it appears, we are both alive and full of bullshit, an accomplishment on both accounts of which I am proud, prouder for the continuation of my writing than the continuation of my life mainly because writing has to a great extent prolonged the other if for no other reason than the bullshit from each has created a pendulum of perpetuity. A reason to live is far more powerful than the mere desire. I might add that contained within my posts are the myriad depositions and admissions of countless roadblocks to upending my pendulum. Family, friends and loyal readers hold the key to my ability to circumvent the laws of thermal dynamics and stay alive forever in this world.

After living three years with the knowledge that I had ALS, I've come to several conclusions, not the least of which is that the biggest killer of health is none other than the design of the diagnosis.

I'm guilty of plunder. I am. I plunder the riches of language and ravage them like inquisitional Wiccan virgins, leaving them splayed, ruined upon flea market tables of chop suey sentence structure, left to fester themselves with nary regret upon the unsuspecting throngs of word hoarders, filling their pockmarked flesh pockets with sentence bile and punctuation leprosy. It's what I do.

Dregs

Any little thing sets my clonising to fits. I'm out of my mind, which leaves me in my body, which is, of course, useless. Meditation becomes a dream becomes a nightmare becomes hell becomes reality. Full circle. Such is my conundrum. My existence is a pale wisp out of sync with the troubled times of my waking hours. I'm caught between wanting to live forever and wishing not.

The best I can do is observe that which is now unattainable, that which is now untouchable, all that is tactile and engraved in my memory. Forever lost is a kiss, a handshake, an embrace, anything and everything requiring reciprocation. I have become a physical dullard, a stuffed toy, a product of my own unwinding.
Understand that I'm not in my right mind when my Amy ails. Surrogate anything takes its toll on me.

I need to get out more. We do. Travel is my best elixir. Any break in routine, no matter how difficult in the beginning, results in a positive conclusion.

I'd rather live on the road than die in bed. The bigger the distraction, the better I feel.

I hate that I lay around all day doing nothing. I was once relatively useful. Now I rely on others to tend to my needs. Sucks big time.