Jet's Journal: Blogging on the Edge of Sanity

October 2011

2011-10-04T23:33:00.013-04:00

The latest entries are always in yellow followed by the month so far in chronological order...

Monday the 3rd
I saw Dr. P this morning about my elbow and he says it's healing "beautifully"... but. Bone matter is growing around the metal plates and restricting movement. In two months I have to go back and see about surgery to remove the extra bone and the plates that are keeping me from using my right hand from feeding myself etc because I can't touch my face with it... groan. The new article I wrote for Blog Critics magazine is going over like gangbusters. I guess I still have the ol’ writer in me somewhere. There’s a copy of it on my Politics page and it’s about Bank of America leading the way for other banks to start charging usage fees on their debit cards.

Tuesday the 4th I’d planned to go out to Dr. S/clinic today to see about more insulin, but I’m having one hell of a headache-nervous tension probably. I got a health card from the county today. Grant Hospital said they’d put in a duplicate application for one, but I didn’t think they’d have any better luck than I did. I was pleasantly surprised… until I discovered that the card they sent me expired the end of last month… sigh.

I begged off physical therapy this afternoon as my shoulder hurts like hell from the rain and cold weather. I was supposed to gather up all of my financial stuff and go over to Social security but since I drive halfway there tomorrow to see my analyst, I’ll go after I see her. I’ve decided to refer to Dr. Mind as my analyst from now on, it sounds classier. Ha ha. It’s supposed to be in the mid-seventies tomorrow and sunny so hopefully I can put the top down. When my check (if my check) comes on Friday, I might actually have enough to do laundry this weekend.

The county usually sends health cards out around the first, and since I haven’t gotten a current one, I guess it was fun to hope while it lasted. I’m going to have to call someone and see if I qualified finally, if that means they’ll start paying my $100+ copay for my Medicare part B. That’s cash I could sure use. I got the spreadsheed finally done and the new cash predictor works great, so now I can see three months into the future. The problem is will I have any income to put on it. With the fucking congress constantly threatening to shut down the government, and me being forced to see GB’s “independent” scrink next week, who knows what’s next.

I spotted a gas station at only $3.09 a gallon last week and used half the grocery money. Fortunately I’m getting that handy-dandy $15 in food stamps.

A fan of mine from my Brokeback Mountain Novel/tribute page has asked me to proofread it and try to embellish certain parts (the sex scenes) and I said I would, so I started reading over it today. My Headline news service is slow to catch on. It’s pissing me off that Google and Yahoo don’t seem to be scanning blogs anymore for their search engines since they’re convinced that everyone’s on facebook. I guess I’ll have to give up soon and go there too… but not now.

Gallagher Bassett is still not only demanding to read my analyst’s notes, but I suspect that they’re reading this too... or am I just being paranoid.

Tomorrow should be a busy day.

Tuesday the 11th
I had a nightmare about my attackers waiting in the parking lot of GB’s shrink for me to show up so they could kidnap me to keep me from making the appointment causing me to lose my benefits. I remember running away and falling a lot because of my leg. They caught up to me at Mt. Carmel Hospital and I woke up screaming at the top of my lungs.

I set the clock radio for physical therapy and when I woke up and checked the computer, there was no reminder as to what time the appointment was. I called there and discovered that last Thursday’s was my last scheduled appointment and they won’t be able to see me until next week. Great. I’m slowly making progress and can touch my nose by straining, but I still can’t feed myself with my right hand, nor can I completely straighten my arm. I used the time to work on proofreading my Brokeback Mountain webnovel. My god, I can’t believe how many typos there are that I didn’t catch the first time. That’s why professional writers hire proofreaders, because your mind tends to complete a sentence you’ve just written and doesn’t notice the errors.

In the middle of all that I got a call from AT&T’s U-verse installer. I objected because I said I’d do it myself and he corrected my misconception when I ordered it. It turns out they physically have to move wires around in the basement of our building to gain the extra internet speed. I asked when he was coming (so I could do some “panic cleaning”) and he said he was calling from outside the building at the front door. I got J.J. the janitor to let us into the utility rooms and fortunately he didn’t have to come in here.

He was a nice enough guy, but I still started having flashbacks of the attack in the confined utility room and begged of leaving.

After he left I hooked up the new modem and didn’t notice any noticeable difference in speed. Oh well, it’s ten bucks cheaper so who am I to complain?

My ears were ringing especially loud this evening, so I put on the headphones and listened to music. I started getting that feeling that someone was outside my door again and had to keep taking off the headset to see if I missed someone knocking… God I hate this. I can’t fall asleep and this is being written at 5AM. That means setting the clock-radio to get up in time to see Dr. Mind tomorrow and I’ve got a bunch of notes I have to type in… groan. text

Wednesday the 12
Dr. Mind called me first thing this morning to tell me that Jennifer over at GB informed her that they won’t pay for any visits for the month of October, so she had to cancel our appointment today. Great-just fucking great. I’ve been worried about having to go to their “independent” shrink tomorrow to the point of probably developing an ulcer and they pull this shit on me. Unfuckingbelievable. This probably means no check or only a partial one next week and nor more antidepressants. Thank god I started hoarding it after the withdrawal symptoms I suffered last time going from 90mg a day to zero cold turkey.

It also just dawned on me that once the cycle is broken, I’ll never get my regular Wednesday appointment at noon that I’ve had for the last seven years, because the time slot will be taken by someone else. Rather than give up, I called Lawyer/K’s office and his assistant told me there’s nothing they can do for now, except make sure I go to the appointment tomorrow. In fact I can’t do anything about my financial future until GB actually cuts me off, which I won’t find out about until days after it’s already happened. By then it’ll be too late and I’ll be without any savings to pay the car, internet and phone bill.

I feel that dreaded overwhelming hopelessness coming over me. I just want to scream out “WHY?” at the top of my lungs. Not that it would do any good, I’m tempted to call Jennifer at GB and cuss her out in frustration… Just to show her how “sane” I am.

Dr. Mind called me back around 12:30 to see how I was, so I read her my notes for the last 7 days. She said she was pissed (I was shocked) because Jennifer decided not to inform her they weren’t paying for October… until halfway through the month. I reminded her that’s what they do with everything and why I’m so stressed out as to whether the next check’s coming or not.

My head hurts again bad… gee, I wonder why.

Friday the 14th
(E-mail to my lawyer) Dear Chuck,
I want to thank you again for all of the "pro-bono" help you've given me over the years and how much I appreciate it.

Dr. M******* suggested I take notes with me to discus such things as not being able to completely open up to her knowing total strangers were reading her notes/intimate details of my life, and the ordeal of getting cymbalta every refill - only to discover none of it was necessary, my fear of strangers, unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and not going anywhere outside my apartment. Even though the session lasted nearly two hours-he would hear nothing of it, and stuck to a lengthy questionaire about my medical history and prescriptions I was taking.

Then he switched to asking me questions about who the president and vice president were and posing memory quizzes and spelling words backwards.

He had a very strict script that he stuck to and actually didn't seem very interested in my mental condition, problems sleeping or dealing with others. I came away with the impression that both he and I were given a fixed deck of cards we were allowed to play and that Gallagher Bassett had the winning hand before the deck was even dealt. Considering how much pressure Dr. M******* says she was under to declare me "improved" and that they turned to Dr. Clary instead when she wouldn't cooperate...

I biggest problem now is - as usual - I'll have no idea I've been cut off from temporary total until it actually happens. I barely have enough food in the house until the next check comes and I have no idea if that check will come at all. This on-going situation put me in the hospital three years ago with a double ulcer. Now that my much-needed sessions with Dr. M******* have been unexpectantly taken away Wednesday, an hour before I was scheduled to go in, I have no idea what to do next and am getting very depressed with the not knowing, and the frustration of not being able to predict my own future even a week in advance.

If anything unexpected happens and I lose my phone service or my internet, I want you to know how much it means to me that through this whole ordeal you are the one man I could count on.

I've told everyone who'll listen that, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks so much
Wishing you love, luck, & laughter
Jet text

Monday the 18th
It’s so goddamned unfair. GB decided sometime in September that they’re not paying for my sessions for the month of October, but doesn’t tell Dr. Mind about it until the middle of October. For all I know Ohio State University will come back on me for the sessions we had this month that they won’t pay for. In addition to that the sons of bitches decided to cut me off BEFORE they even determined whether or not I still need those sessions. UNFUCKINBELIEVABLE.

The weekend went by without my noticing it. I slept mostly. Usually I can’t sleep more than a couple hours at a time, but now I can’t stay awake. When I am awake I’m wondering if I’m going to lose the car because GB isn’t going to deposit this Friday’s check.

I went to physical therapy today and was so glum that I hardly talked to anyone at all. When it was done there all I could think of was taking an overdose of insulin or ramming my car into a bridge abutment or something. Somehow I wound up upstairs at WorkHealth instead of leaving and I don’t remember what I said, which scares me, but they want me to go back tomorrow and seem to be really worried about me going home by myself… so was I, but because I was scared another “disassociative” episode like last time could end me up in Cleveland or New York or somewhere.

The problem is if GB won’t pay for the appointment tomorrow, I can’t afford it. It was as if I was smothered in a cloud of gloom and I didn’t want to go through this any more. I really-really needed to see Dr. Mind last week about the nightmares and the torture of not knowing if the next check is coming or what the next dirty trick will be.

The flashbacks are getting worse and so are the headaches. Last night the energy saving bulb in my kitchen ceiling light blew out. I’m afraid to change it for fear of falling and breaking something else so I’m using the over counter light now.

The freezer’s empty so I’m down to cheap cans of soup again. I’ve been obsessing about not being able to see Dr. Mind again, and now that the stress of possibly being cut off and taking months to get a full Disability check looms over me constantly, I need her more than ever. Wouldn’t you know it, after 7 years of reminding them to tell their computer that I don’t need one, OSU’s computer called me in the middle of this evening with a reminder call that I had an appointment to see Dr. Mind on Wednesday. I guess some idiot went to cancel my schedule and clicked the wrong button.

My head hurts.

Tuesday the 18th
I woke up screaming last night again. Blissfully I don’t remember what the nightmare was. I can no longer fall asleep until I’m too exhausted to stay awake-usually 5AM. I kept my appointment at WorkHealth and though I don’t remember much, I must’ve scared the hell out of everyone and they pledged to contact GB and try to get Dr. Mind’s appointments reinstated. The fucking bastards at GB will be the death of me yet. I’m still worried that GB will refuse to pay for the visit and Grant Hospital will come back on me for it.

I kept getting political junk mail calls all day, so I finally gave in and went on line to get an absentee ballot. Let’s hope I get it on time. I haven’t voted in person in 6 years because of my fear of strangers, always voting by mail instead.

I was still upset when I got home and tried to reach Dr. Mind’s supervisor-she’d given me his cell phone number in case of emergencies and god I needed him because I couldn’t reach her. I caught him in the middle of a meeting (which made me feel bad) and he promised he’d call me right back… he never did.

I talked to my apartment building manager and hinted that I might miss next month’s rent. Everyone says not to worry, because the independent shrink hasn’t sent in his report yet, but as paranoid as GB has made me over the last 7 years, that doesn’t help. I got a letter in the mail from Anthem saying I owed them almost $700 in monthly payments since 2009. I haven’t sent them a penny since being dumped on their doorstep over two years ago. Just one more problem.

Wednesday the 19
I got a strange phone call this morning from someone at OSU who said they’d had trouble with Dr. Mind’s notes and wanted to know what pharmacy I used for my Crestor and Coreg (for my heart and cholesterol) and I told her I didn’t get those through her, but relied on Grant clinic for drug rep samples because I couldn’t afford Anthem’s copays. Then she got confused and said she’d called about setting up a prescription for my Cymbalta (depression) which I already have through Workman’s comp/WorkHealth. She got flustered and hung up after admitting she couldn’t figure out why she’d called… sigh

No usual appointment with Dr. Mind today, instead I went to physical therapy. Thankfully I’m making progress straightening my arm, but not so much bending it towards my face. I’m still struggling with feeding myself with my left hand. I’m still trying to get a definitive answer as to whether or not GB didn’t pay for any of my physical therapy. They gave me two different account numbers and a phone number to call. That’s gone well in the past and I’ve ended up just as mystified as when I started… why should this time be any different, but what a great thing to hold over GB’s head. I went upstairs to WorkHealth after PT (they’re in the same building.) They had asked me to try to refill my Cymbalta prescription this month from there in case I had trouble and I nearly fainted when it went straight through without trouble so I arranged to pick it up tomorrow.

I had to resort to turning on the heat last night. We’ve been about 20 degrees colder that usual with rain and every operated-on joint in my body is bitching painfully at me. Dr. Mind called me to say she’d still had no success at trying to reinstate our appointments and was trying unsuccessfully to reach Jennifer L’s supervisor. I asked her to try again to get the annoying reminder calls from OSU aborted that remind me that I have an upcoming appointment with her… you know-the ones that have been canceled. Between dropping off to sleep every so often I spent the day working on custom pictures for the Brokeback novel.

Thursday the 20
My head hurts like hell this morning and my ears are ringing especially loud-this makes two nights in a row. I’m still worried I won’t get a check tomorrow, but since the Cymbalta was approved, I probably don’t have anything to worry about… or so says Dr. Mind.

What me paranoid?

I called Giant Eagle and ordered refills on my Metformin and Glipizide for my diabetes. I didn’t refill the Carvedilol because I don’t have $4 for it… Christ. On the way north to pick up my Cymbalta I noted my odometer says I’m way past due for the oil change… there’s nothing I can do about it. Traffic is hell now that they’ve closed a bunch of ramps on ’71 for reconstruction. Afterward I headed south and picked up my diabetes meds from Giant Eagle… God help me if they stop their promotion of giving out free diabetes meds.

I got home to the news that they got Gadaffi in Libya and killed the son of a bitch. He was captured, beaten and killed by his own people… JUSTICE. Also in the broadcast was good news that Social Security will be increasing our benefits next year, for which I breathed a sigh of relief since they haven’t for three years now… fool that I am, because it was immediately offset with news that they’re going to increase Medicare premiums more, which probably means I’ll be getting less… groan.

What I thought was a bill from Anthem turned out to be a notice saying that I was eligible for help with my premiums from them-which is wrong because I’ve been turned down for help with them for the last two years. Par for the course.

Friday the 21
I couldn’t sleep all last night worrying about today’s GB check. I was still awake at 7:30AM checking my checking account. The direct deposit always appears on-line no later than 6AM. This is not a good sign but I chastised myself for being paranoid and finally fell asleep around 8AM. A collection agency call woke me up at noon, so I checked on my account. No deposit. THIS is why I’m so paranoid. They do it without warning, I don’t know it’s happened until too late and there’s no planning for it financially.

I’M OUT OF FUCKING FOOD FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

I fell into a deep dark funk instead of going into a rage. I felt one coming though and seriously though of injecting a whole pen’s-worth of insulin but called Dr. Mind’s cell first. She said I should wait out the day, but I know that’s useless from past experience. It shows all the classic signs of them fucking me over without warning again. I hung up with her and called my caseworker Jennifer L at GB and of course got her voicemail, laying out how my car payment was due the 15th and I had until the 25th to take advantage of the 10-day grace period. So far she hasn’t called back. I called Lawyer Chuck’s office and got his assistant Lindsay’s voicemail and left the same message. I called WorkHealth and they were infuriated because my C84 authorizing the checks was good until November 18th and it was good enough to get the check on the 7th. She said she’d try to call GB and find out what was going on. My doctor called from WorkHealth a minute later and said they might try to pull some bullshit where since I saw her last Tuesday that they might try to say that I needed another C84 despite the fact that my current one was still good and said she’d get back to me if she heard anything…. Sigh.

I called Chuck’s office back and filled his assistant in on what WorkHealth said about them fucking with my C84 and she said they wouldn’t do that. HA.

My stomach is bubbling, so I ate a sleeve of saltines to calm it… which would’ve been my dinner tonight.

There’s a good reason why this blog is titled the way it is…

September 2011

2011-09-30T19:59:00.000-04:00

Sept 8, 2011 thru…
I knew that Dr. P’s prescription from back in August for physical therapy on my elbow would expire Sept 13th. I’ve wanted to go there to find out how much the Medicare co-pay was per visit, but I knew it’d be useless because even if it was only $5 each, I couldn’t afford it… so I kept putting it off.

The nurse practitioner at WorkHealth signed off on my “Maximum Medically Improved” papers two weeks ago. I filled out a C84 for more temporary total checks, but figured GB would use the MMI as an excuse to cut off my financial help, and as long as I didn’t know for sure, I’d have to sweat it out until last Friday as to whether I’d get a check or not. I e-mailed Lawyer K about the situation but didn’t hear back from him for a few days. When I did, he said that as insurance, I should have Dr. Mind send a C84 from her office. But she’s away for two weeks-not enough time to make sure I’d get the check on the 9th. I even considered calling Jen at GB, but figured I’d get the usual runaround from them and not get an answer until it was too late. I fell back into the “what’s the use” mode and then thought of calling her boss and my friend Ken to see if he could help me in her absence. I didn’t want to call his cell unless I had to, so I called… and called… and called and finally got through to a temp girl at Dr. Mind’s office, who told me he was gone for a week unexpectantly and after explaining the situation, she didn’t know who I should contact. She transferred me to someone and I got their voicemail. I gave up rather than leave a message.

The check came on Friday after all the worry, and I was completely out of groceries and didn’t have enough for the car payment and the phone bill at the same time, so I chose the car and opted for the late fee from AT&T until I got caught up… if I got caught up. My finances are so tight that I haven’t done my laundry in four months because I can’t save back the 12 quarters it’d take to do it… much less buy laundry detergent. That’s when it dawned on me that during the transition to all Disability; I’d have no money coming in. I knew I’d be alright with the rent and if I explained to the other bills, I hoped they’d understand, but for some reason it didn’t dawn on me that with no money I’d have no food or gas to go get food from a food bank. Somehow before the transition happens, I’ve got to save back enough to feed myself until more money comes in. Now I’m really depressed.

The last time I humiliated myself and begged Grant Hospital for help, I went though a long drawn-out process of filling out and mailing applications for financial help, and weeks later discovered that I’d gotten help with only one-ONE bill for about $34 out of the thousands I owed. In order to get them all taken care of I’d have to repeat the process for each and every bill and I didn’t have it in me for that.

It’s really bothering me that I’ve lost the ability to problem-solve for myself. I decided to make a list of goals that’d make Dr. Mind proud of me for my return to her office this Wednesday. I’d visit a food bank, stop at physical therapy and find out how much the co-pays were, and call Grant Hospital to try for the umpteenth time to get help with the doctor bills… but then I couldn’t leave the apartment for two hours. I don’t know why I didn’t want to leave or why I couldn’t pass through that door, but I couldn’t. With no food in the house, I finally forced myself to go out, and once I got out the apartment door, I couldn’t understand why it was so hard.

I stopped at physical therapy and talked to my friend an assistant administrator. She gave me a phone number of a woman at Grant’s business office who’d at least help with the elbow co-pays. They set up an appointment for me to come in for my elbow evaluation the following Tuesday (13th) at 1:15. I said I’d call her, and then went on to wal-mart. When I got home, I didn’t call-I wanted to, but “what’s the use” clouded over me. I decided to do it on Monday. Saturday night I had a really vivid nightmare that my attackers had poisoned the cheap cans of soup I’d bought. When I finally got back to sleep, I dreamt that giant bugs in black slime crawled out of the cans when I opened them.

Sunday dinner consisted of a sleeve of unsalted crackers dipped in homemade tartar sauce.

Monday brought collection agency calls-sometimes 2 an hour to the point where I was downright angry every time the phone rang and each succeeding call brought me near rage. Still I didn’t call Grant... not that I was in any condition to. I was so mad and frustrated at myself that when I looked up food bank phone numbers I gave up for no reason. Monday evening was clouded with thoughts of how I can’t file for bankruptcy again until 2014 to get out from under Grant Hospital.

It hurts when I try to focus my eyes in the morning on my computer screen and sometimes it takes ten minutes before I can read anything. I only got through half the eye operations I needed because every time I’d show up, the receptionist would hand me a bill for $120 or more that I still owed them in co-pays. It’d make me feel like some worthless beggar every time I went there. Now I’d face the same thing with Grant’s physical therapy unless I did something to overcome how useless and futureless I feel.

On Tuesday, I saw Wednesday looming every closer and was determined not to go to Dr. Mind’s empty handed. I forced myself to call the number of Grant’s business office… they told me the lady was tied up in meetings all day and couldn’t see me. I almost hung up, but fought it and left a voicemail. She called me back half an hour later between more collection agency calls. Apparently my friend at PT, called her in advance and explained my situation and asked me if I could come in around 11AM and she’d fit me in between meetings. I agreed.

I had the paperwork still in the envelope from the two-week fight to get a meager $16 a month in food stamps, so I took it with me. Her office was just off the main lobby. I told the receptionist who I was and whom I was there to see, feeling like I couldn’t breathe. This is the building where all my operations took place and where I’d died twice on the operating table. She explained that Kathy was still in a meeting and asked me to have a seat. I sat facing the windows and watched people wandering in and out of the library across the street… then realized it was almost noon. I turned back around to discover the receptionist had gone to lunch and her replacement hadn’t told Kathy I was there, and that she’d been waiting patiently for me for more than half an hour.

I almost flew into a rage and wanted to leave quickly. Kathy came out before I could and ushered me into her office with her supervisor. I told her how long I’d been there-which the visitor log confirmed and I couldn’t get her to stop apologizing, which nearly prompted me to leave. I explained my mental problems and hoped I hadn’t acted rude without realizing it, and she said I hadn’t.

It turns out that the paperwork that I’d taken without checking from Jobs and Family Services had sent back was all I needed to get all of my hospital bills from Grant wiped off the records and paid by various charities. They both promised that the process would only take 4-6 weeks and then I’d be free of all the collection agency calls. I was so relieved, I jumped up and gave her a giant hug and left Grant Hospital on top of the world. Not only that, they were going to take care of the Physical therapy co-pays in advance of my having them!!!

Then it all started to crash in on me. Those fucking feelings that whenever anything good happens-a vengeful god would come and sweep any joy in my life with his mighty hand. I actually had to talk myself into leaving the parking lot. With a lot of effort, I put the top down on the convertible, turned up the stereo and enjoyed the sunny drive back home… blissfully and thankfully without incident.

Later at Grant Physical Therapy, I filled out a ton of applications, appalled that they wouldn’t share the last 6 years worth of documents with the new therapist. I got part way through the process when a young black man named Ryan meeting my attackers description perfectly, appeared with a clipboard and informed me that I needed to pay over $1,600 in Medicare co-pays to them.

Despite therapist calls to GB to get authorization for more therapies-and them approving them, NOT ONE therapy session had been submitted nor paid by GB. It was confirmed by state computer records. When that happened everything was submitted to… and apparently paid by mistake by Medicare!!! The $1,600 was Medicare co-pays that I owed Grant hospital!!! GB had not submitted one single payment for my ankle, leg, or knee in six years, even though they kept approving more therapy over the phone.

If I’d accepted a settlement when I was declared MMI and then signed a release – apparently Grant Hospital and Medicare could come back at me for tens of thousands of dollar’s worth of physical therapy??? I went through the evaluation on my elbow having flashbacks because of Ryan and I thought of him as an omen and confirmation amongst many that nothing good will ever happen to me again without a disaster hitting me to destroy the joy I felt. She told me I only had one day on the prescription before it would’ve expired… no surprise.

I came home to find even more collection agency calls on my answering machine and went into another rage, cussing in frustration at the top of my lungs… probably scaring the cat and the neighbors. I collected myself and called my lawyer’s assistant and of course got her voicemail. She called back later and I explained it as best I could and asked her to confirm that no Work Comp therapy had been paid by GB. She said she’d call them the first thing Wednesday to confirm it and advise me.

She called back Wednesday morning to say I needed to get Dr. P to submit C9’s AGAIN for each and every PT session that wasn’t paid for. When I asked if she’d confirmed that the unpaid ones should’ve been paid by GB, she said she hadn’t asked.

I had a headache that was now so painful I could barely think. I couldn’t even organize my thoughts into notes to try in vein to explain the whole thing to Dr. Mind-much less understand it myself. Could Medicare/social security come back on me for the payments they shouldn’t have made-then tell me to get reimbursed by GB-who’d of course fight it?

Seriously thinking of canceling my appointment, I vowed to go to see Dr. Mind anyway. I gathered business cards etc and left. When I got there my friend Tyson told me that the new parking passes hadn’t come yet and that I’d have to park in another garage farther away and gave me a paper “key” to get out of the garage without paying. It meant walking around 400 yards the long way around two parking garages to get there, because sawhorses in the connecting hallway said I had to go to Canon St. to get to what was 100 yards away. (it was only after my return on foot that I discovered the shortcut that would’ve cut the trip by 2/3. By the time I got up to her office my left ankle and knee hurt like hell, and I still had to face the process of explaining all that to her with a splitting headache.

I sat in the waiting room for fifteen minutes trying to collect my thoughts… then went to her door with no answer. I hadn’t seen her in three weeks and needed to badly. I went to the reception area and was told she had a meeting and my appointment had been canceled. I was never told. The lady there said that if I hadn’t gotten a reminder call-I shouldn’t have come. I was about to flash into another rage when I turned around and there was Dr. Mind!!!

I was about to thank God that it was all a misunderstanding, when she said we couldn’t have our appointment because she couldn’t get out of the meeting. They were supposed to have sent me a letter telling me my appointment was canceled-but didn’t.

My head began to pound and all I could think was to get out of there before I did or said something stupid without realizing it until afterward. She promised she’d call me without fail that day and I hiked back to my car and drove to a gas station, using my last $10… why? In case I wound up in Zanesville or Indiana on one of my “disassociative” trips again.

I waited all day, hanging up on more collection calls and gave up around 9:30 with no call from her, Shut the phones off and went to bed.

I still don’t know if the unpaid co-pays are for covered sessions… but I still owe them over $1,600 that I don’t have… and I can’t get anyone to explain the whole thing to me so that I can understand it. Anything-even death is better than this.

I have the shining hope of paying my last car payment next March taunting me and then being able to barely able to live on what I’m taking in. Hope is just out of the reach of my fingertips, I can see it approaching at the speed that an hour hand moves on a clock, but I wonder if I can stand or survive7 more months of this before it finally arrives?

I actually have 6 pillows because sometimes at night I wake up from a nightmare/flashback in a cold sweat with a soaking wet pillow and have to exchange it for another dry one… sometimes twice a night. I can feel what sanity I have left falling apart like a soggy doughnut.

Wednesday September 27

I got really sick Thursday night. Now that I’ve been declared MMI, I expect GB to cut me off without warning. My stomach hurt, I was throwing up and had diarrhea. I’m probably growing another ulcer. It was the first time in a while that I felt dizzy and I went to bed because I was afraid of falling down or out of my chair. As soon as I laid down my groin began hurting like I’d been kicked hard in the balls. It didn’t go away until hours later and I was in agony. I was so worried, that I called Aunt Margaret and asked her to stay on the phone with me for a while.

Friday morning at 9AM no check was deposited and I threw up again and couldn’t stop crying. When I sat back down at the computer around 10AM the check had been deposited. I felt queasy the rest of the day. I called Family Medical pharmacy to get my refill of Cymbalta and as usual they told me that GB wouldn’t approve it without prior authorization again. I asked her to log the request on their computer like last time and hung up disgusted. I got a letter in the mail from Social Security telling me that there was a dispute over my income again and that I have to send in proof of my income over the last 6 years… which I don’t have. GB probably notified them that I was MMI and was about to dump me, so Disability will probably try to do the same. God I hate this.

I also got a letter from some independent shrink that GB hired, telling me that I have to show up October 13th. If it’s the same guy I saw there last time, I might as well give up now. He’s the same one who said I was “normal” after taking extra Cymbalta because I was worried about going to meet a stranger in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He reported to them that my only problem was that I was depressed because Heath Ledger died because I was a homosexual. All because I casually mentioned that I was trying to get back out into the world by writing articles at BC and that my latest one was about… you guessed it-Heath Ledger’s death. The deck’s stacked against me.

My stomach is turning because if both disability and GB cut me off at the same time next month I might as well jump off the Broad St. bridge now and get it over with. I was sick all day Friday and had the odd feeling like “something wasn’t right” physically.

I mostly slept over the weekend, between aunt Margaret calling me every other hour to see if I was still all right. I got the U-verse modem on Saturday, but I can’t hook it up until October 11th for some reason. I hope they keep their promise and don’t charge me all of the fees for the changeover. I wonder if I’ll ever have a time in my life again when I didn’t have something major to worry about?

Monday- Started out with a phone call from the girl at physical therapy telling me she needed to change my appointment this Thursday.

I had trouble getting on line to check my e-mail and called AT&T tech support. They’re changing their software and now I can’t directly log into my e-mail without looking at their homepage and a bunch of commercials. I asked her to double check my account for late charges etc and that’s when she told me that the nice lady that offered me U-verse for less wasn’t being nice and trying to help me out… AT&T’s phasing out DSL and making everyone go to broadband soon. If I hadn’t called when I did, my phone bill would’ve gone up $15 a month without warning and they’d have sent me the modem anyway.

I called the pharmacy Monday morning to find out if I could get my Cymbalta and they said it still hadn’t gone through. Later in the afternoon, I got a call that it’d been cleared for them to fill the prescription and I could come pick it up, so I called Giant Eagle and arranged for my Diabetes meds and the Carvedilol for my heart, which I’ll have to pay 4 bucks for.

While going over next month’s budget I discovered a massive mistake. I’d lumped my disability check on the 3rd and the GB check on the 6th into the same budget period. The trouble is if I’d programmed my checking to pay the bills, it all would’ve bounced because the GB check wouldn’t arrive until after the Rent check had cleared. When I separated them into two different periods, I only had $22 for 6 days worth of groceries… damn it. I drove out and picked up my prescriptions-mad because it was drizzling rain just barely enough to keep me from putting the top down, but not enough to call it rain.

The rain is making my knee hurt like hell and my elbow is really sore when I move it.

Tuesday-I got a call first thing from Work Health that they’d succeeded in sending some special paperwork form to GB to stop the “prior authorization” bullshit that’s plagued me for over 7 years… finally. I went to physical therapy and after the session, I went upstairs to thank her for all the hassle she went through… and she almost threw me into a rage through no fault of her own… She handed me a fax that was headed for shredding, but she saved it for me after sending it off to Family Medical pharmacy and to Jennifer Lawrence she’d just gotten saying that the agency that runs Workman’s comp doesn’t require prior authorization for Cymbalta. I nearly blacked out thinking about the grief I’ve suffered over that. I was so upset once that I wound up in Zanesville from a “disassociative episode.” If Jennifer Lawrence from GB had been standing there god knows what I’d have done.

Wednesday-First thing this morning, I got a call from Cheryl at Dr. P’s saying that they had to cancel my appointment and reschedule it. I told her I needed to talk to her urgently about GB not paying my physical therapy bills and she said she’d look into it and talk to me about it next Monday. The only time they have free is 8:40 in the morning… groan.

I began putting my notes together for my session with Dr. Mind this morning when who should call… Dr. Mind. She told me that my appointment had been “bumped” WHAT THE FUCK does no one want to have to see me today? It turns out it was bumped several days ago and she was calling to make sure I’d been notified… which I hadn’t. She said she’d call me back and I told her I really needed her today. When she didn’t call, I made a courtesy call to Tyson that he didn’t have to delay his lunch waiting for me to call for a parking pass, because my appointment had been canceled… sigh.

I can’t find my damned stamps to send Social Security what little paperwork I have. With GB cutting me off sooner than later and my having no extra money at all, I don’t see how I’ll be able to put enough aside to pay just the bare basic bills. I wish Dr. Mind would call back.

Reconstruction in progress

2011-08-27T00:47:00.002-04:00

Now that I have a reliable computer, I'm going to begin reconstructing what I remember from the meager notes I've kept. I will be posting January 1, 2011 to today shortly...

A letter to my Lawyer

2010-11-09T09:51:00.001-05:00

Until I can pull myself out of this and get back to writing, please accept my apologies and this explanation...

Dear Chuck and Meghan,
Just and update to keep you informed and to thank you once again for your kind help.

What was to be the final (or so I thought) surgery on my knee to repair the last of my injuries, took place on September 28th, in which the metal plates that cartilage was binding on were removed.

There was some swelling around the area that was assumed to be simple post-operative inflammation. Within days of the follow up visit to remove the incision staples, a portion of it at the knee began leaking clear fluid and a small amount of blood. Within a day or two, the bandages were sopping wet and I was in agony.

On a subsequent visit, I was given bandage material and sent home with antibiotics. Every night the material and binding would become sopping wet and it was impossible to move around without an inordinate amount of pain.

It turns out the sac around my knee that holds fluids for lubricating the joint had ruptured and as it leaked out I was experiencing bone-on-bone pain.

A follow up appointment was made Wednesday November 3rd and within minutes I was wheeled across the street to Grant Hospital. Dr. P*** said I needed urgent surgery and before I could digest that news I was scheduled for a follow-up operation Thursday November 4th, and kept overnight to watch for infection or complications. Since I had no idea this would happen until it did, I didn’t bring insulin or heart meds, and if G******* B***** follows it’s usual routine, they won’t pay for them and I’ll be billed hospital prices.

At the moment my left leg is in a straight-line brace, so I haven’t been able to start physical therapy until Dr. Pugh clears me for it on a follow up visit September 17th. My next appointment with Workhealth to renew my GB benefits will be on November 22nd.

My concern is G******* B***** trying to cut off my benefits thinking that two months is long enough to recover from Sept. 28’s surgery. Also because I haven’t made an appointment for physical therapy yet, they may assume I’m MMI.

Since they completely cut me off unexpectantly in 2008 without warning me when I went into heart surgery, I’m concerned they might do it again now. I was in recovery for two months before I realized checks were bouncing all over the place.

Is there some law or rule that says they have to give me fair warning so that I can notify Social Security disability in time to not miss several rent checks and possibly be evicted from my home of nearly 24 years?

Also Dr. M******* has been helping. The PTSD has gotten worse over the last few months with nightmares, flashbacks and recently intense thoughts of suicide. Fortunately, apparently the more I talk about the latter; the less likely it is to occur.

With my financial condition becoming ever worse, I’m left with only $132 a month after basic bills for supplies, gas and groceries. This has left me eating only one meal a day, consisting of a cheap frozen pizza for $1.25 or a couple of sandwiches (I’m a diabetic). Several people have asked why I don’t get a settlement from GB or Donatos, but if I were to do that, it’d be deducted from my Social Security benefits with a net gain of $0.

Disability Check (which deducts GB checks & Social Security part B) $347.00
Total monthly income $1229.68 (two months a year I get an additional check when there are three check Fridays.

Rent $530
Electric $110.00
Phone $77.50
Car insurance $82.67
Car payment $296.81
Total Monthly Expenses: $1096.90

$1229.68
-$1096.90
$132.78 per month, divided by 30 give me $4.43 a day to live on.

I’ve been surviving on drug representative samples for my prescriptions given to me by my doctors.

After refusing to take my expenses into account, the county refuses to help me with Medicare and with a straight face is giving me $16 (less than .50 a day) in food stamps per month. Any emergency like a car problem disables me financially. I’m currently facing a $230 shut off notice from the city electric company.

Food banks ignore how much I’m getting and refuse to help because I’m eligible for food stamps. The same is true of charity pharmacies.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
And thanks again for having my back legally…

October 2010

2010-10-11T02:04:00.009-04:00

Friday the 1st
I nearly fainted when I got my On-line phone bill. It was $99.83!?! It turns out for every one of those new deals to lower my phone bills that I made last month; they charged me $5 each to switch the service over without telling me. FUCK!

I got an odd offer from a website called People Finders today. I’d used them once before to locate an old roommate from high school a few years back and they sent me an offer to do a $49.95 complete trace with phone numbers and address history for only a dollar! I think I read it five times to make sure there was no fine print and then traced my first love Jeff Hostetler from years ago. It was a nice stroll back in time and worth the buck.

My leg is really bothering me. I took the surgical bandage off today and the cotton wadding that it was packed in was all bloody. I won’t get the staples out until Monday the week after next. I wound up taking more Percocet for the pain after trying to walk on it and it felt like the thigh muscles were going to explode out of the side of my left leg when I walked. So much for thinking I could just start walking on it the minute the operation was over. After massaging it and wrapping it back up again I gave up and asked my building manager Rich if he could come by my door while he made his package delivery rounds and pick up my rent check, because I seriously doubted I could make it across the complex to his office, and he said he would… He never came.

Teresa called this afternoon to say she’d bought me a 24-gallon garbage bin with wheels so it’d be easier for me to take garbage out-god love her. She also floored me by admitting that on her last visit she’d stolen the parking ticket 2nd notice I’d gotten from Ohio State and paid it for me… sending a letter along with it bitching at them about how I was told it was okay to park there as long as I had my handicapped placard on my rearview window… they apologized to her, took the ticket off of the computer and refunded her money! I wish I was straight so I could marry her. I cried to know that someone cares that much when I’ve been feeling so abandoned lately.

I spent the evening watching old “Rosanne” episodes while working on the reworked Amazon store.

Saturday the 2nd
Mischief got into a big canister of flake fish food and spilled it all over the livingroom carpet this morning. I was able to salvage about a third of it. I’m too far gone to punish her, and hours after she did it, she wouldn’t know what she was being punished for anyway.

I can’t find words to explain what’s come over me mentally. It’s like my thoughts and emotions are in a tank of water and they’re drops of dye. As soon as they hit the water they begin dissipating before I can capture them. This paragraph is the perfect example; I put that thought down and can’t remember what I was going to write afterward.

I’m so tired of trying and failing to better my life that I’ve found myself emotionally packed in molded Styrofoam in a package. No one can get in and I can’t get out, but on the other hand I wish someone could get in to alleviate this loneliness and I wish I had the courage to get out and meet new people and make friends again.

Sometimes I wish I could become an amnesia victim. If I couldn’t remember the wonderful life I had before all this happened, maybe I could handle this better.

My leg is hurting like hell. I’ve been watching season 1 of “Roseanne” on DVD in the upper-right hand corner of my monitor to keep myself laughing while I try to re-sort and categorize Jet’s General Store. I took a pen to a pad of paper and tried to draw a portrait of my sister Betsy and it came out terrible. My hand just doesn’t have the control it had before, so I gave up.

I’m doing that a lot lately.

Dr. Mind keeps telling me to keep trying to fight for myself and get food and financial help.

I pushed myself to assemble the paperwork to get county help with my Medicare Part B only to be turned down for the umpteenth time…. Twice in the last few weeks. So I’ve given up.

I sought out help for the dozenth or so time to get help with my utilities only to be told they can’t after telling me they could… so I’ve given up.

I’ve tried and tried to “re-imagine” or control my nightmares over the last five years only to wake up screaming this morning.

Every stranger is one of my attackers from six years ago. I hold everyone at arm’s length to keep them from hurting me… I keep everyone at arm’s length; which keeps anyone from loving me… of my loving them.

I’ve considered scrimping meals to buy a color print cartridge, printing up a bunch of obviously bad $20 bills and then intentionally get caught counterfeiting so I’d get thrown in jail. Some gang would probably beat the hell out of me or worse.

I’ve been working really hard on trying to refit the A-Store hoping to make it something I could have a source of income from, but for every step forward I take, Amazon sets me back two. No indexes, description limits that cut off the size and color of an item which means I have to sort it all out myself before I can put it on a page which takes up to three days per item.

I wonder how long it’ll take to give up on that too.

I’m going to try an experiment for seven days and assume everything will go right with my next GB/workman's comp check on Friday. Nothing will screw it up, because I’m tired of being a scared little bunny hiding in his hole always preparing for the worst.

Sunday the 3rd
I got dressed and walked/limped my rent check across the complex to Rich’s closed-for-the-weekend office. They’ve put the tarp over the pool and the leaves are falling. Over the last few years I don’t even notice the seasons change. In 2001 I drove through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont just to watch the leaves change and get a few pictures. Spring used to be my favorite season because I’d plant my balcony flowers and vegetables… I won’t even talk about what Christmas used to mean to me.

They say money can’t buy you happiness, but it does buy you freedom to enjoy your life.

When I got back up to my apartment I noticed an odd clattering sound that I couldn’t locate until I realized it was coming from my big 80 gal. aquarium. The thing requires two expensive under-gravel filtration systems with water pumps in two separate zones. The one on the right was clicking…. I know that sound, the plastic propeller inside it has lost a rubber gasket from wear and was about to fail. It would have to be the one buried under a 30-inch tall rock face. I unplugged it to keep it from driving the fish and me crazy and resigned to trying to figure a way to buy a new one someday soon.

Tonight’s the season premier of CSI Miami. It’s usually bad news when a network moves a show to a different night. I hope it doesn’t affect the show’s ratings because it’d be a shame. They’ve been talking about losing a major member of the team. After his diminished role last season I figure it’ll be Delko.

I cannot stop coughing. I’m bringing up whitish yellow phlegm and it’s dogging me really bad. Maybe I have pneumonia.

I tried to walk around on my leg without the bandage and it fucking hurt like hell. I’ve at least worked it to the point of being able to bend it at the knee so I can sit down in a chair, but it’s really sore at the knee and just above it. I have to bind it at night to, to keep the staples from catching in the blanket.

My one meal today was a cold can of Ravioli. This can’t be good, but I’m trying to conserve food. A force of habit that only yesterday I said I was going to break. I only have enough food until Thursday night, which means none for Friday if the check gets fucked with… so I’m trying to conserve just in case.

Monday the 4th
I was hoping for some good news from “welfare” about the call I made trying to get them to use my spend-down bills to help with the $100+ Medicare onthly copay, but no luck. I tried to call them again and I get the “All circuits are busy at this time” recording. I give up. I mean realistically what good will it do, when I’ve been turned down before, so many times? What’s the use?

I’ve got a pet shop up by Wal-Mart that I used to spend hundreds of dollars a month for supplies and fish at. The manager’s a good friend and in the past has sarcastically asked me to call ahead before I come because I’ve been known to buy an entire display tank's worth of Cream-cycle mollies or red swordtails on a whim from him before. I’ve tried repeatedly plugging and unplugging the failing pump in the tank hoping to free it but with no luck.

The big tank works as an ecosystem where the live plants provide oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide from the fish. The pumps pull the fish waste into the gravel where the plants absorb it. Without both pumps working, I’ve noticed the gravel starting to get dark. The bacteria will hurt the fish. I have no money to buy another pump so I was thinking of lowering myself to go over there and beg him for a new one that I could pay off a little at a time. I don’t think I can do it though.

The financial help lady from Grant Hospital called this morning wanting to know about my bills… again. She copied all of the ones she needed while I was there for the operation, but now some board member is asking more questions. She wanted to know about my Sebring Convertible, which worries me. I told her I still owe over $7000 on it, which is less than I could probably sell it for in this economy. I didn’t mention it only has 45,000 miles on it though. I tried to get her to clarify about help with the $230 electric shut-off notice and she said I must’ve talked to the other social worker about that… sigh.

I keep having these weird dreams about my car being stolen, but it’s never the car I have now. It always winds up being my Somolian attackers and ends up with my losing my job somehow because of it, or they chase me around until they catch me and beat me up.

My god what’s going to happen to me when I lose my shrink?

Tuesday the 5th
I went down to get a forgotten package of wheat dinner rolls in the car and started it to check the gas gauge… it’s below E. There’s no way around it, with the painful staples in my leg from my hip to my knee, the lousy cough that won’t go away and no gas, I’ve got no choice but to cancel Dr. S/Clinic and Dr. Mind. I can see me trying to push the car with my leg. Besides I don’t have the ten bucks for the clinic co-pay anyway.

I called the clinic to cancel and can’t get an appointment until next month. I hope the insulin holds out that long. No drug rep samples of my prescriptions either. If I could just get help with Medicare I’d have an extra $100 a month to buy my own damn drugs instead of begging for them and I wouldn’t have to near starve myself. DAMN IT

The frustration is getting to me and I’m feeling the old effects again. I wake up and sit on the edge of my bed and sometime around noon I realize I’ve been sitting there staring at the wall for hours. The same when I sit down at my computer. I’ve been trying to force out an article for BC, using one of my passions to break the writing drought…. Politics. But as soon as I start writing, I realize I’ve been sitting there for 20 minutes, probably with a blank look on my face.

I understand clinical depression, I think I know how it works against me, but it doesn’t help fight it and that’s frustrating too. I hate feeling sorry for myself and part of me says well stop doing it then!

If it was only that easy.

My leg still hurts to bend it at the hip and knee. I’m terrified of getting addicted to percocet but it hurts too damned much. A Social worker that was contacted by Grant called me to tell me what I already know, I’m making too much a month to qualify for help with the electric shutoff notice. I think I heard half of what she said and wanted to hang up on her.

Monthly Income:
#1 GB/workman’s comp $441.34
*2 GB/workman’s comp $441.34
Social Security Disability $347.00
Total $1229.68

Bills:
Rent $530
Car payment $296.81
Phone $75.00
Electric $115.00
Car Insurance $86.75
Total $1103.56

The above expenses leaves me only $126.12 per month for food and supplies or $4.20 a day. This is why I’m only eating one meal a day because I have to stretch what’s left for household expenses like toilet paper, socks, laundry supplies, cat food etc… with nothing left if an emergency comes up like a flat tire or getting sick and needing a $10 co-pay to go to a clinic.

Thank God I’ve lived here for over 22 years and my landlord doesn’t raise my rent every year. After all tenants only stay around a year or two, so I’ve saved him at least 8 complete carpet changes, painted walls and remodeling/upgrades. Everyone around me is paying close to $1,000 a month.

This is why I’ve all but given up.
This is why there are days when I want to kill myself.

I made tons of money as an artist, but try as I might I can’t recapture the talent or the drive to create it. Nor do I have the ability to approach strangers to solicit their art business.

The last art job I did was to design the CD case artwork for a local rock group on my computer.

It’s no wonder no old friends want to have anything to do with me; can you blame them, all I have to talk about is how broke and hopeless this situation is. To be in suspended animation or a state of nonexistence is more palatable than this.

Get a job? Wearing what? I’ve sold everything to pay bills that I own including all of my expensive business suits, I’ve got no winter coat, only a denim jacket after I sold the suede one I used to cherish. I own three sweatshirts, two pairs of jeans, an old pair of athletic shoes cut up so I can get my foot in them and a pair of cutoff shorts… perfect for that important job interview. Doing what? I’d love to get the job I had back at headquarters answering phones and dealing with customers, but I don’t see that happening.

I experimented again today with walking around without the thigh being wrapped tightly and it didn’t work. It feels for all the world like the staples are tearing open my skin. I’m going to have to write myself a post-it note to ask Dr. P/Knee for another prescription of Percocet… not that it’ll help, GB probably wouldn’t authorize it anyway.

Who me a pessimist?

Wednesday the 6th
To prove to myself how I’m not worried about GB not depositing my check, I wrote a paper check for the phone bill and mailed it two days early. It should take that long for it to get to AT&T and then clear the bank. I don’t have to re-apply for GB checks until November 22nd so I should be safe until then and there’s no sane reason to worry about it… so I won’t… I hope.

There… I did it.

Some assistant at Ohio State didn’t notice I canceled Dr. Mind yesterday and called me to ask if I wanted to come in at 3 this afternoon. It’s like one hand not knowing what the other is doing since Barb left. I thanked her and declined.

No hope with Medicare or Medicaid, everywhere I turn something else goes wrong. I need badly for someone to hold me in his arms and tell me he loves me and that everything’s going to be alright… and the loneliness. Year after year since the attack in 2004.

The one thing about suicide is that with it being this close to Betsy getting married, it’d forever remind her of it on her anniversary and I couldn’t do that to her. I guess as long as I keep coming up with excuses not to, I’ll be alright.

I must’ve slept on my leg wrong last night because I’ve been downing 2 Percocets every four hours for the pain. I’ve tried raising it, icing it, lowering it and babying it but nothing seems to sooth the pain; I’ve even thought of increasing the dosage but then thought better of it.

This afternoon was spent working on Jet’s General Store.

The dingbat social worker from Grant called and asked about the value of my car again. It’s like they’re trying to find any excuse not to help me instead of the other way around.

My caller I.D. unit that speaks the number of the caller keeps conking out on me; it’s probably low on batteries that I can’t afford. I’ve sold all my good phones, so if I’m anywhere but the den I have to get up and look at the phone in the kitchen or the den before I answer it in case it's a collection agency. I tried to fix it by switching wires around all afternoon and talked Aunt Margaret into calling me a dozen times to see if it worked with no luck… sigh.

The right side of the aquarium is really starting to get dirty and I see I’ve got no choice but to disassemble that rock cliff. If I can’t fix the pump I’ll have to tear the whole damned aquarium apart and try to make it all one filter zone on the other pump that’s still working. It wasn’t designed to filter that much water and would probably burn out eventually but what choice do I have? The problem is physically leaning down into the damned thing to take it apart would be impossible, not to mention hauling 80 gallons of water in buckets out of it and then into it again to refill it.

I went on line and tried to get the schematics for the pump, but it’s a sealed electrical unit that’s submerged in water and it can’t be taken apart-only replaced.

Thursday the 7th
I called Betsy this morning trying to figure out when it’s safe to call her. The coin has completely flipped and now I’m the one who doesn’t have to worry about using up minutes or a bigger long-distance bill. But I do have to worry about using her minutes when I call. We couldn’t talk for very long because she’s still entangled in wedding plans. Betsy’s the kind of person that gets along with everyone and it seems more and more and more and more people want to come to her wedding. God I’d give almost anything to be one of them.

I tried to fix the caller I.D. unit again today with no luck.

I went to feed the fish and just decided "fuck it"; what do I have to lose? It’s broken so I can’t break it any more than it already is. I spent an hour just pulling jagged rocks about three times the size of your fist out of the water to get to the standpipe that the pump sits on. Then I discovered that the thing comes apart, but in an unusual way. There’s a sealed cylindrical hole in the middle of the underside of it with what I assume is an electromagnet surrounding it. Another cylindrical magnet fits up into it on a vertical axle and when you apply power to it, it spins. The problem is the propeller that pumps the water is made out of plastic and after a few years the clutch that moves it wears down. I needed to find a way to hold the outer magnet out of the cylinder by about a quarter of an inch to keep the propeller from scraping the outer housing, which is what was causing the clicking sound and causing it to jam.

I experimented taking the axle apart and cut off a piece of air-line tubing to make a new gasket for it and after about two hours of cussing, I finally got the damned thing to work!!! I doubt the repair will hold more than six months or so, but it’s something at least. It took another hour and a half to put the rock face back together and to get the bubbles to flow up it like an upside-down waterfall but in the end I’m damned proud of myself. While I was in there I moved some plants around and divided some of the big ones into two to make it lusher in the tank. It came out pretty nice.

My leg and hip hurt like hell from leaning over the top to get to it, but what little percocet I have left fixed that.

Nick down the hall’s boyfriend showed up at my door with Christmas decorations. He said he was hauling them down to the dumpster on Nick’s orders and knowing how much I love (or at least I used to) Christmas wanted to know if I wanted any of it… which I didn’t. Then he floored me by saying he was nearly out of gas and wanted to know if I could spare $5 until tomorrow. It was emotionally crushing to have to tell him how broke I am, and I closed the door feeling horrible. I’ve never not helped someone who found the courage to lower themselves to ask for help and it felt devastating.

I clamped the headphones on, and worked on the General Store while watching Season Two of Roseanne. Four little chicken patties for dinner tonight.

I’m not in the least worried about the check tomorrow… just keep telling yourself that Jet.

Friday the 8th
I checked my checking on-line and the GB check was deposited just as I thought it’d be. The aquarium looks a lot better and the pump seems to be functioning like nothing’s wrong.

I got my absentee ballot in the mail today and filled out a straight Democratic ticket, did the paperwork and sealed it for mailing. Then I spent the morning deciding what bills to pay and what not to pay. The electric bill is going to have to wait until the 22nd, I just don’t have a choice. I’ll just have to cross my fingers that they don’t shut me off before then. I’ve done up a careful grocery list, let’s just hope I don’t forget to hit the gas station before I hit the expressway.
- - - - - -

GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!

I was stupid not to prepare for the worst happening. NEVER-NEVER AGAIN.

At least this time it wasn’t GB.

It started when I went to the gas station and the pump rejected my debit card. The first thing that occurred to me was the thing with the car insurance and the weird routing number fiasco. I tried twice more and the thing said I had to see the cashier. At least it didn’t eat the card.

Inside we tried twice more to run the purchase with no luck. I’m shocked I made it to the station, now I have to drive on fumes back home and hope to straighten this out before the bank closes and I’ll be without food over the weekend.

I called PNC and couldn’t believe my ears. They fucking froze my account over People Finders charging me a dollar for that trace I did on Jeff and then re-froze it again when I suspiciously wrote a paper check for the phone bill instead of paying it electronically on line. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.

After nearly an hour of giving passwords and mother’s maiden names and the city I was born in I finally got them to open the account. They assured me there would be no bounce charge on the phone payment. Thank God the phone bill isn’t due till the 20th, which gives it time to ricochet back and forth before AT&T charges me a late fee or worse a bounced check fee. He said he’d reopen it the moment we hung up.

All over a god-damned dollar charge on my account? Every time I think I’m safe… every fucking time I think I’m safe I get blindsided from somewhere I don’t expect it. There are times I don't leave the apartment more than once a week, and this is why.

I can’t go on living like this.

I drove back to the gas station and like once before ran out of gas within 50 feet of the pumps. This time I was surrounded by begging bums all offering to help me push it for money. I think the terror of the situation took away from how much my leg hurt. I got the damned thing to the pump… and my card was rejected again.

I began to see stars in front of my eyes and screamed GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL at the top of my lungs, which I think scared the hell out of the bums. Fortunately I was the only one at the pumps. I took the card inside and the cashier tried running it and it was rejected… he wouldn’t let me have it back. I pleaded for ten minutes with the Arabic manager who barely spoke English and after two calls to PNC, I got my card back and got $5 in gas.

I spent an hour in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic to get to Wal-Mart only 15 minutes away. Fortunately it was sunny and warm and I sat there with the top down and enjoyed the sun for a change.

In my frustration I forgot a few items I needed, but it’s supposed to be warm and sunny again tomorrow, so I’ll get them then.

I fell asleep from exhaustion around 7PM and woke up screaming from a nightmare from being chased by lions who finally caught me and I wouldn’t die while they painfully tore me from limb to limb.

I woke up just in time to watch Bill Maher’s “Real Time” so at least I had something to laugh at.

The aquarium looks great now… that’s something to be happy about I guess.

Saturday the 9th
I was going out this morning to finish supply shopping when what did I find on my door? A misdelivered notice from PNC bank saying they were shutting down my checking until I called them to confirm the stupid $1 charge on my account. Apparently it was mailed last Tuesday but since my senile mailman keeps putting stuff in the wrong box, I didn’t get it from a neighbor until today.

My five dollars in gas only lasted one round trip to and from Wal-Mart up north so I had to stop at Speedway and get more. I’ve got 14 meals and probably .13 cents left in checking. This eating only one meal a day is fucking going to kill me. The county is no help either giving me an insulting $16 in food stamps, which works out to a fraction over .50 cents a day. I forgot to mail my absentee ballot this morning, I guess I’ll have to wait till I see Dr. P/knee on Monday.

Good news, the aquarium pump that I repaired still seems to be holding up. I’m going to definitely have to ask the doctor for more Percocet and a prescription for the physical therapy. I can’t bend my leg at the knee more than at a right angle and getting up from my desk or in the living room is hell.

The damned cough I’ve had since the strep throat just won’t go away. I sound like a smoker hacking all over the place.

Betsy gets married next Saturday. God I wish I could go. She says brother Jim is still raising all kind of trouble about how he thinks it’s “sick” for her son Brian to give her away instead of him. He obviously can’t see the damage he’s doing. That and he’s bringing mom as a wedding present, which means Betsy can’t go on a honeymoon because she’ll have to look after our mother.

As useless as I think prayer is lately, I actually said one that it doesn’t rain on her wedding.

Sunday the 10th
DAMN IT. I went into my checking yesterday to check on how much I could spend on supplies and didn’t realize that the $5 I got in gas Friday hadn’t shown up on the account yet and I’ll be five dollars overdrawn. With no money left, I’ll have to use 3 of the remaining collectible $2 bills I have left to deposit on Monday, and hope it stops the electronic transfer on the car payment from bouncing. I’ll just have to go in in person before Dr. P/knee’s appointment and hope for the best.

I spent nearly the whole day sleeping, not that I wanted to, but it just came over me. It’s got to be the depression shutting me down. I woke up around 10 this evening and found some special purchase item requests from my BC friends for my store, so I loaded the shelves with them and hoped for the best. I need to get the damned thing done but it’s so damned time consuming writing additional descriptions and then arranging each page by price.

It’s almost as though Amazon wants us to fail, or just barely break even, convincing us we’re going to make money when actually we’re just giving them free ad space on our web pages.

Oh well, I’m just feeling especially cynical today.

It’s going on one in the morning and I’m tired again. I’ve got post-it notes up all over the place to remind me to see Dr. P/Knee tomorrow. I’m really worried, if he says there’s nothing more he can do, GB could declare me Maximum Medically Improved and cut off my benefits.

There’s an old saying not to worry about the bridge until when you come to it, but lately they’ve been collapsing under me without warning only while I’m crossing them.

I’m really concerned about how much I’ve been thinking about suicide lately. As I become less and less worried about the mere existence of heaven and hell, and more and more convinced that death is the same state of existence as you are in before you’re born, it becomes an alarming possibility.

Monday the 11th
The day started out with an early phone call that beat the clock radio. I was hoping to get to the bank, explain everything and deposit $6 to keep anything from bouncing, then make it to the appointment at Dr. P/Knee’s. His office called and said the doctor had an emergency and wanted to know if I could make it by 9:20. What choice did I have?

I checked on line and one of the gas charges hadn’t gone through yet, so I hoped I could get to the bank in time to deposit it before the electronic transfer on the car payment went through. Now it’s a gamble.

It was nice, sunny and warm this morning so I wrapped up my leg and went in my cutoffs. Dr. P took x-rays and you can see where my leg was broken and then moved sideways about half an inch, then bone matter was added to smooth the rough edges and strengthen the near elbow joint in it. My knee is all swollen again and he’s a bit concerned but said it should subside and is probably from the operation… let’s hope.

He said it was actually a day early to take out the staples but after a close exam decided to anyway. I told him about all the pain and he said it was from the operation and that it’d get better. I asked for some more percocet and he said I should be able to get by with Tylenol, so I’m going to have to ration what little I have left.

He also wrote me a prescription for more physical therapy, which I’m going to put off for a week because of how much it hurts.

From downtown I was going to drive about five minutes to the local PNC in Thurber Village, but the thought of begging understanding and help from strangers wasn’t going to work, so I headed out in the sunny morning all the way up north to the branch I usually did banking.

They were closed…

IT’S FUCKING Columbus Day! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made the deposit at the ATM and hoped for the best and then drove home. I lasted about half an hour before I got drowsy and fell asleep until around 7PM. I’ve developed another headache to go with the unkillable cough I still have, so I spent the evening watching TV.

Reading over the last few entries has me worried. With all that can go wrong succeeding in going wrong, the thoughts of suicide seem to be coming more often and easier. I’ve always been a fighter and always found a way out of whatever disaster I found myself in, but the last six years have taken all the fight out of me.

With Betsy’s wedding coming up in ORegon and I can’t go, it’s getting even harder to cope.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with her when I woke up and we talked about how happy she is, and how the wedding keeps growing exponentially with each coming day. I wish I were there to help her. I dreamed last night that I killed myself intentionally so I could be her guardian angel to watch over her.

I guess it’s not a good idea to go without Dr. Mind for more than three weeks. I still worry and ponder how life will be without her to talk to after GB tries to take everything away again.

I’m considering calling the county one more time to try to get them to help me with the Medicare copay but honestly I just don’t have it in me… what’s the use?

September 2010

2010-10-01T17:42:00.001-04:00

Sunday the 5th
II went back in and put the 4th gay news headlines ticker back into my Gay Pride page today. I’d originally taken it out because it seemed to slow down the page when loading, but when I experimentally put it back in, it didn’t make a difference. The news tickers display a total of 48 different sources from around the world and apparently a lot of people visit just to read them… now if I can just get them to click on a few ads while they’re there.

I want to cry every time I see a salad dressing commercial. If I could afford it, all I’d eat would be fresh salads with some grilled chicken breasts for protein. I’ve gained so much weight from cheap junk food in cans and I miss the celery and carrot sticks I used to munch on constantly.

I got dizzy again today and nearly toppled against the aquarium; that’s all I’d need is broken glass, fish and 80 gallons of water all over the floor.

I’m still a bit concerned about Mischief walking around with her tongue sticking out of her mouth by about a quarter of an inch. She doesn’t seem to be panting and I’ve double and triple checked her water. She’s showing absolutely no symptoms of anything. I guess she just likes sticking her tongue out at me. (sigh).

Tomorrow I plan to spend the entire day on the phone trying to get ahold of “Jobs & Family Services.” When I lost their paying my $100+ help with my Medicare part B premiums, it spelled doom for my budget.

I’m thinking seriously about buying seed for next year and doing a vegetable garden on the balcony. I know I can grow green peppers tomatoes and cucumbers but I’ve never tried onions and carrots. I could end up like Oliver Douglas from “Green Acres” before he bought the farm growing veggies on his Park Avenue penthouse’s terrace.

When they finally finish operating on my leg this month, I’ll be able to haul water out there.

Had a case of the lonelys today. One of the most important things anyone needs is to feel like they’re the most important thing in someone else’s world. I haven’t had that in six years. I’m so depressed it wears on my self-worth.

Monday the 6th
I looked at Jet’s General Store’s logo today and decided if I’m going to carry such a large variety of stuff I’d better make the store look a little bigger, so I’m planning to make the image a little wider without losing the “country store” feel to it.

I spent the whole day feeling like I was in danger. I can’t explain why, but I jumped at the sound of anything and if Mischief wandered into my peripheral vision it’d startle me.

I spent the evening watching Bette Midler and Eddie Izzard concerts trying to stay in a happy mood.

Tuesday the 7th
Along about January this year I started noticing a moss growing around the rocks in my aquarium that looks for all the world like lawn grass. In the months since, I’ve found it’s almost indestructible and I can tear some off and plant it somewhere else and it goes wild. I’ve wrapped it around the power cords for the pumps and the water returns and within days it’s thick enough not to be able to see them. I think that’s why the fancy guppy population as suddenly gone berserk lately, the babies have somewhere to hide.

My aquarium plants are doing so well now for some reason, I took the plastic ones out long ago… but now I’m starting to put them back in with a twist. I have some 30-inch-tall plastic Hornwort plants that are about an inch in diameter. I tore big pieces of the moss off the main plants and wrapped it tightly around their little plastic fronds and within days the moss had completely engulfed it to the point where it looks like I have three inch diameter moss columns growing all the way to the water’s surface (sort of like a kelp forest). The fish swim in and amongst it and the effect is great. Sort of like using a wooden trellis to grow vines or grapes with; after a while all you can only see is the plant. I’ve put five of them together and it looks incredible. The tank is four feet wide x 13 inches deep and 30 inches tall.

I have a bar stool in front of it so Mischief can sit and watch the fish and she loves it too.

I used to have two 100-gallon tanks next to each other-one salt one fresh and used the 80-gallon to propagate plants, and treat them for snail eggs before I put them in the main tanks. God I hate being broke.

Wednesday the 8th
I went in for my pre-surgery appointment at Grant Hospital this morning. I was cutting it close time-wise because it took forever to answer a bunch of questions and have blood drawn before I had to be at Dr. Mind’s in time. I kept expecting someone to walk up to me and demand a $100 payment like last time, but fortunately no one did. It probably helped that I told anyone and everyone that would listen to please note that this was a workman’s comp claim before someone billed me. We didn’t have to do an EKG since I had one from my visit to Dr. D/Heart a week or so ago.

All through my session with Dr. Mind I kept wondering what it was going to be like after GB takes her away from me. With Anthem screwing me anywhere I turn, there’s no way I could afford the 20% that Medicare doesn’t pay.

My god; it’s been 6 years since I had a lover. It’s like I won’t let anyone close enough to emotionally hurt me. I used to think it was fear of the physical beating, but now I think it’s resentment of how many so-called friends abandoned me after my world fell apart. After I stopped throwing bi-weekly poker/birthday/get-together parties in the game room when I was in town, or took art clients out to dinner all of the time.

I spent the afternoon sorting through all of my unopened medical bills over the last year that I’d thrown into a cubbyhole in my desk. I started feeling really depressed and “what’s the use” knowing nothing will come of this… again, just like the five rejection notices I’ve gotten so far just this year. What’s the most I hope for? $14 stupid dollars worth of food stamps per month for all the work and anxiety. What I really need is their help with my $100 copay with Medicare, which is what’s killing me in the first place.

At around midnight I realized I’d been staring at my monitor screen for five hours without doing anything… I’d even forgotten to eat.

Thursday the 9th
Sorting unpaid medical bills most of the day. My god there’s about $20,000 or more. No wonder I’ve got collection agencies hounding me day and night. The tough part is that Grant Hospital is billing me and so is their collection agency. Which means I have to sort through everything by date and by price to make sure I don’t have any duplicates and have them reject me because they thought I was trying to submit two bills for the same medical procedure.

Even though I haven’t posted any diary entries for the entire month of September, someone in Fredericksburg Virginia is still daily checking. I’m still scratching my head over who I know there, and I’m beginning to suspect that maybe GB is reading it every day trying to find some excuse to cut me off of my checks or benefits.

My check from them comes tomorrow. I still sweat it out as to whether I’ll get a deposit from them every two weeks. The bitch of it is that it’ll be gone on bills before Friday’s even done. I’m going to have to be super careful on groceries this time. I’d like to make Jennifer over there try to survive on only one cheap meal a day of two little cans of ravioli just to see how she likes it.

It’s 3AM and I’m still only about ¾ of the way through a year’s worth of bills. I still haven’t assembled my lease, birth certificate, Social Security card and all the other stuff they want. I fear I may have to go through this without any sleep at all tomorrow.

I’m yawning through tears.

Friday the 10th
I got maybe an hour of sleep last night… well this morning before I had to get ready to go to “Jobs & Family Services” (what most people call welfare. I remember the last time I went, I was denied for not having one electric bill page of the previous year and another document that I can’t even recall. I gave up.

As I’ve said before, I’m white, but have black family members on my Father’s side, so I fall into a very bad funk when I suddenly become irrationally afraid of them. I got to the waiting room in time for the appointment, and fortunately at 8:15 in the morning, the place was almost deserted. I had an envelope that was nearly 2 ½ inches thick, so if I failed this interview, I could be able to tell myself that it was impossible and to legitimately give up even trying (even though Dr. Mind tells me not to).

I sat there in the waiting room and tried to relax and compose myself, and a door immediately to my left that I thought was to a closet opened up abruptly and a young black man called my name out and I came face to face with my new caseworker-obviously not the “Mary” I was expecting.

He led me down a long hallway and looked back impatiently at me that I wasn’t keeping up with him on my sore knee. I tried to apologize and explain about that and he ignored me. After a series of turns through cubicles we arrived at his desk. I tried to explain about my PTSD so he wouldn’t take it personally and he told me he wasn’t interested in it and was too busy to hear my story.

In the past they’d go down the checklist that I’d been given in order and ask for documentation. I pulled out my Social Security card and he said he didn’t need it? I next pulled out my current lease… he didn’t want that either. I was nervous about the electric bills since I only had actual bills from March. When I reluctantly handed them to him, he held up his hand impatiently and asked me to stop handing him things until he asked for them.

I began having flashbacks from the attack as if maybe he was one of them. Fortunately he didn’t have a Somolian accent but I still couldn’t meet his eyes. He asked for my utilities and I’d lost track in the folder where I’d just laid the power bills, so I handed him the phone bills instead. He became agitated because they were printouts of the previous year’s payments instead of the actual bills themselves. I tried to explain that I’m billed on-line and don’t get bills. He gave me a stern look and said that was no excuse; I can print out the actual bills on line if I’d taken the time to look.

My ears started roaring like I was going to have one of my frustration rages, and I tried to explain again how I was being treated for a nervous problem after the attack and he looked me in the eyes and told me flatly he wasn’t interested and that we needed to speed this along.

From that time on I never met his eyes or even looked at him again; in fact as my frustration with the situation grew, I just propped my elbows on the desk and buried my head in my palms with my eyes closed..

He spotted my electric bills and said he wanted them instead and that since I had those, I shouldn’t have given him my phone bills because the county counts electric in my name as my being responsible for all the bills in my household. I clenched my jaw, handed them to him, and then picked a spot on the distant wall to stare at while he shuffled through them in silence.

He worked on his computer for a while and kept getting up to ask someone this or that for a few moments and then would return as wordlessly as he’d left. I went back to burying my head in my palms and fighting to keep from running out the room.

It turns out my case was still open because I still had an unused .51 cents on my food stamp card. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE. He smirked that I was again eligible for a whole $16 a month in food stamps and seemed to indicate the interview was over. I asked about the medical bills I’d brought for the spend-down and he pursed his lips at me and got up again and went to ask someone. It was as though he had no idea what a spend down was.

I buried my forehead again and that’s when I noticed something between my elbows on the desk. A handwritten sign on an index card that said “DO NOT lean your elbows on this desk”

I wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t scared, I just needed to get out of there like someone who was claustrophobic and found themselves trapped in a closet with no light and the door bolted closed.

His supervisor wandered by and saw me and got concerned, then asked me if I was all right. I explained about the attack, my fear, how he refused to let me explain so he wouldn’t take it personally and she was about to say something when he returned. He asked her about my “spend-down bills” and I showed her the stack and she became puzzled and asked why I hadn’t been mailing these in. I told her that I’d gotten several letters saying I wasn’t eligible for help, nor had received any assistance since last August. She looked pissed and said if someone had taken the time to explain it to me better, it was because I’d stopped sending in my bills that I became ineligible in the first place. I told her that I’d spent the first 9 months of 2009 in the hospital and didn’t get the memo and since I was away from home couldn’t mail them in.

She took the stack from me and said she’d scan them herself and asked me to follow her. She had an assistant scan them while she sat me down in her cubicle, which was in the next aisle, but adjacent to the caseworker I’d just been with, and asked me to clarify why I seemed so upset. She was a really nice young black woman and I explained how my grandfather was black and how it had nothing to do with race but was from flashbacks and panic, but I felt bad and was frustrated that he wouldn’t let me explain why I’d reacted to him the way I did.

I had a feeling this isn’t going to go well. I got home to realize I’d forgotten to ask about them helping me with Medicare part B’s co pay. I tried to call them and of course couldn’t get through.

I checked the bank statement on line and I got the GB check but it’s gone already. I miscalculated somewhere and the only way I can buy food is to put off the phone bill until the 24th, which means another $5 late payment fee. Shit, I remember when I’d pay my phone bills six months at a time in advance, now I’m fretting over five lousy bucks. The problem is that since the rent will come out of the disability check on the third, I’m going to have to put the majority of the check coming on the 24th on the phone, electric and car insurance and then spend very carefully on groceries. Then mandatorily save what’s left over to be combined with next month’s disability to barely pay October’s rent with maybe $5 left for groceries.

This is all giving me a headache. Does anyone still wonder why I haven’t grown another ulcer?

I used my mini grocery cart to precariously balance a huge garbage bag of opened junk mail and envelopes down to the dumpster this afternoon.

Saturday the 11th
Today’s the 9th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The TV’s been filled with specials all day. I’m kinda pissed to realize that within a year of it being hit, the Pentagon was rebuilt so that you can’t even tell it was damaged, but almost nothing’s gone up in nine years at ground zero. I spent the morning looking at footage I’ve stored of the building impacts on my computer.

I couldn’t stop sneezing this afternoon and I’m starting to feel cold. I’ve actually turned off the fans in the house. I curled up in my bed under three blankets and fell asleep. Around 10 I woke up from another nightmare. I was trying to get away from my three Somolians by leaping from the top of one of the World Trade Center buildings to the other and just as I was about to jump it collapsed out from under me.. I didn’t die when I landed and they came out the front door and began beating me with an oversized gun.

God will this never end? I wonder what will happen when I get cut off of my Cymbalta. I’ll be able to get prescriptions, but won’t be able to afford it with Anthem’s co-pay.

I’ve been worried that the change over from GB to Social Security might entail them trying to take the $3,000 GB overpayment from me again and I might not have enough to survive. That and the changeover could take so long that I could miss a couple of rent payments.

You’d think by now I’d be used to this, but I’ve been caught off guard so many times, I have to be constantly ready for the worst or suffer the consequences.

Sunday the 12th
I started feeling a really bad sore throat today. I used to get these bouts with strep throat every spring that’d last seemingly forever. Fortunately they stopped around 1999, but this feels just like it.

Looking over my e-store layout, I’ve come to realize that I’ve gotten away from the original concept of “you can afford it here” and I’m afraid I have to start over. The idea was to have most of the items in three categories: “affordable” “Reasonable” and Famous brands and Designers” and I’ve strayed away from that, so I’m going to rework it, starting with the Men’s department.

I got a nice call from Aunt Margaret today; they’ve put her on a light dosage of Cymbalta like me. I hope it helps her. Betsy’s gone to working just weekends up at Clear Lake and will be laid off soon. That’s got to be rough on them. She told me that according to Char’s Facebook page Bill toppled a tree in her mother’s yard over onto their motor home.

I decided to venture out to the new Wal-Mart near where Teresa lives. It’s cloudy, but warm and I miss “cruising around with the top down.” I discovered that it’s closer in a straight line, but longer to driving it. It was nice, with skylights and a more organized layout but the prices were two or three cents more there than at mine on Morse Rd. On the way home a car full of young black guys pulled up beside me at 70MPH on Rt. 70, all smiles and just having a good time. I nearly wrecked the car when one rolled down his window and began yelling at me. I nearly sideswiped the car on the other side of me in panic, only to realize he was screaming “Nice ride!” I smiled back, took a deep breath and floored it away from them. My heart did some pounding for a while, but they peeled off at the next exit.

As I close out this evening, I’m developing a headache and I still feel cold… this is not good. I spent the day working on redoing the Men’s department. I haven’t had any customers since the beginning of the month… this sucks. I’ve got to get the new logo done and send it out to my BC friends to display on their pages.

I’ve been hearing rumors via e-mail that Eric Olsen the founder of BlogCritics is leaving his consultant position there. I sort of expected it after he sold out to Technocrati. He no longer has control of his “baby” and even though he stayed on it’s not the same. Especially when someone else can override his decisions concerning something he created.

Monday the 13th
The sore throat is getting worse and now I’m having nasal congestion that’s draining into my lungs and a headache that’s so bad that my eye’s literally hurt. When I cough the right side of my head hurts where my jaw muscle attaches to my skull at the temple. This isn’t good. The coughing is only aggravating the sore throat and as of today I’m not allowed to take aspirin according to my pre-surgery instructions. I’m getting chills too to the point of turning off all of the fans that I use to counter the ringing of my ears. I’m tempted to go out and buy some Dayquil, but I can’t afford it.

This will be the first year in a long time that I didn’t send a birthday message to Char. Her withholding Dad’s letter for 32 years is still unforgivable and I’m still not ready to deal with… or forgive her.

I e-mailed Eric Olsen today, and he e-mailed me back that he’s indeed leaving BC. This is not good news. He said he’s announcing it on Wednesday and his wife Dawn is leaving too. Damn it.

About an hour after his e-mail, I got a mass one from him to all BC writers announcing he’s leaving. I guess he figured that if I’d found out about it, so had everyone else, so he moved his note up two days.

The congestion in my lungs is getting really bad. My voice is really low from coughing and this afternoon I gave up and went to Kroger’s and got a bottle of Dayquil. It doesn’t really do that much good on the symptoms, but the syrup in it soothes my throat.

I came home, downed some of it and hid in bed. I woke up around midnight and played chess on the computer for a while, then worked on reorganizing “Jet’s General Store”.for about two hours before getting drowsy.

My coughing is getting worse instead of better and now I feel really hot instead of really cold.

Tuesday the 14th
Today is Christopher Rose’s birthday, a British acquaintance of mine. I set up a note on the BC private community page wishing him a happy birthday and he wrote back that it was nice to hear from me. I smiled for a change today.

I’ve been having trouble with my equilibrium again today. Every time I got up I’d lose my balance and topple somewhere. It might have something to do with my ears; I hear an annoying click when I swallow. I’ve been coughing like crazy all day and my nose has been stuffed too. It’s one of those sicknesses when you become convinced that it’ll never go away. I have to think seriously about calling Dr. Mind tomorrow and canceling and if this doesn’t clear up by the weekend, I might have to cancel the knee surgery.

I slept through the whole day getting up for maybe an hour at a time. This headache is killing me and the only way to escape it is to sleep.

It started again this afternoon. I woke up to the sound of the doorbell ringing and of course no one was there. I got up and looked in case it was Rich delivering a package, but no one was there.

Other than playing chess with the computer nothing was accomplished today.

Wednesday the 15th
I woke up with an even more intense headache this morning. My whole body hurt to even move. I knocked around the penthouse for an hour and went back to bed. It’s advanced to shivering chills now and I gave up and called Dr. Mind first thing this morning and said I couldn’t make my appointment. I know I’m not supposed to do it, but I gave up and took half an aspirin for the headache.

I tried to reach Teresa again this morning to let her know I may have to move the surgery date but couldn’t get ahold of her.

Nothing in the mail again today from welfare. I hate this and it’s stupid to get my hopes up. Eric sent out an official e-mail to everyone today that he’s leaving BC… I guess we’ll see what happens when the inmates begin running the asylum

If I could’ve stopped coughing I’d have slept the whole day. It feels like my head explodes every time I cough, especially at my right temple. My throat’s getting worse instead of better and I’m rationing the Dayquil to the point of it probably not helping in such small dosages.

I worked on organizing the Men’s Department of Jet’s General Store most of the evening and tried to listen to comedy recordings on my headset to cheer my miserable self up.

Ughhh

Thursday the 16th
My throat is getting less sore. I hope it stays that way. I have an electronic fever thermometer in my middle desk drawer but it’s come up missing. Mischief taught herself how to open it because she knows I keep rubber bands and fun things she likes to play with in there. I didn’t discover this until I found some of my insulin hypos on the floor.

I tried to reach Teresa again this morning. Her accounts for texting, e-mail and voicemail are all full. I’ll try again tomorrow. Mischief has a bulk feeder and water dish so she’ll be okay and I guess the fish will be alright eating plants in the aquarium for a couple of days.

I tried to get on line with AT&T to see my phone bill and it wouldn’t come up. I guess the site is down, so I called to try to make arrangements to pay the bill on the 24th. It’s due on the 20th and the last thing I need is another $5 late fee. The guy I talked to said he could hook me up with a better deal on my phone service that not only gave me more features, but had free unlimited long distance… AT $12 A MONTH LESS!!! Then he told me that he could upgrade my DSL to twice the speed for only $5 a month more! Something went right! I took the offers and he transferred me over to the billing department. The lady was very nice and said it was okay to pay it late, and even took the late fee off this month’s bill.

I was startled awake this afternoon to the tornado siren going off outside my window. It’s two blocks away on a tall pole and points directly at me when it spins around. We had one hell of a storm with trees and power lines down all over the place and at one point a twister was aimed right at downtown along the I-70 corridor… I-70 is only fifty yards south of me. Except for chairs blowing around on the balcony and horizontal rain, it was exciting to watch, but fortunately I came out of it undamaged. Never saw the tornado, though at one point I almost grabbed Mischief and headed for the basement while watching weather radar on TV.

I’m now completely out of Dayquil and the congestion is getting worse instead of better.

I woke up screaming again this evening after a nap, but don’t remember why.

Friday the 17th
Betsy floored me by calling on her way up the mountain to say that she and Norm bought their wedding rings at Sears. They were having a half price sale on the very rings she would’ve bought from my General Store. I don’t blame her, but I’m bitterly disappointed. I’d hoped to use the commission to get caught up on the bills.

Grant Hospital called today to do a pre-surgery questionnaire. I told her about my throat and fever and she said to call by Monday if it doesn’t clear up over the weekend.

I was sitting at my desk here when the doorbell rang, or at least I thought it did. It sounded so real-and that’s when something amazing dawned on me; the doorbell sound I’m hearing is a mechanical bell set in apartment doors-NOT MINE!!! It’s the sound of the doorbell I was ringing frantically after I was robbed and beaten when no one would let me in their apartment! My penthouse used to have that type of door until it was upgraded to a phone system… so my doorbell doesn’t ring.

Saturday the 18th
I’m still reeling from Betsy not buying her rings from me. I tried to tell her I wasn’t mad the other day but lost the cell connection. In her position I’d have done the same exact thing.

I called the 866 number and nothing’s been added to my food stamp card damn it. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. But damn it all to hell it took a lot out of me to make that appointment and then sort through the ton of documentation required for the application. Never again. I give up. You’d think they’d have at least sent me a rejection notice by now.

God my whole body hurts at the joints and I seem to be coughing even more than my head hurts.

I probably have no choice but to cancel the surgery on Tuesday and risk GB using that as an excuse not to send me a check.

Sunday the 19th
I woke up this morning and the headache was more intense than ever. I’ve got no choice but to call tomorrow and reschedule the operation…. Fuck. It also means I’m going to have to buy food to make up for the meals on Tuesday and Wednesday. To make up the shortage I’ve decided to pay only $100 on the $115 electric bill in order to buy groceries and Mischief is nearly out of cat food… groan. I was tempted really badly to try to choose between more Dayquil and food, but food won out.

I drove up to Wal-Mart, GOD I miss driving anywhere at will. The freedom to just come and go as I please I think is what I miss the most; that and fresh vegetables.

There’s got to be a way out of this mess that I haven’t thought of yet and it’s really starting to piss me off that I still haven’t heard anything about whether I’ll get any help with my Medicare part B payments.

My head hurts so bad there’s no real sense in putting anything else down in writing today. I’m off to bed to escape it.

Monday the 20th
The throbbing in my head is a little better, but I can’t stop coughing. In fact I woke up around 8AM in a coughing fit. I answered a call from Aunt Margaret this morning and she didn’t recognize my voice it was so deep. I called Dr. P/knee and canceled the operation, rescheduling it for next Tuesday at 5:30 in the morning. He is so great, he scheduled me for overnight specifically so I could get 4 square meals-god love him. If I have anything to say about it, they’ll all be huge chef salads and chicken breasts.

After checking my bank statement against my spreadsheet, I just discovered that I fucked up somewhere and transposed two numbers. I’ll be short about .50 cents on the rent next month. God damn it all to hell. Dr. Mind called me this morning to wish me her best and I told her I was still as sick as I was when I had to cancel last week’s session. I told her I’d try to come in this week if I’m better and she said it was okay, if not we could have our session over the phone.

The right side of my head is killing me when I cough to the point where I only put out half a cough. I wonder if I could have torn a muscle in my jaw during one of my coughing fits; it’s damned agony.

I have two frozen dinners and three cans of ravioli left for today, tomorrow and Thursday and then I’m completely out of food. The only way I can see my way out of this is to only pay $100 of my $115 electric bill and hope for the best. I’ve already promised I’d pay the phone on time this Friday to keep from being disconnected, so I’m stuck. Somehow I don’t think $15 is going to buy two week’s worth of food.

I still haven’t heard a single word from “welfare,” I’m still hurting from the near panic attack in the waiting room and what followed. More than likely nothing will come of it, like all the other times.

God this is so hopeless.

Tuesday the 21st
Strange thing, no collection agency calls for a while. I wonder if that’s good or bad. I decided to do the one can of ravioli today so that at least the next couple of days will be “full meals” if you can call it that.

Gads what I’d give for a salad.

I can’t stop coughing, it’s a good thing I canceled the surgery or I’d probably gagged to death coughing up flem with a breathing tube known my throat while I was unconscious.

I had a dream last night that I held up a Kroger’s and all I wanted was enough to make a few big salads. I woke up before I found out how it ended.

Wednesday the 22nd
I set the clock-radio for 8 this morning and called Dr. Mind to cancel our session. No sense in getting her sick too. I got her to reschedule me for 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. She says they’re closing down the back parking lot today (they don’t have a front one) and I’ll have to come in early tomorrow to make sure I can get a pass into the garage next door and still make it on time.

The “every-Wednesday-at-noon” tornado siren test woke me up and I nearly panicked until I realized I’d canceled Dr. Mind today. The mail brought a medical card! Something went right!!!! I put it in my wallet and about an hour later it occurred to me that I might have to activate it so I took it out again and discovered that it wasn’t mine. The mailman had miss-delivered a guy named Jason from the other building to me. FUCK. I just can’t win.

My head feels “woozy” like it’s in a vice. The only way to survive this is to sleep; which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Between the coughing and the headache I didn’t even eat today. I wish I could bottle this feeling as a diet.

I should send a note to Brenda thanking her again for her help with my clinic co-pay. Knowing how I feel now being on the receiving end of it, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to help out someone again if I ever recover from this.

Thursday the 23rd
I left post-it notes all over the place so I wouldn’t forget to go to Dr. Mind this afternoon. As predicted, they’d partially closed off the back parking lot. Of the spaces back there they decided to leave everything open except the two handicapped slots-there they parked their construction trucks.

She asked me for my watch, which hasn’t run for two months, but is still correctly displaying the date on the LCD display… and nothing else. She says she’s got a friend who can look at it.

After I went over the last two weeks with her, I drove up to Family Medical Pharmacy up north to refill my Cymbalta only to find that GB “prior authorized” only one filling of the prescription even though it had two refills on it. GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL. We tried calling Dr. T’s with no luck and I left empty handed. I drove home very carefully so as not to wind up in Zanesville again.

I wish I had.

Today’s mail brought a full rejection from “Job & Family Services” On one part of the notice they said I would be eligible for $16 a month, but they stated that they’d added $0 to my food stamp card and said that even though I presented over $20,000 in medical bills that I didn’t meet my spend-down for help with the $100 Medicare Part B monthly payment.

Just to add icing to the cake, I got a red shutoff notice from the city unless I pay them $235 on my electric bill. All I can do is send them $100 tomorrow and hope for the best. This is just getting too much for me.

I spent the evening pondering how much easier it’d be if I just killed myself. An intentional overdose of insulin or something like that… of course I came to my senses… after a while. This stress and constant problems are just too much for me anymore.

Friday the 24th
GB deposited my check. I went on line and paid the phone bill and sent the city $100, god I hope that works, but the way things are going; I doubt it.

With no food in the house I went up to Wal-Mart and bought some chicken patties and dinner rolls for $10, leaving me 5. If I’m careful I’ll have dinner Saturday and Sunday and I can make it on three dinner rolls on Monday…I hope. I have to fast anyway on Monday night because I have surgery on Tuesday morning. I loved driving there with the top down, but I won’t be able to do it more than once more as I’m low on gas and still have to get back and forth to Dr. Mind.

The only reason I’m looking forward to being operated on is for three-possibly four good meals. Seven years ago I could never have imagined being in this situation.

I got on the computer and decided to try to text my friend Matt on his cell phone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but this time it did. He said he missed me and wished me luck on Tuesday.

Since telling Dr. Mind about the doorbell, I haven’t heard it once… what a relief.

Saturday the 25th
I slept fitfully last night but blissfully don’t remember why. My throat is feeling better, though I still have the cough. The headache is still there, but the side of my head at the temple has stopped hurting.

I called Family Medical about whether I got the authorization today and forgot they closed at noon on Saturdays.

I watched Ohio State beat the living hell out of Eastern Michigan State something like 70-20. Me a football fan? I slept a lot between working on Jet’s General Store. Still no customers this month… (sigh)

Sunday the 26th
I finished the new Jet’s General Store logo today. I decided fuck it, and put the rainbow flag back in it. Like Bette Midler is fond of saying “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!”

My throat is feeling a lot better, though I still have the cough and I’m going through with the surgery after all.

Now all I have to do is worry about how soon GB will start trying to say I’m “Maximum Medically Improved” and try to cut me off.

Monday the 27th
I did a huge load of laundry and printed out a bunch of medical records/history for the hospital tomorrow.

I usually can’t fall asleep before 5AM, I have to get up at 4… this should be fun.

I spent the day making last-minute preparations for tomorrow morning… good god I have to get up at 4AM!

Along about 10PM I remembered that my car insurance is due tomorrow! I went on line and tired to make a payment… rejected… WTF? Tried again… rejected… groan… five more times. I finally got ahold of PNC Bank customer support to discover that tonight of all nights they’re changing over to a new filing system and I have a new routing number! It took me and some guy from customer support half an hour to get it to go through.

Only to me do these things happen…

Tuesday the 28th
4:35AM I’m supposed to be at the hospital at 5:30… I wonder if I’ll make it. God I’ve got to trust my car overnight in a hospital parking lot…

When I got there, there was a spirited argument over security wanting my wallet to hold in their vault, but not my insulin and heart prescriptions. After explaining it a dozen times to as many people. They got the wallet-I got the prescriptions. The fucked up thing about hospitals is that they’re so compartmentalized that in the space of an hour and a half a dozen people will come in and ask you the exact same questions over and over again because they’re not allowed to share information with each other.

Dr. P/knee came in and said I might not be able to stay overnight because GB is trying not to authorize it. So much for a few decent meals.

I think this is the fastest I’ve ever been knocked out in pre-surgery. When I woke up I hadn’t even recovered consciousness before a nurse asked me if I’d needed to piss yet. I got to the room around 11:30 hoping for a good lunch and was handed a menu for… a liquid diet. Jello and a diet Pepsi. (Chrrrrrrist.) I discovered my leg was completely bandaged from my crotch to my toe for an operation on my knee… this had me worried, especially after Betsy called and said the hospital had me in only “fair” condition.

Another nurse came in asked me if I’d “urinated” and stated that If I didn’t by the time she changed shifts they were going to install a catheter… oy vay.

She came in an hour later and said the liquid diet was a mistake and I ordered a HUGE grilled chicken salad with extra cucumbers and tomatoes. My god it was so good. My stomach probably spent the afternoon wondering what the hell that stuff was. When Betsy called I was so stoned I could barely put two thoughts together rationally, gave up and asked her to call back. I plan to ask for as much Mrs. Dash seasoner as I can to bring home with me to cut down on my salt intake.

Aunt Margaret called me in the evening and I woke covered in sweat. I asked for a fan in my room, but so far no luck. If I succeed in staying over night, I plan to call the business office and have them send a representative to my room and personally fill out the financial aid requests, so they can’t possibly say I didn’t. I even grabbed the huge envelope of stuff I took to “welfare” so they’d have all my financial papers right then and there. I’m still fighting for myself, so I haven’t given up yet. It’s so fucked up that someone that is upper or even just middle class in this country has to lose and/or give up everything before he can get any help.

I guess they’re letting me stay the night after all, because by 7PM no one’s come in with discharge papers for me to sign.

I do have a nurse that insists on popping in every other hour to ask if I’d peed yet…. Unbelievable.

Wednesday the 29th
I woke up in agony this morning. There’s nothing more painful than bone surgery and the pain was so intense I could barely think around it.

The nurse says I’m to be discharged this afternoon. Dr. P/knee came by with a souvenir of my surgery by bringing me the plate and screws that he’d removed from my leg. I ordered a sausage omelet with bacon and cheddar cheese, hashed browns and a giant sausage sandwich on wheat toast. I was in heaven.

After breakfast I called the business office and they said they’d send someone up from the financial aid department this morning or afternoon, so I spent the time worrying if I’d be sent home before I saw them. A social worker from a separate department came up and I explained the whole story and she offered me some resources for more food banks, some help with my apartment cleaning (between the heart surgeries and knee/arm/foot I haven’t been able to walk stuff about 4 blocks to the dumpster)

I wound up running out of needles and testing supplies, as the nurses kept insisting on testing my blood glucose level every other hour. I’m used to testing once or twice a day and I had to refuse their equipment/supplies because GB won’t pay for them since they’re not part of the original injury.

I gave up and told them that the Lantus insulin hadn’t cut in yet and that I should be alright until I could get home and do an injection there. My nurse was appalled when she heard that and began sneaking me pricking devices for my fingers and alcohol swabs, God love her.

The social worker kept telling me not to leave the hospital until I’d seen the financial aid officer with Grant Hospital, so I ordered lunch… another HUGE grilled chicken salad and a cheeseburger. I have no food in the house at all-none, so I figured I better bulk up, since I’ll be in no condition to go grocery shopping for a couple of days.

After lunch the financial aid lady finally came, she said she could get me help with the turn-off notice on the electric bill. Though I was grateful, I didn’t tell her that I wished I’d known that before I’d sent them $100. I also got a big piece of news in the form of the Pizza shop has been responding to agencies contacting them about giving me help (and the reason for them refusing me)… by telling them that I’m still employed with them! Unfuckingbelievable.

Thank god I know how to get in and out of the car without killing my leg from all the previous surgeries! I shudder to think what’s going to happen, once the Percocet wears off. I got home around 2PM and encountered Rich putting the chaise lounges from the pool away for the year. He joked around with me about how slow I was moving, getting back at me when I did the same to him after his recent hospital stay. His next step will be to drain our big pool which means a two inch deep stream of water running down the parking lot to the storm drain.

Up in my apartment, I’d cleaned Mischief’s litter box before I left Monday morning, but I still smelled ammonia. I’ll have to get to that soon; it’s still clean but the litter needs to be completely changed..

After feeding the fish and making sure the cat was okay, it dawned on me that everything was exactly where I left it. I don’t think Teresa had checked in to see if everything was okay. I wouldn’t be mad at her if she hadn’t-after all I’d only been gone two days. I realized that I hadn’t made the bed, having done the laundry just hours before I left, so it meant fighting the sheet and blanket over a queen-sized bed…, which wasn’t easy. Of course every time I’d drift off, either Betsy or Aunt Margaret called. God love both of them… they’re the only family I have that gives a damn and I’m sure I’d be dead by my own hand by now if it weren’t for them.

I woke up around midnight and my leg was in full-blown agony mode. The next few days should be fun. I limped around the house and decided it was too much and decided to see if I could sleep the whole night through.

Thursday the 30th
I woke up around 9 and my leg HURTS. It was a fight just to get up and check the internet for news and e-mails. The points I’d redeemed on my checking account came through and I now have $20 to buy food for 8 days… Weeeeeee!

1-888-404-3721, which is a collection agency called JP recovery called me 4 times in the space of one hour this morning.

I called Family Medical Pharmacy to see if GB finally gave “prior authorization” for my anti-depressants and was surprised to find that they hadn’t. WTF. This means they probably won’t give it for the percocet and I NEED that painkiller. The pharmacy said I need authorization from Dr. T/WorkHealth, so I called them and Dr. T said the authorization was already given to her to write any prescription that I thought I needed for the injury, and that the problem was with GB not wanting to pay for it… or my Cymbalta and hinted that if they could delay it a week, they’d only have to refill it every 5 weeks instead of 4 because pharmacies will only refill after 30 days after it’s “filled” not when it’s ordered.

I next tried to get ahold of Jennifer at GB and of course got her voicemail over and over. I’ve got some kind of legal paper in all of these lawsuits that GB keeps losing that I can only contact GB through my lawyer and so I got ahold of him next… well his assistant anyway. She said the only thing to do was to keep trying. She put me on hold and got voicemail too.

By this time I was getting frustrated and could feel myself ready to explode emotionally, so I called Dr. Mind. She said to try calling the pharmacy and seeing if they’d fill the narcotic without prior authorization… So I did, and it worked.

I got a grocery list together and my calculator and drove up north and discovered that GB had put a hold on my prescriptions. An hour went by and my leg hurt because there was no place to put it up until a lady came over and moved her chair in the waiting area so I could prop it up. An hour went by, then another. I was getting madder and madder. The last time this happened I wound up in Zanesville on one of my “disassociation trips.” I decided to use the waiting time to go over to Wal-Mart. I can get these little Banquet chicken patties, 10 for $3.98 and of course when I got there they were out of them. Frustration building, I asked a guy in frozen foods to help me and he found 4 in the back, so I’ll be rationing them for 8 days.

I got back to the pharmacy and realized I was almost completely out of gas with nothing left in checking and 15-20 miles from home.

When I got there, they were still fighting with GB so I waited some more and it turned out they were fighting over the Cymbalta refill but had approved the Percocet hours ago. I almost gave up when it finally came through.

I drove home watching the gas gauge fall below the E halfway home, but fortunately I made it. With my having to empty my account to make the rent (assuming the disability check actually will show up tomorrow since the 3rd is on Sunday) I’m going to have to use some of my shiny Eisenhower dollars to get to Dr. Mind on Wednesday… damn it.

I sent off a message to my good friend Paula on her birthday this evening. I miss her a lot and I hope she’s still climbing the ladder of success at Safelite. With all this, I’d completely forgotten about my promise to call Betsy in Oregon today, when she called me I was just too exhausted from today’s events and promised to call her tomorrow morning at 7:30AM her time after she gets Norm off to work.

God it’s going to kill me not to be at her wedding.

August 2010

2010-08-19T02:54:00.008-04:00

Wednesday the 18th
Time to start over. I haven’t written for weeks because it was just too difficult to live through once without reliving it again in writing, but I’ve committed myself to keeping this diary and I will.

Right, so let’s take inventory.

Jet’s General Store ”
I think the damned store’s changed names five times in the last two weeks and I still have had only one customer, God bless her, she’s bought about $700 worth of merchandise, earning me a whopping $19.94. I’m still working on “stocking the shelves” and wording things. It’s hell having to type out every single word on every page, organize products that my specific store carries and deciding what goes where.

Though it’s still not officially open, the Book Department is pretty well solidified (or at least I thought it was) along with the computer, electronics and jewelry department. The idea is to comb through literally thousands of Amazon’s pages looking for products and making them easier to find. It’s like looking for a desk. If you put desk into their search engine you’ll get anything that has the word “desk” in the description and it displays 23-25 thousand items of which only 600 are actual desks and the rest are chairs, tables, lamps, pens etc, or worse, items that they don’t carry anymore but still display because the search engine found them. I took it upon myself to find them, root through only the cheapest, midrange, and the absolute best at the best prices for each to display in my store.

It’s great, but entails a lot of frustration and it’s very time consuming.

~ I wrote the last couple of paragraphs last week, since then I’ve discovered that a technical glitch is preventing the “A-stores” from connecting to Amazon’s main page, keeping my custom store from being able to display not only book prices, but a shopping cart for customers to put them in. In the last four weeks, I called tech support 6 times and got the same results… nothing.

I put up a page of Hugo Boss suits in my Men’s department and let Amazon “auto-pick” what was displayed… of the over 400 suits, all but five showed a “currently unavailable” in the description. When I called tech support, they said that the suits were available, but for some reason weren’t displaying correctly on the A-stores… not just mine, but everyone’s. Then to top everything off, the product description page displays differently on our store’s than Amazon’s. What that means is that the description line isn’t as long and cuts off ¾ of the way through it. Since the manufacturers place the size and color at the end of it, I have to go in and put the needed information of every single item I display on a separate lines so the customer can see it. These are the reasons I still haven’t opened the store yet and Amazon doesn’t seem to think they’re a priority. Their damned tech support sounds like it’s in India and they probably don’t understand half of what I’m trying to explain to them anyway… sigh

I’ve been trying to talk them into including a sidebar price range scale, and size search, but so far nothing.

Mischief”
My cat Mischief is still walking around with her tongue about a quarter inch out of her mouth. I’ve checked her water dispenser, scrubbed it inside and out several times, and I don’t think she’s thirsty. God I wish I could afford to take her to a vet. Since she was a rescued kitten, she’s never warmed up to me, and I firmly believe that she was taken from or abandoned by her mother at a very young age. She barely trusted people when I got her at six months, and she’s just barely improved since. She still shies away from me when I approach her, but can’t stand to be more than four feet away. I’ll be sitting at my desk and she’ll jump up and eventually put her paw on my wrist when I’m typing something. After a while she’ll even rest her chin on my arm and begin dozing off, or licking my forearm… but if I raise my hand very slowly to pet her, she lets me stroke her fur only a minute or less before she jumps down. I’ve tried rubbing my hands in catnip and purring at her, but nothing works. I fall asleep alone and wake up with her sleeping next to my pillow. It’s heartbreaking sometimes.

Finances”
I’ve now built the 6th version of my spreadsheet this year and included what I thought was a foolproof budget page. I factor in my anticipated bills, then deduct them from my income every ten days, so I can see how what I spend effects my cash-on-hand a month in advance, allowing the overages to carryover to the next period. Though things are really tight I figured I’d have around $225 saved up for emergencies by the end of this month. Then, I made a mistake only an idiot would make… I forgot to factor in food and the gas tank. As of last Monday I’ve got about $1.85 in my checking and it only gets worse through the end of the month. I can’t even see my finances past the next check because I no longer can count on one, having GB use any excuse in order to not send me one on any sort of technicality.

I’d hit my $100 target with Adsense last month and hoped I’d get it this month, but they’re playing some fine-print game where anything I earn doesn’t get paid for 4-6 weeks or more, so the money I was hoping to save me this month isn’t coming until God knows when… par for the course.

The same thing with Amazon.com. I’d hoped I was going to get around $20 from them too, but no… more fine print.

Last Friday’s GB check was gone within 12 hours of it being deposited. After the car payment and the phone I had around $60-65 to buy 14 days of groceries and supplies and I’m low on just about everything from toilet paper, paper towels to cat food. I bought $15 in gas to make sure I could get to all of my doctor appointments and then went over to Wal-Mart and picked up about a 6-day supply and held off buying any more in case something comes up. I kept telling myself to factor in the money for gas so I wouldn’t go overdrawn on my checking and not to spend more than $25-30. My 15-year-old hand calculator that cost me $25 died on me. I bought a new one with more features for a dollar. I hate buying garbage food and if I had my way would eat only salads, but that’s out of my reach right now.

Physical health”:
The aftereffects of the attack are still plaguing me psychologically to the point where I feel old and worn out and tired of “fighting the good fight” instead of muscular and ready to take on the world. There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t hurt.

I had hepatitis in 1980 and I’m worried I might be suffering a relapse. The symptoms are yellowish skin, urine the color of iced tea and very whitish-tan stool. I’ve got the latter of the three, but not the yellow tint or the iced tea. I tell myself it’s all the chicken patties and noodles & sauce I’ve been eating, but I’m beginning to worry.

My fiasco involving the phone being off the hook for three days last week really screwed me. One of the calls I missed was an automated reminder for Dr. P/knee last week. We rescheduled it for last Monday, but it fell a week after I saw Dr. T/WorkHealth to reauthorize my checks for the coming months. The appointment with Dr. P was to schedule my knee surgery in September, and I’m really pissed at myself for forgetting it.

I also hadn’t checked the mail for a while and missed a postcard saying that Dr. S/clinic had canceled my appointment asking me to reschedule. Not that it mattered, because I got an automated call reminding me to be there on the date they canceled it/ Of course when I went I had to come back again and that’s when I realized that I had so little gas left, that I was forced to decide whether to see Dr. Mind or attend an eye appointment. I reluctantly chose the eye appointment.

I ended up paying for $5 of gas in dimes and nickels and then realized it’d paid for less than two gallons of gas for the humiliation of holding up the line while I counted it out.

I got to the OSU eye clinic and was presented with a bill of almost $200 and she made it sound like I couldn’t complete my eye surgeries unless I paid it. It turns out that Anthem only covers my prescriptions??? What the hell have they been billing me for? It turns out Medicare is only covering about 80% of my surgeries. She asked me if I had another Anthem card and I didn’t think I did, but I searched my wallet and with a sense of relief I found one and she said that was the problem all along, that she’d re-submit it and everything would be alright.

Halfway through my exam, she came into the examining room and told me the second card was a prescription card too even though it looked completely different. Now what do I do? I just can’t win.

I guess every doctor in the city decided to go on vacation that week.

I attended the appointment at Dr. T’s only to discover she wasn’t there and a substitute was filling in for her. He was nice, but clueless. He refilled my Cymbalta and sent me on my way. After I filled out the C84 paperwork to reauthorize my GB checks I was hit with a stroke of genius and asked the receptionist for a copy of the “fax received” receipt showing that GB got it. No more of them claiming they didn’t get the paperwork in time. Since I couldn’t tell them when the surgery was, I have to go back again in three weeks…. Presumably when Dr. T will be back from vacation. Because I didn’t know when surgery was… groan.

I’ve developed sores on the top and back of my head where they hit me with the gun in 2004. They appear and disappear seemingly at random and I wonder if they’re psychosomatic. They feel like a cross between little pimples and warts and vanish after a few days, seemingly during hard times of stress.

The ringing in my ears is just as loud as it ever was; even louder when I clench my jaw or interlace my fingers and rest my hands on the top of my head. Dr. Mind calls it tintinitus. It happened right after the attack and a doctor I saw says there’s no cure for it. It’s so loud that it interferes with my hearing at certain sound frequencies. Imagine a loud high-pitched tone 24/7 and you get the idea. When I’m trying to create my logo for the General Store or something where I have to concentrate, I have to put music on my headphones to drown it out.

I can still predict the weather with my right shoulder where my upper arm was broken in four places. It’s still nearly impossible to take a full breath without pain in my upper chest. The emergency thoracotomy where they tore everything away to get to my heart to save my life after the blood vessel exploded is still muscularly and skeletorily sore. Coughing, sneezing and yawning are an exercise in agony. Thankfully the ulcers haven’t returned even after being cut off from the Nexium.

When I began writing this today I took a blood glucose reading and was shocked that it was 448. Normal is around 90-100 and you start worrying at around 150. I did 25 units of the 100-proof insulin. I just checked it again and it’s fallen to 269 in a little over 45 minutes. I shot up 30 units of the 70/30 stuff before I ate and it’s got to be true what Dr. S said, the 70/30 stuff has lost its potency. I’ve a limited supply of the 100-proof, so I’ll have to be careful. It’s just driving me crazy that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and I’m in real danger of overdosing on it, thinking I’ve got a bottle that’s withering and it’s actually a full-strength one. I’ve got till the 24th to figure out how to come up with the $10 co-pay to see Dr. S. If I can’t I can’t get the drug rep samples of the medicines I need for my heart and diabetes.

My left leg was nearly destroyed during the attack to the point that there’s still one operation to go on it almost 6 years later. The pain in my knee isn’t as bad as hearing the damned thing crackle when I move it… ughhhhh. They warned me that my inner left calf muscle would vanish, but I guess I wasn’t prepared for it to. That muscle works with your ankle and when they destroyed my ankle, the doctors had no choice but to fuse it into one piece, the leg muscle withered away with it. I still try to flex it every so often, but it doesn’t seem to help. I make it downstairs to the gym every-so-often to ride the bike, but strangers are still a problem.

My right shoulder above where my arm was shattered in four places crackles even louder than my knee. When I’m playing a mouse on a string with Mischief I wind up giving up after about 10 minutes in pain… I hate this

My left foot is fine, but you’d never know it to look at it. After 20 or so operations and being in a cast for so long, the circulation returned, but the iron in my blood pooling in my skin caused it to stay there and it sort-of tattooed the pattern into the skin on my foot. It’s fine, but it looks ghastly. I have to check my feet nightly before I sleep to make sure I haven’t stepped on something and it might get infected. The nerve damage makes it impossible to feel certain areas of the bottom of my feet, either that, or my brain processes it as feeling like my ankle, knee or even hip has been injured instead. In other words my nerves are like a badly rewired stereo.

At my appointment with Dr. P/knee he was really nice. The x-rays say the bone is healing really well and he offered to take the hardware out any time I wanted to. I picked September 21st and he said that fit well into his schedule. I told him how much trouble I’m having with my diabetes because of only eating one meal a day and he said I should be eating at least two and a bedtime snack. He said when I go in for surgery, he wants to keep an eye on it, and made sure I was authorized for about four meals while I was there. I told him they’d all be salads… and they will be.

After seeing him, I drove up to Family Medical to renew my Cymbalta prescription. GB wouldn’t authorize it after about 20 minutes of phone calls citing something about prior authorization with Dr. T’s office. I’m so fucking tired of these games. I nearly went into a rage right there and was terrified that I might hurt someone, so I went and sat down for a minute and collected myself. I got back up and we tried to get ahold of Dr. T’s office for 10 more minutes and only got voicemail over and over again. This has happened so many times before that the Pharmacist Maria just refills it without the authorization, knowing they’re playing their games and it’ll come through in an hour or so, but she wasn’t there that day and her underlings wouldn’t fill it for me.

I left there infuriated. Every time I think I’m safe from them, they pull some shit on me that I’m not expecting.

Psychological health… or the lack of it ”
I got halfway home and realized I’d seen a tall radio antenna to the right of the expressway I’d never seen before. Soon after I crossed a bridge over a river that was wider than any in Columbus and I started getting really puzzled. I guess I drifted over in my lane and a big tanker truck blared its horn at me and I overcorrected and hit a “rumble” strip on the right side of the lane. I recovered in time to see a “Hospital Next Exit” sign and overhead signage for State Street and some numbered street. I was near downtown. I live three blocks from State Street so I figured I was near home, and while I was still puzzling over the river I’d just crossed that shouldn’t have been there, It dawned on me that ’71 doesn’t have a State Street exit!

Just then I passed under a sign that said Downtown Zanesville next two exits - ZANESVILLE???

I was halfway to Pennsylvania and nearly out of gas!

I’d been driving in a coma for more than an hour and a half or more. This happened once before in 2005 a few months after I was attacked. I didn’t get a job at Safelite and nearly wound up in Indiana before I “woke up”. I wandered around Zanesville trying to find a gas station and kept getting lost out of panic and confusion, just trying to convince myself that I was really there. I put $20 in the tank and prayed it was enough to get home on. I sat in the parking lot of a Denny’s that looked like it was being converted to a Big Boy’s or something and was hungry as hell. I’d probably just emptied my checking of what little I had left in it and got back on the road before I stopped somewhere to eat with money I didn’t have.

That’s when I noticed my watch was broken. This was getting too fucked up to be real. It’d stopped on 4PM. I figured the batteries were dead, but the LCD display still worked and I puzzled that the display was stuck on January 1st and as I watched it just by coincidence flipped to January 2nd. I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

About halfway home the upper right side of my head started hurting really bad to the point of distracting my driving. I kept reaching up to feel if it was swollen and sometimes it felt like I’d been hit with a two by four or a baseball bat. I spent about five minutes in the carport checking the car for evidence that I might have hit someone’s car in my “sleep” and called Dr. Mind but couldn’t reach her and knew better than to call her cell, so I gave up. I’d lost about 4 ½ hours somewhere.

I kept thinking maybe I have some sort of split personality that takes over my body and maybe I wanted to drive home to Pittsburgh. The more I thought about it the more my head hurt.

Dr. Mind called me that evening and assured me I wasn’t losing my mind. I don’t really remember a lot of what she said, but I felt better after talking to her.

Now I don’t have any money for food and I have one meal left. I remembered that I’ve accumulated a bunch of “points” on my checking account and one of the “prizes” is $15 for something like 12,000 points, so I called them to redeem them for groceries. They confirmed that the money would be direct-deposited into my checking and I was glad and nearly hung up and headed straight to Wal-Mart when she told me it’d take 4-6 weeks. I got pissed and asked why, if it’s coming from the bank and it’s directly deposited, why the wait. When she started spouting doubletalk at me I hung up on her.

It also turns out that to get discounts on air travel, it not only takes the same amount of time, but you have to buy a ticket full price to get another ticket “sometime in the future.” More about that later.

I keep looking at a huge framed collection of pictures I’ve taken of my travels across the country and it hurts that all that’s been torn away from me. I’ve been tempted to pull out my viewcam movies of it all, but it’d hurt even more, so I haven’t.

Though I’ve wanted to, I haven’t written a single article for BC in I don’t know how long. I get ideas for them, but they die almost as fast as they come to me. Another creative outlet that I miss.

The damned loneliness, not having a lover or sex for 6 years because of the physical and psychological damage done that night is devastating. I came close to offing myself last month. I’m still close because I’m beginning to feel like a trapped animal with only one way out.

The damned collection agency calls are coming as fast and furious as ever; sometimes 6 or 7 a day. I don’t know what to do. I’ll go into the hospital for a Workman’s comp operation and GB won’t pay for my heart, insulin or chest pain meds. I suffered a heart problem after my last knee operation and had to be transferred to the heart ward from the joint facility. GB decided they weren’t going to pay for that part of it, Medicare won’t pay for it because it should be included in the WC claim. The bills are so hopelessly intertwined that I can’t make heads or tails of it anymore and frankly have given up. It’s like the time GB paid to transport me home from my last operation, but refused to pay for them taking the wheelchair I was brought home in back to the aftercare facility… so I got stuck with the bill.

Why I haven’t developed another ulcer is beyond me.

The depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and hopelessness are almost too much to bear. The stress is building again. Though they promised me they’d fix it, I’m still getting two different electric bills a month, but with different totals, and they’re usually followed a week later with a red shut-off notice for a payment that’s only 10-14 days overdue. We’ve been over 100 degrees so many times this month that I fear what the next bill will look like.

We had two huge electrical storms last week. All the buildings downtown have lightning rods on them for safety and if a storm passes directly over like these did, strikes are common, and very very close. So close that they sound like horrendously loud whip cracks instead of flash and thunder. Both came around 4-5 in the morning and lasted half an hour, waking me up to what I perceived as gunfire, leaving me cowering on my side of a barricaded door to my apartment, trying to assuring myself it was only a dream and that it’s only thunder.

With them discontinuing my physical therapy, I only leave my apartment once a week to see Dr. Mind; and lately I have to make a serious effort just to force myself out the front door for that. It doesn’t help that some Ohio State University newbie cop gave me a parking ticket last month for parking in a slot that two other officers over the last year or more have said it was okay to park in. I gave the ticket to Dr. Mind’s boss and he failed to reason with them and I can’t afford to pay it, leaving me in fear that my car will be towed for an unpaid ticket or a warrant will be issued for me… sigh.

For the last month or so I haven’t been able to sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a time.

Miscellaneous news ”
My sister Betsy’s fiancé Norm has kinda-sorta set a wedding date for early October. He asked her if she could have anyone at the wedding, who would it be and she said me without even thinking. She says there’s an argument going on between my younger brother Jim and her son Brian as to who’s going to walk her down the aisle and give her away. They don’t know it, but she’s determined for that it be me. Now all I have to do is figure out a way to get there.

I feel bad because they’ve begun scrimping for an airline ticket for me.

Betsy went through a rough time last weekend up at Crystal Lake. A ramp collapsed from the restaurant to the boat docks and several people and a baby fell into 36-degree mountain water. Fortunately no one was hurt seriously but there were a lot of cases of hypothermia and she was pretty shaken by it.

Same shit different day…

Sunday the 22nd
Wednesday’s talk with Dr. Mind was reassuring. She pointed out that everyone has an experience where they have a lot on their mind on a long driving trip and they suddenly become conscious that they’ve gone farther than they realized and were puzzled about it. The act of driving is such an automatic thing that our brains sort of go on “autopilot.” She called it “disassociation,” and said that it’s possible for that part of the brain to just take over the chore while we do other stuff, and that it’s different from falling asleep at the wheel because that particular part of the consciousness stays awake, while the other part shuts down.

She warned me not to drive if I’m really upset about something. While it was helpful advice’ I’ll still worry every time I get behind the wheel, or see the gas gauge lower than I expected. That’s another thing; a quarter of a tank doesn’t go as far as it used to… damn it! As cars got smaller, so did their gas tanks to save weight, and I’m still in the mindset that a half of a tank could get me to Pittsburgh… back when gas tanks held 25 gallons. Now, $5 gives you a quarter of a tank, but that’s only a little over two gallons!

One of the other things I thought of was that it makes me feel like the “old Jet” when I’m driving. A Chrysler Sebring convertible get’s a lot of envious stares, especially the red one that I have that looks like a full-sized luxury convertible instead of the down-sized Japanese thing Chrysler’s selling nowadays. They give me looks like they’re saying, “God, I wish I could afford one of those!” Little knowing that when I bought it, I could, but now I can’t and the only reason I don’t sell it is because I owe more on it than it’s worth. That and if push comes to shove and I get desperate, I can always sell it for 7 grand and disappear.

6 years ago I’d never be thinking like that.

All the way home I thought of following Dr. Mind’s encouragement and stopping down at a charity organization that could hook me up with a food bank. At first I thought my reluctance was ego, or lowering myself to beg for help, but now I’m fairly certain it’s a strong fear of rejection. Every time I go somewhere for help I get turned down to the point of I just ask myself “What’s the use?”

Out of food I started putting small amounts of dehydrated chopped onions in my mouth and waiting for them to plump up, which is all I have left with some garlic salt. That’s when I got hit with another disaster, or blessing or both. I decided to check my financial spreadsheet and when I do that I check my on-line checking balance. That’s when I discovered I was one day from catastrophe. I’ve got an option on my account that let’s me know if I’m overdrawn, so I was relieved that I didn’t get an e-mail after buying gas in Zanesville. The trouble is that on my spreadsheet, I’d already deducted a timed payment on a $77 phone bill due to go out electronically Thursday… but I only had $71 in the bank. If I hadn’t checked it when I did, the phone payment would’ve bounced causing me $35-40 in bank fees. I immediately canceled the payment, and now I’ll have a double phone bill next month + a $15 late payment fee from them… but I’ve got money for groceries.

I slammed my fist on the desk and hurt it. Will this ordeal end? Will it ever FUCKING end? Hunger was getting the best of me, but I knew not to go out upset, so I opened the mail… a bad idea.

#1 was the electric bill. $114; I know better than to be hopeful because a 2nd will be along any day now for about $75. Both amounts due will be wrong and in a week there’ll be another that’s a red shutoff notice for around $225.

#2. GB sent me a letter saying they don’t think they have to pay Dr. Mind because they don’t have some kind of medical records. It’s all bullshit. I’d be dead by my own hand by now without her.

#3: Google Adsense has owed me $100 for a few months now for earning a couple of pennies or so for each ad click on my websites, and I’ve been depending on that to get ahead of this disaster. It took me 5 years to hit that threshold before they’d direct deposit that check. They sent a letter with a $100 gift card toward advertising my websites on their website. 5 years - five fucking years. I know I selected cash not a damned gift certificate, and when I went into my account there was no way to get ahold of them and no “Contact us” information. I sent out an e-mail to them on the only address they gave for some “phone verification and hoped for the best. I feel like a damned rape victim and I’m pulling all of their ads off of my sites if I don’t hear from them in three days. I also plan a system-wide e-mail to all the BC writers and Blogspot writers warning them that earning pennies a month on their ads isn’t worth it and is a scam.

I emotionally shut down after that and tossed the rest of the mail in a pigeon hole in my desk’s hutch.

Thursday I checked my account to make sure the phone payment didn’t go through and discovered that even though PNC said it’d be 4-6 weeks, they deposited… are you ready for this? $5 points bonus in my account this morning. I asked for $15. This means going through the whole process all over again and blowing 20,000 “points” to get a lousy $20.

I went to the OSU eye clinic to see Dr. K. I spent the whole trip wondering if I’d actually arrive there or “wake up” in Cleveland somewhere. Of course on arrival the receptionist handed me a demand note for nearly $200 again and I felt like some skid-row bum looking for a handout when I had to tell her I couldn’t come up with it. She seemed reluctant to let me have a seat, but I guess by law they have to treat me… but they don’t have to act like they like it. I felt like shit standing there and could feel myself turning red.

Dr. K said my eye looks good and she wanted to schedule my right eye lens replacement surgery, but I told her I couldn’t do it because I can’t afford the co-pay or even to buy a pair of reading glasses that I’d need after the surgery, since the artificial lenses they’re installing are only for distance. She put me on eye drops again, still worried about my being unable to control the diabetes and told me to be really religious about using them. She now doesn’t want to do my other eye until after the knee surgery, so Instead of scheduling my next appointment, we’re keeping it open for about three months from now.

Dr. K also did something really nice. We talked about how bad the situation was and she said she’d stop the bill from going to collection. She said when she sees my name on the list she’ll pull it. I hope she remembers. I’m so grateful and ashamed at the same time.

I reluctantly drove up to Wal-Mart out of hunger and bought about $50 worth of cheap, salty, sugar-laden food. I stopped at Kroger’s and picked up another $10 in $1 bags of mixed salad greens on sale. No dressing, but at least it’s something healthy. I’ve ridden friends in the past over to food banks, and I’ve contributed to them myself a few times over the years and from my experience with them I know they’re all cheap canned store brand garbage that no one wanted. After all $10 will buy 10 store-brand cans instead of only 6 name-brand and showing up with 10 makes you feel and look more generous than you really are. Being a diabetic I’d have to pick and choose and I’m sure I’d go through hell while they watched me turn down cheap cans of fat-laden corned beef hash and sugar laden jars of spaghetti sauce. Of course this is all rationalization for my real fear of being turned down for help at all because I’m too rich. It’s not that I’m “too good” to go to a food bank and ask for help, it’s that I can’t handle the repeated rejections I’ve gotten from every direction.

As soon as I put the groceries away the damned collection agency calls started non-stop. One was from the 541 area code and I cheerfully answered it thinking it was Betsy. Tempted as I was to take the phone off the hook, I didn’t. But I got really sleepy and spent the rest of the night in bed.

I woke up Friday screaming, I don’t remember from what, but my heart was beating really fast and hard and I was covered with sweat. I’m back to waking up three hours after I fall asleep. I’m also experiencing a problem with my equilibrium again. I’ll get up out of a chair and suddenly fall back into it again, or walk from the den to the kitchen and abruptly fall sideways against the wall

I got an e-mail Friday from my wonderful friend Brenda. She mailed me $10 so I can pay the co-pay when I go to the clinic on Tuesday. God love her. I’m used to being the “kind and generous stranger” and it’s a lot different being on the receiving end of it. I guess more than a few friends still care than I thought.

I got a headache again Friday afternoon and fell asleep and woke up that evening around 10 and suddenly realized I hadn’t gone down to make arrangements to go to a food bank.

There’s an old saying that a rich man’s idea of planning for retirement is contributing to a 401K… A poor man’s idea of contributing to his retirement is buying a lottery ticket. Lately, believe it or not, I’ve been hoping against hope I didn’t win the lottery. I’ve been playing it in one form or another since 1987. I used to even put up $500 for a pool when I was with friends and sell them dollar shares. Now that I can’t afford the tickets anymore as of two weeks ago I’m praying I don’t win (?) For over twenty years I’ve faithfully played 2-5-9-14-16 (22) and have been convinced that the day I stop playing that combination is the day it’ll pop up a winner.

Today (Sunday) I got an e-mail from my sister Dee that my Uncle Bill (mom’s brother) died. Mom’s sisters didn’t even tell her and my aunt Margaret about it until after his funeral. I’ll miss him; he was fun to visit when we were kids. My mom and Aunt Margaret haven’t spoken to each other for about five years and so I called my aunt to see if she’d been told and discovered they were both together in Aunt Margaret’s living room in Pittsburgh.

I guess it’s a family thing. Betsy and I are incredibly close, just like Dee and Jim are incredibly close, but I haven’t spoken to Dee or Jim since my father’s funeral in 2006.

I had a meal and tested my blood and it was at 301-damn it. I injected another 20 units of 100-proof and tested again half an hour later and it was up to 400! Because I can’t afford them, when I use a syringe I re-use it twice more. The usual procedure is to inject, fill it with alcohol and squirt it on the injection site… that’s when I noticed that no alcohol came out. I drew more in and there was nothing in the syringe.

There’s a good possibility that my sugar has been so high because I just assumed I drew insulin in instead of nothing because I was watching the rubber stopper against the scale instead of the liquid. I tossed the syringe and injected again. In other words every third injection may have been empty.

It just never ends.

Tuesday the 24th
Woke up from a nightmare last night but only remember part of it. An English butler dressed to the 9’s showed up at my door with a covered silver tray. He bowed and said, “Miss Lawrence’s compliments sir, lifted the cover and presented me with a .45 automatic to shoot myself. I backed away and he began chasing me down the hall. When I got the fire stairs, I discovered that the floors below were flooded with something sticky and red and above; the stairs seemed to climb to infinity. He chased me up from about three flights below, pausing to shoot at me. The further I climbed, the more my leg hurt and it started bleeding.

I got to the top and went through a hatch that led to the roof and found myself on one of the towers of the World Trade Center. My three attackers were there and began hitting and kicking me. I remember falling over the side and that’s when I woke up.

I spent some time working on the computer and went back to sleep, blessedly dream free.

Thanks to Brenda, I can go to see Dr. S/clinic and also I’ll have enough gas to get to Dr. D/heart tomorrow.

I went in early to scan the lobby directory looking for social workers and food banks. Dr. S. was wonderful and so was his staff. He decided to put off doing the A1C test for a month because of the trouble I’ve been having controlling my sugar. My reading was 303 this morning, so I took ten units because I knew I’d be driving and didn’t want to risk an overdose. When they checked it at the Clinic it only fell to 262.

He’s one of the few that don’t make me feel like some derelict bum coming in from the street begging for quarters. He wrote a new prescription for Coreg for my heart that he said I can get without insurance for $4. Then gave me enough free drug representative samples to last me two months of Lantus insulin pens, 70/30 insulin, and the needles for the pen cartridges and 200 syringes. I also got a month’s supply of Crestor.

Before I left I checked out a couple of social workers but most had gone to lunch. I did get some useful information about some of the charity organizations and news that some changing their rules for the 2nd time this year. All require me to actually call Anthem as opposed to what I was told before and dump them, then get a letter acknowledging it… ha ha fat chance. I told one that I hadn’t paid a single premium to Anthem since I found myself being put on their billing list, and she was amazed that they haven’t dumped me.

Betsy called me this evening to say that my brother Jim is having a fit over my possibly showing up at her wedding. She’s also puzzled by him saying that her having her son Brian walk her down the aisle was sick and immoral??? He acted like he was entitled to walk and give her away as if she had no say in the decision. We lost the cell connection. I won’t be able to talk to her tomorrow because I’ve got doctors all day.

Wednesday:
I couldn’t find a parking slot at OSU for the first time and wound up going through a ritual where I have to go inside the building and find some guy to get a pass to the staff parking garage next door. The trouble was he was out to lunch and I was worried I’d get a ticket for being parked in the no stopping zone out front while I tried to find him, so I had to keep hurrying back to the front door to see if a cop was about to have me towed. It took me about twenty minutes to find him and I couldn’t reach Dr. Mind’s office to tell her what was going on and the ordeal caused be to be about half an hour late.

The session went as usual and I had to watch the time to keep from being late to Dr. D/heart’s appointment. Thank god Brenda sent me that $10 or I’d never have had the gas to get across the county to see him.

At the cardiologist’s they did a test on my pacemaker and downloaded its records, and found no unusual problems with my heart, and the memory in it reported no unusual heart rhythms. Apparently it doesn’t take much to jolt the “dead” heart muscle to work in rhythm with the rest of my heart. Considering it has to do it on every beat, and the thing records everything it does until it’s uploaded, she says the battery is still expected to last at least five years or more!

Dr. D is one of the most caring people I’ve ever met. He went over my chest and is concerned that my left lung isn’t drawing as much air as my right. I was worried and asked if I could develop pneumonia but he said no. It’s from where they literally tore into my ribcage to get to my heart when they did the thoracotomy. He seemed unconcerned when I told him about the pain when I take a deep breath and said it was just something I’d have to live with. If I’m still experiencing it at the next follow up, he may prescribe something.

I told him about the trouble I’ve been having with my equilibrium and he surprised me by saying it had to do with my combination of prescriptions and to let him work on a different combination, and he’d get in touch with me or if it wasn’t too bad, wait till my next appointment.

He asked me to tell his assistant about all the trouble I’m having with GB, I’m not sure why, but they want me to make it a point to have the hospital call him when I’m admitted for the knee operation. He was shocked and acted outraged when I told him that GB won’t pay for my insulin or heart meds while I’m there and how my hospital bills are so hopelessly intertwined because GB will only pay for part of them, but Social Security won’t cover the other parts because it’s a workman’s comp claim, so I’m stuck with the bills… and the collection agencies. He was especially pissed how GB would cover the ride home from the aftercare facility, but not for the cab company to return the wheelchair I was in back to them.

He was great. He gave me more Crestor and some powerful version of Coreg that came in capsules instead of pills that I take every other day instead of daily. He chastised me about my ego and said to call him if I run low and ask for more. I promised I would.

I set to work on “Jet’s General Store” when I got home, and I’m intent on getting it done. I’m going to have to give up on getting any kind of help from Amazon’s “India” tech support and do this on my own. I decided that the technical glitch that tells everyone that the store is temporarily unavailable the first time they log onto it was something I’d have to fix myself, and took three days to completely duplicate it onto another URL… and it worked. It, it, worked!!!

Thursday:
I got an instant message from my nephew Brian out of the blue. I hadn’t heard from him in at least 10 years. I guess this whole “walking Betsy down the aisle” thing is getting serious. My niece Amber apparently called my brother up and cussed him out to the point of making him apologize repeatedly to her! Go Amber!!!

I used part of the day planning my finances for next month. The car insurance is killing me because I have to pay month-to-month, so there’s an $12 surcharge per month as opposed to paying it in one lump sum. It’s beginning to feel like every bill I pay is to a loan shark. The phone wants an extra $15 when I’m late too, and the electric company keeps threatening to shut me off if I’m so much as two weeks late… sigh. The days of having the utilities paid up months in advance are long gone…

Friday:
I was relieved to get my GB check. I still have to e-mail Lawyer K about my next surgery date and ask again about legally making them pay for my insulin and heart meds.

The tough part’s going to be stretching $98 to buy three weeks of groceries and supplies; not an easy task and feed the cat too. Thank god nothing seems wrong with the car.

I kept having these uncontrollable full-body shudders all day and a headache. I rarely have headaches and lately they’ve been hitting me a lot. It’s got to be tension. My ears ringing is going to drive me batty too.

My god I miss cooking. I used to love to take fresh ingredients and make something delicious like homemade chili or a casserole, fancy salads etc. The only thing I can afford now is canned ravioli at .98 cents, and I’ve actually gotten used to eating that right out of the can cold to save on electric… that and I sold all of my bowls with the rest of my china to make ends meet. If I can’t eat it out of the can or package from the microwave or serve it on a paper plate, I can’t afford it. I’ve even resorted to washing the plastic spoons and forks to re-use them again.

I’m serious about getting my paperwork together again and trying for the umpteenth time to go over to Job & Family services and try to get them to help me with my Medicare premiums and prescriptions. Maybe I can talk Dr. Mind into going over there with me. I don’t think I can take another rejection from them.

July 2010

2010-07-05T04:29:00.012-04:00

July 1st
No matter which way I've turned, no matter what I've done in the last six years, it's only gotten worse; never better... The nightmares and flashbacks were intensifying and in my frustration and emotional exhaustion I finally gave up-in my mind it seemed I'd be better off in hell than trying to live in this one alone without a man to love or to love me.

I've been away under observation for a while and have been home for about a week.

I couldn't find a way to stop reaching back into the recent past and find the inner strength I used to have, trying to regrasp the freedom and good times. I hate that I don't look like I used to not out of vanity but out of loss of youthful attitude. I kept lingering on how all my friends have fled, in worse shape than I. and I feel like Job after everything's been taken away by the devil, but there's no promise from God that I'll recover no matter how much faith I try to have. Every time I think nothing more hope can be taken away, it is... and my sanity mostly

I'm still trying to assemble couple of weeks in my head, but I don't remember a lot of it. Over the last few days they've been calling every day and they've got me occupying myself by trying to get the e-store going again, though I don't know why. Anything I'd gain would be taken away by Social Security and it suddenly felt really useless.

I'll explain later

I had a lot of hope invested in Jet's Amazing Supply Store, but it still needs a lot of work, but it's open for business-the icon's at the top of the page-Everything's guaranteed by Amazon.com so don't worry. . I still have some "shelf stocking" to do, but it takes such intense mental concentration writing all of those descriptions and preparing stuff that it takes my mind away from the uselessness of it all.

more details when I can... if I can

Sunday the 11th
It’s funny; life’s one of the only things you can’t make it all the way through alive. That’s one of the weird things that occur to you when you stop being afraid to die.

Just because I stopped writing for a while doesn’t mean major disasters don’t keep happening to me.

~ One hurdle I survived was signing my 23rd lease. I was really worried they wouldn’t approve it after the debacle with the June check bouncing because GB fucked me over again. However to balance it out, it’s true… my landlord charged me an additional $50 this month because of it. With the bank fee for the overdraft, that they promised me they’d refund me, but of course didn’t, I’m out grocery money for the month-which means using the emergency money for food.

~ Columbus has the largest fireworks display in the Midwest, it’s called “Red White & Boom.” They have it on the 3rd so all the outlying suburbs can have theirs on the 4th. Friday the 2nd I got drowsy around 8PM for no apparent reason and went to bed early. I woke at 9:30 in terror to the sounds of loud gunshots and barricaded myself in the bathroom scared out of my mind and worried of my third (or is it fourth) heart attack.

They’d moved the fireworks to the 2nd because it was a Friday and I only live four blocks from where they’re set off here downtown. I’ve been having flashbacks and nightmares almost every night since and mostly stay awake until I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open. Most people think of the day before they slept as “yesterday.” I don’t have that luxury anymore. Sometimes I don’t sleep for 24 hours, sometimes twice in the same day so I have to look at my computer to see what day it is. I jump at shadows and noises. It was so bad that I begged off physical therapy last Thursday because I couldn’t leave the apartment.

~ The problem I’ve mentioned before about the mysterious double and unmatching electric bills has finally resolved itself with disastrous results. Since I live downtown in the business district, the City controls the electric. Last year they consolidated the Electric and Water department’s billing and it caused a disaster for all involved. The electric meter is being read on the 15th and the water department computer sends the bill out by mail due between the 19th and 20th, because that’s when the water’s due. So almost everyone is at least a month overdue on their bills.

The electric clerks not knowing this would tell us to disregard the first bill in favor of the second thinking it was sent out in error. Now comes the mess. My billing was finally restored in March after the meter disaster last year and I immediately got a $66.65 bill days after the meter was fixed. I called to find out what was going on and she said it was an error and to wait to be billed for next month… which I did. Sure enough my April bill was around $95 and I paid it. May came with two bills with two different amounts, I called to ask what my current bill was and what she said didn’t match either of the two bills nor the amount on line. I called back a few days later and it was still that same amount, so I paid that. June came along and I got one bill and two days later another… the 2nd was a red shut-off notice????? It turns out the ultimate computer sends out one current bill and another if it’s past due! Even though I was current on my payments, I was still being shut off because I was 90 days past due on my March bill. The notice said I had until July 7th to pay them $66.65 or it’d be shut off without notice and they didn’t care if I’d paid March, April and May on time. So I sent them an electronic check. Now they’re telling me I owe them for June (I could afford one, but not both) and I have until the 14th to come up with $98+. I’ve grown an ulcer worrying if my power was going to be shut off over the weekend because billing and the meter guys are in two different departments.

~ I’ve been working night and day to get “Jet’s Amazing Supply Store” going, and after three weeks’ work I had something that was taking shape that I could be proud of… then it hit me that anything I make will be deducted from my disability check, so I’ve done all that for nothing-absofuckingly nothing. I just finally came to the realization that no matter how hard I work at it, anything I dream about will be taken away somehow. My hope for the future died. The only thing I have to look forward to is wondering how I’ll survive the next blindside that I didn’t see coming… so I just gave up out of emotional exhaustion

That’s when I started swallowing pills and shooting insulin… a lot of it.

From what I’m told, a neighbor heard me moaning and called the police and took me to the hospital, then I spent some time in a private room with people asking me all kinds of questions. When they were satisfied, I came home. They still call occasionally to check up on me.

I’m using the rest of my 18 or so Eisenhower silver dollars to buy groceries tomorrow for two weeks.

~ The blood sugar problem is getting worse and they say it’s the mental “fight or flight” mechanism in my body. To combat it I’ve been taking more and more insulin and it’s having less and less effect. I’m down to so few syringes, that I reuse them so much that I’m wearing the dosage gradients off of the sides before I throw them away. Messes like the above seem to hit me without warning and I’m on guard for any imagined disaster at all times to the point where my nerves are fried. I sweat bullets worrying about whether my next GB check is going to come or not, and I’ve got the same financial problems that I had before I tried to off myself.

I’m going to try to talk Columbus into not shutting off my power tomorrow (Monday), but the next check has to go towards the car payment and the phone. I want to cry out in frustration often. I sit here wondering if my car will be taken away because of a missed or bounced check, will the power be unexpectantly turned off spoiling all the food I have, destroying what little insulin I have and making it incredibly hot here. I live on the top floor, so all the air-conditioning heat and humidity from the apartments below would be sucked right in my windows. In the winter that’s an advantage and in the summer it’s a man-made greenhouse for my balcony plants, but without A/C it’ll be hell. Will I ever keep the imaginary devil(s) from my doorstep and will my mind survive this?

I’ve seriously thought of calling myself Vernon again and dropping my lifelong nickname of “Jet”. The rich, generous, take a vacation on a whim, happy-go-lucky “Jet” has died and I can’t resurrect him. I shave in the shower because I don’t recognize the tired and depressed face in the mirror anymore and it fucking hurts so bad I can hardly stand it.

~ For about the last week or so, I’ve been having trouble walking around. I lose my equilibrium and fall sideways and have to brace myself on a wall or a counter. I feel hot to the point of having to have a box fan pointed at me at all times, no matter how low I set the A/C.

I drove up to Wal-Mart to get some cheap food last week and almost ran out of gas on the way there, then completely forgot to deduct the $20 out of the food budget and sweated bullets all the way home thinking I’d just bounced a check at Wal-Mart. Fortunately I somehow still have $1.98 in checking.

Unfortunately I have $1.98 in checking.

~Yesterday my printer died. I snapped a new printer cartridge into it, and the belt that runs the print head back and forth either broke or the head came off of it. I felt a rage coming on and barely kept myself from throwing it across the room in frustration. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to take it apart and fix it… if it’s fixable. God help me if the nearly seven-year-old computer dies, because I’ll never be able to replace it.

I’m so alone and so lonely and I honestly can’t find a reason or the strength to fight on. The five-year absence of loving myself, and being loved is withering my sanity. Even If I can get myself together mentally, there are no jobs out there to look forward to. I’m sure’s hell not going to get rich getting pennies on the dollar selling Amazon shit, but it’s the last hope I have and frankly I’m proud at having succeeded in creating a whole store from nothing.

Jobs & Family services sent me a letter yesterday outlining my benefits. They haven’t helped me since last August, but they have to keep sending me letters to rub it in.

(sigh)

Monday the 26th
The following was NOT a dream.
I was sitting at my desk working on my on-line store yesterday afternoon when someone tapped on my door. After all I’ve been through I couldn’t determine if it was real, a flashback, or a “daymare” and stayed silent. I got really worried when Mischief came in from the livingroom to the den and looked at me, then at the door. Then to my shock the sound of the door starting to open nearly through me into serious panic. Mischief meowed and I jumped up to find the door four inches open and someone on the other side pushing against the mini grocery cart and bag of garbage I had on the other side of it. I hurled myself at the door and yelled “WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?” slamming it shut and locking it.

It was Teresa

I’d caught her hand in the door and had hurt her.
I haven’t seen or heard from her in six months or more. She has a key to the apartment so she can take care of Mischief when I’m in the hospital. It turns out that Aunt Margaret and Betsy had been trying to get in touch with me since last Friday and couldn’t get through because Mischief had played with the phone cord in the bedroom and knocked the receiver off the hook. Concerned, they both called Teresa at work from Pittsburgh and Oregon and asked her to check on me.

I told her how the last two weeks had been really rough with the near suicide attempt and the shut-off notice etc. She told me that with the school levy in her area, her house payment had gone up higher than she could afford and that she might go into foreclosure and because of that she was working 7 days a week.

She chastised me for ever thinking I could lose her as a friend. She said she’d received the text message but it got lost when her phone was broken. It felt so good to reconnect with a friend and actually laugh for a change. Also I’m kind of broken hearted that I financially can’t help her save her house. 6 years ago I’d have written her a check for $20,000 without even batting an eye.

Thank God for here, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to laugh with a friend.

-----

I’ve discovered a way to edit the CSS of my store to allow the sidebar menu to stay in view in all modes and a way to put up a custom larger picture instead of just a logo… so I have to start all over again writing html code… ugh.

It’s been so hot in the upper nineties and hundreds outside. I got an electric bill for over $200 in the mail today. Disaster just won’t leave me alone.

I’ve been trying to call and text Betsy in Oregon all morning and can’t get through to her cell. I’ve called her home number and it’s been disconnected.
Now what?

June 2010

2010-06-08T13:25:00.008-04:00

Sunday the 20th
Big news… I hope.
I’ve been absent on and off for the last few weeks because I’ve been so crushingly depressed that I couldn’t function, but now I’ve found a project that just might pull me out of this both emotionally and financially… if it isn’t too late.

I’m starting a new business from the “virtual” ground up. Using tools from Amazon, I’m building a cyber store “Jet’s General Store & Gay Pride Shoppe” from scratch. As with any business, the problem is what to decide to stock the shelves with. The cool part of this is it only costs me my time, and once I have it set up, it virtually runs itself!

No money! Details to come, but it’s very time consuming.

Details to follow soon

Tuesday the 1st
A really nice man from Dr. Mind’s church group gave me a ride to my eye surgery this morning. He also insisted on giving me a ride home too, saving my beautiful Eisenhower silver dollars from ending up in the pocket of some ungrateful cab driver. In gratitude, I gave him one, which he accepted graciously.

Surgery has become such a regular thing to me that it’s nearly mundane, though never what I expect. I think the thing that nearly drove me crazy was people coming into the prep room and all of them asking me the same question, some in the presence of other, but some lawyer in an office demanded that they ask.

“Are you allergic to any medications?” “Are you allergic to any anesthesia?” “What is your birthday?” and two guys came in and standing side-by-side, one asked, “What eye are you having operated on today?” and then put a mark over my left eye. Then the other asked, with the first still standing there, “What eye are you having operated on?” and then put his own mark over my eye. Hospitals are not run by doctors… they’re run by lawyers.

I thought I was going to be awake for the operation like the last time, but I went under and woke up just in time for them to pull my eye lens out. One moment I could see, the next I was blind, then just as quickly I could see again. Everything was tinted brown. It turns out that the lens is tinted to protect from ultra violet rays. I knew it was coming, but I still hated knowing that my color perception would now be permanently altered. She said not to worry, that my brain would retrain itself and within a few days I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Still, it’s a strange feeling to know that one eye will see one color and the other something else, but that my brain will be able to reconcile that. They issued me a small metal oval-shaped eye patch with holes drilled in it that reminded me of a kitchen sink drain strainer complete with a black rubber seal around the perimeter. Inside of it was a cotton pad that’s supposed to keep my eyelid closed and the whole contraption was taped to my face.

Dr. Mind’s church friend Paul came and got me and I was surprised that the operation took nearly two hours instead of the half an hour I was given the impression it’d take. When I got home I was still groggy and spent the rest of the afternoon sleepy. I woke up this evening with a headache and the cotton-padding pressing against my eyelid is driving me crazy. DON’T RUB IT!!!

I have to go back in tomorrow, but can’t find a ride, so I’ll just have to drive myself one-eyed… that’ll be fun.

I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to do about the rent. The latest that I can turn it in is the 3rd, but GB doesn’t deposit it until Friday the 4th. The only thing that I can think to do is to turn in the check to him after 3PM when the banks flip their transactions over and hope he doesn’t cash it until Friday. God it sucks to have to think like this; I used to pay my rent a fucking year in advance.

I’m sitting here typing this out and have only now noticed a bright orange mystery armband with a strange word on it. NKAM… ? It means No Known Allergies to Medications. I went the whole day and never noticed it there until now.

Wednesday the 2nd
This should be fun, because Monday was a holiday, I’m going to go through the whole day convinced this is Tuesday instead of Wednesday. My little office fan is getting harder and harder to start. The blades are practically frozen and I have to spin them to loosen them up before I hit the switch to turn it on or risk burning out the motor.

I finally couldn’t stand it any more and pulled the cotton out of the eye shield. I had the feeling that it was getting in my eye under there. My eye was all crusted over at the opening and I had to clean it out anyway after first cleansing my hands with rubbing alcohol and letting them dry. My vision is blurred, which I should’ve been prepared for, but wasn’t. I dutifully taped the shield back on and drove over to the clinic. She said that it looks good and that she’ll take the stitch out next week. She gave me a little canvas pack with a pair of the big sunglasses that shields from all directions. I love those things. They’re identical to the pair that snapped in half. I hope these last longer.

I drove home without my glasses, as I can see so much clearer with my left eye. The problem is that none of the lines that I see are straight; they have little dimpled indentations in them. She says it might be a little leftover swelling and to let it go a week… let’s hope.

When I got home it was strange not wearing my glasses to watch TV or look in the aquarium. Now I’ll have to have the right eye done. The downside of all this is that with the artificial lens I now need reading glasses. I see distance with my left and read with my right now… sigh. She suggested breaking the left lens out of my glasses, but I’m afraid I’ll damage the frame and I can save money on prescription reading glasses if I can keep the frames intact. She gave me another eye drop so now I’ve got to do three of them four times a day… groan.

I updated this journal but Blogger wouldn’t let me post it. Something about them being temporarily unavailable so I guess I’ll store all my journal entries on my computer until they fix whatever’s wrong. I went in and custom designed some carousel ads at Amazon but Blogger wouldn’t let me post those either. I really like my new Gay Pride and Entertainment Page banners. I’ve revamped them and given them expanded news tickers with all the up-to-the minute news. I’m going to do the same thing with the others if they ever allow me to post stuff. It looks like they’re changing the page that allows us to change the web page appearance and there’s probably a software problem.

Amazon says that I’ll get a commission on anything anyone buys from my site as long as the use the link-whether they buy that particular item or not… hint hint. For a while I was actually buying groceries there like sugar-free Tang and stuff because it was cheaper.

My left eye keeps getting crusty around the edges and it’s hell not rubbing it. I’ve still got to wear the eye-shield when I sleep and that’ll drive me crazy.

My session with Dr. Mind went well. I’m still worried about the rent check. I ran into Rich my apartment building manager and told him there may be a problem with my Workman’s Comp check and he said that it wouldn’t be a problem to not cash it until Friday. That’s a load off of my mind.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening “seeing” things. I’m a little upset as the floats and the remnants of the hemorrhage weren’t removed from my eye. She said that’d have to wait for a separate operation-they have to know exactly where they are before they go in and with the cataract they couldn’t see them. I hope it’s the swelling, but I still can’t completely focus my eye; I mean it’s really close but not “quite” there.

Thursday the 3rd
I spent some time custom designing Amazon ads for my webpages. I’d take an hour getting it just right only to have Blogger not let me in. Unfortunately I can’t “back” up to the worksheet once I finalize it, so I lose all that work and have to start over again. I think I found a way to float two carousel ads side-by-side to have twice the number of items in the same space as one… I’m dying to see if it’ll work.

The craziest thing happened. I went to Yahoo’s help desk to try to fix a problem with my outgoing e-mails defaulting to red text no matter what I do. Some girl named Jada requested permission to download software to log into my computer and operate it remotely from her keyboard so she could see what I was seeing, which she did. The next thing I knew she was also downloading software for the Yahoo live toolbar that I didn’t want saying it’d solve the problem… it didn’t. Finally she said I had somehow gotten a web-stationary installed on my e-mail page and she uninstalled it and everything went back to normal.

I asked her to uninstall the toolbar, but she talked me into keeping it temporarily to see if I really didn’t want it… then it got strange. We were communicating through a little window on the screen and as I was signing off she asked if I was satisfied with her help. I said yes and tried to log off. She asked if I was very satisfied with her help and though I wasn’t I figured if I could get rid of her I agreed I was satisfied and tried to close the window. She again said she needed me to type out that I was very satisfied and I decided I’d had enough and of her and closed the text window.

The next thing I knew she took control of my cursor and opened a basic word processing program called Notebook on my screen and asked again for me to type out that I was very satisfied with her help. This was fucked up. I manually shut off my computer and modem. Restarted it and suddenly had Yahoo stuff all over my wallpaper. I went into add/remove programs and dumped everything, but after restarting the computer could still not get rid of the Yahoo live software from my wallpaper. I tried “system restore” but there were no restore points. WTF

I called AT&T and reported the incident and after about an hour’s work, a very nice guy and me finally restored my machine back to before she started fucking with it.

I found out that McAfee isn’t letting my computer save fallback positions on my System Restore software because it’d mean undoing their constant updates. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

MY EYE ITCHES. What’s worse is that with my left eye catching so much more light, my brain tries to default to it while I’m reading, to the point where I have to cover it to read with my right eye, because the artificial left lens is for distance only. Speaking of which, I tried opening one eye and then the other and yes-just as she promised, my brain has recalibrated so that I perceive the same color in both eyes instead of the left being tinted… very strange.

I went over and gave Rich my rent check and spent the day trying to enter these diary journals onto this page without success. It’s a problem with all six of my websites, so it’s something on their end. I felt really drowsy and spent the rest of the day and night sleeping, waking occasionally, but falling back asleep again within an hour or so.

Friday the 4th
FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK
GB didn’t deposit my god damned check this morning. GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL. My lease is up next month, I’ve got other tenants bidding on my penthouse and my rent check is going to bounce with my lease renewal sitting on Rich’s desk. GOD DAMN IT.

I fought tooth and nail to keep from going into a rage. I wanted to pick up something and throw it, I wanted to destroy something I was so mad.

Calming myself, I called GB and got Jennifer’s voice mail. I called my lawyer and got his voicemail and then his assistant’s voicemail. I called Rich and played on my apparent psychic abilities to predict the future day-before-yesterday and told him GB didn’t deposit my check. He said he’d hold onto it and not deposit it until tomorrow. If it bounces I have to pay a $50 fee to him. FUCK.

Lawyer K’s assistant called to say he was gone for the weekend and that she was getting Jennifer’s voicemail too and to let it play out and call her if I don’t hear anything in a couple of hours.

They do this every time I’m stupid enough to let myself feel safe. I could feel it building in me and tried to reach her office at OSU but it kept going to voicemail. I called their main operator and he said there’s a new girl filling in at that department and a backlog of calls and to be patient… great.

Jennifer called back to say they never got the C84 from Dr. T, so they couldn’t deposit the check. BULLSHIT!!! That appointment was May 12th and if they didn’t get the authorization, they never would’ve deposited the check on May 21st. I swear they’re taking great joy in fucking with me. I called Dr. T/WorkHealth and they said they sent the paperwork on the 12th. The receptionist (who’s a friend) said she’d resend it by fax, and she was as outraged as I was.

I called Dr. Mind’s cell phone, (a sin unless it’s an emergency) and hung up, determined to figure this out for myself. Visions of crashing my car through GB’s headquarters door in Dublin OH and spraying the place with machinegun fire began running through my head. Frustration and anger were building really fast.

I got Jennifer’s voicemail again and controlled my temper long enough to tell her that Dr. T confirmed sending the C84 to her last month. She called back within a few minutes and promised that it’d be put into my account today and would be available tomorrow. I tried to call Rich and explain the situation, but he was gone from his office..

I called Lawyer K’s office and spoke to his assistant Meghan and laid it all out for her about it being the worst possible time because of my rent check possibly bouncing with my lease up the end of this month.

Dr. Mind called me… damn it I forgot the call would register on her caller I.D. and I apologized all over the place. She wanted to know if there were any calls she could make and I said no, I was going to try to handle this myself. I used to be able to handle problems like this all the time and laugh it off. Some bill would come due and an art client hadn’t sent a check. I hate that I can lose control so quickly. My hand hurts from pounding my fist on the desk in frustration. I took a double dose of Cymbalta.

I called my bank and explained the situation and they said there was nothing they could do until the electronic transfer took place and/or my rent check hit my account. They charge $36 per attempt to cash a bounced check… great. Just what I needed.

In the middle of all this Tressa called to say I’d missed my physical therapy session today, which I’d totally forgot. I checked my schedule and it says I don’t have one until next Monday??? We rescheduled for Tuesday. That’ll be fun since I’ve got to go to the eye clinic that morning.

I had just enough food to last till today. Checking the inventory I’ve got 6 packets of Lipton chicken noodles and sauce. If I only eat one a day that’ll take me to next Wednesday.

I was so pissed, that by this evening I didn’t realize I hadn’t eaten today, and by then I wasn’t hungry. The way my stomach’s bubbling, my double ulcer is probably opening up again.

Saturday the 5th
I woke up screaming in the night twice last night. I relived the beating again and the 2nd one had something to do with them holding everyone I loved hostage unless I gave them the money I “owed” them for not having enough when they robbed me the first time.

No deposit was made into my checking account. I want to cry, if only to release the frustration and anger. I got two reminder calls today about my follow-up eye appointment on Wednesday and that I have to be at the hospital clinic on Tuesday. I suffered full-body shudders all day and my chest still aches from them, and had realistic flashes of my door being broken down or the sound of it ringing. There’s got to be a way to sue GB for this torture. I’d bankrupt the goddamned company-not out of greed, but to punish them for what they probably put thousands of people through worldwide just like me.

Wal-Mart called me this morning wanting to know if I still wanted the refill of Norco painkiller I’d ordered for Betsy. Damn it. I told them no because her check never came for it. The prescription expired June first and they can’t wont’ cover it unless I pick it up today and I’ve no money to do it with. I found a bunch of my neighbor’s mail in my box yesterday; Betsy’s check is probably in someone else’s… par for the course.

My eye hurts like hell and so does my knee. There’s probably a big storm coming. I didn’t eat anything yesterday and I’m so mad today I’m not really hungry. I’ll have to force something down or I really will have an ulcer from the stomach acid.

I spent the day either dozing off for brief periods or fighting trying to get this posted on line and failing. Around 11PM I ate a package of noodles and sauce combined with the last can of chicken I had.

Sunday the 6th
I tried to stay awake all night last night because I figured I’d have nightmares again, but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep around 3AM. Fortunately I slept straight through. My knee turned out to be a reliable predictor again and we had tornados all over the state. The damned thing still hurts so I guess we’re still in for more bad weather today.

I’ve noticed Mischief is licking her nose a lot and a few times she seems to be walking around with her tongue about a quarter inch out of her mouth. If she’s sick I don’t know what I’ll do… I guess I’d sell some more antique books to pay the vet. I’m seriously considering selling my antique piano to try to get ahead of this disaster of finances. If I could just find around $2,000 to pay the insurance ahead, maybe a month in utilities and then relax I think I’ll be all right. What I really need is a backlog of cash against when GB fucks with my checks.

It’s inevitable that my rent check will bounce, although I should probably wait until tomorrow to make that prediction. I’ll lose $85 in bounced check fees between my landlord and the bank. It just dawned on me that that means I not only won’t have enough to buy any groceries if this bullshit comes to pass tomorrow, and I won’t have enough for the car payment on the 15thbecause I don’t the next check until the 18th…if it comes at all. That also means I won’t have money for the co-pay for the clinic on Tuesday. I can imagine me and Mischief living under a bridge soon, I wonder if I’d actually be able to exist on her dry cat food until this whole thing’s resolved.

Sometimes I really wonder why I don’t just end it all… This is just getting to be too much and I really don’t see it getting any better in the future. If it all falls apart tomorrow, I just might.

I still can’t get Blogger to accept any entries on this or any other of my websites. I left an e-mail message with them… not that that will do any good. My knee hurts so much I actually resorted to a Percocet for relief.

I spent the day working on a new graphic for the science page. It’s strange having to close my left eye so my right eye can focus on the screen. I resorted to putting the eye shield on, which helped a little.

Monday the 7th
I kept waking up to the sound of the phone ringing or the doorbell all night, so I got very little sleep… gee, I wonder why. I turned on my office fan and discovered I’d left it on all last night and the motor finally burned out… great. That’s the only thing that masks my ears ringing loudly in the silence of my den and I’m so used to the movement of air in here that I’m beginning to sweat like a pig… What fucking next?

The GB check wasn’t deposited this morning, as predicted. I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life emotionally cowering and preparing for the worst instead of something good happening. I called Rich, but got his voice mail. I got his janitor J.J. finally who said he’d just gone to the bank… I’m fucked. I called GB and “just by coincidence” just like the last five times-Jennifer is away for a week and some inept assistant is working in her place. She said the deposit was made last Friday and that there was nothing she could do on her end. I called Lawyer K and he in effect said that I should consider myself lucky that they’re taking action this fast-usually it takes months instead of days… which didn’t help my mood.

Dr. Mind called and offered to make some calls, but I didn’t think it’d do any good and I’m still trying to convince her… and myself, that I can stand on my own two feet and handle this myself. I called the bank to find out if the deposit was caught up in electronic channels somewhere but they said they can find no evidence of the deposit and GB was no help.

The rent check may not hit my account until tomorrow, and then it’s a race to see what shows up first. I get the feeling PNC will put the rent check in first and let it bounce intentionally so that they can charge me and overdraft fee. Don’t laugh; I’ve been reading articles about them doing it all of the time.

I tried putting my diary entries in again, but Blogger’s still down.

I almost picked up my dead office fan and hurled it cross the room, but I stopped myself. I did 120mg of Cymbalta today instead of 90mg.

The TV news was filled with the tornados that ripped all over the place yesterday… maybe I should rent myself out as a tornado siren.

Tuesday the 8th
I had the dream about crashing my beautiful convertible into GB’s offices again, but I don’t remember if I used a machinegun this time… Just as well, I guess. I checked my on-line statement this morning and I’ve been charged an overdraft fee at the bank… just great. I called Huntington to ask about a grace period on my car payment and was told as long as it hit the bank before the 25th (ten days) it wouldn’t even be considered late. That at least gives me enough for groceries and maybe a cheap fan, but I might not make this month’s phone and or electric bill.

I called and ordered a refill of my Cymbalta prescriptions to pick up.

I didn’t have time to sulk over it because I had to be at the clinic this morning. I gave the woman who collects the fee a sob-story about the rent check bouncing and I couldn’t get any money out of my checking so I didn’t have the $10 co-pay for her. She let it slide, but she didn’t seem happy about it.

I’ve dropped another 10 pounds since I was there last, probably from malnutrition. I told him about running out of Furosemide/Lasix for my water, but that I haven’t had any mushiness on my shin so I wasn’t concerned and neither was he. I told him I went off the Potassium supplements too and he seemed okay with it. He increased my insulin to 30 units a day plus the regular Novolog before meals. I told him I was low and he gave me three Lantus pens. Fortunately I didn’t get rid of the needles for them so I still have a supply of syringes and pen needles.

He also gave me some 5mg pills of Crestor. I’m on the 10s, so I’ll have to take two, but I’m glad I have them. He told me he wants to do a glucose workup on my next visit in two months and if I run out of Lantus to call and he’ll see about getting me more. I went there and forgot my glasses, so I sweated it out that I wouldn’t be pulled over. My vision is really improving. As I was pulling out of the parking garage a car slammed into me, and I realized it was a flashback or “daymare” and that I was okay, it shook me up it was so real… god will this never end. I had to get out of the way of a car that really was barreling down on me after I’d slammed on the brakes in the middle of the street.

I went to physical therapy and a new girl was being trained. Tressa confirmed that GB will only be paying for her to train me to take care of myself at home until I can have the operation, at which time I’ll have to start therapy all over again.

I drove up to Family Medical and picked up my Cymbalta. They tell me I don’t have any refills left, so I’m going to have to figure out what I did with her paperwork from the last time. Then I went on to Wal-Mart and picked up a minimal amount of groceries and got halfway home when I realized I’d forgotten the damned fan. I’ll have to pick it up tomorrow after Dr. Mind. God I’ve got the eye exam tomorrow too… She’s going to pull the stitch out of my eye… eeeeeek!

I got home too late to go down and see First-Link about a local food bank. I talked to Dr. S’s social worker about it and she says they still can’t help me as long as I have Anthem.

A rat in a maze.

I felt really drowsy around 8pm and missed NCIS tonight. Oh well it was a rerun anyway. I woke up around 11pm and fell back asleep. I’m proud of myself, I remember to set the clock radio for the eye appointment tomorrow morning.

Wednesday the 9th thru Tuesday the 15th
I’ve spent nearly the whole time either sleeping or half in a coma, and not leaving the apartment except to go to physical therapy twice. Hell I used to only be home that often. Every time I try to force myself out to meet new people I begin having flashbacks and I can’t make it out the front door. Physical therapy seems more interested in getting me to do a home program than on working with me on-site. The stress on my knee is really starting to be painful and despite my fear of becoming addicted to it, I may have to ask Dr. S for a new prescription for Percocet.

Last Wednesday’s follow-up eye appointment was uneventful except that she pulled the stitch out of my eye. She also gave me another eye drop to add to the two I’m using already and I’m to use them until I run out. I asked her when the other eye would operated on and she flat-out told me she wants to take a few months to see if the diabetes will try to attack the good left eye and made it sound as if it was likely to happen. She doesn’t want to risk doing my right until she’s sure of the left healing because it’d leave me blind if anything happened. I don’t see her again until sometime in August.

Try as I might, I couldn’t talk the bank out of the bounced check fee, nor my landlord out of the fifty-dollar penalty for a bounced check. Most likely that means almost no grocery money as the next check will be taken up with the car, Allstate, phone and possibly electric. No, the phone charges extra for a late payment so I might try to juggle the electric until the first of next month, or maybe try to juggle a double bill in July. I went over Friday and gave Rich a check for $50. We joked around about it bouncing, but the owner wouldn’t let me out of it, even though Rich explained the situation. I even took the direct deposit receipt with me to show him that the paperwork said it was deposited on the 4th.

I can’t look at myself in the mirror, that’s how much I’ve changed physically. It’s like looking into the eyes of a stranger and now that I’m back in physical therapy all the good times in the gym come back to me, and the hurt that I can’t do what I used to do haunts my dreams.

I escape it all by sleeping a lot. When I wake up between 7-9PM I actually have to check to see if it’s AM or PM and since I wake and sleep two or three times a day it’s becoming harder and harder to keep track of what day it is. I’ve started trying to force myself to stay awake until I fall asleep from exhaustion and I’ll go two or three days without nightmares just until I think I’m finally safe from them and then wake up screaming in the night.

Mischief is starting to worry me. I keep catching her with her tongue just slightly out of her mouth and it’s mystifying the hell out of me. She doesn’t seem to be panting and she licks her nose a lot too. Of all the cats I’ve ever had, I’ve never seen this before. I’m beginning to suspect maybe she has sinus problems, but she’s not coughing or sneezing so I’m stumped. I’d give almost anything if I had enough to take her to the vet’s.

I’m beginning to wonder if the switch to Crestor is making my ears ring even louder. Sometimes even the fan won’t drown them out. I miss my little desk fan. I had it on the shelf behind me here in the den, but I couldn’t afford another so I have a giant box fan in its place. Even set on “low” it’s like a mini hurricane and any papers that aren’t weighed down go flying.

I’ve spent a lot of time setting up the Amazon ads on my most popular site. The Gay Headlines page is getting more readers than I ever dreamed of, but even though I’ve taken a lot of time tailoring the ads to match items that the articles are about, no one is buying anything… Oh I’m getting a lot of ad clicks (for which, unlike Adsense, they don’t pay for mere clicks,) no one seems to be buying. It’s got me stumped.

To occupy my mind I’m going to work on the Science page next and then Entertainment.

My stomach won’t stop bubbling and I worry about that double ulcer that I was taking Nexium for. It’s sort of a “catch-22,” worrying about an ulcer can cause an ulcer… ha ha. I’m starting to live with this feeling in my upper throat like I’m about to throw up, but it’s only a burp.

It’s been weighing on my mind to just sell everything I have and just disappear with the clothes on my back, my cat and my car…

May 2010

2010-05-08T10:58:00.018-04:00

Saturday the 1st thru Friday the 7th
The first week of May has turned out to be especially rough on me. I’m not sure why but putting two thoughts together was like trying to breathe in a room full of ammonia fumes. There wasn’t any one particular event that triggered it, but it was been rough. So let’s look at what did happen…

Social Security surprised me by direct depositing my check two days early on Saturday the 1st, not that that made a difference since after I paid the rent and car insurance I had only $6 or so left in the bank. I started working on a genuine looking $25 dollar bill for an upcoming article I plan to write for BC, but since I’m a typical artist I’m never satisfied and kept scrapping it and starting over again.

Sunday was my birthday. Betsy gave me a few smiles by calling me while trying to send an animated electronic birthday card, but she kept failing. It was sweet of her to keep trying and I fought like hell to keep from laughing. While she was cussing at her computer, I talked to her fiancé Norm. Every time I talk to that man I like him more and more. It makes me lonely though I don’t blame her/them. In the end after about an hour she finally succeeded in getting it to send by first sending it to Norm’s phone and then him sending it to me, but it wouldn’t play the animation of a little bear giving himself birthday spanks and singing and the header read fwd, fwd, fwd fwd, fwd fwd. I told her I loved her for trying. She didn’t get the package with the family pictures in it until this Wednesday and couldn’t pick it up until Thursday because Norm’s mom was ill. The package was too big to fit in her post office box so she couldn’t get it on her way to Clear Lake resort, where she started back to work this week. Without those painkillers she’s going to be miserable.

Thus starts another period where instead of hearing from her almost daily I’ll go 4-5 days at a time without a call because there’s no cell service up there.

My eyes are getting worse. It takes about an hour after I wake up to get them to focus so that I can read the screen.

Monday
I set out to conquer some goals. Dr. Mind wanted me to get in touch with a minister from the gay Metropolitan Community Church because she thinks he can help me get involved and get out more. I kept trying to get her to understand that getting out more means using up gas that I can’t afford to buy. I also wanted to contact a local food bank about getting something to eat and the diabetes foundation about help with getting some insulin.

I went over to an appointment with Dr. Knee and made a follow up appointment for two months from now. I’ve got to compose a note to my lawyer about GB soon because I can’t go into the hospital without meds for my heart, ulcer, diabetes, and GB won’t pay for them. While there I had them check on the problem with authorization of more physical therapy and it turns out it was approved April 13th and fucking GB never told anyone!

Dr. Knee wrote me a note for them and I took it over to WorkHealth and handed it to Tressa. She says it’s been so long that they’ll have to do another redetermination on me before I can start all over again. (groan) I told her I’d call her later in the week and had a desperate urge to get out of there because of all the strangers in the lobby. That’s getting old really fast; it’s like being claustrophobic and feeling like the walls are closing in.

Brenda gave me a hard time on-line because she’d sent me the money to get something nice for my birthday. I went over to Wal-Mart after seeing Tressa, to buy catfood with it and decided fuck it, even if it meant taking a double dosage of my small supply of insulin I was going to indulge in a birthday cake and settled on a $2.98 three-layer Pepperidge Farm German chocolate cake… They were out. Chocolate fudge?… they were out… Lemon… you guessed it. All they had was coconut white cake-yuk. I went over to the deli and everything was more than $15. I settled on a bag of chips and 5 cans of tuna. (sigh)

When I got home I felt really defeated, but Aunt Margaret called to wish me a happy belated birthday and it cheered me up just knowing she cared. I heard from my Allstate agent, wishing me a happy birthday and saying that they were giving me the nice discount to celebrate and because I’d been a customer for so long… as it turns out this long promised discount worked out to be about $6 less a month. Wheeeeeeeeee!

They also explained that the main discount that they'd been babbling about for so long was that I could save an additional $12 a month if I pay my premiums 6 months in advance instead of the usual $8 savings… Wheeeeeee! Since I can no longer afford to pay a 6-month premium and had to go monthly the exciting discount he kept telling me about for the last several months was moot.

Par for the course.

I fell asleep in the early afternoon and woke up around midnight. Knocked around the house for an hour and then fell back asleep until Tuesday morning… Nothing accomplished.

Wednesday
I woke up screaming, I’m not sure why.
The whole morning I couldn’t get my eyes to focus because of the growing cataracts. Even with my glasses, I couldn’t get them to focus on the computer screen. This is really starting to scare me. I waited until it was nearly time to see Dr. Mind and then called cancel the appointment. I’ll probably regret that decision, but I can’t afford a roundtrip cab.

My friend Matt from the Pizza Shoppe called to wish me a belated happy birthday. He’s in his early twenties and is already an assistant supervisor like I was at Domino’s. I’m so damned proud of him. We had a nice talk about his wife and stepkids and how much we miss the fun we used to have and it cheered me up a little.

People have started e-mailing me like crazy asking for me to re-post the Blogger HTML instructions on our group website for automatically loading their links to their BC articles. I did and all hell broke loose from asshole editors whining that I was clogging up their in-boxes unnecessarily with stuff I’d already posted a dozen or more times. Founder Eric e-mailed me and asked me to send him my instructions for the custom BC sidebar; Adsense set up instructions and the HTML instructions and posted them on the permanent BC home page where everyone could see them. It took a lot of squinting at the screen and blowing the font up to 200% just to read the damned things

Between Monday and Wednesday I got three electric bills, all with different amounts and dates due and none with the same amount ranging from $85 to $138. I’m going to have to call the city to find out what the hell’s going on now. I went into the kitchen without turning on the light and bashed my left shoulder into the sharp corner of an open kitchen cabinet in the dark. I have the kind of cabinets with no door handles-they’re beveled outward so that you catch the edge of the door with your fingertips to open it. While stylish, the edges are sharp cornered. The resulting painful cussing had Mischief hiding from me for about an hour.

My eyes were still blurred on Thursday and negotiating the narrow turns at the Clinic’s parking garage was out of the question, so I regretfully called to cancel the clinic appointment, only to get their damned voicemail all afternoon. I’ll have to try Friday because I’m low on crestor for my heart.

I’m still using my insulin syringes two or three times each to make them last, I’ve been pulling rubbing alcohol into them, the squirting the injection site with it sterilizing both the skin and the needle at the same time. Dr. S/clinic warned me that the alcohol reacts to the insulin and to be careful to get it all out by squirting air with it a few times.

Friday
I wouldn’t take any excuses. GB behaved themselves and deposited my check but I couldn’t force myself out of the door to buy some groceries. I had three chicken patties left in the freezer and ate them for lunch. That was it for the day. Hopefully I’ll make it out tomorrow.

My right eye cleared up enough today to focus on working on my genuine looking $25 bill, which I created in between phone calls, then I’ll have to do some research into how much the treasury spends on printing 5 20s vs 4 $25 bills.

- I called the clinic and rescheduled, but they can’t see me until June. I’ll be out of Crestor by then, so I’ll have to see how much Simvastatin is at Wal-Mart and cut out a meal or two to afford it.

-My phone bill went up nearly $10 this month and I couldn’t find an explanation for it, so I called AT&T. Apparently when I hit *6? to keep them from seeing my number when I was trying to find out where/who the fictitious 999 numbers were calling me from, the phone company automatically signed me up for a “tracer” feature which meant an additional $9 a month added to my bill. I got them to remove it, which took about an hour, and she said I didn’t have to pay for it on the bill. On top of that AT&T has decided to charge me $5 for long-distance calls whether I make them or not! It’s some bullshit about my being on a minimal plan. I made one 33-cent phone call to my mother that ran 5 bucks because I was under the limit… (groan) While I was at it, I asked to be transferred to the nuisance call department and complained about getting calls with numbers that appeared on my caller I.D. that didn’t exist. She told me of a program that I could sign up for that would screen up to 10 calls-giving them a recording saying I’m not accepting calls from them… but there was a $6 sign up fee. When I told her I was on a fixed disability income and couldn’t afford it, she must’ve thought I was some old fart and waived the fee. Now all I have to do is write down all of the collection agency numbers and it’ll be blessed silence around here and I can actually take phone calls from doctors at Grant without thinking they’re from the collections department.

-Next I called WorkHealth to schedule some therapy next week. I’ve got an appointment with someone other than Tressa. Whether that means I lose her as my regular therapist I don’t know.

-I called the city about my electric bill and it turns out their computer had a fit and tried to put everyone downtown on a “budget” amount per month. The good news is that this month’s bill is only a little over $62! All of the walking around in the dark, shutting down the aquarium light and heater and raising the thermostat to 80 degrees paid off. I don’t know how long I can stand it, but it’s a start.

-I e-mailed Lawyer K about the situation with the upcoming operation and wrote:

Dear C***** I attended another appointment with Dr. Knee last week and will see WorkHealth next Wednesday to continue my temporary total. Thanks for apparently scaring the bejesus out of them into leaving me alone so far this year.

Dr. Knee and I do have an issue.
GB recently went through my hospital and aftercare facility bills and retroactively refused to pay for any medications regarding my heart condition and my diabetes. When trying to submit the subsequent bills to Medicare/Disability they're rejected because they state that it was a workman's comp operation so they won't pay.

Over the last 12 months my heart/ulcer hospital vs GB injury bills have become so intertwined that I can't tell what bills are for heart operations and which should've been covered by GB-some for the same visit/account number. Collection agencies are hounding me sometimes 4-9 calls a day. This may be by design so that they can refuse to pay for something they should've but I'd never notice or object because the two issues are so hopelessly blurred.

The Future problem is...

Dr. Knee and I have set up a tentative date for surgery in September. Grant Hospital won't allow me to self-medicate my insulin and heart meds, nor bring them with me and I can't afford to pay inflated hospital prices for them (which is what I've been forced to do with the previous GB covered visit medication bills), nor can I refuse Grant Hospital's meds because I can't afford them, because I'd die without them.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can't afford to pay Grant for the meds I already have that they won't let me take there during my stay for the operation on my leg/knee and that GB won't pay for.

Fortunately I still have about three months to try to figure this out.

Chuck, I never thought this would happen to me, but with costs going up and my income staying flat for the last six years, I have been forced to chose between eating cheap groceries and buying my needed medications. I've been getting free drug-rep medications and insulin from my cardiologist and Grant's clinic since the beginning of the year because of increases in electric and phone rates. After basic bills I have only $60 or so to buy groceries and supplies for the month. The Medicare change over at the beginning of the year increased my monthly medications from at most $22 per month to over $380-not including my insulin to cover my diabetes and have left me unable to afford my drug needs.

Dr. Mind has been a godsend in helping me deal with the hopeless financial issue or I'd have given up long ago.

I don't suppose cost-of-living increases are something I can get out of GB?

Chrysler insurance sent me another interesting offer that I’ll have to look into and compare it. I’ve been meaning to dump Allstate for some time now, but I want to take one hell of a careful look before I leap, what with short-lived “promotional” offers that suddenly expire without warning.

It was in the 80s today, but there’s supposed to be one hell of a thunderstorm tonight and then the whole weekend is supposed to be in the fifties… yikes. I can tell already that there’s a change in the weather because my chest and knee hurt like hell.

I should look into becoming a weatherman…

I have no choice but to drive illegally until I can get the damned eye test thing worked out. I just hope I don’t get caught… but with my luck.

Saturday the 8th thru Thursday the 13th
I called my mother on Mother’s day and had a nice chat with her for a change. She seemed cheerful and spry. I told her about my design for a new $25 dollar bill and she seemed to like it so I promised her I’d e-mail it to her through Dee. I got a belated birthday check from Betsy in the mail for $25. Maybe I’ll actually go out and buy that cake-blood glucose be damned.

On Monday I had to be at the redetermination hearing at WorkHealth/Physical Therapy at 10 in the morning, Lately I haven’t been able to fall asleep before 7AM because of renewed nightmares so I was dragging when I got up. The new girl that I hae to deal with rubbed me the wrong way and will only schedule appointments early in the morning. This isn’t going to work. When I got home from it I couldn’t fall asleep so I tried entering some of the phone numbers that are harassing me into the call blocker but the feature wouldn’t accept the entries. I tried with and without the area codes and everything I could think of. I finally gave up and resolved to call them tomorrow or Wednesday.

Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I checked the mail and then took both of my printer ink cartridges up to Walgreen’s to have them refilled. I’m going to try to print out my checking account to some of my harassers and ask them where they think I have room to send them any money. It turns out that refilling them went from $9.99 to $12.99 per cartridge. I said fuck it and had them refill both blowing Betsy’s check. After about five minutes the attendant came back and told me that the color cartridge wouldn’t refill because it failed the electronics test. There’s a thin copper foil strip on the bottom that carries signals from the printer and it wears out eventually and this is the 3rd refill. I got the black filled successfully and headed straight for Wal-Mart drooling at the thought of that German Chocolate cake.

On the way there I wound up behind a car with no break lights. At a traffic light, I jumped out to run forward and tell him before he got pulled over for it and made an astonishing discovery-I don’t know how to run!!! I nearly fell on my face. Since the surgeries on my foot and ankle, I’ve had to teach myself how to walk all over again because of all the nerve damage messing with the signals from my brain to my leg/knee/ankle/foot… however in all that time I’ve never had occasion to actually run. I was astonished at the revelation. My brain actually came up a blank when I thought of dashing forward!!!

At Wal-Mart they were out of Pepperidge farm German Chocolate cake… again. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Not to be defeated I bought a Chocolate fudge one instead. I thought of buying birthday candles and singing to myself, but the very idea discouraged me, and I didn’t want to set off the smoke alarm.

I left it to thaw and had the WHOLE DAMNED THING instead of dinner… along with lots of insulin. My god how I’ve missed that “chocolate high.” When I got home from all the walking my knee/leg began hurting to the point of throbbing. This can’t be good. They didn’t have a handicapped motor-cart available for me to use at Wal-Mart so I tried to walk all over the damned store and now I’m paying for it.

Tuesday I called the phone company to find out what was wrong with the phone feature. Repair said I didn’t have the feature they described and that I could only submit a number after they called me first… sigh. I tried it and it still doesn’t work. “We’re sorry… the number you have submitted can not be used with this service.”

Betsy called and we talked about how my other sister Dee accused her of accusing Dee of ransacking Dad’s house for money just after he died. It’s a rare occasion when I hear Betsy mad and she was. While we were talking, Dee texted her to apologize and tried to blame one of her (Dee’s) kids from her first marriage that she’d disowned. Betsy was seething. Betsy told me that when she opened the package I’d sent last week, the yellow painkiller bottle had popped open and they were all over the inside of it rattling around. She was so grateful because she was on a house cleaning job and was blessedly pain free, which made sending them to her well worth what I went through.

I woke up around 10PM and missed NCIS and NCIS-LA. Fortunately I can catch the full episodes on Hulu. I worked through the night on the $25 dollar bill project because I couldn’t fall asleep until 4:30Am and I had to be at WorkHealth for my appointment to continue my “Temporary total” payments. I reluctantly set the clock radio for 6AM… and then 6:15… and then 6:45…

Wednesday I have no idea how I made it to the 7:45AM appointment at WorkHealth without wrecking the car from not being able to see, or from falling asleep at the wheel. I’m having more and more trouble with my eyes and it takes longer and longer to get them to focus in the morning. I’ve got an eye appointment next week. Dr. T has been really nice about the whole situation and I don’t have to go back for another reevaluation until August 11th. I came home and went into a coma from lack of sleep. I set the clock radio for 11AM so I could get to Dr. Mind’s at noon, but when I woke up I still couldn’t focus my eyes and tried to get a later appointment for today or tomorrow… no luck.

It would have to rain today. I kept yawning through my tears all the way there. I can’t miss her because she’s out next week and I don’t do well if I have to go two weeks without my shrink. I had to wait while she took care of an emergency. and we didn’t get to spend much time together.

I got home exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately.

Thursday I woke up around 9AM and couldn’t get my eyes to focus again. God I’m getting scared. Oh the right one gets clear after a while, but it takes longer and longer. I called physical therapy and begged off. I told them we’d have to reschedule for afternoons and my eyesight problem.

Tressa called back later to say my first appointment with her wasn’t until June 4th.

I hopped on the phone to AT&T again. It turns out call screening doesn’t work with multi-line businesses-What the fuck??? Most harassing calls come from multi-lined collection agencies, sales calls trying to sell you shit, and multi-lined sweat shops sending you pre-recorded political announcements, so what’s the use of the service?

I gave up and hung up on them. I texted Betsy to send my brother Jim a birthday message from me because I don’t have his cell phone or e-mail address to text/and or e-mail him greetings. I don’t know why I keep trying, even though he is my brother.

I started getting e-mails about someone putting the Digg project down on the BC forum page. I wrestled with the subject for a while and then said fuck it, it’s useless to put out all that energy for so little a return and gave up. I got an e-mail from Lisa and Eric liking my $25 bill idea, so I’m going to spend the evening writing up and hopefully publishing the article.

Sunday the 16th
I finally finished the Kennedy $25 dollar bill graphic and article and if I do say so myself it looks great. I almost had to start all over again… again when my research turned up that each denomination of bill has a different color scheme for its paper and I’d duplicated the $100 bills new format. It took two hours to insert a pastel yellow middle without messing everything else up, but I succeeded finally by adding it one very tiny and minute pixel at a time using Microsoft Paintbrush… yikes. I published the article at BlogCritics and on my own blog’s politics page.

There’s a core group of BC writers that I’ve joined called “BlackOps” that have been trying to get more attention for our BC articles by posting descriptions and links on the Digg home page. BlogCritics editors are generally putting down our efforts as useless, but we’ve been soldering on. Most of us are just trying to get enough attention on our articles to hopefully get some people to click on the ads just below the titles in hopes of making a few paultry pennies here and there.

The group is comprised of some really nice people that five years ago I’d have flown or drove out in person to meet but no longer have the ability to do so, which sucks.

The response to the Kennedy $25 bill article was great Friday and Saturday, but with other articles being published mine’s been pushed off of the BC home page already. I still think it sucks that the politics section only displays three articles. The readership went way down by Sunday afternoon. When I published it, I sent off a copy to the Kennedy Presidential Library hoping someone would notice and write back… we’ll see.

My right-wing sister Dee showed my mom the $25 Kennedy I designed and apparently didn’t read any of the details about it. In the graphic I have how the Statue of Liberty shifts from copper-colored to green and in the transition in the middle it’s yellow. She wrote back that I was insulting the troops by showing a yellow Statue of Liberty (dear god) and ignoring that it’s a color-shifting element on the bill. She rather indignantly said that I should’ve made it red-white and blue because “those colors don’t run.” This is the same sister who didn’t even tell her family that I existed until my father’s funeral in 2006, and jumps all over me if I try to contact her son for fear I might tell him or her husband about the black side of our family on my grandfather’s side. Apparently her husband is very racist. It’s probably why she ransacked his house to clear it of any evidence or pictures of him and had a fit when the reverend gave the photos to me before she could take possession of them… Either that or she doesn’t want me contaminating her son with my “Gay germs.”

Incredible. I’ve gotten word that my equally right-wing brother in Seattle has gotten into a rather angry confrontation with my nephew. Apparently my brother is a huge and rabid Sarah Palin supporter… dear god what is this world coming to? I guess I now have to admit to myself that half of my family are rednecks… groan.

I had a nice talk with Betsy while she drove up the mountain to Clear Lake. I’m so glad I got those painkillers to her, because she says it’s like heaven to walk around without pain from her heel spurs. I’m glad I can still help her even though I’m broke. Part way through the conversation I sneezed and nearly died from the pain in my upper chest. It was so bad that for a moment I thought the defibrillator had gone off and it scared the hell out of me. Since then I’ve been losing my equilibrium again when I try to walk around in the apartment. I’m not dizzy; I just lose my balance and want to fall sideways and have to steady myself against the wall.

After bills I’ve got $3.83 in checking left. I’m going to have to start working on a letter with a printout of my checking statement to show some of these collection agencies that I just don’t have anything left to send them and nothing left to sell that they can threaten to take. I thought seriously yesterday of cataloguing my Eisenhowers by date and mint and trying to sell them… Considering that most were a gift from my Uncle Wayne, that will hurt, but it’s all I’ve got left. I’ve actually considered taking them to the corner pawn shop so that I can eventually buy them back.

The thought of all of this depresses me to no end.

Last night a friend of a neighbor knocked on my door inviting me to an impromptu memorial for a gay neighbor who died earlier in the week. I wanted to go so badly but I can’t get past the front door to face all of those strangers. God this PTSD sucks.

Saturday my niece Amber texted me and we had a nice talk and a laugh about family politics. It’s amazing how much she is like her mother (Betsy)-very level headed. Her husband is in Afghanistan and I hope he comes home safe.

I spent most of Sunday listening to music on my headphones to drown out my ringing ears and working on a new version of my financial spreadsheet to accommodate three different kinds of insulin to keep track of and I’m making room for elements to track that I didn’t have room for on the page when I was making more purchases.

My sleep/wake cycle seems to have settled down again. I’m finally getting drowsy around 2Am and wake up at 9. The last few days have been peaceful with no nightmares, though something on the news or something I’ve read on line will set off a realistic flashback. It’s agony when I have a full-body shudder from one. I ache so much from being alone. Not having someone to love or care for or about me sucks. I miss hugging someone too. I’ve got to get over this fear of strangers before it kills me or I kill myself to end this isolation and physical suffering that seems to have no end.

I’ve got to drag myself out of bed at 7:30AM Monday morning to go to the eye appointment at 9 at OSU. I just hope I can see well enough to drive.

Thursday the 20th
What is it going to take to push me over the edge? Have I become so numb to everything that I just don’t care anymore?

I went to my eye appointment Monday towards a surgery in August, and in the midst of it there was a flurry of activity. They started shuffling me from room to room using ever increasingly complicated-looking pieces of equipment to try to peer past the cataract in my left eye to see the diabetes damage. After about the third room, two and then three people seemed to be consulting and looking through all manner of scopes into my eyes.

Eventually they sent me home without telling me what was going on, but scheduled an appointment for next week. Today (Thursday) I got a call saying that I was being pushed ahead of everyone else and was going to have to go into surgery Friday of next week and that I have to report to another location across town to get more detailed pictures taken tomorrow!.

The only explanation I could get out of them was that the cataract has begun growing at an accelerated rate just from the last time they saw me.

I’m fucked

Even if I had anyone one able to help, who would be willing to drive me to surgery at 5 in the morning and then wait to take me back home. I don’t have money for a cab.

- - - - - - -

Monday I took my computer apart. It’d been making some very threatening noises and I discovered a can of compressed air I didn’t remember buying. It turns out one of the two additional cooling fans I’d added was in the process of burning out. Fortunately it was one of the ones that just moved the internal air around and toward the exhaust fan. I played with it for a while and got it to spin reluctantly, but after I put the whole thing back together it was so much quieter.

The computer is over 6 years old and they don’t usually last more than five so I’ve got to make this one last. Back when I was rich I bought a 2nd hard drive and installed it for redundancy, so I’m safe if the whole thing fails, I just won’t have a computer to connect it all to.

The group that I’m working with is nice and I’m enjoying communicating with them. It makes my day less lonely.

OSU just called and rescheduled my appointment to 1:30PM tomorrow so I won’t have to drag myself out of bed… something went right.

I thought I was doing so great with hundreds/thousands of readers until an editor posted readership in the tens of thousands. It knocked me down a peg or two. I’ve been covering the Rand Paul controversy on my Tea Baggers article at BC and it’s getting a lot of attention.

It’s been keeping me from completing my revamp of my financial spreadsheet though. The check comes tomorrow and I have to figure out how to get a two-way cab ride out of a budget that barely lets me buy food. I’m also worried because I’m running out of Crestor samples for my heart and I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next month… Still having eye-focus problems and my chest hurts like hell. I’ve resorted to my remaining supply of Percocet.

I still wish I knew what keeps me going.

Sunday the 23rd
Well, I learned a few things Friday that I didn’t know that I didn’t know; possibly because I didn’t want to know… duh. When I went in for the pre-surgery testing for my right eye they did an EKG. While explaining it to me, he showed me how the pacemaker is delivering a tiny shock to my heart on every damned beat! I thought it was just an occasional jolt every so often to keep it in rhythm, but apparently the bottom chamber of my heart that they kept telling me was dead, is as dead as they told me it was. It was the other bottom chamber that had begun beating against the rest. When I expressed concern about the life of the battery, he said it’d probably last about 15 years!?! Those must be some pretty damned good batteries!

I guess that lets out my theory about the hiccups being caused by the pacemaker because I’d never stop. I rarely have them, but now I experience a single one about once every other day. They telling me that I’ve lost 10 pounds cheered me!

The 2nd thing that I didn’t know was that a cataract grows in your eye lens; as opposed to where I thought it grew in the middle of your eye. I was busy over the weekend researching all this stuff up on line. When they said they were putting an artificial lens in, I thought was to fill the spot where the cataract was in the middle of my eye. Apparently they’re removing the entire lens-which is why I’ll need reading glasses. It turns out my eye lens is a lot bigger than I thought it was too and they’re removing all of it! I’ll have great distance vision and that’s about it. There are supposed to be new implants that are good for all distances, but since I was warned I’d need reading glasses, and I’m only on Medicare, they’re probably not going to use them.

It’s amazing that the majority of your eye is just filler. It’s big and round so it can rotate in your socket, but essentially everything takes place on the front surface and everything that I thought was going on my big eyeball was actually happening in that little cubbyhole behind the lens.

Research has also uncovered two other things. Being out in bright sun light causes cataracts because of the additional ultra-violet light, so enjoying my convertible might be a contributing factor. Also the lens they’re implanting may filter blue light because they say blue light is harmful to your eyes with the condition I have. All that artwork I was hoping to produce… I wonder what color the sky will be… maybe I’m hopefully over-reacting. It’ll definitely be strange to see different colors from each eye.

I started two different eye drops over the weekend. I’m supposed to use them four times a day until this Friday to cut down on the risk of infection after the eye surgery. I’ve got to do something to get my blood sugars down. I’m almost tempted to start combining the Lantus and the Novolog again, which is what was causing the glucose crashes before but that’d be dangerous. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I see Dr. Heart this Wednesday after I see Dr. Mind; boy will I have a lot of questions for him! I run out of Crestor and Lasix on Monday; those are the drugs for my heart and controlling fluid buildup. I couldn’t get into see Dr. Clinic so I couldn’t get more drug rep samples, maybe Dr. Heart will have some.

My check doesn’t come until the 4th next month and I’ve decided that the only way to pay for the cab is to be “late” with the rent. What I’m going to attempt is to take my rent check over after 3PM on the third after the banks close and hope they don’t cash it until after the 4th. I went over to Wal-Mart and bought as much in groceries as I could, hoping to stay stocked up into the first week of next month, as the check will be completely taken up with the rent and car payment.

God this sucks. While doing inventory I found some sugar free chocolate pudding in the back of the kitchen cupboard and picked up a carton of milk. Wal-Mart had 24 packs of Diet Dr. Pepper on sale for $3.88 so I bought three of them. The rest was mostly cheap ravioli and Lipton (excuse me Knorr) noodles and sauce and cans of tuna or chicken. GOD I wish I could afford salad. It was nice and sunny Saturday and it reminded me of all the road trips I’d take just to go somewhere. I smile to myself remembering when I’d actually blindly stick a pin into a map of the Midwest and just go there “just to see.”

I finally got the spreadsheet done and it’s a lot more streamlined. Something happened with Lance Armstrong because suddenly my article on him was getting a lot of readers… either that or the picture of him naked on a bike that I added a few weeks ago have seekers coming in droves. With Rand Paul making a fool of himself in Kentucky, my translation tool for the Right-Wing Teabaggers on my Politics page was getting hundreds of readers over the weekend too, and it kept me occupied answering comments.

My Digg group kept me hopping with requests too.

My computer hasn’t made a single strange sound since I took it apart, so I’m hoping it’ll last a while longer. I wish I were brave enough to reset the software back to its original state to speed it back up, but I’d have to reinstall all of those Windows updates all over again… no thanks.

There was a gathering at the swimming pool Saturday and several neighbors I hadn’t seen for a while yelled hellos at me. While looking at them, I tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk and stumbled forward and nearly fell. Not only did I pull a bunch of muscles trying to keep from falling, but it brought back the new and very real fear of falling. Lately every time I fall, I break something. With the sore muscles when I woke up, a wave of depression hit me on Sunday. I tried to ease it by sending out Sunday church jokes that I’ve collected over the years to the Digg group but it didn’t seem to help and I was in a funk all day.

Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend a lover comes up behind me, puts his arms around my shoulders and kisses me… god this loneliness hurts.

Monday the 24th
I woke up at 6AM screaming again. I was reliving the beating in my sleep and this time it was especially real. I’ve had to repeat the story again to my new e-friends in the Digg group. I’m also hearing the damned doorbell ringing again during the day and finding no one there.

My apartment building manager hasn’t left the usual notice on my door a month and a half in advance notifying me that my lease is up at the end of June. I hope he was right about my rent not going up. I guess he just assumes I’m going to renew-which I am. I ran into him last Saturday and he told me he’d lived here 33 years. This will be my 23rd lease.

I used the last Crestor for my heart in the bottle today that I didn’t realize was there. I’m hoping Dr. D/heart will have some on Wednesday when I go in and see him. I can ask him about whether that battery is actually going to last 15 years or if he meant the unit itself will last 15 years. Eye surgery grows closer and closer. I’m not worried about the surgery, hell as many as I’ve gone through it’s nothing now, but when my left eye improves I won’t need glasses for it; in fact glasses will be counter-productive… the trouble is I’m required to have them for driving on the crazy license I have now that says I’m not allowed to drive after dark either. Problem? I can’t afford another pair of glasses… Same shit-different day.

I can’t get my goddamned blood sugars down. I’m doing 30 units a day of Lantus. If I don’t get down soon my eye won’t heal. I don’t see Dr. S/clinic until next week. That reminds me I’ve got to update my medical profile and print it out before then with all the new eye drops and what drugs I’ve run out of.

I tried texting Teresa this morning but she didn’t answer back. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s avoiding me. We’ve lost touch lately and it seems like every conversation is to apologize for not calling for so long. She’s been to busy with three jobs and the only thing I have to talk about is the latest chapter in the soap opera… pretty much the way all my friends have gone.

My Digg group fortunately still e-mails me constantly. It just occurred to me that I haven’t heard back from Amazon about becoming an associate. It’d be great to run subject-specific ads for each article. I’m going to do that and I’m going to do it soon.

I’ve also started getting “chat” messages over my computer and haven’t discovered them until an hour or so after they arrived. I went in and explored around for the sound effects that are on the computer and discovered a single ring of an old-fashioned phone. I took it, boosted the volume and then edited it back on itself to make it sound like a phone ringing ten times. Then I programmed the computer to play that sound when it detects an incoming message. When I leave my headphones plugged in now I’ll hear an in-coming message from clear out in my living room. Let’s just hope I don’t get one while I’m listening to music.

I called Wal-Mart to find out how much a refill of Simvastatin was and they said $5.99. I checked on the Lasix that I’m now out of and discovered that all of my prescriptions for it have expired. Up until now it was a moot point since I can’t afford them anyway, but I need something to control the fluids around my heart and with all the salt in the cheap food I’m eating, this could get serious. I’m still trying to save back the mere $20 I have for a round trip cab ride to the eye surgery-which isn’t near enough, so buying the Simvastatin for my heart is out of the question. Some lucky cab driver is going to be getting Eisenhower silver dollars for a cab fare… Fuck.

I tried to call MCC again to talk to Dr. Mind’s friend but got a voicemail.

Tuesday the 25th
I woke up and knocked around the house for about half an hour and while checking my e-mails I suddenly felt very cold like I’d stepped into a walk-in freezer. Scenes from my childhood spending summers with my dead cousin Billy started running through my mind and I suddenly felt really sad and lonely. It took about half an hour to shake it off before I could get the day going again.

I logged on line and tried to sign up for Amazon’s associate program and kept running into a cyber-brick wall. I finally picked up the phone and called their tech support and they walked me through the process and I can now put Amazon ads on my articles. If it’s a music or video review, I can put a picture icon in the body of the article and they would go directly to Amazon and I’d get a commission if they bought it. In fact he said I’d get a commission if they bought anything whether it was part of the ad or not!

While he had me on hold, I got another call and my caller I.D. doesn’t show whom it is. I gambled and lost… well sort of. It was Grant Hospital billing department. I finally decided to fight for myself against this bullshit and talked to her and unlike the others she was very sympathetic. I laid out the whole story about how my hospital bills have become hopelessly entangled since GB started refusing to pay for my regular meds during Work comp surgeries, and how social security refuses to pay them because they’re… you guessed it-workman comp covered surgeries.

I told her about trying to block their phone numbers because of the stress and how I gave up because it’d also block calls concerning future medical appointments, doctors trying to help me with my meds etc

I also talked to her about being turned down for help with my prescriptions because I make too much in disability checks. Like all the other social workers she said she’d check into it. She promised that she’d try to see about stopping the harassing phone calls… I won’t hold my breath.

She says she’s going to mail out yet another financial assistance application. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve filled out, but she wants me to send this one directly to her… so we’ll see.

I spent the rest of the afternoon programming the HTML codes for my custom Amazon ads. With over 100 different articles and features on my six websites this could take forever, but if it possibly makes me some money I’ll be happy. Also Amazon pays by the month so I don’t have to wait until I earn $100 like Adsense does in order to get a check.

The episode of NCIS tonight was possibly the best I’ve ever scene of any series in my life. I’ve GOT to write an article.

Wednesday the 26th
Three collection agency calls before 10AM. God this sucks. I made it over to my usual Wednesday appointment with Dr. Mind. She’s going to try to find a church group to help me with rides to the surgery. God it hurts to think of myself as begging for anything… it’s so crushing to my self worth. If I could find someone with about $1,000 they could spare so that I could get back ahead of just the basic bills, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether damned GB is going to be late with their damned check or not. Anyway we had a decent session. GB is demanding her detailed notes on our sessions again.

How the hell can you talk openly and honestly with you psychologist knowing that some corporate asshole is reading her notes? It’s no wonder we’re not making all that much progress because I keep holding back the shit I don’t want some secretary to read. Speaking of secretaries, Dr. Mind’s very-very likable secretary Barb is retiring on Friday. She is so sweet and I can’t express how much I’ll miss her. I’ve been going to Dr. Mind now for nearly six years and Barb goes out of her way to be helpful and cheers me up when I’m down.

From her, I came home and had just enough time to go over my medical profile, update it, and then print it out before heading to Dr. Heart’s. It’s such a beautiful bright sunny day today. I used to call these my “get lost” days were I had the freedom to just toss everything on the schedule aside and hit a freeway and intentionally get lost in the suburbs somewhere-just to see what was there, and then try to find my way home again. Not only was if fun, I made a lot of new friends and found some great shops and restaurants that I didn’t know existed. I used to do that when I lived in San Diego and wound up in front of the naval housing unit and wondered if my brother and sister in law was there.

At the heart appointment, it turned out that it was just a test of the pacemaker/defibrillator to make sure it was functioning right; which it is. She confirmed that it shocks my heart on every beat, but corrected me that it should last about five years instead of the fifteen… though that in itself is amazing. I learned a lot. It turns out that that second heart attack did do a lot of damage. It not only enlarged and “killed” one of my bottom heart chambers, but it caused a sort of electrical “short-circuit.” Apparently the heart takes its cues like a car’s distributor and it was damaged so that the bottom two chambers were no longer communicating with the top two. The enlarged bottom chamber wasn’t pumping at all and the last chamber was so confused that it began beating against the top two, which is why I kept passing out and the triple bypass didn’t seem to do anything.

The pacemaker makes the “dead” chamber contract and then electrically “cues” the healthy fourth one to follow suit, all timed around the top two. I was also relieved to discover that a strong magnet only temporarily turns off the pacemaker and as soon as I leave its field it comes back on. (whew)

Thankfully they had a month’s supply of Crestor to give me from drug rep samples. I plan to lie to Dr. Clinic (GOD I hate this) and say I’m out, hoping to get a month’s worth from him too just to be on the safe side. I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to see Dr. D there; only the technician that was doing the testing. He came out of his office and saw me getting my next appointment at the receptionist’s office and smacked me on the back and joked with me for a while. I used to live in what seemed like an ocean of friends and his act brought back how much I miss that.

I was tempted to take the long way home in the sun but I’ve got less than a quarter of a tank of gas so that was out… alas.

I’ve been sitting here all evening trying to write something, but nothing’s coming out. I’d love to write a couple of astronomy pieces or maybe an editorial on “don’t ask-don’t tell” but it just won’t come. I studied my HTML codes for the Amazon ads and I’m trying to figure out a way to put a line of code that would allow them to “float” amongst the text of an article instead of taking up the whole line. Sooner or later I’ll figure it out. It’d be great to have them within the paragraph so the reader could click on them “while they’re thinking about them.

Thursday the 27th
I woke up this morning to the sound of kittens crying. I was blinded when I opened my eyes because the curtains in the bedroom were open and the morning sun was streaming right at me reflected off of the glass front of the new county justice center four blocks to the west.

Out on the balcony the beefsteak tomatoes were about halfway to the balcony roof on stakes and some were on the verge of turning red. I’m going to have to call Vicki and ask her to pick them for me while I’m. I’ve been having trouble with a squirrel lately that we’ve named “Spiderman.” The bastard uses his claws to climb up the masonry side of the building and then goes from balcony to balcony digging up flower beds that we “thought” were safe from them this high up. We have a family of albino squirrels that live around the dumpsters out back and one morning a few weeks ago I didn’t realize that there were people down on the ground watching him do his acrobatics and I began swiping at him with a broom trying to get him out of my geranium beds. My landlord had a fit at me when complaints started streaming in.

Anyway, while I laid there squinting, Madame Schange (pronounced “Shang” leaped out of the cardboard box at the foot of my bed and I presumed she was heading for the litter box in the bathroom. Chazra (pronounced Kazra) looked up at me and he couldn’t be bothered to move as I tried to get up out of bed. I threw on a pair of cut-offs and went into the living room and that’s when it hit me. No boxes all over the place, no garbage bags, the place was clean, the curtains were open! Out on the balcony hanging baskets of flowers were all in their brightest and cheeriest displays.

Chazra walked up to me and presented me with one of his protesting new kittens and I smiled down at it. It’s unusual for a male Siamese to have anything to do with his kittens, but I’d trained Chazra to take care of them by putting some hairball medicine on their backs (which he loves) and kept doing it until he licked and cuddled them out of force of habit as much as Madame does with or without the treats. Teresa nearly fainted the first time she saw him do that thinking he was out to hurt them. I’ve already got six good homes for these little packages of cuteness. Their eyes had opened about a week ago, but they didn’t have their “points” yet and were all white. Madame came to the door of the bedroom and started bitching at me, so I smiled and put the loud little bundle of fur back in the box with his brothers and sisters.

I nearly tripped over my suitcase in the process and something kept nagging me in the back of my head that something wasn’t quite right.

I almost made it back out of the bedroom when the phone rang and it was Brock wanting to know if I’d left for the airport yet. Huh? Then I realized I had to be in San Diego by this evening. I said I would soon and he said he’d have a rental car waiting for me and hung up. I grabbed a five-gallon bucket and began filling it in the bathtub. God I felt good this morning… in fact I couldn’t remember feeling this good. When the bucket was full I went to lift it up and nearly hurled it across the bathroom spilling water all over the place. To my shock the damned thing weighed next to nothing!

While I refilled it, I grabbed a bunch of towels and layered them on the carpet in the bathroom walking on them to sop up the water and then hung them on the racks in the shower to drip dry. When the bucket was full, I picked it up again and went out onto the balcony to the humidity on the other side of the sliding glass doors, followed by my faithful companion Chazra. One of these days he’s going to leap at a bird and fall six stories. After dissolving a little miracle grow into the water, I dunked a sprinkling bucket and filled all of the planters picking off old flowers and checking the tomatoes as I went. Then I filled a squirt bottle and misted all the blossoms and the green peppers.

When I went back in for more water I just couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong… then it hit me, my big huge desk I’d bought and built was gone! My albums were out on display instead of my CDs and VHS tapes lined the shelves instead of DVD’s.

Still holding the bucket, I ran into the bathroom and dropped the bucket on the soggy floor when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. There were my muscles, my longish styled hair and it slammed me so hard I nearly passed out in relief!!! It was all a dream, it was all a barely remembered nightmare. I was whole again.

OH THANK GOD!!!

…I opened my eyes. The curtains that had been closed since that winter of 2004 were still closed, Chazra and Madame Schange were both dead, he in 1998 and she’d been given away with a kitten in 1996. I loved him so much his ashes are still in a silver tin on my desk to this day. Mischief my tabby lay asleep beside me and when I reached over to pet her, she shied away and then jumped down from the bed.

I sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. I had relived some morning ten years ago in my sleep. I just sat there and wept.

After a while I pulled myself together and got the day started; or I should say it got started whether I wanted it to or not with a collection agency call. I simply picked up the phone and then immediately hung it back up.

Dr. Mind called me to give me a number for a man from her church that was willing to ride me to the eye appointment at 5:30AM tomorrow. I was about to call him when I got a call from OSU saying that they had to reschedule my surgery for next Tuesday and to stop using the eye drops until Sunday night and then start again. When I called the guy up who was going to ride me there, he said he was tied up Tuesday, so I’m in the same boat again. OSU called me back again twice in an hour to change the time of surgery, making it impossible to try to arrange a ride from someone. I guess I’ll spend the rest of my money in checking and my cherished Eisenhowers on cab rides. They also said I had to go back for a follow up appointment the next day, so that’s four cab rides. All I can do is risk driving one-eyed on Wednesday and hope it doesn’t conflict with my regular noon appointment with Dr. Mind.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to reach the eye clinic to nail down a time, or to at least confirm what day it was on but kept getting the department’s voice mail and finally gave up in frustration. My mind kept wandering back to this morning’s dream-it was so fucking real! It’s exactly what I was doing the morning of 911, only I never made it out to the balcony. That bucket of water sat in the middle of the livingroom floor all day as I watched non-stop in astonishment.

My knee’s beginning to hurt again, that can only mean that rain is coming. It’s supposed to stay in the upper 80s all week.

I’ve eaten nothing but canned ravioli and noodle mix since I can remember. It’s no wonder I’m turning to blubber.

This evening I got the hell scared out of me. Betsy called me on her cell on the way up the mountain to Clear Lake Oregon where she works. Half way there she stopped off at the house she owns to check on everything and encountered a stranger in an out-building who asked her for food. Up there in the mountains the nearest cop is 45 minutes away. She got a call from my brother Jim and clicked over. The cell service is really sketchy on the mountain and after I waited a while, she never clicked over and eventually I got a dial tone. Trying not to panic, I texted my niece and explained the situation. After about half an hour, she finally reached Betsy, who’d gone to a neighbor’s and they confronted the guy together.

Normally I wouldn’t have been so concerned, but Betsy’s house up there was broken into not so long ago and a gun was stolen, so I was concerned.

I played chess with my computer until I got drowsy and then went to bed… alone

April 2010

2010-04-02T03:52:00.035-04:00

Thursday the 1st-April fool’s day!
I had a strange dream last night about hitting some standing water during a flood and my car disintegrated. I actually got out and lifted it up above my head and carried it to the other side, all the time scared that my heart would give out, in order to keep the engine dry so it’d start on the opposite hill. Just by coincidence an old backyard mechanic offered to help me put it back together so I waded back into the flood and picked up floating plastic pieces of the car as if it’d been made out of a model kit I used to build as a kid. The man asked me to hand him a giant tube of model glue when a collection agency call woke me up before I could find out what happened next.

I got a total of 9 collection agency calls. One lady kept calling over and over because she liked my answering machine message and kept giggling. She’s a problem because if the machine is turned off, it’ll pick up after 10 rings but not play the message in order for me to turn it on remotely. She lets it ring that long thinking it’ll eventually answer, where the callbots hang up after five… sigh

I got some interesting news. BC has decided to share their ad revenue on our articles with us through Adsense. Joy. What that means is that I can now track how many of my readers log on at their website. Since they’re using the ugly text ads instead of pictures, I doubt that any of us will make anything, because it’s still only pennies a click like on my own sites. Since BC is simply tacking on another ad, they’re not really “revenue sharing” since the meager pay out comes from Adsense instead of them… Beggars can’t be choosers. Maybe I’ll get a check finally in 2011 instead of 2012… whoopie

I’m down to four diabetic Janumet tablets left and then I’m out. Dr. Mind told me Wednesday that the charity pharmacy at the church across the way might let me avail myself of them. I called them once a few weeks ago and got nowhere, but I might give it another try.

Aunt Margaret called with some good news, her kidney function is improving and she’s losing weight. She’s in her seventies and on dialysis and I’ve been worried about her. Betsy called and I’m pissed at myself for letting it slip that I’d found out in my father’s diary that he was blackmailing my Uncle Wayne on my mom’s side over the years for money to gamble and lose in the stock market. He’d threatened to report him as gay to the military when he was in Vietnam, which would’ve risked his 30-year pension with a dishonorable discharge. I’d learned so many heartless things about him and my family that my parents shielded from us that I destroyed the hard drive it was on to keep them from reading it in case something happened to me.

Tomorrow’s going to be rough. I’m going to have to write the rent check, but it’ll bounce if I don’t take some collectible $2 bills and deposit them in my checking. Soon I’ll have to dip into my Eisenhower silver dollars again and the Kennedy halves. God I hate this. I’m reluctantly thinking of swallowing my pride and asking Dave in Australia for the help he offered, but like I said before, I feel like a bum with a cardboard sign at the end of a freeway exit begging for coins.

I don’t know what else to do.

I’ve started thinking about giving all of my possessions away to friends, finding a home for the cat and then just giving up… I know I won’t, but I can’t escape the thoughts and it bothers me. I just hope I can hold on until Friday next week when the next GB check comes and hope that Mischief’s cat food holds out that long.

I’m now using my syringes five times before tossing them-mainly because the needles get so dull I have to push to get them to puncture the skin. In order to get more I’d need a prescription, and to get that I’d have to pay the clinic $10 that I don’t have to see the doctor… then I wouldn’t have enough to buy the damned things…

Fuck

Friday the 2nd
God how I hated to do what I just did this morning, I was on the verge of tears into the afternoon. For about the last twenty years, I got accustomed to doing things like over-the-top tipping. An example was that once I took my friend Brenda in Pittsburgh out to lunch at a Big Boy’s restaurant and told our server that if he had any hope for a tip, he must never let my glass of lemonade go dry… The guy nearly drowned me in it. When I got up to pay I didn’t leave a tip, but at the cash register I asked to see the manager, complimented our waiter, paid the tab, which I think came to only about $16 for the two of us and then handed the bewildered guy a $20 tip. When I was out on business, I’d stop at a bank occasionally and ask if they had any $2 bills or giant Eisenhower silver dollars, and then I’d use them as tips for pizza guys and servers etc. When I’d get home from the road I’d dump it all in a glass jar, forget about them, and then have to buy more when I went out again. I once left a girl a penny tip with a note warning her not to spend it. It was a steel penny from the 40s during World War II when copper was needed and the U.S. minted them out of steel instead.

I pulled that glass jar down today; only this time I emptied it. Along with a $5 gambling chip from the MGM Grand, I have 61 Eisenhowers left, 82 bicentennial Kennedy halves, 40 bicentennial quarters, 28 state quarters and 51 $2 bills. I went through the bills and kept only the near perfect ones. Dumped the quarters in the regular laundry change, took my uncirculated Susan B. Anthony dollars and put everything else back in the jar. My Uncle Wayne helped me start collecting the Eisenhowers and they’ll be the last to go.

I’ve been calling dealers and collectors who will only give me face value for my collectible currency. In this economy that’s the only way they can make money reselling them, and my putting them on e-bay is worse because I’d have to pay percentage fees, postage to mail them to buyers, Pay-Pal would want their cut and in the end I’d make nothing… soooooooo… I reluctantly went into my library and got my old coin books too and then broke all of the pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters out of their little holes and rolled them… even the “S” mint coins and now I’ve got to find a way to deposit it all in the bank without breaking down and crying in line. My God this hurts. They’re one of the last vestiges of my former life and the touch of every coin had a good memory that I didn’t want to let go. I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.

It’s true what they say about the friends that stick by you when things go sour. People like Dr. Mind, Teresa, Brenda, Brock, my sister Betsy and Aunt Margaret. It hurts just how many people I thought I was really close to that haven’t called for years now. It’s like people that you were really close to at work that you said you’d keep in touch with and then never heard from again. I ache for the days when I sometimes had to take the phone off the hook because people were calling me from all over the country just to say “hi!” or on my “brick” cell phone where every minute you spent was a fortuned. Now the only calls I get are collection agents. They came up with a new tactic today that’s really low, they use cell phones that can be programmed to display non-existant phone numbers on your caller I.D. I got two of them today while I was out.

The bank went smoothly. I’ve now got enough to cover the rent check, buy cat food and enough groceries to last until next Friday… I hope. This time I remembered to take the calculator with me to Wal-Mart. More paper plates and plastic silver wear… groan. IT WAS SUCH A BEAUUUUUTIFUL day today. Nothing but sunny skies and temperatures in the 80s-perfect for “cruising around with the top down”. If I weren’t so low on gas I’d have driven all day.

When I’d gotten home, the phone was ringing and Betsy was calling to warn me that my mom was in Ohio… just what I don’t need. Her birthday is tomorrow. Any other time I’d welcome a visit from her, but in my state of mind I’d be afraid of my reaction to one of her motherly sermons. I plan to call her tomorrow and e-mail her a picture of her father that I enhanced from a photo so dark you couldn’t see anything. As I worked on it, I was surprised to find him crouching down and holding what was apparently his favorite hunting dog. I hope she likes it. Mom used to pull these surprise attacks on me where she’d drive all the way from Pittsburgh to Columbus without telling me and then calling me for directions from some payphone a few miles out of town, usually just as I was leaving for an art job or to go to the airport on a business trip. I miss how we used to get along together before she found Jesus and moved in with my sister Dee; and after I read my father’s diary.

I got on line to double check, because I can’t remember getting an e-mail from the state of Ohio saying my plates were about to expire and it was time to renew before my birthday on May 2nd, and discovered that in a rare moment of having some extra money last year I’d renewed them for two years so they don’t expire until 2011!!!!!!!! Which may or may not be a moot point if I can’t get my eyes fixed before I have to renew my license.

BC’s tracker software works. I’m really excited to see where some of the article’s I’ve written on Science and Gay Pride are still getting hundreds of visitors a day… as predicted though, no one’s clicking on the ads on those pages over there either.

It’s now 4:05AM Saturday morning and I just might be able to get some sleep. I just put up a post-it note in the middle of my monitor to remember to write a check for the rent and to call mom tomorrow (today) when I wake up…

Over the weekend the 3rd & 4th
Saturday
I called my mom Saturday on her birthday (she’s 74). The friendly call went for about three minutes until I asked if she’d heard from my Aunt Margaret (her sister) lately. I meant to tell her the good news that her kidney function was improving, but I never got a chance when Mom started going off on me about her (they’re apparently still not speaking) so I decided to get off the phone before it got worse. I was glad that mom is feeling feisty anyway and she sounds like Dee’s taking good care of her.

After reading a few on-line articles, I’ve decided to experiment with adding a three-tone code to the beginning of my answering machine. It seems that automated callers listen for the tones that the phone company uses to signal a disconnected line and then stop calling. I can only hope this works, because I could use some peace.

It started getting really warm over the weekend, which meant switching on the air conditioning. I shudder to think what the next electric bill will be like. I’m still down about having to cash in all of those Susan B. Anthony’s and the $2 bills. I covered the rent check, but only have enough left to buy Mischief some more cat food-She’s got about a day’s worth left. Thank god for Dr. Mind and her coupons.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a “boom car” out in the parking lot pumping out bass at a level normally reserved for movie theater coming attractions. After about an hour, I realized it was coming from within the building not outside and I went down one floor in the elevator to discover it was coming from my neighbor directly beneath me. I knocked and formed a suicide pact with him that if he comes to me with a noise complaint first instead of going to the apt. bldg. Manager, I’ll do the same for him. He off-handedly mentioned that he’s still waiting for me to move out of my penthouse so he can move in and I told him I’ve lived here 22-years and there’s no way I’m leaving. After I left him I wondered if Rich had started the waiting list on my apartment (that’s how I got in) after sitting downstairs for 9 years on that same list. I have the only one bedroom penthouse in both buildings in the complex. All the others are 2-bedrooms on two floors, so I have the only one-bedroom apartment with wall-to-wall glass and a private balcony. I called Rich and he said there’s no waiting list on any apartments… damn-now I’ll have to find something else to be paranoid about instead.

Betsy called and needs more of my unused pain meds for the calcium spur in her foot. I’m only too glad to do it for her. God I envy how happy she is with Norm.

Sunday
Spent the morning going over Dad’s old photos again and decided to take a break and watch some TV. I looked in the aquarium and the giant plecostomus was out from under his rocks and I was determined that today was the day I’d catch the fucker come hell or high water. I got a big plastic garbage bag and disassembled the three-foot tall rock face I had in the aquarium piece by piece. I had a great “upside down” waterfall that I hated to disassemble, which was achieved by running air lines under it which bubbled up the rocks, but I was determined to snag him. He’s so big that when he moves out from under the rocks he tears up the plants. I’ve got a pet shop up by Wal-Mart that trades my big ones (the bigger the tank-the bigger the fish grow) for little ones. The aquarium is self-sufficient because I get a little three-inch plecostomus, let it grow to 12-inches and then trade it in on another three-incher plus more fish, plants and aquarium supplies with no money changing hands. They’re only open until 5PM on Sundays so I was going to have to hurry.

It was another BEAAAAAUUUUUTTTTTIFUL sunny day-just perfect for 20-minute driving up north.

Anyway, the little brat is fast and in no time plants were floating all over the place. Then it occurred to me to use one of the 14 x 20 glass top cover plates to set vertically in the water to block his escape and within ten minutes I had him caught! I put him up in a gallon freezer bag, got cleaned up and drove out to Jack’s Aquariums prepared to brag of my accomplishment after trying for 3 months to catch the little fucker…

Jack’s was closed Easter Sunday. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

I came all the way back home with him and didn’t remember I needed cat food until I pulled in the drive way. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day. I punched a bunch of holes in the bag for water circulation and hung it in the tank.

I spent the evening pondering my artwork. I was the kind of artist that would get excited about my next art job ¾ of the way through the one I was working on currently. Then I’d want to hurry and finish it so I could get to the next one… and so on… and so on. It occurred to me that that’s the way I used to live-always looking to the future. Now it’s depressing to think that I don’t seem to have a future… well, I do, but not one worth looking forward to. All I see is hunger, loneliness, ill health and inability to pay the bills. I gave up some of what was left of my financial stability when that collectible currency went out the door, and the hurtful part of it was that those coins and bills were collected for fun, not what they’d be worth in the future. They were something I liked to do-not an investment. It’s like all of the beautiful chess sets I used to own; at one point I began running out of places to display them all and began suspending the boards with pieces on them from the ceiling on threads as if they were suspended in mid air.

I had to run the air conditioning again today. I’ve noticed that now that it’s unusually warm this early in the year and there’s flooding everywhere that the Republicans and religious fundamentalists have suddenly shut up about global warming… maybe I’ll write an article.

Tuesday the 6th
I finally made it up to Jack’s yesterday and traded the plecostomus in on a 2 incher some tangerine swordtails and Dalmatian mollies. They look great in my tank. I’m only disappointed that they didn’t have any tall plants to trade for. I nearly ran out of gas again and the car started hesitating. I limped it to a gas station and was appalled to discover gas is back up to $3 fucking gallons again. I bought less than a quarter tank on $15. Monday was spent frantically trying to finish cataloging dad’s photos and harvesting more from the DVDs of his hard drive. The mailing box is “priority mail” so it’ll only take 2-3 days to get it to Betsy with my left over antibiotics included in it.

I called Tressa again and still no authorization for the physical therapy. She says she logged onto the BWC website and one wasn’t even submitted. I called Cheryl over at Dr. Knee’s and got her voicemail… again.

This diabetes thing is getting rough. I’ve got about six test strips left and I’m judging how much insulin to take by how sweet my lips taste-which probably isn’t a good idea. I stopped off at Wal-Mart and bought Mischief some cat food just as she ran out. While there I picked up five Snickers bars incase I overdose the insulin. This financial thing is getting old really fast.

I woke up screaming Tuesday morning, but I don’t know why. I just had an overwhelming feeling of residual horror. I’ve had daytime flashbacks of the door being broken down complete with sound effects and I’ve started having painful full-body shudders again. The clinic called yesterday to remind me of my appointment tomorrow afternoon. I was going to use my last $20 to have my ink cartridges refilled so I can start sending letters to all of the collection agencies, but I guess that’s out, as I’ll have to spend it on the clinic fee on Thursday.

I’m hurting really bad. I used to have one hell of a support system… no, I’ll rephrase that-I used to be one hell of a support system. I could reach out when I needed emotional support and there were always people there to take my hand almost before I could extend it, and I did the same for them. Now it’s like there’s no one, and the few that are left that really care are hundreds of miles away and/or have families to care for that care for them. I used to be able to reach out and there’d be a warm caring body next to me or in my bed to comfort me when I was low… now when I reach out I only get empty air.

The overwhelming feeling of loneliness can swamp my thoughts for hours at a time these days and it hurts. I’m reminded of it now that the weather’s sunny, because I go out with the top down and while I’m driving I’m my old self for a little while… then I come home

Wednesday the 7th
Dr. Mind talked to me today about joining the Metropolitan Community Church as a way of trying to break out of my shell, but I still have such a problem with dealing in person with strangers that I doubted it’d take place. Besides even though it’s a famous gay church, I’m still having issues with Christianity right now. I had a rather spirited argument with my printer this morning that made me late to see her. I finally got it to squeeze out the last drop of ink to print this cycle’s diary entries to read to her and ran out of paper to print it on… groan.

When I got home for some reason I felt energetic, and did something I haven’t had the stamina or strength to do in quite some time… I drained 40 gallons (half) off of the aquarium and then put 40 more of fresh water in it. It felt good to suddenly realize that I could haul 5-gallon buckets between the living room and the bathroom. At 8 pounds per gallon that’s 40 pounds a trip! I had a feeling like “Hey, maybe I can get my old self back,” all the while worrying that I’d pay for it later with aches and pains, but surprise of surprises, I didn’t. The water stayed a grayish cloudy all night, most likely from the oxygen in it, but I’m sure it’ll clear up in a day or two.

Tressa would be so proud of me. Speaking of which I still haven’t heard a word from her, though I keep leaving messages but no one answers.

Thursday the 8th
I had a nightmare last night about living in my old Pontiac under a bridge after losing everything and getting evicted out of my home of nearly 23 years. I kept trying to hide because a bunch of people would wander by and try to rob me and I’d scare them off with my pellet gun that looks real. My three Somolians showed up and knew it wasn’t real and beat the hell out of me and stole my car and killed Mischief. I woke up crying and didn’t want to go back to sleep, but I was so tired from hauling water yesterday that I fell back asleep. I woke up with a sore throat, but don’t know if it was from screaming in my sleep or not.

I’ve got to be at the clinic at 1:45 this afternoon. This shoots to hell my plans to have my printer ink cartridges refilled up at Walgreen’s. With my luck they’ve probably raised their prices for it again. After you re-use a cartridge a few times the metal foil contacts wear to the point of being unusable. It’s still so hard adjusting to not being able to walk into any store and buying new cartridges and not care about the price. I got so used to that lifestyle that I seem to have forgotten it from when I had to struggle back in Barberton before I got my Art business going full strength. It’s like that whole era is a book I read a long time ago and can’t remember many of the details.

I used the last two $5 bills I had and paid the co-pay at the clinic. I’ve lost another 10 pounds-Yaaaaaaaaaaay! Dr. S finally took the time to explain that the reason my sugars were so fucked up was that I was using regular Novolog the same way I was using the 70/30 and the regular stuff is much-much stronger. He took the time to give me the class that no doctor has explained in 5 years and I now understand how to use my insulin properly… Now all I have to do is figure out how to afford to buy it.

He gave me a month’s supply of Crestor, but they don’t have any Lasix-the drug that helps keep fluids from building up around my heart, or any insulin. On top of having to pay the electric bill now, I’ve got ten dollars a month at the clinic. Since they can only give me a month’s supply of stuff at a time. Wal-Mart says that my insulin syringes would be a lot cheaper if I had a prescription for them, so I got Dr. S to write one out for me, along with the test strips which even with my Anthem run about $70 that I don’t’ have.

I got home and the phone was ringing-another collection agency. The experiment goes on with the three tones on my machine that tell their robo caller that the line’s disconnected. So far only one of them has called back after hearing the tones… we’ll see.

Friday the 9th
GB deposited the check; it’s been a while since they’ve fucked with it, and I’m starting to worry. Isn’t that ridiculous? They’ve actually got my mind to the point that I worry as much about things going right as I do when they go wrong.

This mid-cycle check as to go to the phone, car and possibly the electric. I went ahead and programmed the car and phone into the checking account, the electric I’ll wait till I see the bill. I think it’s only going to be about $90 if I read the on-line statement right. I’ve been using nightlights to navigate in the dark and only turning things on if I absolutely have to. I’ve actually learned to stomach canned ravioli without cooking it.

Jack’s called me to say that they screwed up the trade last week and that if I wanted to I could come out and pick out some plants for the tank for free. I was really gratified that they were so nice about it. The manager used to love when I came in, because if I saw a particular kind of tropical fish that I’d like I’d buy a whole tank’s worth for about $200 instead of buying just one fish, so I guess he wants to keep my business. On the way there I was low on gas and bought another three gallons at $10.00… Now I’ve only got about $80 for groceries and supplies.

I wrote a bunch of notes to myself for my trip to Wal-Mart. I went to the pharmacy and priced syringes. She told me that a box of 100 was $12.95-wow Anthem saved me all of $2.05. She said that the prescription for the test strips wasn’t written right and that I’d have to wait until Monday for a price. I have no choice but to buy the needles, then inject the insulin without a reading and hope for the best. The test strips will just have to wait. I went over to the jewelry department for batteries for my tester, but if I can’t afford the test-strips the batteries become a moot point. I tossed them in the basket and figured I’d decide about them later. They ran about $10 for the two that the tester requires.

I bought more cheap food because I can’t afford the makings for the healthier salads. Canned ravioli, breaded chicken patties, fish sticks, all loaded with salt, starches, carbs and sugar. I’m literally killing myself by what I’m eating, but I don’t’ have a choice. I left the store with only $29 to last for two weeks-this is so fucked. I got out to the parking lot and discovered the little package of tester batteries under the bags. I’d unknowingly shoplifted them because I didn’t spot them in the bottom of the basket in the checkout line. Whether I meant to or not, it’s come down to stealing now… what will I do next? All the way home I wanted to turn around and go back in and pay for them, but I really needed them. I don’t know how to reconcile this in my head and I fear it’ll play on my thoughts for a long time.

Saturday the 10th
I spent the morning experimenting with the nozzles of my aquarium water pumps trying to aim them so that the plants don’t fold over from the current they produce. The water finally cleared up and the tank looks great… nearly empty, but great. The little plecostomus I traded for died. I bagged him up and stuck him in the freezer. They’ll let me trade him for another one. Tiger Woods was playing in the Masters today and he looked like he was getting his game back. I don’t watch golf unless he’s playing; I have a feeling a lot of people don’t.

My knee hurts like hell this morning-which means we probably have a storm coming. I’ve had the air conditioning set at about 78 and use a fan in the bedroom and the den to keep me comfortable. The motor on the fan in the den burned out this afternoon. It set off the smoke alarm, but other than that it was no big deal. I can’t afford another one, so things will be warm in here.

I’m so pissed at myself. I stuck some frozen chicken patties in the toaster oven just as my aunt called to say hello, and forgot and left the remainder in their plastic bag on top of it. The bell went off and the remainder of the bag is ruined. There’s two meals down the drain. I’m getting senile at my young age.

I spent the afternoon watching Tiger play and sorting photos. Betsy’s birthday is the 15th and I’m determined to get them to her before that. It’s just fucked up that I can’t print her a birthday card.

Sunday the 11th
Tiger didn’t win the Masters. I kind of expected that he wouldn’t after being away from the course for so long, but still I hoped. He’s pulled some squeakers out before.

That choking cloud of “alone” smothered me again today. Sometimes I think I should try to rob a convenience store or something and then intentionally caught so I can go into a coma in jail and forget the world… and then I come to my senses. The problem with jail isn’t being locked up away from everyone-it’s the inmates killing each other and the gangs terrorizing everyone. I don’t think I can think up a crime that wouldn’t hurt someone, so it’s a moot problem any way. I wouldn’t want some store clerk to go through the hell and PTSD that I’m living now.

Oh well, there’s still over dosing on insulin.

I miss the den fan because it’s so quiet in there that I can hear my ears ringing really loud, which means resorting to wearing headphones and listening to music. Columbus has a casino coming soon and I’ll have to stay away from it. I used to be unable to fly anywhere near it without hitting the casinos in Los Vegas. Back when I had money to burn, I’d give myself $500-1000 to blow, not caring whether I’d win or lose, and usually between blackjack and poker I’d leave with about $5000 or more. The difference is I was gambling for fun, I have a feeling now I’d be playing out of desperation instead and t’s what destroys people.

I had tater-tots for dinner… unfuckinbelievable.

Monday the 12th
I woke up around 6AM and felt like I was starving and dying of thirst. I must’ve eaten a whole pack of sandwich meat slices and 6 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper and still felt funny. I checked my sugar and was amazed. This waking up with super-low blood sugar is getting really worrisome. I had to rush over to see Dr. S/clinic this morning. They gave me a quick blood test, took some samples and gave me a piece of candy. I spent the whole day sleeping when I got home and then was groggy the whole rest of the day.

Tuesday the 13th
I finally fell asleep around 6 this morning and woke up and 9:30 feeling like shit. My blood sugar was at 50. I took my insulin at noon yesterday and ate around 5:30. The entire time my readings were in the 170 range. All day it stayed steady and then suddenly 17 hours after I took the insulin my blood sugar plummeted 120 points! I tried to get up and knock out some articles and digg some friend’s submissions but I couldn’t get going. I wrote an article a few years back about diabetes’s effects on people and one of the symptoms is angry outbursts. Boy did I have them today. I probably alienated everyone at the BC homesite in one evening. And people wonder why I can’t interact with friends, much less strangers. No results from the lab about my blood sample they took at the clinic yesterday.

I called my friend Teresa and left an e-mail telling her I missed her and fell asleep midway through NCIS. I woke up at 1:30AM (Wednesday) and who knows when I’ll get back to sleep. I’ve decided to occupy my mind and redesigned my websites so that there’s less clutter by making expandable buttons that when clicked open one of my website menus and take the reader there. It takes up a hell of a lot less space and looks better. I worked on it until I got drowsy and yawning through my tears and went to sleep while the birds were chirping merrily outside.

Wednesday the 14th
I woke up at 5:30AM and my sugar was 45! This time I took the insulin at 11:30 yesterday afternoon! Maybe my pancreas is coming back to life? I knocked around the house for a few hours and set my clock/radio so I’d be sure to make it to Dr. Mind today. I must’ve dozed off around 6:30-7 because Dr. Mind called and woke me up canceling our noon appointment today because she had an opportunity to attend her own doctor’s appointment; so we rescheduled for 1:30 tomorrow.

I no sooner hung up from her than the collection calls began. I figured I wouldn’t get any sleep so I stayed up. The three-tone trick on my answering machine seems to work only to a limited set of harassers… alas. I discovered the new baby plecostomus floating dead in my aquarium… after all I went through. I’m pretty sure I can trade him in on a live one. I put him in a sandwich bag and put it in the freezer. If I can ever figure out what I’ll need for ink or postage to send Betsy those photos, or food to last until Friday, I’ll take him over when I go to Wal-Mart. I’ve got around $20 to last another week.

I called Tressa at physical therapy to find out if she’d heard from Dr. P/Knee or from GB and nothing. I got dizzy standing up and fell against the wall with my sore shoulder again/ this sucks. I was supposed to call and get an eye appointment Monday but I can’t move, much less think.

Thursday the 15th
I woke up again with low sugar. I’m getting scared and depressed. Last night I went to sleep begging God to just get it over with and take me. The frustration and helplessness is really beginning to get to me. I took insulin at 11 yesterday morning. I’m down to 6 test strips left and then I’m fucked, so I only took 10 units instead of the usual 25 and it still happened again this morning.

I stood up from the bed and nearly fell on my face. I finally gave up after a few hours and called Dr. Mind’s secretary and canceled.

I keep thinking that I need to call Wal-Mart and find out how much those test strips are, but every time I think of it I forget why I went there as soon as I get to the phone. I’ve been trying to pack up my dad’s photos and send them to Betsy, but can’t get up the strength to do it, and I’m really pissed at myself because today’s her birthday and I was determined to have them to her by now. She called me today and we had a nice talk… god I miss her. I’m afraid to even walk out to the car for fear I’ll pass out or lose my balance.

I took the little fan I have in the den behind me apart trying to fix it. I think if I can afford some 3 in 1 oil or some spray silicone I might get it running again, or I hope I can because I can’t afford a new one. It helps drown out the ringing in my ears that’s driving me crazier than I already am.

I went into my Adsense account and I’m getting lots of clicks from my good friend Brenda. I’ve GOT to e-mail her and thank her. I’m afraid to take my insulin at all today. I wonder if this could be a side effect from running out of the Janumet?

It was sunny and over 80 degrees today and I couldn’t make myself leave the apartment. I fell asleep this afternoon and woke up screaming this evening. I had a bizarre nightmare where I peered out the window and Santa Clause as big as life was floating in mid-air just outside of my balcony railing. Then I laughed when I saw that they were using a “cherrypicker rig” to put a big plastic one on the roof. The guy dressed up like Santa began slipping out of his sleigh and screamed for me to help him, but I couldn’t reach far enough out to grab him and he was really terrified. Suddenly he reached out caught my hand and the rig moved outward away from the balcony leaving me hanging in mid-air. He laughed and let go of me and I grabbed a runner on his sleigh. that was as sharp as an ice-skater’s blade. I looked down and one of my Somolian attackers was at the controls and began shaking the rig back and forth. I looked up at Santa and he took off his beard and it was another of my attackers and he began beating me over the head with his gun and I fell. I woke up just before I hit the ground. I spent most of the evening thinking there was snow on the ground outside and it was probably better not to drive on it anyway and stay home.

God, I’m fucked up.

Friday the 16th
No low blood sugar this morning (what a relief) I decided to call Wal-Mart and find out how much the test strips are for the glucose meter. They said they were $15.99, which means somehow Anthem is still discounting them.. I hope. That’ll mean skimping on food until next Friday’s check with noodle mixes and breaded chicken patties and canned ravioli, but I’m in danger of unintentionally killing myself using too much or too little insulin without those strips. This is crazy. I’ve only got around $35 left in checking, which will leave me barely enough to ship those photos and antique frames to Betsy along with my leftover percocet.

It was tough focusing my eyes this morning. I’ve only got two weeks before my driver’s license expires and I’m getting royally pissed at myself for not calling for an appointment… mainly because I won’t have the money for the upfront co-pay that they ask for before they’ll even let me see the doctor. I just got a bill from Anthem; I now owe them almost $160 in monthly fees since January. If they’d just dump me, I might be able to get help with food and/or medical bills. Unfortunately I can’t dump them voluntarily. It’s like the difference of being able to get unemployment after being fired as apposed to quitting… sigh.

I’m beginning to regret not being able to go to see Dr. Mind Thursday; this depression is getting tough to deal with. I’ll sit down for what I think is five minutes and three hours later I’m still sitting there, and over the last few days I haven’t been able to keep the idea of killing myself out of my consciousness. I wake up and I tell myself I’m going to do this, this, this and this. I berate myself that there’s no excuse not to; then I reach for the phone and something stops me and says rather forcefully, “what’s the use?” I’ll see the sun out and think, now’s the perfect time to sow flower seeds out on the balcony or go outside and enjoy a nice drive somewhere with the top down, and I can’t force myself out the door.

I headed out finally this afternoon to go over to Wal-Mart and nearly got to the car when I remembered that the baby plecostomus was left in the freezer and went back up for it. When I got to Wal-Mart’s pharmacy they told me that they’d quoted me the price for the half-prescription of the test strips I’d requested, but the cashier told me they couldn’t break up the box. I had no choice but to buy the whole thing and it ran me $35. Nothing’s left for food or supplest and I’ve just emptied my checking account… FUCK.

I took the dead plecostomus over to Jack’s and they were very nice about it and gave me a new one that’s a little bigger (2 inches). I got out to the car and discovered the gas gauge on the E line. I sat in the parking lot and felt completely deflated of hope. If I ran out of gas on the way home, I’d never be able to walk it with my sore knee to a gas station, and even if I did make it, I wouldn’t have any money to buy it, and would have to resort to begging like some bum. After about 10 minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to chance it. All the way home I kept thinking that I no longer have enough gas to get to Dr. Mind next Wednesday and that’ll make it three weeks in a row.

As it turns out, I was parked on an angle and when I drove home the needle crept just barely above the line; not that that helped, because the last time I ran out of gas that’s where it died too.

I saw a bum begging for money with a cardboard sign and told myself “That’s not me,” and then it hit me-a realization I’ve been denying for years now-it is… that IS me. I was so upset I pulled over and shut off the car because I was so distracted I thought I’d wreck because I wasn’t paying attention. I’m a goddamned hypocrite. When I go to the clinic, when I went to social services, when I sit out in the waiting room to beg for drug-rep samples of prescriptions I can’t afford, I look around me at the others there and tell myself I’m not one of them… but I am… damn it, I am, and it hurts so much. I feel like a little kid crying in frustration in a corner that’s just been punished for something I didn’t do. I think I sat there for about 10 minutes in the side of the exit and then drove home. I’m a bum, a beggar, broke and down on his luck that can’t reconcile in his head that he lives in a downtown penthouse and drives a luxury car. It doesn’t matter that I can’t afford to move financially or physically, or that I owe more on the car than I’d get for it. My god this hurts to think about.

I made it home but the engine coughed once as I was backing into the carport. I’ll have to take the rest of my $2 bills, take my gas can, and walk down to the ridiculously over-priced BP station and buy a gallon or two.

Now that I’ve unintentionally and without knowing it shoplifted my sugar tester batteries, will I be emboldened to try to do it on purpose for something equally important. Should I save back enough to buy printer ink and try to print my own money? Should I go out and try to rob a convenience store hoping to get caught so I can be put in jail so I won’t have to make these decisions, maybe getting killed by a fellow inmate for not joining a gang? It scares me that I seem to have suddenly mentally walked over those railroad tracks and now I’m standing on the proverbial “wrong side of town” in my head and discovered that it wasn’t as scary being here as I thought it’d be.

After she sent me that $30 for the postage, I now can’t send Betsy my leftover painkillers now and she starts work next week. With the calcium spurs in her feet it’ll be hell on her.

I called Cheryl over at Dr. Foot’s when I got home and got her voicemail again.

My ears are ringing really loud in the silence of the den here, so I decided to try using cooking spray as a lubricant for the fan, after all it’s designed to work in the hundreds of degrees, and lo-and-behold it did! I doubt it’ll last long as it’s designed for high temperature cooking not a lubricant, but at least something went right for a change. This is what kills me; I can think of a solution for problems like that, but can’t seem to find a way out of this health or financial maze.

I can’t fall asleep now until around 5 in the morning. I think I’m afraid of going into a glucose coma, so I sit around waiting just in case.

The part of me that wants to end it all and shoot up an entire syringe full of 100 proof Novolog seems to be getting stronger and stronger. I’ve even considered writing up an on-line will. Betsy’d never be able to afford to ship my most loved possessions to Oregon and they’d probably be sold by the state or left on a curb somewhere to rot. Between the nightmares of the attack/attackers, the flashbacks and the doorbells in the middle of the night that aren’t there, my strength to fight is slowly seeping away.

Fortunately I’m still to much of a coward to do it… don’t worry.

Saturday the 17th – Tuesday the 20th
Saturday
I’ve started opening the livingroom curtains trying to let some light into my life… well actually it’s to be able to leave the aquarium lights off during the day. After checking I find I’ve got $4.34 left in my checking account. I feel like hell that I’ve got to make Betsy wait until Friday to mail off the picture frames and antibiotics I promised her three weeks ago.

I still have to play with the fan in the den. It’s like trying to start one of those old propeller planes; you have to spin the blade until it becomes loose enough for the motor to start, which usually takes about a minute and a half of playing with. It’s really strange that it runs fine once it gets started, then freezes when I shut it off. I suspect that the linkage that makes it oscillate is the culprit, but I don’t want to tear it down that far to find out and then not be able to put it back together again.

The trick with the three tones on the answering machine seems to have a limited effect, but still that’s better than nothing. I’m still wondering about the one call that keeps asking me to call a 999 number that doesn’t exist, nor does caller I.D. identify it.

My upper left arm from my shoulder to my elbow really hurt this morning; I’m not sure why, it’s probably muscular.

Thinking about my being no more than a beggar and a bum is really “bumming me out.”

Sunday the 18th
I had another rough night/morning. I couldn’t fall asleep until 5AM and then woke up at 7 to the sound of the non-existent doorbell visitor and couldn’t fall back asleep… groan. I finally dozed off around 11AM and woke up at 3 in the afternoon. I checked my blood sugar and it was 421… this is getting old really fast.

I couldn’t figure out why it was so cold in the apartment and shut the air conditioning off, but that didn’t help. Then I turned on the TV and discovered it was down to 35 last night, and it’s supposed to stay this cold for a while. Ma nature needs a new calendar, it was in the 80s last week.

I’ve had the worst headache all day and I haven’t been able to focus my eyes. I spent the afternoon smelling buttered popcorn all day-god I hope it’s a neighbor instead of a stroke… maybe I’m pregnant?

I am bound and determined-I WILL call for an eye appointment tomorrow- I WILL call for an eye appointment tomorrow- I WILL call for an eye appointment tomorrow- I WILL call for an eye appointment tomorrow- I WILL call for an eye appointment tomorrow… I hope.

Monday the 19th
The first thing this morning I called OSU eye clinic and got an appointment for this Thursday. They want me to bring my Medicaid card, which I no longer have. I hope Medicare covers this. Would they really turn me away if I don’t have the co-pay they mentioned on the phone? Now all I have to do is find a way to print out my medications list and medical history for them.

I still have yesterday’s headache; I wonder if it’s from my eye problem. I got really tired and wound up falling asleep around 8PM last night, up at 1AM, back to sleep at 4AM… groan.

4 collection agency calls today, all live instead of the robo-caller.

Tuesday the 20th
I woke up screaming this morning. I relived the attack in a dream last night with one difference; he was using a hand hatchet instead of the gun to beat me. I just keep bleeding all over the place and couldn’t stop screaming no matter how many pieces they chopped me into; which made them hack at me even more.

I put some laundry together and took it downstairs. One guaranteed way to meet all of your neighbors is to not shave for a few days, dress up in your most embarrassing clothes, and take a pile of smelly clothes down to the washers-you’ll meet every neighbor you have.

I’ve got a $2 MegaMillions ticket for a few weeks ago and I got into my stash and picked out $5 worth of my bicentennial 50-cent pieces to put into the gas tank Wednesday morning… let’s just hope the car makes it to the gas station two blocks away.

After I discovered the freezer empty, I did an inventory. I’ve got noodle and sauce mix and cans of tuna to last until Friday.

I’m going to have to get in touch with Lawyer K soon about my medications when I go into the hospital in September for my knee operation. Now that GB is going through my hospital bills and refusing to pay for any medications that don’t have to do with the knee surgery, I’ve got to find a way to get Grant Hospital to allow me to bring my own stuff, because I can’t afford to pay for theirs.

I’m frankly shocked that I don’t have another ulcer. If anything goes wrong; even the tiniest thing, I’ll be in trouble, like I was when I had the flat tire. Hopefully it’ll be warm enough outside to put the top down to see Dr. Mind tomorrow. It’s been three weeks-I try not to go that long without seeing her. I turn another year older in a little more than a week and a half… alone. God the parties my friends used to throw me… sigh

I lost my balance again this morning and banged my knee on the wall… par for the course. Tomorrow morning should be interesting, I’ll have to set the clock/radio to make sure I don’t miss Dr. Mind and I’ll have to leave myself time to get to the gas station first.

Wednesday the 21st thru Friday the 23rd
Wednesday:
I ran out of gas trying to get to my appointment with Dr. Mind… fortunately it was only 20 feet or so from the gas pump. It was an adventure pushing the car to the pump then as it started rolling downhill towards Rich St. trying to scramble in to hit the brakes before it caused an accident… then pushing it backwards uphill to the pump again. The BP is gouging customers because it’s the only gas station downtown and the price was $3.20 a gallon. Then the middle-eastern clerk had never seen fifty cent pieces before which delayed me even further.

My session with Dr. Mind went well. I got out all of my frustrations and concerns about my thoughts of suicide.

I determined that I would do something constructive when I got home, so I set down an outline for not one-but two articles to write. One concerning Nepal’s newly formed government sending out official invitations for gays to marry on the slopes of Mt. Everest, and another on the new $100 bill.

Thursday the 22nd
I got up early and knocked out the article on gay weddings on Mt. Everest, and then to my shock took all of only 2 hours to knock out the 2nd article on the new hundred-dollar bill. After only being published once every other month or so, I actually published two in one day!!! Then I took a shower and checked on Google Earth for the location of the new OSU eye clinic and left.

Unfortunately it wasn’t where Google said it was, but I found it eventually and still got there on time. Thankfully they didn’t demand a co-pay. The wait was nearly two hours just to get in to see the pre-exam nurse, then another half an hour to see the eye doctor’s assistant who gave me the eye exam, then another 45 minutes to see the doctor to give me the results.

The reason I’m having so much trouble in my eyes lately is that I’ve developed cataracts in both eyes. He said he saw the remnants of the old hemorrhage, but that the unfocused left eye is a cataract and that one is growing in the right eye as well; which is why my vision is worse. He asked me if I thought the colors I see have been getting paler and I said yes but I thought it was psychological; he said no it’s the cataract yellowing the inside of my eye. I’ve had several people comment on how “colorful” my blog banners have been, but until now I didn’t know it was because I was over over-compensating for it. He warned that I need surgery and soon before they grow larger, and wants to see me back in two weeks… not in time for my eye-test for my license.

He said lots fo people drive with only one eye and that I should be able to see enough out of my right one to pass the test. I left the eye clinic just in time for rush hour traffic.

What next?

As it turned out, rush hour was a blessing with slower moving cars. With the drops they put in my eyes during the exam, I wasn’t able to completely focus my eyes and the bright light they use to look inside my pupils to dilate them also blinded me. I had to sit in my car for a while to be able to barely drive home without killing myself or anyone else. I couldn’t focus or read my computer screen without squinting and using the glasses at the end of my nose. Normally I don’t need glasses to read the screen. It made me feel old.

I had time to think and came to realize that the reason I have so much trouble with strangers is that I didn’t used to be afraid of them, in fact I welcomed them. When those three came up to me, I just assumed they were three of hundreds that came before them who were hopelessly lost in a maze of duplicate apartment building numbers and hoped I would help… so I smiled a welcome at them with a cheerful, “Hello!” and only then saw his gun. Since then I’ve been shy to downright worried when one even comes close to approaching me.

Friday the 23rd
My eyesight thankfully cleared up enough in my right eye that I could read the screen this morning.

GB didn’t deposit my check today… FUCK! Just when I was feeling safe too. I knew I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I know that e-mailing and calling will do nothing, so I’ll have to wait until Monday. I decided to occupy my pissed-off mind today by combining two articles I’d written about American right-wing fundamentalism and then updated the result to talk about the Tea Party movement. I submitted it this afternoon, but so far it hasn’t been published. It’s a bitch waiting for some editor to read through it, but I had to agree to let BlogCritics publish my material first before it can be published somewhere else.

They have a much better readership than my blogs do, so for now I’ll have to live with someone who doesn’t agree with me editing my work. The good news is that after they publish it, I can publish my own version if I don’t agree with what they did to it. Often it’s better as they’re college educated professional editors and I’m just a blogger… we’ll see.

It hurts like hell between my left shoulder and elbow and I can’t figure out why, especially when I try to reach around myself and scratch my back. Maybe it’s from pushing the car. I can’t tell if it’s muscular or bone. GOD I MISS THE GYM over at physical therapy. Risking going to the one downstairs without a spotter is still out of the question. That’s another call I’ll have to make on Monday.

At least my den fan is still working.

At least after seeing Dr. Mind last Wednesday, I don’t feel like killing myself as much this week. I’ve only had one flashback and no nightmares.

Monday the 26th
The revamped and updated editorial on the Republican Tea Party was published Friday evening and was a huge success with commenter from all over the world on the Blogcritics’ site agreeing and debating.

Despite that my right hand hurts like hell and I fear I may have fractured or broken something, and typing this is definitely not fun. The GB deposit finally showed up on my checking account this morning. I didn’t eat yesterday and was starving (at one point I was tempted to try Mischief’s dry cat food) but I settled for reconstituted dried chopped onions with a little salad dressing, which is all I have left in the cupboard. Anyway, I headed out to Wal-Mart at first light and picked up some groceries. After the rent, electric and car insurance I’ve got $71 to last two weeks, so I chose food over drugs and bought about $45/8 day’s worth of groceries with the gas guage reading empty again. I got really pissed as I drove past gas stations selling it at $2.85 @ gallon because I paid $3.15 last Wednesday. After groceries, I’ve got just under $25 left; $15 of which has to go to mailing Betsy the pictures and my leftover antibiotics and pain pills. Ten bucks-ten bucks to buy 7 more days of groceries… God help me is something even trivial comes up.

I got home, put all my supplies away and programmed the bill payments into my account… and that’s when I slammed my fist onto my desk.

I forgot I have to renew my driver’s license by Friday, and didn’t save back any money for it.

My hand is kind of swollen and it hurts like hell when I flex my fingers.

What next, what fucking next? And it’s only noon. The rest of the day should be an adventure.

For about 9 months now I’ve been plagued with a problem in my eyes that now makes sense; if it’s a bright sunny day, I lose any perception of the color black and it’d get difficult to tell what color a traffic light was against a bright sky. With cataracts inside both eyes, when the sunlight hits them they catch that light. The effect is like trying to see around a bright flashlight in a completely dark cave.

I had another of my “comas” where I sat down at noon and three hours later I thought it was 10 minutes later. Dr. Mind calling to say she had a meeting on Wednesday and rescheduling for 1PM instead of our usual noon shook me out of it. I lost three hours that I’d meant to use to pack up the pictures.

Last weekend’s headache went away finally.

The knot on my left elbow began swelling again this evening and I squeezed it and a little puss came out. The skin where it got swollen before has been contracting, and after it goes down it cracks and gets hard and flakey. An infection probably got in, but nothing to be too worried about. After a few more squeezes the swelling went way down. I think if I keep putting rubbing alcohol on it, it’ll be okay.

While going through my Eisenhower dollars I remembered a Big Boy’s waitress I knew in Chicago near Midway airport that’d I’d see every time I was in town. One day I complimented her on a beautiful silver medallion she wore around her neck. She told me she’d taken a big Eisenhower dollar I’d given her, had it polished to almost chrome shininess and had it mounted as a necklace. She told me she tells everyone who asks about it that it was the nicest tip she ever got. It made me think of all the people I’ve touched in one way or another and it made me smile. I had a guy tell me once that he recognized me from when I used to deliver pizzas at Ohio State. He said I was his earliest childhood memory because I gave him a little toy Domino’s Pizza “Noid” around Christmas.

One of mine (thought not the first) was living near a railroad crossing and running out when a train approached and the men in the caboose would throw candy to all of us kids. I wonder what would happen if one of those men recognized me…

Tuesday the 27th
The swelling at my elbow has gone down, so it looks like draining it did the trick.

I’m trying to get myself into some sort of mental shape to try to make myself go downstairs to the gym everyday and at least use the stationary bike and do some light lifting. I’ve tried before only to come back because of the number of strangers down there. it’s be great if I could because then I could sauna and shower afterwards and not have to use my own hot water.

I got a ton of collection agency calls today so I guess the three-tone trick didn’t work. My knee really bothered me when I woke up, which served to remind me to call Tressa at physical therapy. She said she hadn’t heard anything, so I called Dr. Knee’s office but only got Cheryl’s voice mail. She never called me back.

When I got to get my license renewed tomorrow I’ve decided to do it after seeing Dr. Mind. That’ll give me all afternoon to get my eyes focused. Since I’m there I’m going to pick up my Cymbalta, which thankfully is still free.

I experimented with my e-mail and tried to text my good friend Brenda and it worked. I just have to be careful who I text now because they get charged for them. She’d e-mailed me all pissed because she thought it wasn’t fair that I was all bothered about getting the photos to Betsy, and I told her she must’ve missed my earlier entry about Betsy sending me $30 and feeling like shit about spending it on food instead of using it for what it was supposed to be for. Anyway we reconnected, which was nice.

This whole financial thing should’ve happened last year, but I was given a reprieve because the electric meter went on strike and the city didn’t fix it for a year, so I had that extra $90-120 a month to buy groceries and prescriptions. Now that they’ve fixed it, I screwed.

The sudden burst of writing energy left me and I’m really disappointed. I thought I could keep the momentum going and polish off some of the reviews I owed Blogcritics, but it’s left me again.

I hope it’s sunny tomorrow.

Wednesday the 28th thru Friday the 30th
In no particular order…

My good friend Brenda sent me a birthday card with $25 in it. I wish I could spend it on something other than cat and fish food, and enough groceries to last until Friday of next week. God love her. I sent her an e-mail and said I was making a little statue of her to put on my dash board.

A huge internal controversy has sprung up over Blogcritics insisting that we not self-publish our own material until 24 hours after they do because Google apparently is trying to give BC a hard time. Many writers (myself included) disagree, but what can you say when my own stuff has ten times the number of readers there as on my own sites here? BC is also insisting that we add a line to our articles that we publish afterward that it was originally published at BC first and link to it. With everyone complaining of the hassle of trying to add a link code to each of their articles, I posted a quick and painless way that our Blogspot HTML could do it automatically each time we published an article and now I’m a hero because it never occurred to anyone to do it that way, so I’m getting glowing e-mails thanking me and calling me a genius.

I was in a really deep funk for a day or so because I failed my eye test for my driver’s license. I’m really depressed because it seems things only get worse instead of anything getting better in my life. My upcoming eye exam might change things, but I’ll have to pay an additional $26 to get the status on my license changed which I can’t afford, so I’ll begin driving illegally now. If I’m caught I automatically get transported to the police station, my car expensively impounded and I’ll have to find a ride home.

I finally posted Betsy’s package with the family pictures and the antique frames, and some of my leftover painkillers and antibiotics. I was talking to her on the phone trying to find which address she wanted me to send them to, and discovered even more painkillers I didn’t realize I had. I had to open the package and rearrange things and didn’t realize until I resealed it that I’d forgotten to put the CD-rom discs of the photos off of Dad’s computer back in. I’ll just have to e-mail them to her.

I got a letter today from my stepsister Charlene. In it I found what appears to be a letter that my father posted years ago that he sent to her by mistake. In it he expresses his sorrow that we lost touch and that he still wanted us to be close friends despite our differences. Since I never got this letter until five years after he died, I never knew. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for this. Fortunately around 1999 I reestablished contact with him when I found out he didn’t’ remember a lot of our family life in his old age and became his friend instead of his son on my own.

March 2010

2010-03-02T23:20:00.007-05:00

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.