Monday the 1st
The appointment with Dr. P/knee went okay this morning. He’s tentatively scheduled the surgery to remove the plates and screws from my knee in September… now all I have to do is keep GB off of my back until then. The tendon is still grinding/catching against the plate. It’s not too bad for short strolls but if I walk more than about five minutes it begins to hurt like hell. He wants to see me May 3rd, the day after my birthday. I told him about all of the drugs I’m out of, but he didn’t think he could help me with that as he’s a surgeon’s office. Alas
I came home to discover a letter from the pizza shop informing me I’m still an employee there (ha ha) from when I worked at headquarters. They were telling me how great of an employee I am. I worked briefly at their headquarters after the attack doing data transfers, and as such was considered an upper level employee eligible for a 50% discount card that’s good for a year on all of my pizzas instead of a mere 25% like the underlings get… joy.
I see Dr. S/clinic tomorrow but haven’t been able to raise the $10 they demand up front. I’ll have to take five of my collectible $2 bills-GOD I hate this. I’ll probably have to explain to them that it is legal tender and that they are real… sigh.
I went over my budget again today, trying to find a way to squeeze my prescriptions out of the $4.90 I’ve got left in checking. I’m especially worried now that the nurse expressed concern about my being out of the Lasix that prevents fluid buildup around my heart.
I was going to do a rough draft of the Carly Simon article, but got so damned depressed after doing the budget that I played a game of chess on the computer and got drowsy and fell asleep. I woke up at 10PM in time to watch a new episode of CSI Miami and then caught the return of Jay Leno to the "Tonight Show" and was bored to tears.... MY GOD HOW I MISS JOHNNY CARSON!!! I could stand only about ten minutes of his lame "comedy" and gave up and switched to Letterman instead. Now I’m yawning again and I’m going to turn back in… same shit different day.
Before I go to sleep I’m going to have to update my medical profile because I’ve got to get up early tomorrow morning for the appointment.
Tuesday the 2nd
I went to see Dr. S/clinic this morning. It hurt like hell, but I took twenty of my cherished mint-condition $2 bills with me. After registering, I pulled out five of them and the girl looked at them in awe and said without my explaining anything that she couldn’t take them because she could tell they meant a lot to me. I still felt humiliated but relieved when she did something on her computer that got me out of paying this time. The exam went well. He’d already gotten a fax from Dr. R/heart so he knew the situation with my heart better than I did; which saved a lot of time.
When we got to the meat of the exam the following was determined.
He said the defibrillator function of the device would probably never go off for years to come and not to worry about it. He laughed when I told him about the single hiccups from the pacemaker and said it was just one more thing I’d have to get used to. The knot at my left elbow is caused by the sac surrounding it expanding when I had the infection. When the infection went down it built up scar tissue inside it that probably will never go away so get used to it looking like Popeye’s. The Janumet isn’t working as well as he’d hoped and my sugar is still hovering in the 2-300 range. He said we’d just have to live with that carefully until I can get the insulin problem straightened out. They injected me with 20 units of insulin, looked, but said they were out of the drug-rep insulin pens. He said my heart and lungs sound fine, but he can detect my trouble breathing because of the slice and dice job done by the thoracotomy to save my life and that I’d just have to get used to it… it might clear up in a few years.
I finally remembered to ask him to look at my left foot, which is very gaunt and at times looks like it was embalmed or off of a mummy. He said because of the many surgeries and the original beating injuries, a lot of capillaries were damaged and leaked into my skin. Because of the poor circulation until the operations corrected it, the blood drained out of it, but the leakages left iron deposits in my skin that act like a permanent tattoo and it looks a lot worse than it is… another thing to learn to live with.
He was happy to hear that Dr. P will be operating on my knee this September and crossed his fingers that GB will leave me alone until then.
He looked around for some drug rep samples of the many prescriptions that I’m out of and couldn’t find any. Apparently some new laws have been enacted to reduce health care costs and generics are being released so fast that drug reps aren’t leaving samples until the dust settles-leaving me high and dry. While a blood work up was being done on me, he went down to his “miracle” social worker and they both came back to explain the main unknown reason I can’t get help… Since I’m on Medicare part D (Anthem Blue) and getting $17,000 a year in total benefits, everyone assumes that I can afford to buy my prescriptions at their discount and won’t help me since most of their thresholds are set around $12,000.
At that income I’m considered “lower-middle class” instead of poor and their programs are for the poor only. Many people like me are going through the same thing with no help because we had good incomes of around $50-100,000 and then disaster struck and we’ve fallen to $15-20,000 a year through minimal unemployment or disability checks and we’re left with all of the bills we had at the higher levels and nothing to pay them with. That’s why so many people are losing their homes, cars and businesses to foreclosure and repossession. The super poor have their safety nets with Medicaid and county welfare and the rich have their Cayman Island bank accounts and tax cuts, and us vanishing middle-classers have nothing.
She said she contacted several charities that told her the same thing. I mentioned a church a few blocks from me that’s just opened a charity pharmacy and she said I’d get the same story-as long as I’m on Medicare part D-they won’t help me. She said to call her when Anthem Blue Shield finally dumps me for not being able to pay their priemums and she’d see what she could do, but I’d need to present the paperwork saying I was no longer on their program. Dr. S said the $6.50-12.50 generic drugs prices through Anthem were a rip off that they’re making pure profit on over charging for generics, and to ask the cashier at Wal-Mart to ring it up off program at their price of $4, as my trying to spend down my deductible with Anthem will still leave me unable to afford my prescriptions. Still paying $4 for 12 prescriptions plus no generic for insulin means over $200 a month for my basic medications-which I don’t have. He told me to contact him about rewriting my prescriptions for generics as they become available and I said okay, but at 12 prescriptions at $4 each I’m screwed because I had to put the electric bill back into the budget again at $85-125 a year.
I left his office feeling really depressed and hopeless. Well at least I still have my health… sort of… ha ha.
From there I headed up to Family Pharmacy and picked up my Cymbalta (anti-depressant) prescription. At least GB is still paying for that… for now.
Dr. Mind was right; my car needed washing badly, because with all of this snow it was covered with salt and the last thing I’d need is for it to start rusting or something essential to begin corroding, so I grabbed a handful of laundry quarters before I left home and took it to a self-service car wash. The first one I went to took my money and then wouldn’t start. The second one took my money, started but the damned thing was out of soap and the foam brush wouldn’t work-probably frozen. The third worked, but was out of wax. Total cost: $7 for a $2 car wash… I just can’t win.
I took my twenty $2 bills over to Wal-Mart and bought $38 of groceries. I bought a ton of salad mix, a head of red cabbage, a stalk of celery and some red-wine vinegar to make my own low-fat Italian dressing with. At least I’ll eat well until it runs out in about 6-7 days; then it’s back to the cheap package dinners.
When I got home I unloaded the car and the car alarm wouldn’t arm. This has been an occasional problem for a while and usually means the remote batteries are low. It involves putting the key in, turning it on without starting the ignition and then holding an under-dash button in to reprogram it. The plastic button and the metal piston it operates to make electrical contact with the sensor broke off in my hand. Now the alarm on/off function was not only disabled-it was permanently armed with no way to shut it off. I had to get down on my knees, get out my old spotlight and lay on the floor under the dashboard to hold the thing together with both hands, operate the ignition key and operate the buttons on the remote at the same time. After a half hour of freezing out there I finally got it to cooperate, but as soon as I change the batteries in the remote I’ll have to go through it all over again.
About the only good thing is that without the override button attacked to the housing, a car thief can’t disarm it. I won’t go into how sore my back, chest and knee are now.
When I got up to the penthouse and unloaded the groceries, Dr. R/heart’s nurse called to say she couldn’t find any help or samples for me, but promised to keep searching. A few minutes later Dr. S/clinic’s social worker did the same thing. God love these people for going out of their way to help, but I wish I didn’t feel so humiliated for needing it. I gladly give help to anyone I can, but it’s so damned hard being on the other end of it.
Between collection agency calls, I tried to print out the check for this month’s rent and discovered I’m out of printer ink… FUCK. I’ve reached the dreaded point where my income no longer meets my expenses. It’s been coming torturously slow for five year 25-30 bucks a month but it’s finally here.
I had a nice talk with Betsy this evening, and watched NCIS.
I have DVDs of my father’s hard drive before I destroyed it and his horrible diaries that my family will never see, and was going through them when I found some hidden file folders inside his Windows system operating files as if he didn’t want anyone to know they were there. Instead of the expected porn, I found black & white photos of rednecks working on old cars, old diners and what are apparently photos of soldiers from World War 2, through Vietnam. I told Betsy about them and promised to burn them onto a CD and send them to her. The old family photos are of people I’ve never seen before. The trouble is for some reason I can look at them, but can’t save them in a file format. It’s really strange. I had the same problem with his old Air Force UFO photos I found. I’ve got to open it, hit “print screen” and then save it in paintbrush to a new file, which is time consuming and a pain in the ass.
After playing with it for a while, I gave up and turned in after giving Jay Leno another chance. I found him just as boring and unfunny as I did before, clicked over to Letterman for a while and then turned in. Tomorrow will be spent at Dr. Mind’s and then chopping celery and red cabbage… yum!
Wednesday the 3rd - Saturday the 6th
Wednesday
I printed out my diary entries for Dr. Mind this morning and as expected they came out really light from low ink. I may have to resort to using more of my $2 bills to buy a cheap refill at Walgreen’s. The problem is it’s a gamble, sometimes those refills work and sometimes they don’t and I’m beginning to suspect that they’re only a third of the price because they only put a third of the ink in the damned things.
I headed out to see her and was blinded by some really huge thing in the sky… oh yeah the sun-I remember that! I’ve got a really nice pair of sunglasses I got during my last eye surgery that I keep in the car for just such occasions. They’re big plastic things that allow you to snap your regular glasses into them. I guess it was really cold because when I tried to use them to fight against snow-blindedness before I pulled out of the parking lot, they snapped in half. Uhhhrrrrrgh. It was a usual session at OSU and I’m glad I have her, because lord knows I’d be dead by now without her.
When I got home, something happened when I got out of the car and my knee hurts like hell now. At least the car alarm is behaving itself for a change. However my computer monitor isn’t; after a long stretch of behaving itself, it’s begun trying to default back to a digital input when I turn it on instead of the analog one from my 6-year old tower. 1920 x 1200 flat panels are so damned picky and feel they’re to good for anything older than they are. I guess computers and monitors live in cat years. From what I understand, most hard drives only last about five years, so I guess I should consider myself lucky.
I discovered my paper electric bill in the mail finally. I was relieved to find it matched what they said it would be on line until I looked at the details. It was for the period between Jan 14th and the 29th… only two weeks! That means I can expect a bill of around $180 or more next month. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out where to cut the budget next. I guess the collectable Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins are next to go.
I slept most of Thursday; the only event worth mentioning was that I got the letter I mailed to Jeff back today. The wrong address, or something they couldn’t forward it… now Elvis Pressley’s stuck in my head singing ”return to sender… address unknown… no such number… no such zone:… I can’t stand Elvis-I had to resort of Led Zeppelin on my head phones to exorcize him..
Friday was a good day
I woke up this morning and could barely focus my eyes-just another reminder that I’ve got to find a way to have eye surgery that I’ve been putting off since last July when my left eye hemorrhaged. If I don’t start looking for someone willing to do it soon, I won’t pass my eye test when I have to renew my driver’s license on my birthday May 2nd. Oh shit-I just remembered I have to renew my license plates too. Now I know I’m sunk.
My apartment bldg manager appeared at my door this afternoon with a package from Heart Care. Dr. D & R/heart sent me a 6-month supply of Crestor to help with my cholesterol. While I was recovering from that, I got a phone call from Dr. S/clinic’s social worker saying that a supply of prescriptions was waiting for me at a pharmacy down the street! I hurried out (because they close at 5) and discovered 30 syringes, 100 units of Lantus insulin in a bottle, a supply of Carvedilol and another of Lasix to control the fluid around my heart-GOD LOVE THEM!!!
About the only thing I’m short on now is the little lancets that are used to poke my finger when I’m testing my blood sugar and the Cozaar that Dr. Skully says I might not need now that I’m on the Crestor. A pack of them is around $10, so I guess I’ll be injecting the insulin blind for about a week or so until I can figure out what to forgo next to buy a supply of the cartridges. As it is, I’m relying on little nightlights in the kitchen and bathroom instead of turning on the overhead lights. I’m back to washing plastic spoons, forks and drinking cups to reuse them. I’d stop feeding the cat, but she only costs about $7 a month and if I stopped feeding the fish I don’t want to think about what this apartment would smell like.
I’d sell the old college text books I’ve collected over the years on psychology, engineering and electronics, but anything over ten years old is badly outdated on any subject and they’re not old enough to be collectors items yet. I dread cataloging the CDs and DVDs I have left and at pennies on the dollar I doubt it’d compensate for the memories they bring back, and how much they cheer me up when I’m low.
In all the excitement about getting a fresh and needed supply of drugs I forgot to try to call WorkHealth to schedule some more physical therapy. That reminds me, I’ve got to go get reauthorized for more GB checks next Friday..
Oh well; same shit different day…
Sunday the 7th
I had a nice peaceful sleep last night and then wound up having flashbacks all morning; god will this ever end? The elevated blood sugar levels are taking a toll on my eyes and it takes longer and longer to get them to focus in the morning. I made a bad mistake that I’ve been paying for all weekend-I turned the thermostat down 5 degrees hoping to stave off a huge electric bill next month and now I’m sneezing and my upper chest hurts like hell when I do.
Now that I’m on my essential meds, the start-up side effects are beginning to plague me again until my body builds up the proper level of them. The sudden loss of equilibrium, short-term memory loss and muscle aches. I expected them when I switched from the Simvastatin to the Crestor and Janumet instead of the Glipizide. Hopefully it’s just my body getting used to the new combination of drugs.
I spent most of the afternoon reconfiguring the spreadsheet to accommodate and track the new drugs and their doses so that I can keep track of when I’m low.
Betsy called twice today-she’s called every day this week. She’s taking care of an old man she used to clean for, who’s close to death. She says it makes up for how helpless she felt when Dad wouldn’t let her fly east to take care of him before he died. She’s sending me postage to e-mail her a bunch of photos on disc that I’ve harvested from Dad’s computer before I fried the hard drive. It was nice to talk to her.
I spent some time on line trying to locate Bill Z. my old partner in the British car business. I’d love to know what became of my suped-up yellow TR9 prototype that I gave him. The only thing I regret about that whole era is that I never found my fantasy car while I could afford one. A 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible in good shape and Turquoise blue with a white top and tri-power… oh but the search was such fun, especially when I’d get to expose a fake made from a LeMans or Tempest.
Monday the 8th
I called Shawntell; Dr. R/heart’s nurse to thank her for the Crestor she sent but got her voice mail. I called Tressa at WorkHealth to verify that she got Dr. R’s fax allowing me to restart P.T. and to get on her schedule and got her e-mail too. I checked with my building manager about my rent check not being cashed a week after I wrote it because my bank was bought out by another. He said there wasn’t any trouble, but the transaction still hasn’t shown up on line yet.
My blood sugar was high today, so I shot up 15 units of Lantus Insulin, but I guess the stuff is different than what comes in the cartridges because half an hour later I began feeling really bad and very week so I took a blood reading and it plummeted from 217 to only 60 which is right in the danger zone of being critically low. I wound up eating the remaining two of my emergency glucose tablets in case it dropped further. Now I’ll have to find a supply of something with sugar in it in case this happens again. When I was in the rehab facility it dropped below 40 once and I nearly died and was in a coma for nearly three hours… I don’t want to go through that again.
I’m considering cutting my own hair tomorrow-a big change from the pampering I used to get at the spas. I’ve been doing that for about five years now, and it’s not that hard, except for the back. Just one more indignity.
I ignored 9 collection agency calls today and added a new one to my list. I’ve trimmed down some post-it notes to fit on the eye-level shelf on my desk’s hutch so that they’re in front of me when the phone rings so I know whom not to answer. I’ve also compiled a list of hospital numbers that are from doctors and social workers who are trying to help me so I know to answer them. I’ve been using a tool to trace them-I just go to Google and put the phone number from my caller I.D. in and hit enter and about five different websites tell me who called.
I went for 15 years with an absolutely spotless and platinum credit report and now I’ve come to this.
Most of the day was spent finalizing the spreadsheet formulas and I did a general clean up on my computer getting rid of over 5000 cookies, cleaning out the internet temporary files and defragging both my C and D hard drives. It’s great backing documents to a 2nd hard drive. It’s done instantly instead of taking half an hour or more to an external drive and recovery of a file is nearly instant. Better yet, if one drive fails, the machine boots up to the duplicate with the same operating system. It makes me glad I used to be rich enough to afford such a system and was computer savvy enough to install the internal components myself.
Friday I see Dr. T/GB and I’m hoping they come through with my check the same day. I worked it out on the new spreadsheet and I’ll only have around $56 to buy food and supplies-another instance of having to decide between prescriptions and food.
I wish there was a way to stop looking backward at the good times in San Diego and the art business. I hate living in the past, but I can’t look forward for there’s nothing in the future and the present is bleak enough to try to avoid thinking about. I haven’t crossed through my front door since last Wednesday to see Dr. Mind for fear of what mind-trick person or car might jump out at me. At the moment it’s 2:36AM and I don’t want to go to sleep for fear of the nightmares or imagined sounds that could wake me up screaming. Which means I’m yawning through tears constantly.
I think it’s the loneliness and being alone that might push me over the edge… but of course I’ll get to the brink of sanity and then something will pull me back… it always does… for now.
Tuesday the 9th
There was a multiple shooting at Ohio State University at 3:30 this morning. I began having flashbacks the moment I saw the news and I’ve been having uncontrollable full-body shudders all morning. An employee that was about to be fired walked into his boss’ office at and shot two people and then turned the gun on himself. The location was only a stone’s throw from Dr. Mind’s office. This is going to be a tough day.
I tried to distract myself by digging into what happened to my e-mail this morning. I can log onto any website except it, so I called AT&T support and sat on hold for half an hour. While I waited, I rebooted my DSL modem and computer and nothing worked. I finally got some woman with an oriental accent that I could barely hear and had an even harder time understanding. After about fifteen minutes of wandering through my control panel file tweaking things, she handed me over to a guy in California who told me there was an outage in the Midwest-Ohio specifically-and that it should be cleared up by this afternoon.
As soon as I hung up, I got a call from Tressa at physical therapy returning my message. She said she never got the fax from Dr. R/heart’s office so I called there and asked his nurse Cindy if she’d take care of it and she said she would. I hope they work it out soon as my knee has been hurting like hell to walk on today. It was warm and sunny this afternoon for a change so it’s probably the change in weather affecting my joints. I would’ve loved to have gon out and cruised around with the top down… I even got dressed for it, but then couldn’t get past my apartment door. This is getting old really fast.
I tried working on the Carly Simon article, but the shooting at OSU kept distracting my mind. At one point I went to bed trying to keep myself from watching the local news, but the moment I closed my eyes, there were my Somolian attackers laughing and beating the hell out of me. I’d never have gotten to sleep anyway because the god damned collection agencies began calling relentlessly the moment I lay down. I still have the comedy answering machine message stored on my computer that takes about a minute to listen to, so I fed it to the machine so that their robo caller would think they’ve reached a spam phone number… you never know. I’m also thinking of recording several disconnected phone numbers to get enough audio material to edit/patch a phony but convincing outgoing message saying that my phone has been disconnected that’d only play to specific phone numbers. Thank God I didn’t sell the most expensive and versatile answering machine I could buy before this all happened.
I cut it close on food; after tonight’s roast beef casserole, I’ve got one chicken dinner and three cans of ravioli left. GB better come through this Friday of I’m fucked for sure. I’m still having trouble with equilibrium from the new prescriptions and the short-term memory problem is bugging the hell out of me. I’ll think of something to do or write down and forget it almost immediately. My ears ring all the time to the point of almost being used to it. For some reason though I’ll suddenly be aware of it and then be plagued with it the whole rest of today. It’s like a constant high-pitched hearing test tone that won’t go away.
This irrational fear of going into see Dr. Mind tomorrow is growing inside me, that I’ve got to consciously will from my thoughts. At one point I called and canceled my appointment but got some other secretary and decided against it.
I made dinner watched NCIS and NCIS L.A. and then tried to write some more of my Simon article without success. It’s now nearly 4:30 in the morning and I don’t want to go to sleep…
I took a good look at my new internet journal banner that I call “Self-Portrait” and realized that the “today” me is looking back sadly at the past “me”s instead of forward. I’ll be Dr. Mind will make a lot out of that tomorrow…
Monday the 15th
For a moment I pulled myself out of the funk I’m in and wrote/published an editorial on the Texas School Board trying to change history text books that children would be taught from in their public schools to say that the U.S. was founded to be a Christian theocracy. I’m not sure where it came from but it seemed to just flow out of me and I discovered that my BlogCritics friends and Jet’s Politics Page fans were impatiently waiting for me to reenter the political editorial arena because I got a lot of responses from it by e-mail.
Sunday, I tried to write the Carly Simon article and nothing would flow out of me. The last week has been very difficult; it’s like a smothering choking cloud of “what’s the use?” is pressing down on me and I can’t get out from under it. It started to intensify when I got my GB check on Friday, sent out the bills and realized that I had to pay the phone bill out of the next check or starve; which means it’ll be late and I’ll have to pay a late fee. That left me with $78 to buy two weeks of groceries and supplies and nothing left to buy this cycle’s prescriptions. When I got home I only had $14 left. If some emergency comes up like a problem with the car or a flat tire I have no safety net under the financial tightrope I’m walking.
With the phone bill pushed to next check, I may have to find a way to delay March’s rent. This is all so hopeless; it’s no wonder I can’t stop living in the past. This is a problem that I see no end to, and with May coming up fast, I’ll have no money to renew my license plates or driver’s license, which may be a moot point because my vision is getting worse-even with my glasses.
Without surgery on my left eye I’ll never pass the eye test and I can’t afford the co-pays to even get into the clinic for the preliminary exams. I succeeded in getting Dr. T/GB to authorize me until mid May for more checks, but that dark ghost of GB lurks in the shadows. It worries me that they haven’t drug me into court for so long, like they’re saving everything up to hit me with a bunch of shit at once.
In addition the collection calls and letters are coming in more threatening and more often. With bankruptcy filed in 2007 I won’t get protection from them until 2014. I tried to cheer myself up by putting the top down when I went grocery shopping and it worked for a while, until I got home and discovered I miscalculated and only have about 12 days of groceries at the most. I don’t see things getting better, only worse and I don’t know how much longer I can keep bailing water out of the row boat I’m in, when more is seeping in than I can manage.
I can’t stop thinking about how safe and secure my life used to be and how I looked forward to that Oregon beach house for the rest of my life with a lover and two cats.
I wonder what’s left for god to sweep away from me before I can hang on to it?
Wednesday the 17th
I had the hell scared out of me last night. Normal blood glucose reading is between 90-110. It’s like an earthquake reading; each number you go below that is exponentially more dangerous. Too low below 40 you go into a coma-below that you die because your blood doesn’t have enough “umph” to burn to sustain your body’s engine. The higher above 130 you go, the more risk you run of damage to any vital organ that has tiny capillaries because your blood becomes so thick with unconverted sugar that they clog and burst-threatening your heart, eyes and kidneys first and then the brain and other vital organs.
Last night around 10 I had a reading of 217, which is of concern, but since it was in the 400s January and February when I couldn’t afford my insulin, I was concerned, but confident I could control it as long as the syringes hold out. Around midnight I shot up what I thought was 15 units, but obviously was a lot more and I must’ve misread the scale on the syringe because along around 1 I started feeling like I was going to pass out. I took a blood reading and in a little more than a half an hour it plummeted to 70. I got a lollipop out of the desk since I used up all my emergency glucose tablets the last time this happened, and sucked on it. Half an hour it was down to 61, so I used another lollipop, By two it’d risen to 75 but that was still too low.
I dug a can of unsweetened pineapple juice out of the back of the fridge and ate the whole thing. It took until 3AM to stabilize it at 110, so I sat another half an hour to make sure before I went to sleep to be sure it wasn’t going to fall again. Whewwwww.
I went and saw Dr. Mind today; the session went okay, though I’m still suffering from flashbacks and nightmares. Afterward, I took my last $14.07 and bought two more days of food up at Wal-Mart. It was nice and sunny, but only in the mid 50s so I put the top down anyway and cranked up the heat. I got a lot of envious looks at my red luxury convertible. That’s one of the reasons I probably won’t ever sell it for a while; when I’m in it, I’m not handicapped and everyone thinks I’m a “rich-bitch”. Little do they know that I owe more on it than I can sell it for and that I’m barely able to afford the payments and insurance… but when I’m in it with the top down and the stereo up, I’m free and the old Jet comes out again and it feels fucking good.
Dr. mind won’t be in next week and except for going two blocks to physical therapy, I probably will stay here locked behind my door, safe from strangers and imagined threats. When I came home I think I’d spend $13.50 or so on two meals to round out next Wednesday and Thursday, and I’ll hope and pray the check comes and BC won’t fuck with it.
Now I don’t have enough to see Dr. S/clinic as they let me slide last time, and I don’t think they’ll let me get away without the $10 up front this time.
A friend from BC called me as a surprise and it was nice talking to a total stranger on the phone without having palpitations. She’s really nice and complimented me on my latest article. I remembered (as I usually do after I’ve already published it) the clever title I’d come up for it, but it was too late. The article was about the Texas board of education trying to force right-wing religious ideas on unsuspecting kids. It’s entitled: “Tinkering Texans Tamper With Texts To Teach Slanted Right-Wing Agenda To U.S. Kids!” and it was only after I published it that I remembered the clever one I’d thought up last night before I had my glucose emergency; “TINKERING TWISTED "TEXAN TALIBAN" TORTURES TEACHER'S TEXTS!”
My upper arms are both hurting lately, I thing it’s side-effect muscle pain from the Crestor… Whom do I sue?
Friday the 19th
I owe Betsy my dad’s photos from the box I was given by the reverend after his death, and the ones from Dad’s computer and I can’t bring myself to search through all of the hidden file folders he had to find them that are preserved on a bunch of DVD-roms I’d had made. I feel really tired today and don’t know why. I know I’ll regret this but I’ve started using my syringes twice as I can’t afford more. I’ll use it, then draw rubbing alcohol into them, squirt it out, then dry them and use them again.
While checking out the news on-line today I found a story of a General who lied about being told that the Dutch army was to blame for a massacre because they had gay soldiers… what the fuck? The Dutch government has had openly gay soldiers now for about 35-years, and got really pissed because he lied when he said one of their generals told him that, and the Dutch general immediately responded through the news media by calling him a liar. The Netherlands government even got involved and expressed “outrage” at the false implication. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing again so I put out an article about the Dutch reaction to it.
There’s a website called Digg that’s been pleading with BC’s founder Eric to get us to “digg” each other’s articles on their website, so I made an effort to get people to digg mine, since a whole lot of gay specific articles aren’t written for BC and it’d bring a new supply of fresh readers to our site. Let’s just say that it didn’t work out and my motives were misinterpreted. I may just start digging my own articles from my sites instead.
My chest hurts like hell. I had another sugar emergency yesterday and missed physical therapy and the only available opening was at 8:15 this morning. I don’t know if it’s the thoracotomy or the heart operations but taking a deep breath is even more agony than before. They tell me that it could take years to recover. Every time I walk into that gym it reminds me of my days back in Barberton going to the health spa with my young apt manager as a training partner. It’s depressing when I can’t manage a 20-pound weight when I used to press 3-400. I swear it feels like the screws in my arm are going to break right through my skin. Dave gave me a watch for Christmas that beeped a pace. I measured my stride and entered it so that when I went out for a run, it’d calculate how far I went in a session and I could add or decrease the pace. I loved that thing; it still around here somewhere, battery acid probably eaten through the innards by now.
I wish I could find more of the photos of myself when I was bulked up. So far I’ve only located two. The rest were in a briefcase that was in a rental car I had in San Diego that got stolen by some Mexicans along with receipts and some bills. I had to cancel all of my credit cards because the rental receipts were in it too. I have nothing against Mexicans in general, only the ones who refuse to learn English and the ones who steal cars.
It reminds me of a story a border guard told me once about a little boy that crossed from the U.S. into Mexico on a bicycle five or six times a day. He was always shirtless in shorts and tennis shoes with no socks. On the back of the bike was tied a five-pound bag of sand. People kept telling them that the kid was smuggling but after searching his shoes and sometimes cutting open the bag, they could never catch him, going so far as to disassemble the bike once. This went on for a couple of months and then suddenly he stopped doing it. One day he was spotted with his mother crossing northbound in a new car. My friend finally came out and asked the kid what he’d been smuggling and the kid grinned from ear to ear and replied, “bicycles!”
I was thinking back to when the economy went sour back in 2000 and I sold two failing head shops in San Francisco because I couldn’t afford the power bills during the Emron artificial crisis. I took the money from both sales, paid the accountants, broker’s fees, liens and taxes and then split the money that was left between all of my employees so that they could have something to live on until they could find jobs. Knowing what I’m going through now, I wonder if I’d still do that.
Every act of kindness I’ve ever done is followed by suspicion that I have alternate motives. Why can’t anyone believe the feeling that comes from doing something good, just for the satisfaction of the act?
I dug out the little box of Dad’s photos and prepped them for being scanned at Kinko’s on Monday, and was so tired afterward I only had the energy to sit at the computer and field e-mails all night.
Saturday the 20th
Today was rough; I had my hands full trying to sort dad’s photos out and juggled e-mails from my new article all day. I couldn’t believe the insane number of photos he had of me compared to my brothers and sisters. I’m thinking of redoing the header of this site with them in order but someone would probably accuse me of vanity instead of just posting it to show the aging process.
Some time around 5PM I suddenly got really tired and sat down on the bed and woke up around midnight. I’ve got people bitching at me on-line because I’m not on enough any more and only seem to be answering comments on my own articles instead of theirs like I used to. I tried to explain that when I’m on percocet I can barely function enough to leave intelligible stuff on my own, much less theirs.
It still hurts like hell to inhale more than half a breath in my upper chest. The feeling of emotional and financial hopelessness is really getting me down. I got nice e-mails from my friend Reuven in Israel and Eric e-mailed me to say thanks for my “Digg” efforts.
Other than my office here being cluttered with boxes with old photos all over the place, not much happened.
God, it’s lonely not having some to love or to love me… if only I weren’t so broke I could get out more often and succeed in just leaving the front door.
Sunday the 21st
Monday 5:30AM
I couldn’t sleep Saturday night and finally fell asleep Sunday morning around 6AM. My thoughts were filled with hopelessness and loneliness. I couldn’t stop thinking about driving out to the middle of the Broad Street Bridge and standing at the railing and staring down at the water below. I’d get up to distract myself and then when I went back to bed the thoughts would return again. I woke up around noon Sunday and couldn’t fall back asleep. The day was spent mostly exhausted and in pain. Both my shoulders hurt like hell and even half of a percocet didn’t help, so I took a whole one.
I knocked around the house most of the day and couldn’t focus my eyes on the computer screem unless I raised the zoom up to about 150%. They usually focuses in about an hour but today it went the whole day. I colorized an antique photo from my father’s collection to try to distract myself, but that didn’t help. I keep thinking of how others have family close by for support but most of mine have rejected me. My Aunt Margaret lives three hours away in Pittsburgh and my sisters Betsy and Char live three time zones away in Oregon.
Well this should be interesting-I’m going “live” here.
In the middle of typing that last sentence I began feeling “funny”. I took a blood glucose reading and it was 60. I just ate all three of the mints that Dr. Mind gave me last Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day. I hope it helps, I feel really bad. Before I went to sleep, I took 15 units of #100 Novolog (I keep mistakenly calling it Novolox) and this is getting old really fast because I can’t figure out the doses for this shit. At the moment I’m sucking on a grape lollipop while I’m inventorying and I’ve got 25 test strips and only 15 lancets left. I’m going to have to start storing the used lancets in alcohol to reuse over and over again, but the test strips aren’t reusable, so I’m really fucked once they run out and will have to inject the insulin blind without test strips. I’m having enough trouble as it is with the test strips, god knows what fun I’ll have without them for reference.
I’m starting to feel a little better. The mints turned out to be starchy and chewable instead of the hard kind, which is why I’m crunching the last of a grape lollipop now.
I’m going to wait until I finish writing this to see what happens. The “feeling” hasn’t gone completely away, but it has eased. If this is a repeat of the last time I may have to raid the fridge for the last can of pineapple….
It’s now 6AM, I went to the fridge and got some sugarless cranberry juice to wash the corn syrup laden candy down with.
Sunday was spent cataloging dad’s photos and answering e-mailed comments from my latest article. I’ve only got mere pennies left in checking until Friday or I’d go out and get a big chocolate cake using my debit card, if I thought I could trust myself driving-which I don’t at the moment, The German Chocolate kind that I miss so much, and keep it in the freezer for just such occasions. YUK! ‘The feeling just started coming back, so I just popped what I thought was an artificially flavored watermelon pop in my mouth and when I looked at the green label it turned out to be artificially flavored “sour apple”.so I dumped it. If push comes to shove, it just dawned on me that I’ve got a dollar or so in laundry quarters so I can always go down to the laundry room and buy a coke from the machine.
6:20AM Monday morning I still feel odd, but I think it’s getting better. This is going to mean using up another test strip. I just put some rubbing alcohol into an empty snap-top plastic test strip container to see if it’ll hold it without leaking and it did. Now all I have to do is remember to load the used lancets face down in it so I don’t stick myself when I try to get one out.
Anyway, I injected myself around 3AM and went to bed. I started having the same dream/thought about jumping off the bridge again and after about two hours of tossing and turning I couldn’t get it out of my mind, I got up and… well you know the rest.
This is going to shoot my Monday plans all to hell. If I ever get to sleep. Thank god I don’t have physical therapy today, but I may have to turn the phone ringers off or be woken up every 45-minutes by another collection agency. Christ, no wonder my thoughts keep turning to suicide.
AT& T is having a problem allowing me to log into my diary to update it. A tech support guy gave me a proxy server in England in order to log onto it, but I don’t know how long this will work. It’s been days since I’ve been able to post and I don’t know how long it’ll take to be fixed.
The following is a summary of my last entries…
Tuesday thru Friday the 26th
I tried posting this Wednesday evening thru Friday afternoon and couldn’t log onto any blogspot sites. I e-mailed a friend who said they’re putting up a bunch of new features for writers and it’s closed to editing until god knows when.
I had a good time on line Tuesday “butting heads” with the archconservatives on BC’s political page. They’re all pissed off and foaming at the mouth because the Healthcare reform package passed and for a while my old self came back and was matching them witty comeback for comeback. It all left me Wednesday and I couldn’t bring myself to even respond to e-mails from fans welcoming me back into the fray after such a long absence. It’s amazing how an arch nemesis on that forum will throw angry retorts and insults at you one minute, and privately e-mail you the next to tell you how much they missed you.
According to Google I’m getting less readers on my sites. I think it’s because I redesigned them so people didn’t have to slog through the ever-growing table of contents to get to an article they’re looking for. Where before, I think they’re getting interested in something as they scrolled down through it and decided to read it after they finish their sought-after article, now since it’s in the sidebar, they don’t. I’m going to let it go another few days and if it doesn’t change I’ll have to move the table back where it was. Readership is down nearly half. I made all of 64 whole cents last week on ad clicks! I’m rich!!! I think Brenda’s being nice and clicking when she logs in (god lover her). Since Adsense doesn’t send out checks until I collectively earn $100, I figure I’ll eventually get a check sometime in 2014.
It’s been a rough few days. It seems no matter how minutely I adjust the dosage; I’m still winding up with low blood sugar and nearly passing out when I inject the insulin. I haven’t been able to sleep from nightmares and daytime is just as bad with flashbacks. I’ve got this strange ache in both my upper arms between the shoulder and the elbow that feels like bone instead of muscle. It’s to the point that I spend most of the time with headphones on trying to drown out the ringing in my ears. I’m almost out of Janumet for my diabetes, but I think I won’t need it as well as the insulin is working.
Wednesday the city tested the tornado sirens at 9:30 AM instead of their regular noon like they always do, and I had to convince myself that I was actually hearing the damned thing. I got a call from Betsy last night saying she’d shown her grown kids how to log onto this journal and they freaked when they thought I was standing there naked. I told her that it’s a reflection from the waist down-I told her they needed to look again because it was on the same horizontal line reflection as the newborn picture of me.
With no Doctor Mind this week I haven’t left the apartment for days, and since GB hasn’t approved more physical therapy the only excuse to go out will be to buy groceries and pay the late phone bill on Friday. It’s like I’ve sentenced myself to solitary confinement. I’m going to make myself start going down to our gym, strangers be damned and try to replicate the PT sessions on my own. I called WorkHealth and Tressa still hasn’t heard anything.
I just figured up my budget and if I only put $10 of gas in the car, I’ve only got $61 after bills to buy two-week’s worth of groceries and supplies. There’s GOT to be a way out of this maze, but I haven’t found it yet.
I have no choice, Monday I’m going to have to force myself to make an eye appointment at OSU, or I won’t pass my eye test to renew my driver’s license in May. I still don’t know how I’m going to come up with the money to pay for it and new license plates.
The last few days have also been spent going down memory lane, trying to arrange dad’s photos into some semblance of order. I promised Betsy I’d send them a week ago and haven’t been able to mentally force myself past the front door-even to go down and get the mail. I’m putting together a collective family album and burning it onto a CD-rom and I’m going to include old gay lovers I’ve had over the years too and if they don’t like it-fuck ‘em. My family e-mails out family photos every other holiday, so I’m going to send some personal photos back at them.
I should get a job as a weather forecaster. My knee really started hurting this morning, and sure enough tt’s supposed to snow tonight. They’re predicting temperatures in the 70s next week, but we’re supposed to get two inches of snow tonight… sigh.
Friday the 26th
I tried to log in to update this journal again this morning and still no luck.
I drove out to my bank to get the cash out of my checking account to pay the overdue phone and yet another branch was closed! PNC is closing them all over the place and the only one open anyway near me is in an office building downtown where I’ll have to pay for parking. I gave up and came home and wrote out a paper check. I set out again to pay the phone bill then bought gas. I had the nozzle in for mere seconds and ran up $15 in gas at $2.70 @ gallon.
When I went through Wal-Mart I bought what I thought was a minimal amount of groceries and supplies, so that I could come back tomorrow with my calculator and make sure I had 14 meals… instead the tab came to $65!!! I’d completely forgot I’d gone over $5 on the gas budget and now if I write a check for next month’s rent, I’ll be $5.60 overdrawn-which will cost me a $35 bank fee and god knows what my landlord will charge. THIS SUCKS.
I got home and tallied my receipts and wanted to cry. I can’t stand this anymore. If only I had a dollar for every time I’ve said that. I think I’ve only got 11 meals and nothing left at all for extras like cat food that I’m almost out of.
I’ve spent from 9:30PM until 11:07 PM with tech support trying to get the problem resolved with ATT being unable to log onto Blogger.com from customers from Wisconson to Ohio and every state in between… groan… What next?
Monday the 29th
I called Matt this afternoon and wished him a happy birthday. He was about to go out with his family. Matt was the manager that I worked for at the pizza shop when I was attacked. He calls me every so often to see how I am and I attended his wedding and reception in 2005. The shop misses me because 2 or 3 times a week I’d treat everyone to carry-out lunch at Bob Evan’s or Long John Silver’s since the shop makes employees pay for their own food. God; the hundreds of dollars I spent on them in the name of being a nice guy.
I spent a few more hours on the phone with AT&T’s tier 2 tech support and let them remotely run my computer to trace where the Blogger connection is breaking down and it indeed was at Google. They gave me a workaround website where I can use a proxy to get into my websites from England or somewhere until they fix it.
Never give up-never say die… groan
Saturday’s mail brought yet another notice from Medicaid that I just barely over their income limit and that I’m still ineligible for help… based on the application I put in last September. That’s only about the 8th or 9th one they’ve sent. It’s like they’re rubbing it in-not only are we not going to help you, but we’re going to keep reminding you that we’re not going to help you.
I poured the rest of Mischief’s dry cat food in her little feeder. God I hope it’s enough to last her for two weeks. I’m still trying to figure out what to sell to keep my rent check from bouncing next month by only $5…this sucks. I’ve been enlarging and enhancing and in cases colorizing family photos to occupy myself.
I started losing my equilibrium again this morning and it’s really pissing me off. I’ll be walking around and suddenly tilt sideways and have to catch myself on something.
Betsy called Saturday night to say my sister Charlene got fired and that she’s fleeing Oregon after living there 30 years to come back to Ohio. The theory is that her mom lives somewhere near the Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio borders and that that’s probably where she’ll settle.
Sunday I came up with an idea. I’ve been having trouble with low sugar from trying to get used to the injections, so I figured why not eat some of the M&M peanut candy to kill my appetite? I might gain a few meals out of it. Then I’d have to monitor my blood sugar really closely, but carefully because I only have a few test strips left because they’re not reusable. I took a reading and the batteries in the goddamned thing died. Great-just great. Why I haven’t broken down and cried in frustration is anyone’s guess.
Sunday brought a really bad headache, probably from tension. My ears began ringing really loudly so I spent most of the day with headphones on. My eyes are getting harder and harder to focus and I’m really getting concerned. I’m already planning to try to make counterfeit stickers for my license plates and then hope to God I don’t get pulled over, because there’s no way I’ll save enough to renew the plates or my license.
If the bank finds out I’ll lose the car, and who knows what the jail term would be for phony stickers? Betsy can’t seem to understand why I won’t sell the car. Explaining how much it means to me after I fought for it for so long and so hard, goes right over her head. Besides that, I owe more on it than it’s worth, which means I wouldn’t get enough to buy another.
I had a terrible series of nightmares last night; I kept killing myself and wouldn’t die. I was jumping off of expressway overpasses in front of trucks, jumping off bridges into water, crashing the convertible into bridge abutments, parking on railroad tracks and injecting all of my insulin at once. Nothing worked and somewhere in the distance my three attackers were laughing their heads off every time I failed. I woke up in a cold sweat around 5AM and haven’t allowed myself back to sleep.
So far today (Monday) not a single collection agency call today; I even picked up the phone a few times to see if it was off the hook somewhere. After squinting at this monitor for about five minutes, I gave up and put on my glasses-which are meant for distance sight. It didn’t improve. I took a gallon plastic freezer bag and punched a bunch of holes in it to make a net big enough to catch the damned plecostomus with, now the damned thing won’t come out of hiding. I’m looking forward to some free colorful fish to stare at in my aquarium. It’s almost as relaxing as when I used to sit on the beach in Newport.
Tuesday the 30th
For the 2nd day in a row I haven’t been able to fall asleep until 4AM or later. I finally had a sweet dream about being in San Diego and I remember passing a mirror and being so delighted that I had my old “body” back. It ended with me moving to the beach house in Newport Oregon. I woke up from it at about 7:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep trying to get back into the dream.
I almost succeeded in dozing off when promptly at 8 an automated collection agency call roused me. I guess they’re trying to make up for lost time yesterday by calling today, as I got 9 calls in the space of 5 hours. Mixed in with the group, Ohio State called to say there might be a problem with parking starting tomorrow and she outlined a rather confusing new procedure for what to do if I can’t find a parking slot… great. I thought of calling Tressa at Physical Therapy again but after three calls there, she’d have called by now if she’d heard anything and bugging her isn’t going to change that.
I wake up most days with a mental list of things I’m bound and determined to accomplish, and then I spent most of the day remembering how happy and generous I used to be and comparing it to the way I am now and being sad. I considered trying to find a local food bank, but the thought of actually going to one makes me think of some bum standing at the end of an expressway exit with a cardboard begging sign. I spent a lot of time pondering what would happen to my most cherished things should I suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, or decided to just give them all away. In order of importance would be my books, the tapestry and then my car, followed by the piano and this desk I worked so hard to build before the first heart surgery. I was contemplating how much money I’d have if I gave up my beloved car and if I could afford to take cabs everywhere on the money I’d save. Betsy had criticized me for holding onto things, but when things are all you have left in life to replace being loved or living comfortably it’s like giving up the last vestiges of what I once was.
I’ve pondered that I have nightmares and flashbacks of my attackers, and yet I can’t remember what they look like. Yet in the dreams the fear is so real and intense. It’s like I’m dreaming or flashing on the “concept” of them instead of them… I’m babbling; I know…
Enough.
I think my blood sugar is all over the place. With the dead batteries in my meter I’m shooting insulin blind. So far I haven’t felt like passing out yet, but my lips have tasted like sugar a few times, but I’ve been afraid to shoot more insulin for fear of overdosing. I’m now hoarding my hypos and using what few I have left five times before throwing them away. Sometimes the tips are so dull that I have to push them inside my skin.
While working on dad’s computer photo files, I came across one that had been scanned in very faded to the point that it was nothing but shades of tan and lighter tan. I used some of my remaining software and brought out a photo of a beautiful black woman who is probably one of my ancestors. It looked like it was taken about 100 years ago. I was kind of inspired and the artist in me came out and I sharpened the image, gave it more depth and then colorized her. When I was done I was amazed. Who would I show it to? Nearly all of my family is so race prejudiced, they’d reject even the notion, and in fact my sister Dee’s husband is so prejudiced, she’s never revealed that our grandfather on my father’s side is black.
I sneezed today and it felt like my whole chest exploded it hurt so much. After about half an hour I had to resort to a percocet to ease the pain. I’ve noticed lately that the harder I clench my jaw the louder the ringing in my ears gets.
The appointment with Dr. P/knee went okay this morning. He’s tentatively scheduled the surgery to remove the plates and screws from my knee in September… now all I have to do is keep GB off of my back until then. The tendon is still grinding/catching against the plate. It’s not too bad for short strolls but if I walk more than about five minutes it begins to hurt like hell. He wants to see me May 3rd, the day after my birthday. I told him about all of the drugs I’m out of, but he didn’t think he could help me with that as he’s a surgeon’s office. Alas
I came home to discover a letter from the pizza shop informing me I’m still an employee there (ha ha) from when I worked at headquarters. They were telling me how great of an employee I am. I worked briefly at their headquarters after the attack doing data transfers, and as such was considered an upper level employee eligible for a 50% discount card that’s good for a year on all of my pizzas instead of a mere 25% like the underlings get… joy.
I see Dr. S/clinic tomorrow but haven’t been able to raise the $10 they demand up front. I’ll have to take five of my collectible $2 bills-GOD I hate this. I’ll probably have to explain to them that it is legal tender and that they are real… sigh.
I went over my budget again today, trying to find a way to squeeze my prescriptions out of the $4.90 I’ve got left in checking. I’m especially worried now that the nurse expressed concern about my being out of the Lasix that prevents fluid buildup around my heart.
I was going to do a rough draft of the Carly Simon article, but got so damned depressed after doing the budget that I played a game of chess on the computer and got drowsy and fell asleep. I woke up at 10PM in time to watch a new episode of CSI Miami and then caught the return of Jay Leno to the "Tonight Show" and was bored to tears.... MY GOD HOW I MISS JOHNNY CARSON!!! I could stand only about ten minutes of his lame "comedy" and gave up and switched to Letterman instead. Now I’m yawning again and I’m going to turn back in… same shit different day.
Before I go to sleep I’m going to have to update my medical profile because I’ve got to get up early tomorrow morning for the appointment.
Tuesday the 2nd
I went to see Dr. S/clinic this morning. It hurt like hell, but I took twenty of my cherished mint-condition $2 bills with me. After registering, I pulled out five of them and the girl looked at them in awe and said without my explaining anything that she couldn’t take them because she could tell they meant a lot to me. I still felt humiliated but relieved when she did something on her computer that got me out of paying this time. The exam went well. He’d already gotten a fax from Dr. R/heart so he knew the situation with my heart better than I did; which saved a lot of time.
When we got to the meat of the exam the following was determined.
He said the defibrillator function of the device would probably never go off for years to come and not to worry about it. He laughed when I told him about the single hiccups from the pacemaker and said it was just one more thing I’d have to get used to. The knot at my left elbow is caused by the sac surrounding it expanding when I had the infection. When the infection went down it built up scar tissue inside it that probably will never go away so get used to it looking like Popeye’s. The Janumet isn’t working as well as he’d hoped and my sugar is still hovering in the 2-300 range. He said we’d just have to live with that carefully until I can get the insulin problem straightened out. They injected me with 20 units of insulin, looked, but said they were out of the drug-rep insulin pens. He said my heart and lungs sound fine, but he can detect my trouble breathing because of the slice and dice job done by the thoracotomy to save my life and that I’d just have to get used to it… it might clear up in a few years.
I finally remembered to ask him to look at my left foot, which is very gaunt and at times looks like it was embalmed or off of a mummy. He said because of the many surgeries and the original beating injuries, a lot of capillaries were damaged and leaked into my skin. Because of the poor circulation until the operations corrected it, the blood drained out of it, but the leakages left iron deposits in my skin that act like a permanent tattoo and it looks a lot worse than it is… another thing to learn to live with.
He was happy to hear that Dr. P will be operating on my knee this September and crossed his fingers that GB will leave me alone until then.
He looked around for some drug rep samples of the many prescriptions that I’m out of and couldn’t find any. Apparently some new laws have been enacted to reduce health care costs and generics are being released so fast that drug reps aren’t leaving samples until the dust settles-leaving me high and dry. While a blood work up was being done on me, he went down to his “miracle” social worker and they both came back to explain the main unknown reason I can’t get help… Since I’m on Medicare part D (Anthem Blue) and getting $17,000 a year in total benefits, everyone assumes that I can afford to buy my prescriptions at their discount and won’t help me since most of their thresholds are set around $12,000.
At that income I’m considered “lower-middle class” instead of poor and their programs are for the poor only. Many people like me are going through the same thing with no help because we had good incomes of around $50-100,000 and then disaster struck and we’ve fallen to $15-20,000 a year through minimal unemployment or disability checks and we’re left with all of the bills we had at the higher levels and nothing to pay them with. That’s why so many people are losing their homes, cars and businesses to foreclosure and repossession. The super poor have their safety nets with Medicaid and county welfare and the rich have their Cayman Island bank accounts and tax cuts, and us vanishing middle-classers have nothing.
She said she contacted several charities that told her the same thing. I mentioned a church a few blocks from me that’s just opened a charity pharmacy and she said I’d get the same story-as long as I’m on Medicare part D-they won’t help me. She said to call her when Anthem Blue Shield finally dumps me for not being able to pay their priemums and she’d see what she could do, but I’d need to present the paperwork saying I was no longer on their program. Dr. S said the $6.50-12.50 generic drugs prices through Anthem were a rip off that they’re making pure profit on over charging for generics, and to ask the cashier at Wal-Mart to ring it up off program at their price of $4, as my trying to spend down my deductible with Anthem will still leave me unable to afford my prescriptions. Still paying $4 for 12 prescriptions plus no generic for insulin means over $200 a month for my basic medications-which I don’t have. He told me to contact him about rewriting my prescriptions for generics as they become available and I said okay, but at 12 prescriptions at $4 each I’m screwed because I had to put the electric bill back into the budget again at $85-125 a year.
I left his office feeling really depressed and hopeless. Well at least I still have my health… sort of… ha ha.
From there I headed up to Family Pharmacy and picked up my Cymbalta (anti-depressant) prescription. At least GB is still paying for that… for now.
Dr. Mind was right; my car needed washing badly, because with all of this snow it was covered with salt and the last thing I’d need is for it to start rusting or something essential to begin corroding, so I grabbed a handful of laundry quarters before I left home and took it to a self-service car wash. The first one I went to took my money and then wouldn’t start. The second one took my money, started but the damned thing was out of soap and the foam brush wouldn’t work-probably frozen. The third worked, but was out of wax. Total cost: $7 for a $2 car wash… I just can’t win.
I took my twenty $2 bills over to Wal-Mart and bought $38 of groceries. I bought a ton of salad mix, a head of red cabbage, a stalk of celery and some red-wine vinegar to make my own low-fat Italian dressing with. At least I’ll eat well until it runs out in about 6-7 days; then it’s back to the cheap package dinners.
When I got home I unloaded the car and the car alarm wouldn’t arm. This has been an occasional problem for a while and usually means the remote batteries are low. It involves putting the key in, turning it on without starting the ignition and then holding an under-dash button in to reprogram it. The plastic button and the metal piston it operates to make electrical contact with the sensor broke off in my hand. Now the alarm on/off function was not only disabled-it was permanently armed with no way to shut it off. I had to get down on my knees, get out my old spotlight and lay on the floor under the dashboard to hold the thing together with both hands, operate the ignition key and operate the buttons on the remote at the same time. After a half hour of freezing out there I finally got it to cooperate, but as soon as I change the batteries in the remote I’ll have to go through it all over again.
About the only good thing is that without the override button attacked to the housing, a car thief can’t disarm it. I won’t go into how sore my back, chest and knee are now.
When I got up to the penthouse and unloaded the groceries, Dr. R/heart’s nurse called to say she couldn’t find any help or samples for me, but promised to keep searching. A few minutes later Dr. S/clinic’s social worker did the same thing. God love these people for going out of their way to help, but I wish I didn’t feel so humiliated for needing it. I gladly give help to anyone I can, but it’s so damned hard being on the other end of it.
Between collection agency calls, I tried to print out the check for this month’s rent and discovered I’m out of printer ink… FUCK. I’ve reached the dreaded point where my income no longer meets my expenses. It’s been coming torturously slow for five year 25-30 bucks a month but it’s finally here.
I had a nice talk with Betsy this evening, and watched NCIS.
I have DVDs of my father’s hard drive before I destroyed it and his horrible diaries that my family will never see, and was going through them when I found some hidden file folders inside his Windows system operating files as if he didn’t want anyone to know they were there. Instead of the expected porn, I found black & white photos of rednecks working on old cars, old diners and what are apparently photos of soldiers from World War 2, through Vietnam. I told Betsy about them and promised to burn them onto a CD and send them to her. The old family photos are of people I’ve never seen before. The trouble is for some reason I can look at them, but can’t save them in a file format. It’s really strange. I had the same problem with his old Air Force UFO photos I found. I’ve got to open it, hit “print screen” and then save it in paintbrush to a new file, which is time consuming and a pain in the ass.
After playing with it for a while, I gave up and turned in after giving Jay Leno another chance. I found him just as boring and unfunny as I did before, clicked over to Letterman for a while and then turned in. Tomorrow will be spent at Dr. Mind’s and then chopping celery and red cabbage… yum!
Wednesday the 3rd - Saturday the 6th
Wednesday
I printed out my diary entries for Dr. Mind this morning and as expected they came out really light from low ink. I may have to resort to using more of my $2 bills to buy a cheap refill at Walgreen’s. The problem is it’s a gamble, sometimes those refills work and sometimes they don’t and I’m beginning to suspect that they’re only a third of the price because they only put a third of the ink in the damned things.
I headed out to see her and was blinded by some really huge thing in the sky… oh yeah the sun-I remember that! I’ve got a really nice pair of sunglasses I got during my last eye surgery that I keep in the car for just such occasions. They’re big plastic things that allow you to snap your regular glasses into them. I guess it was really cold because when I tried to use them to fight against snow-blindedness before I pulled out of the parking lot, they snapped in half. Uhhhrrrrrgh. It was a usual session at OSU and I’m glad I have her, because lord knows I’d be dead by now without her.
When I got home, something happened when I got out of the car and my knee hurts like hell now. At least the car alarm is behaving itself for a change. However my computer monitor isn’t; after a long stretch of behaving itself, it’s begun trying to default back to a digital input when I turn it on instead of the analog one from my 6-year old tower. 1920 x 1200 flat panels are so damned picky and feel they’re to good for anything older than they are. I guess computers and monitors live in cat years. From what I understand, most hard drives only last about five years, so I guess I should consider myself lucky.
I discovered my paper electric bill in the mail finally. I was relieved to find it matched what they said it would be on line until I looked at the details. It was for the period between Jan 14th and the 29th… only two weeks! That means I can expect a bill of around $180 or more next month. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out where to cut the budget next. I guess the collectable Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins are next to go.
I slept most of Thursday; the only event worth mentioning was that I got the letter I mailed to Jeff back today. The wrong address, or something they couldn’t forward it… now Elvis Pressley’s stuck in my head singing ”return to sender… address unknown… no such number… no such zone:… I can’t stand Elvis-I had to resort of Led Zeppelin on my head phones to exorcize him..
Friday was a good day
I woke up this morning and could barely focus my eyes-just another reminder that I’ve got to find a way to have eye surgery that I’ve been putting off since last July when my left eye hemorrhaged. If I don’t start looking for someone willing to do it soon, I won’t pass my eye test when I have to renew my driver’s license on my birthday May 2nd. Oh shit-I just remembered I have to renew my license plates too. Now I know I’m sunk.
My apartment bldg manager appeared at my door this afternoon with a package from Heart Care. Dr. D & R/heart sent me a 6-month supply of Crestor to help with my cholesterol. While I was recovering from that, I got a phone call from Dr. S/clinic’s social worker saying that a supply of prescriptions was waiting for me at a pharmacy down the street! I hurried out (because they close at 5) and discovered 30 syringes, 100 units of Lantus insulin in a bottle, a supply of Carvedilol and another of Lasix to control the fluid around my heart-GOD LOVE THEM!!!
About the only thing I’m short on now is the little lancets that are used to poke my finger when I’m testing my blood sugar and the Cozaar that Dr. Skully says I might not need now that I’m on the Crestor. A pack of them is around $10, so I guess I’ll be injecting the insulin blind for about a week or so until I can figure out what to forgo next to buy a supply of the cartridges. As it is, I’m relying on little nightlights in the kitchen and bathroom instead of turning on the overhead lights. I’m back to washing plastic spoons, forks and drinking cups to reuse them. I’d stop feeding the cat, but she only costs about $7 a month and if I stopped feeding the fish I don’t want to think about what this apartment would smell like.
I’d sell the old college text books I’ve collected over the years on psychology, engineering and electronics, but anything over ten years old is badly outdated on any subject and they’re not old enough to be collectors items yet. I dread cataloging the CDs and DVDs I have left and at pennies on the dollar I doubt it’d compensate for the memories they bring back, and how much they cheer me up when I’m low.
In all the excitement about getting a fresh and needed supply of drugs I forgot to try to call WorkHealth to schedule some more physical therapy. That reminds me, I’ve got to go get reauthorized for more GB checks next Friday..
Oh well; same shit different day…
Sunday the 7th
I had a nice peaceful sleep last night and then wound up having flashbacks all morning; god will this ever end? The elevated blood sugar levels are taking a toll on my eyes and it takes longer and longer to get them to focus in the morning. I made a bad mistake that I’ve been paying for all weekend-I turned the thermostat down 5 degrees hoping to stave off a huge electric bill next month and now I’m sneezing and my upper chest hurts like hell when I do.
Now that I’m on my essential meds, the start-up side effects are beginning to plague me again until my body builds up the proper level of them. The sudden loss of equilibrium, short-term memory loss and muscle aches. I expected them when I switched from the Simvastatin to the Crestor and Janumet instead of the Glipizide. Hopefully it’s just my body getting used to the new combination of drugs.
I spent most of the afternoon reconfiguring the spreadsheet to accommodate and track the new drugs and their doses so that I can keep track of when I’m low.
Betsy called twice today-she’s called every day this week. She’s taking care of an old man she used to clean for, who’s close to death. She says it makes up for how helpless she felt when Dad wouldn’t let her fly east to take care of him before he died. She’s sending me postage to e-mail her a bunch of photos on disc that I’ve harvested from Dad’s computer before I fried the hard drive. It was nice to talk to her.
I spent some time on line trying to locate Bill Z. my old partner in the British car business. I’d love to know what became of my suped-up yellow TR9 prototype that I gave him. The only thing I regret about that whole era is that I never found my fantasy car while I could afford one. A 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible in good shape and Turquoise blue with a white top and tri-power… oh but the search was such fun, especially when I’d get to expose a fake made from a LeMans or Tempest.
Monday the 8th
I called Shawntell; Dr. R/heart’s nurse to thank her for the Crestor she sent but got her voice mail. I called Tressa at WorkHealth to verify that she got Dr. R’s fax allowing me to restart P.T. and to get on her schedule and got her e-mail too. I checked with my building manager about my rent check not being cashed a week after I wrote it because my bank was bought out by another. He said there wasn’t any trouble, but the transaction still hasn’t shown up on line yet.
My blood sugar was high today, so I shot up 15 units of Lantus Insulin, but I guess the stuff is different than what comes in the cartridges because half an hour later I began feeling really bad and very week so I took a blood reading and it plummeted from 217 to only 60 which is right in the danger zone of being critically low. I wound up eating the remaining two of my emergency glucose tablets in case it dropped further. Now I’ll have to find a supply of something with sugar in it in case this happens again. When I was in the rehab facility it dropped below 40 once and I nearly died and was in a coma for nearly three hours… I don’t want to go through that again.
I’m considering cutting my own hair tomorrow-a big change from the pampering I used to get at the spas. I’ve been doing that for about five years now, and it’s not that hard, except for the back. Just one more indignity.
I ignored 9 collection agency calls today and added a new one to my list. I’ve trimmed down some post-it notes to fit on the eye-level shelf on my desk’s hutch so that they’re in front of me when the phone rings so I know whom not to answer. I’ve also compiled a list of hospital numbers that are from doctors and social workers who are trying to help me so I know to answer them. I’ve been using a tool to trace them-I just go to Google and put the phone number from my caller I.D. in and hit enter and about five different websites tell me who called.
I went for 15 years with an absolutely spotless and platinum credit report and now I’ve come to this.
Most of the day was spent finalizing the spreadsheet formulas and I did a general clean up on my computer getting rid of over 5000 cookies, cleaning out the internet temporary files and defragging both my C and D hard drives. It’s great backing documents to a 2nd hard drive. It’s done instantly instead of taking half an hour or more to an external drive and recovery of a file is nearly instant. Better yet, if one drive fails, the machine boots up to the duplicate with the same operating system. It makes me glad I used to be rich enough to afford such a system and was computer savvy enough to install the internal components myself.
Friday I see Dr. T/GB and I’m hoping they come through with my check the same day. I worked it out on the new spreadsheet and I’ll only have around $56 to buy food and supplies-another instance of having to decide between prescriptions and food.
I wish there was a way to stop looking backward at the good times in San Diego and the art business. I hate living in the past, but I can’t look forward for there’s nothing in the future and the present is bleak enough to try to avoid thinking about. I haven’t crossed through my front door since last Wednesday to see Dr. Mind for fear of what mind-trick person or car might jump out at me. At the moment it’s 2:36AM and I don’t want to go to sleep for fear of the nightmares or imagined sounds that could wake me up screaming. Which means I’m yawning through tears constantly.
I think it’s the loneliness and being alone that might push me over the edge… but of course I’ll get to the brink of sanity and then something will pull me back… it always does… for now.
Tuesday the 9th
There was a multiple shooting at Ohio State University at 3:30 this morning. I began having flashbacks the moment I saw the news and I’ve been having uncontrollable full-body shudders all morning. An employee that was about to be fired walked into his boss’ office at and shot two people and then turned the gun on himself. The location was only a stone’s throw from Dr. Mind’s office. This is going to be a tough day.
I tried to distract myself by digging into what happened to my e-mail this morning. I can log onto any website except it, so I called AT&T support and sat on hold for half an hour. While I waited, I rebooted my DSL modem and computer and nothing worked. I finally got some woman with an oriental accent that I could barely hear and had an even harder time understanding. After about fifteen minutes of wandering through my control panel file tweaking things, she handed me over to a guy in California who told me there was an outage in the Midwest-Ohio specifically-and that it should be cleared up by this afternoon.
As soon as I hung up, I got a call from Tressa at physical therapy returning my message. She said she never got the fax from Dr. R/heart’s office so I called there and asked his nurse Cindy if she’d take care of it and she said she would. I hope they work it out soon as my knee has been hurting like hell to walk on today. It was warm and sunny this afternoon for a change so it’s probably the change in weather affecting my joints. I would’ve loved to have gon out and cruised around with the top down… I even got dressed for it, but then couldn’t get past my apartment door. This is getting old really fast.
I tried working on the Carly Simon article, but the shooting at OSU kept distracting my mind. At one point I went to bed trying to keep myself from watching the local news, but the moment I closed my eyes, there were my Somolian attackers laughing and beating the hell out of me. I’d never have gotten to sleep anyway because the god damned collection agencies began calling relentlessly the moment I lay down. I still have the comedy answering machine message stored on my computer that takes about a minute to listen to, so I fed it to the machine so that their robo caller would think they’ve reached a spam phone number… you never know. I’m also thinking of recording several disconnected phone numbers to get enough audio material to edit/patch a phony but convincing outgoing message saying that my phone has been disconnected that’d only play to specific phone numbers. Thank God I didn’t sell the most expensive and versatile answering machine I could buy before this all happened.
I cut it close on food; after tonight’s roast beef casserole, I’ve got one chicken dinner and three cans of ravioli left. GB better come through this Friday of I’m fucked for sure. I’m still having trouble with equilibrium from the new prescriptions and the short-term memory problem is bugging the hell out of me. I’ll think of something to do or write down and forget it almost immediately. My ears ring all the time to the point of almost being used to it. For some reason though I’ll suddenly be aware of it and then be plagued with it the whole rest of today. It’s like a constant high-pitched hearing test tone that won’t go away.
This irrational fear of going into see Dr. Mind tomorrow is growing inside me, that I’ve got to consciously will from my thoughts. At one point I called and canceled my appointment but got some other secretary and decided against it.
I made dinner watched NCIS and NCIS L.A. and then tried to write some more of my Simon article without success. It’s now nearly 4:30 in the morning and I don’t want to go to sleep…
I took a good look at my new internet journal banner that I call “Self-Portrait” and realized that the “today” me is looking back sadly at the past “me”s instead of forward. I’ll be Dr. Mind will make a lot out of that tomorrow…
Monday the 15th
For a moment I pulled myself out of the funk I’m in and wrote/published an editorial on the Texas School Board trying to change history text books that children would be taught from in their public schools to say that the U.S. was founded to be a Christian theocracy. I’m not sure where it came from but it seemed to just flow out of me and I discovered that my BlogCritics friends and Jet’s Politics Page fans were impatiently waiting for me to reenter the political editorial arena because I got a lot of responses from it by e-mail.
Sunday, I tried to write the Carly Simon article and nothing would flow out of me. The last week has been very difficult; it’s like a smothering choking cloud of “what’s the use?” is pressing down on me and I can’t get out from under it. It started to intensify when I got my GB check on Friday, sent out the bills and realized that I had to pay the phone bill out of the next check or starve; which means it’ll be late and I’ll have to pay a late fee. That left me with $78 to buy two weeks of groceries and supplies and nothing left to buy this cycle’s prescriptions. When I got home I only had $14 left. If some emergency comes up like a problem with the car or a flat tire I have no safety net under the financial tightrope I’m walking.
With the phone bill pushed to next check, I may have to find a way to delay March’s rent. This is all so hopeless; it’s no wonder I can’t stop living in the past. This is a problem that I see no end to, and with May coming up fast, I’ll have no money to renew my license plates or driver’s license, which may be a moot point because my vision is getting worse-even with my glasses.
Without surgery on my left eye I’ll never pass the eye test and I can’t afford the co-pays to even get into the clinic for the preliminary exams. I succeeded in getting Dr. T/GB to authorize me until mid May for more checks, but that dark ghost of GB lurks in the shadows. It worries me that they haven’t drug me into court for so long, like they’re saving everything up to hit me with a bunch of shit at once.
In addition the collection calls and letters are coming in more threatening and more often. With bankruptcy filed in 2007 I won’t get protection from them until 2014. I tried to cheer myself up by putting the top down when I went grocery shopping and it worked for a while, until I got home and discovered I miscalculated and only have about 12 days of groceries at the most. I don’t see things getting better, only worse and I don’t know how much longer I can keep bailing water out of the row boat I’m in, when more is seeping in than I can manage.
I can’t stop thinking about how safe and secure my life used to be and how I looked forward to that Oregon beach house for the rest of my life with a lover and two cats.
I wonder what’s left for god to sweep away from me before I can hang on to it?
Wednesday the 17th
I had the hell scared out of me last night. Normal blood glucose reading is between 90-110. It’s like an earthquake reading; each number you go below that is exponentially more dangerous. Too low below 40 you go into a coma-below that you die because your blood doesn’t have enough “umph” to burn to sustain your body’s engine. The higher above 130 you go, the more risk you run of damage to any vital organ that has tiny capillaries because your blood becomes so thick with unconverted sugar that they clog and burst-threatening your heart, eyes and kidneys first and then the brain and other vital organs.
Last night around 10 I had a reading of 217, which is of concern, but since it was in the 400s January and February when I couldn’t afford my insulin, I was concerned, but confident I could control it as long as the syringes hold out. Around midnight I shot up what I thought was 15 units, but obviously was a lot more and I must’ve misread the scale on the syringe because along around 1 I started feeling like I was going to pass out. I took a blood reading and in a little more than a half an hour it plummeted to 70. I got a lollipop out of the desk since I used up all my emergency glucose tablets the last time this happened, and sucked on it. Half an hour it was down to 61, so I used another lollipop, By two it’d risen to 75 but that was still too low.
I dug a can of unsweetened pineapple juice out of the back of the fridge and ate the whole thing. It took until 3AM to stabilize it at 110, so I sat another half an hour to make sure before I went to sleep to be sure it wasn’t going to fall again. Whewwwww.
I went and saw Dr. Mind today; the session went okay, though I’m still suffering from flashbacks and nightmares. Afterward, I took my last $14.07 and bought two more days of food up at Wal-Mart. It was nice and sunny, but only in the mid 50s so I put the top down anyway and cranked up the heat. I got a lot of envious looks at my red luxury convertible. That’s one of the reasons I probably won’t ever sell it for a while; when I’m in it, I’m not handicapped and everyone thinks I’m a “rich-bitch”. Little do they know that I owe more on it than I can sell it for and that I’m barely able to afford the payments and insurance… but when I’m in it with the top down and the stereo up, I’m free and the old Jet comes out again and it feels fucking good.
Dr. mind won’t be in next week and except for going two blocks to physical therapy, I probably will stay here locked behind my door, safe from strangers and imagined threats. When I came home I think I’d spend $13.50 or so on two meals to round out next Wednesday and Thursday, and I’ll hope and pray the check comes and BC won’t fuck with it.
Now I don’t have enough to see Dr. S/clinic as they let me slide last time, and I don’t think they’ll let me get away without the $10 up front this time.
A friend from BC called me as a surprise and it was nice talking to a total stranger on the phone without having palpitations. She’s really nice and complimented me on my latest article. I remembered (as I usually do after I’ve already published it) the clever title I’d come up for it, but it was too late. The article was about the Texas board of education trying to force right-wing religious ideas on unsuspecting kids. It’s entitled: “Tinkering Texans Tamper With Texts To Teach Slanted Right-Wing Agenda To U.S. Kids!” and it was only after I published it that I remembered the clever one I’d thought up last night before I had my glucose emergency; “TINKERING TWISTED "TEXAN TALIBAN" TORTURES TEACHER'S TEXTS!”
My upper arms are both hurting lately, I thing it’s side-effect muscle pain from the Crestor… Whom do I sue?
Friday the 19th
I owe Betsy my dad’s photos from the box I was given by the reverend after his death, and the ones from Dad’s computer and I can’t bring myself to search through all of the hidden file folders he had to find them that are preserved on a bunch of DVD-roms I’d had made. I feel really tired today and don’t know why. I know I’ll regret this but I’ve started using my syringes twice as I can’t afford more. I’ll use it, then draw rubbing alcohol into them, squirt it out, then dry them and use them again.
While checking out the news on-line today I found a story of a General who lied about being told that the Dutch army was to blame for a massacre because they had gay soldiers… what the fuck? The Dutch government has had openly gay soldiers now for about 35-years, and got really pissed because he lied when he said one of their generals told him that, and the Dutch general immediately responded through the news media by calling him a liar. The Netherlands government even got involved and expressed “outrage” at the false implication. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing again so I put out an article about the Dutch reaction to it.
There’s a website called Digg that’s been pleading with BC’s founder Eric to get us to “digg” each other’s articles on their website, so I made an effort to get people to digg mine, since a whole lot of gay specific articles aren’t written for BC and it’d bring a new supply of fresh readers to our site. Let’s just say that it didn’t work out and my motives were misinterpreted. I may just start digging my own articles from my sites instead.
My chest hurts like hell. I had another sugar emergency yesterday and missed physical therapy and the only available opening was at 8:15 this morning. I don’t know if it’s the thoracotomy or the heart operations but taking a deep breath is even more agony than before. They tell me that it could take years to recover. Every time I walk into that gym it reminds me of my days back in Barberton going to the health spa with my young apt manager as a training partner. It’s depressing when I can’t manage a 20-pound weight when I used to press 3-400. I swear it feels like the screws in my arm are going to break right through my skin. Dave gave me a watch for Christmas that beeped a pace. I measured my stride and entered it so that when I went out for a run, it’d calculate how far I went in a session and I could add or decrease the pace. I loved that thing; it still around here somewhere, battery acid probably eaten through the innards by now.
I wish I could find more of the photos of myself when I was bulked up. So far I’ve only located two. The rest were in a briefcase that was in a rental car I had in San Diego that got stolen by some Mexicans along with receipts and some bills. I had to cancel all of my credit cards because the rental receipts were in it too. I have nothing against Mexicans in general, only the ones who refuse to learn English and the ones who steal cars.
It reminds me of a story a border guard told me once about a little boy that crossed from the U.S. into Mexico on a bicycle five or six times a day. He was always shirtless in shorts and tennis shoes with no socks. On the back of the bike was tied a five-pound bag of sand. People kept telling them that the kid was smuggling but after searching his shoes and sometimes cutting open the bag, they could never catch him, going so far as to disassemble the bike once. This went on for a couple of months and then suddenly he stopped doing it. One day he was spotted with his mother crossing northbound in a new car. My friend finally came out and asked the kid what he’d been smuggling and the kid grinned from ear to ear and replied, “bicycles!”
I was thinking back to when the economy went sour back in 2000 and I sold two failing head shops in San Francisco because I couldn’t afford the power bills during the Emron artificial crisis. I took the money from both sales, paid the accountants, broker’s fees, liens and taxes and then split the money that was left between all of my employees so that they could have something to live on until they could find jobs. Knowing what I’m going through now, I wonder if I’d still do that.
Every act of kindness I’ve ever done is followed by suspicion that I have alternate motives. Why can’t anyone believe the feeling that comes from doing something good, just for the satisfaction of the act?
I dug out the little box of Dad’s photos and prepped them for being scanned at Kinko’s on Monday, and was so tired afterward I only had the energy to sit at the computer and field e-mails all night.
Saturday the 20th
Today was rough; I had my hands full trying to sort dad’s photos out and juggled e-mails from my new article all day. I couldn’t believe the insane number of photos he had of me compared to my brothers and sisters. I’m thinking of redoing the header of this site with them in order but someone would probably accuse me of vanity instead of just posting it to show the aging process.
Some time around 5PM I suddenly got really tired and sat down on the bed and woke up around midnight. I’ve got people bitching at me on-line because I’m not on enough any more and only seem to be answering comments on my own articles instead of theirs like I used to. I tried to explain that when I’m on percocet I can barely function enough to leave intelligible stuff on my own, much less theirs.
It still hurts like hell to inhale more than half a breath in my upper chest. The feeling of emotional and financial hopelessness is really getting me down. I got nice e-mails from my friend Reuven in Israel and Eric e-mailed me to say thanks for my “Digg” efforts.
Other than my office here being cluttered with boxes with old photos all over the place, not much happened.
God, it’s lonely not having some to love or to love me… if only I weren’t so broke I could get out more often and succeed in just leaving the front door.
Sunday the 21st
Monday 5:30AM
I couldn’t sleep Saturday night and finally fell asleep Sunday morning around 6AM. My thoughts were filled with hopelessness and loneliness. I couldn’t stop thinking about driving out to the middle of the Broad Street Bridge and standing at the railing and staring down at the water below. I’d get up to distract myself and then when I went back to bed the thoughts would return again. I woke up around noon Sunday and couldn’t fall back asleep. The day was spent mostly exhausted and in pain. Both my shoulders hurt like hell and even half of a percocet didn’t help, so I took a whole one.
I knocked around the house most of the day and couldn’t focus my eyes on the computer screem unless I raised the zoom up to about 150%. They usually focuses in about an hour but today it went the whole day. I colorized an antique photo from my father’s collection to try to distract myself, but that didn’t help. I keep thinking of how others have family close by for support but most of mine have rejected me. My Aunt Margaret lives three hours away in Pittsburgh and my sisters Betsy and Char live three time zones away in Oregon.
Well this should be interesting-I’m going “live” here.
In the middle of typing that last sentence I began feeling “funny”. I took a blood glucose reading and it was 60. I just ate all three of the mints that Dr. Mind gave me last Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day. I hope it helps, I feel really bad. Before I went to sleep, I took 15 units of #100 Novolog (I keep mistakenly calling it Novolox) and this is getting old really fast because I can’t figure out the doses for this shit. At the moment I’m sucking on a grape lollipop while I’m inventorying and I’ve got 25 test strips and only 15 lancets left. I’m going to have to start storing the used lancets in alcohol to reuse over and over again, but the test strips aren’t reusable, so I’m really fucked once they run out and will have to inject the insulin blind without test strips. I’m having enough trouble as it is with the test strips, god knows what fun I’ll have without them for reference.
I’m starting to feel a little better. The mints turned out to be starchy and chewable instead of the hard kind, which is why I’m crunching the last of a grape lollipop now.
I’m going to wait until I finish writing this to see what happens. The “feeling” hasn’t gone completely away, but it has eased. If this is a repeat of the last time I may have to raid the fridge for the last can of pineapple….
It’s now 6AM, I went to the fridge and got some sugarless cranberry juice to wash the corn syrup laden candy down with.
Sunday was spent cataloging dad’s photos and answering e-mailed comments from my latest article. I’ve only got mere pennies left in checking until Friday or I’d go out and get a big chocolate cake using my debit card, if I thought I could trust myself driving-which I don’t at the moment, The German Chocolate kind that I miss so much, and keep it in the freezer for just such occasions. YUK! ‘The feeling just started coming back, so I just popped what I thought was an artificially flavored watermelon pop in my mouth and when I looked at the green label it turned out to be artificially flavored “sour apple”.so I dumped it. If push comes to shove, it just dawned on me that I’ve got a dollar or so in laundry quarters so I can always go down to the laundry room and buy a coke from the machine.
6:20AM Monday morning I still feel odd, but I think it’s getting better. This is going to mean using up another test strip. I just put some rubbing alcohol into an empty snap-top plastic test strip container to see if it’ll hold it without leaking and it did. Now all I have to do is remember to load the used lancets face down in it so I don’t stick myself when I try to get one out.
Anyway, I injected myself around 3AM and went to bed. I started having the same dream/thought about jumping off the bridge again and after about two hours of tossing and turning I couldn’t get it out of my mind, I got up and… well you know the rest.
This is going to shoot my Monday plans all to hell. If I ever get to sleep. Thank god I don’t have physical therapy today, but I may have to turn the phone ringers off or be woken up every 45-minutes by another collection agency. Christ, no wonder my thoughts keep turning to suicide.
AT& T is having a problem allowing me to log into my diary to update it. A tech support guy gave me a proxy server in England in order to log onto it, but I don’t know how long this will work. It’s been days since I’ve been able to post and I don’t know how long it’ll take to be fixed.
The following is a summary of my last entries…
Tuesday thru Friday the 26th
I tried posting this Wednesday evening thru Friday afternoon and couldn’t log onto any blogspot sites. I e-mailed a friend who said they’re putting up a bunch of new features for writers and it’s closed to editing until god knows when.
I had a good time on line Tuesday “butting heads” with the archconservatives on BC’s political page. They’re all pissed off and foaming at the mouth because the Healthcare reform package passed and for a while my old self came back and was matching them witty comeback for comeback. It all left me Wednesday and I couldn’t bring myself to even respond to e-mails from fans welcoming me back into the fray after such a long absence. It’s amazing how an arch nemesis on that forum will throw angry retorts and insults at you one minute, and privately e-mail you the next to tell you how much they missed you.
According to Google I’m getting less readers on my sites. I think it’s because I redesigned them so people didn’t have to slog through the ever-growing table of contents to get to an article they’re looking for. Where before, I think they’re getting interested in something as they scrolled down through it and decided to read it after they finish their sought-after article, now since it’s in the sidebar, they don’t. I’m going to let it go another few days and if it doesn’t change I’ll have to move the table back where it was. Readership is down nearly half. I made all of 64 whole cents last week on ad clicks! I’m rich!!! I think Brenda’s being nice and clicking when she logs in (god lover her). Since Adsense doesn’t send out checks until I collectively earn $100, I figure I’ll eventually get a check sometime in 2014.
It’s been a rough few days. It seems no matter how minutely I adjust the dosage; I’m still winding up with low blood sugar and nearly passing out when I inject the insulin. I haven’t been able to sleep from nightmares and daytime is just as bad with flashbacks. I’ve got this strange ache in both my upper arms between the shoulder and the elbow that feels like bone instead of muscle. It’s to the point that I spend most of the time with headphones on trying to drown out the ringing in my ears. I’m almost out of Janumet for my diabetes, but I think I won’t need it as well as the insulin is working.
Wednesday the city tested the tornado sirens at 9:30 AM instead of their regular noon like they always do, and I had to convince myself that I was actually hearing the damned thing. I got a call from Betsy last night saying she’d shown her grown kids how to log onto this journal and they freaked when they thought I was standing there naked. I told her that it’s a reflection from the waist down-I told her they needed to look again because it was on the same horizontal line reflection as the newborn picture of me.
With no Doctor Mind this week I haven’t left the apartment for days, and since GB hasn’t approved more physical therapy the only excuse to go out will be to buy groceries and pay the late phone bill on Friday. It’s like I’ve sentenced myself to solitary confinement. I’m going to make myself start going down to our gym, strangers be damned and try to replicate the PT sessions on my own. I called WorkHealth and Tressa still hasn’t heard anything.
I just figured up my budget and if I only put $10 of gas in the car, I’ve only got $61 after bills to buy two-week’s worth of groceries and supplies. There’s GOT to be a way out of this maze, but I haven’t found it yet.
I have no choice, Monday I’m going to have to force myself to make an eye appointment at OSU, or I won’t pass my eye test to renew my driver’s license in May. I still don’t know how I’m going to come up with the money to pay for it and new license plates.
The last few days have also been spent going down memory lane, trying to arrange dad’s photos into some semblance of order. I promised Betsy I’d send them a week ago and haven’t been able to mentally force myself past the front door-even to go down and get the mail. I’m putting together a collective family album and burning it onto a CD-rom and I’m going to include old gay lovers I’ve had over the years too and if they don’t like it-fuck ‘em. My family e-mails out family photos every other holiday, so I’m going to send some personal photos back at them.
I should get a job as a weather forecaster. My knee really started hurting this morning, and sure enough tt’s supposed to snow tonight. They’re predicting temperatures in the 70s next week, but we’re supposed to get two inches of snow tonight… sigh.
Friday the 26th
I tried to log in to update this journal again this morning and still no luck.
I drove out to my bank to get the cash out of my checking account to pay the overdue phone and yet another branch was closed! PNC is closing them all over the place and the only one open anyway near me is in an office building downtown where I’ll have to pay for parking. I gave up and came home and wrote out a paper check. I set out again to pay the phone bill then bought gas. I had the nozzle in for mere seconds and ran up $15 in gas at $2.70 @ gallon.
When I went through Wal-Mart I bought what I thought was a minimal amount of groceries and supplies, so that I could come back tomorrow with my calculator and make sure I had 14 meals… instead the tab came to $65!!! I’d completely forgot I’d gone over $5 on the gas budget and now if I write a check for next month’s rent, I’ll be $5.60 overdrawn-which will cost me a $35 bank fee and god knows what my landlord will charge. THIS SUCKS.
I got home and tallied my receipts and wanted to cry. I can’t stand this anymore. If only I had a dollar for every time I’ve said that. I think I’ve only got 11 meals and nothing left at all for extras like cat food that I’m almost out of.
I’ve spent from 9:30PM until 11:07 PM with tech support trying to get the problem resolved with ATT being unable to log onto Blogger.com from customers from Wisconson to Ohio and every state in between… groan… What next?
Monday the 29th
I called Matt this afternoon and wished him a happy birthday. He was about to go out with his family. Matt was the manager that I worked for at the pizza shop when I was attacked. He calls me every so often to see how I am and I attended his wedding and reception in 2005. The shop misses me because 2 or 3 times a week I’d treat everyone to carry-out lunch at Bob Evan’s or Long John Silver’s since the shop makes employees pay for their own food. God; the hundreds of dollars I spent on them in the name of being a nice guy.
I spent a few more hours on the phone with AT&T’s tier 2 tech support and let them remotely run my computer to trace where the Blogger connection is breaking down and it indeed was at Google. They gave me a workaround website where I can use a proxy to get into my websites from England or somewhere until they fix it.
Never give up-never say die… groan
Saturday’s mail brought yet another notice from Medicaid that I just barely over their income limit and that I’m still ineligible for help… based on the application I put in last September. That’s only about the 8th or 9th one they’ve sent. It’s like they’re rubbing it in-not only are we not going to help you, but we’re going to keep reminding you that we’re not going to help you.
I poured the rest of Mischief’s dry cat food in her little feeder. God I hope it’s enough to last her for two weeks. I’m still trying to figure out what to sell to keep my rent check from bouncing next month by only $5…this sucks. I’ve been enlarging and enhancing and in cases colorizing family photos to occupy myself.
I started losing my equilibrium again this morning and it’s really pissing me off. I’ll be walking around and suddenly tilt sideways and have to catch myself on something.
Betsy called Saturday night to say my sister Charlene got fired and that she’s fleeing Oregon after living there 30 years to come back to Ohio. The theory is that her mom lives somewhere near the Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio borders and that that’s probably where she’ll settle.
Sunday I came up with an idea. I’ve been having trouble with low sugar from trying to get used to the injections, so I figured why not eat some of the M&M peanut candy to kill my appetite? I might gain a few meals out of it. Then I’d have to monitor my blood sugar really closely, but carefully because I only have a few test strips left because they’re not reusable. I took a reading and the batteries in the goddamned thing died. Great-just great. Why I haven’t broken down and cried in frustration is anyone’s guess.
Sunday brought a really bad headache, probably from tension. My ears began ringing really loudly so I spent most of the day with headphones on. My eyes are getting harder and harder to focus and I’m really getting concerned. I’m already planning to try to make counterfeit stickers for my license plates and then hope to God I don’t get pulled over, because there’s no way I’ll save enough to renew the plates or my license.
If the bank finds out I’ll lose the car, and who knows what the jail term would be for phony stickers? Betsy can’t seem to understand why I won’t sell the car. Explaining how much it means to me after I fought for it for so long and so hard, goes right over her head. Besides that, I owe more on it than it’s worth, which means I wouldn’t get enough to buy another.
I had a terrible series of nightmares last night; I kept killing myself and wouldn’t die. I was jumping off of expressway overpasses in front of trucks, jumping off bridges into water, crashing the convertible into bridge abutments, parking on railroad tracks and injecting all of my insulin at once. Nothing worked and somewhere in the distance my three attackers were laughing their heads off every time I failed. I woke up in a cold sweat around 5AM and haven’t allowed myself back to sleep.
So far today (Monday) not a single collection agency call today; I even picked up the phone a few times to see if it was off the hook somewhere. After squinting at this monitor for about five minutes, I gave up and put on my glasses-which are meant for distance sight. It didn’t improve. I took a gallon plastic freezer bag and punched a bunch of holes in it to make a net big enough to catch the damned plecostomus with, now the damned thing won’t come out of hiding. I’m looking forward to some free colorful fish to stare at in my aquarium. It’s almost as relaxing as when I used to sit on the beach in Newport.
Tuesday the 30th
For the 2nd day in a row I haven’t been able to fall asleep until 4AM or later. I finally had a sweet dream about being in San Diego and I remember passing a mirror and being so delighted that I had my old “body” back. It ended with me moving to the beach house in Newport Oregon. I woke up from it at about 7:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep trying to get back into the dream.
I almost succeeded in dozing off when promptly at 8 an automated collection agency call roused me. I guess they’re trying to make up for lost time yesterday by calling today, as I got 9 calls in the space of 5 hours. Mixed in with the group, Ohio State called to say there might be a problem with parking starting tomorrow and she outlined a rather confusing new procedure for what to do if I can’t find a parking slot… great. I thought of calling Tressa at Physical Therapy again but after three calls there, she’d have called by now if she’d heard anything and bugging her isn’t going to change that.
I wake up most days with a mental list of things I’m bound and determined to accomplish, and then I spent most of the day remembering how happy and generous I used to be and comparing it to the way I am now and being sad. I considered trying to find a local food bank, but the thought of actually going to one makes me think of some bum standing at the end of an expressway exit with a cardboard begging sign. I spent a lot of time pondering what would happen to my most cherished things should I suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, or decided to just give them all away. In order of importance would be my books, the tapestry and then my car, followed by the piano and this desk I worked so hard to build before the first heart surgery. I was contemplating how much money I’d have if I gave up my beloved car and if I could afford to take cabs everywhere on the money I’d save. Betsy had criticized me for holding onto things, but when things are all you have left in life to replace being loved or living comfortably it’s like giving up the last vestiges of what I once was.
I’ve pondered that I have nightmares and flashbacks of my attackers, and yet I can’t remember what they look like. Yet in the dreams the fear is so real and intense. It’s like I’m dreaming or flashing on the “concept” of them instead of them… I’m babbling; I know…
Enough.
I think my blood sugar is all over the place. With the dead batteries in my meter I’m shooting insulin blind. So far I haven’t felt like passing out yet, but my lips have tasted like sugar a few times, but I’ve been afraid to shoot more insulin for fear of overdosing. I’m now hoarding my hypos and using what few I have left five times before throwing them away. Sometimes the tips are so dull that I have to push them inside my skin.
While working on dad’s computer photo files, I came across one that had been scanned in very faded to the point that it was nothing but shades of tan and lighter tan. I used some of my remaining software and brought out a photo of a beautiful black woman who is probably one of my ancestors. It looked like it was taken about 100 years ago. I was kind of inspired and the artist in me came out and I sharpened the image, gave it more depth and then colorized her. When I was done I was amazed. Who would I show it to? Nearly all of my family is so race prejudiced, they’d reject even the notion, and in fact my sister Dee’s husband is so prejudiced, she’s never revealed that our grandfather on my father’s side is black.
I sneezed today and it felt like my whole chest exploded it hurt so much. After about half an hour I had to resort to a percocet to ease the pain. I’ve noticed lately that the harder I clench my jaw the louder the ringing in my ears gets.
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