Saturday, I was all ready to write one of the most depressing posts I’ve ever written and shared with you all some utterly disgusting incidents while I was being sized up in Pittsburgh. All I wanted was to let out was the worst of the worst. I was even going to include a warning up front not to read further if easily grossed out.
I didn’t do any of those things. I ran out of time, and I still haven’t figured out how to use this fucking laptop without doing a real number on my neck which the P.T. (Tamar, the best P.T. on the planet.) finally fixed on Friday that I promptly fucked up again by getting back on the computer. I have come to the conclusion that I don’t like pain. My back hurt something fierce on Saturday. I couldn’t hear. My sex organs didn’t and don’t work as they should. (Not just on Saturday.) I’d had enough. More than enough. I was beginning that great fall into the abyss, but I didn’t think I’d still be alive to hit bottom. I’d be gone long before that. I’d had enough.
The next day, we planned a brunch to celebrate Lydon’s twenty-ninth birthday and his engagement to Joanna- (not at the Bowery Ballroom). Chip’s mom and our nephew Nye were there as well as the usual set of dubious Lipmans. (Bagels, nova, the whole schpiel.) I popped an oxycodone two hours prior to arrival. Back pain gone. I announced to the entire group my litany of non-lethal, but still real lousy “cascading problems.” (The most lethal thing I’ve got to deal with is I. Even more than an upper respiratory infection. Either can kill me. I think the former is more likely to get me than the latter.)
But pain free, life feels different. Maybe even worth living. I no longer have the need to disgust you or myself. I think that’s serious progress. In one five milligram little pill. If only I could figure how best to place this fucking computer, so my neck stops hurting like bloody hell.
Tomorrow is stent day. Right now, I don’t think I’m very deaf. I could be and have not a clue. I’m here sitting in the living room by myself. But yesterday, in a room full of people, it was rough. My mother and I were having problems hearing the conversation. You don’t know how miserable it is asking someone to repeat something, again. Even when you know you’re speaking to someone who loves you, you can just hear that tiny edge in his or her voice because it’s a pain in the ass to have someone say to you, “Excuse me, what did you say?” Over and over again. I can better understand why so many of us (I sheepishly raise my hand), have difficulty dealing with older people. All I can say, hey guys, you just have to have a little bit more patience. They don’t mean to be difficult. And when they are, you’ll recognize the difference instantly.
It is now Tuesday. Stent day. I head to the ENT in about a half hour. I became very upset last night. As I’ve bitched about (I think) over and over again about my short-term memory problems. (Often I don’t have one.) Spelling confusion. (I never misspelled anything in my life…until now.) I also found out that I was completely befuddled by long division. Long fucking division. Yes, I had taken an oxycodone. (Back and neck.) But that wouldn’t make long division into the math equivalent of a Rubik’s Cube. (I could never figure those things out.) I was and am freaked by this.
And will I ever know if a part of my brain is damaged (during the eight-week medically-induced coma) or am I just fucked up by the medication I’m taking. I’m afraid I’ll be on these “psychotropic” drugs forever. Anyone want to risk reducing these babies? Not when I figure while on all these drugs, there’s still a chance of an “Au revoir, mes petits!”
Right now, all I want to do is give my head and neck a fucking break and put this computer down and far, far away. First Since When submission is this week. (For an agent, not a publisher.) Oh boy.
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