Tutti Frutti

Fear is corrosive. I had a full-fledged panic attack and then relived it the day following, because the scene was the same, I had a cough, and I was constipated. Not much to panic about. (Does anyone remember Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait scream after she thinks that the husband who has been murdered has apparently not been murdered? Charles Grodin, the husband’s lackey and Dyan Cannon’s lover, is quick on the take? He says, “She just saw a mouse.” Warren Beatty is looking around quizzically for said mouse. Grodin thinks quickly, She relived it.”)

Well I relived the “The Coughs From Hell” that I described all too vividly in my last post. Oh my god, I can’t breathe. Just heading back to the john where the initial panic occurred was more than enough to send me into a tailspin. Like a soldier on his first stint back in Kandahar where his buddy was blown to bits. Well, now he’s back in Kandahar again. This time, no one gets blown to kingdom come, buddy or otherwise, but that poor soldier might as have lost his best friend. He suffers as if were happening again. In real time.

Fear eats you alive.

No more playing with oxycodone. Not that was ever my intention though it had become tempting of late. Fuzz the fear. Now who can find fault with that? Everyone, that’s who. If I made oxy my new best friend tempting though it might be. So far, no evil reactions to the huge increase in Effexor. And I must live through whatever panic attacks come my way. And trust me, this is not like the nauseating butterflies before a major exam. (Yeah, I never had any perspective whatsoever. So I would always worry excessively (and needlessly) before exams. Using the tired joke yet again, when I hear the whirring helicopters, I’m back in ‘Nam.)

I inadvertently discovered why mucous was clinging, glue-like, to my throat, causing what I now know were bronchial spasms. I hit a big, fat emotional wall at around eleven last night. I’d had enough. I had to sleep. That’s my only means of escape. Fuck brave, strong Franny. No, she doesn’t exist. C’mon, I’ve been telling y’all I’m a wuss for months. Please believe me. I am a coward. Hey, if I weren’t, I’d probably be dead, so I suppose wussiness has its benefits. (Glass half full again. What am I thinking?)

In my hurry to get to bed and snuggle down with my Lunesta. (Don’t you just love those gentle butterflies? The ad agency should get a bonus for them. I buy into the whole butterfly/tinkerbell concept completely. And that was even before I started taking it. Now, hands off my fucking butterflies, or I’ll break your face.)

I went to bed without medication that dries me out. (Since ARDS, I’ve produced way too much mucous. Spiriva solved that one.) But I found, on waking up this morning, there was no more glue in my throat. When I coughed, the damned things were productive. Say what? Spoke to my allergist (who seems to know more than all the damned pulmonologists combined). He put me on a nebulizer containing Albuterol and Pulmicort. Fuck if I know anything about this shit except it will stop the spasms that have, until now, caused me to cough uncontrollably…

I love this man.

So I sit here listening to Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti wishing it had been recorded with his original lyrics:

Tutti Frutti, good booty

If it don’t fit, don’t force it

You can grease it, make it easy

Fucking awesome.

It's Nixon, By A Nose!

Have you all forgotten me? No, sweet ones, you haven’t. I wish I could. No such luck. Damn. The oxy saga finally comes to a flaccid ending. (If endings can be such. Well, they can now. You wanna argue with an extremely pissy, ill, menopausal woman? Are you crazy?)

I never felt comfortable using the oxy as my “anti-suicide pill” or as my “mood enhancer” though it performed the latter function with aplomb. My mother, of all people, was so happy to see her usually miserable daughter so gregarious, so social, so relaxed. I suppose, if my choice were that or nothing, depending on my mood, I might as well go for the narcotic that would quickly have me addicted and wanting more. Not a good look.

My psychopharmacologist missed last Thursday’s phone appointment to solve my conundrum: misery or not giving a shit, salut! What the fuck was that all about? Chip thought I didn’t want the appointment rescheduled, didn’t reschedule it assuming that everyone agreed that oxycodone was everyone’s drug of choice. I knew that was no solution, and I was shocked that Ira (the psychopharmacologist) would go along with this. We had our belated appointment yesterday. I was only taking the oxy when my back was not happy and was yammering for a hit of something, thank you very much. And that’s what I did.

Ira thinks that last week’s walk to the very edge of the precipice may have been partly caused by withdrawal from those few measly pills I’d taken, I thought, so prudently. So I thought. I’ve since gathered, best to take it regularly, on a schedule, for as long as necessary, and them wean yourself off the stuff by cutting your dose little by little. I know this shit. I just haven’t had to deal with this all that often in my life.

Yes, I know you can’t go cold turkey on psychotropic drugs, as my internist so lovingly refers to them. I’ve been weaned off those before. I know the drill. But getting weaned off anything is pretty unusual these days. It feels to me that I just keep adding drugs and upping dosages. Nothing fun, mind you. But perhaps life saving, so I shouldn’t complain that they don’t have me doing the hula, cannula, tubing and all, in my living room. Though wouldn’t that be fun if I had the urge? Hmmmm. Oxy, oxy, oxy.

Resolved after my appointment with Ira, Effexor has been upped by fifty percent. (Effexor just kills sex drive. Whoopee. One more thing to look forward to.) That’s a whole lot of Effexor. I should know in a day or two if I can tolerate that high a dose. If so, I’ll need some time to see if I hop back from that precipice and contemplate dancing the hula. (Sorry, y’all, that’s the best I can do.) If I spent last week being proverbially kicked in the nuts from oxycodone withdrawal, I’d really not like to go there again.

I’m no longer in excruciating pain. That’s one reason I can be so blasé about dropping the oxy. Slowly, achingly, my back improves. Maybe, I can get by with Alleve. (Glass half full.)

I can’t catch a break. Just when I think its safe to go back in the water…(Actually, I wonder when that might be. I love the ocean. I even love swimming pools. Being wheeled along Long Island’s gorgeous beaches comes in second, though just by a rather large and eminently caricature-able nose, to Richard Nixon walking along the beach in a suit and wing tips. I’d be ridiculous. (Though he wins the ridiculous contest, no question. Certainly not in my mind.) And impossible to push along- at least on the dry sand. What a nightmare.

No today, and it has been happening since the heat has poured out of our radiators, my throat and sinuses are filled with a glue-like mucous (Nasty but healthy mucous. No funky colors. When that happens, no if that happens, then I’ll be up shit’s creek.) I can’t get the crap out without ever more violent coughing. I was coughing like that when I first came out of the hospital. That’s when coughing was responsible for two fractured ribs. Albeit hairline cracks, but cracks just the same. That’s not normal. That’s fucked up. This time around, my hearty pecs protect my ribs and allow me to breathe through the scarred wreckage that are my lungs. (Yes, I worked on the pecs some, but they really appeared without any conscious help from me. Amazing what the body can do when forced to. I love those damned pecs. They’re seriously multi-purpose. They also keep my sagging middle-aged breasts a bit less saggy than they would if left to their own devices.)

So I’m coughing again. Instead of cracking ribs, these coughs mostly throw my back out of joint. The clavicles are a nice easy target that my coughs toy with regularly. I also get lumps on my back just about anywhere you slice it, and I point them out to Rachel, my very fine masseuse, as if she’d miss them on her own. Oy.

Today, I had finished stretching my neck when I was overcome with Coughs From Hell. Those are the ones that fail to move much of anything, go on for what feels like an eternity, and make it impossible for me to catch my breath. Oh shit. I can’t catch my breath. I panic, because besides making me a fine set of pecs, my body panics all on it’s own with no help from me. During a tiny respite, I take my four o’clock pills twenty minutes early, because that batch contains a Klonopin. I thought that was clever of me to do that, don’t you? Too late, I was already in the thick of it.

The best cough suppressant is oxycodone. I swear. If I hadn’t quit Brownies I’d make a Brownies promise to you all. Just when I thought I had this one figured out, no more oxy, the insidious drug calls out, “Wait for me!” (“ Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.”) I have to wait and see. If this fucking cough is what I have to look forward to all winter, it’ll be…long time no see, Mr. Codone!

Old Brown Water, Keep on Rollin'...

I didn’t expect I’d be writing so soon, but I need to. (Even if I fuck up my neck doing so.) Today began like any other day. For forty-five minutes or so, the hot water chose to exit the faucets brown. Calling downstairs, no one else had yet complained of the problem. As magically brown water appeared, magically it disappeared.

The need for clean hot water usually is something less than an emergency. This was too, but I often can’t tell the difference anymore between a real emergency and a not-so-real emergency. (I still have a vague fear of the shower.) Well today, I had to shower before Rachel the fine (and I have learned though it never crossed my mind she wasn’t) extremely kind masseuse arrived. Time was a wasting as my faucets gushed brown. I’ve become increasingly aware that when I get tense, my whole head tightens up. Obviously, this has become particularly problematic when I have a screwed-up painful neck and head. (Limited range of motion blah, blah, blah…) Yes, I am well aware that this “head” problem is quite different from the one that requires oodles of psychotropics for me to maintain a semblance of emotional stability.

So I got tense. I took an oxycodone. It helped both head and screwed-up back a bit. My fine masseuse arrives and is horrified to see my upper thighs covered with very ugly bruises. She is more horrified that they were caused by the splendid deep-tissue work from the prior week’s massage. She gets upset. She’s not supposed to do that. I said, “Yeah, I know, first do no harm." I’m not concerned about the bruises. I must have a high tolerance for pain and for whatever reason, my legs have always been tight. No, I have beautifully stretched muscles. I stretch like a maniac. I have to. With one quarter lung capacity, there isn’t a whole lot else I can do. This is not a stretching issue. It’s a fascia issue. Massage opens fascia releasing pent up emotions, stress and makes a person just feel plain better.

My massage therapist says she won’t go into the tissue as deeply as she did last week. This really rattled me. I was soooo relaxed last week and my body just let her in. This was not Nazi massage. So I turned a little purple. I know how tight I am , and there is no painless way around opening me up. I know it. I expect it. I accept it.

I feel guilty that I made my poor masseuse think she was Dr. Frankenstein or worse, Dr. Mengele. Guilt makes me tense. Where did I have a real hard time letting go? My goddamned head that’s where. And Chip, angel that he is, started to make a cheesecake while I was getting worked on. He forgot that the first part of the recipe requires use of the blender. Oops. I’m feeling guilty, trying to relax while knowing I have upset my masseuse for taking the damned pain, and the blender is blending in the next room. Not a surprise, this was not my best session.

After the session, I tried to explain to her why I didn’t give a shit whether my whole body was one big bruise. No, I didn’t burst out sobbing though it would have been very helpful if I had. But I did go a step past weepy. I’ve been weepy a lot. I can do weepy on the turn of a dime. My problem is that I haven’t ever been able to get past weepy. Not in three and a half years. I spoke to my masseuse, and this is what came out:

I don’t care about the bruising or the pain. I’ve had so much taken from me that I refuse to give up anymore. Back pain, neck pain, bruising. Who the fuck cares? I’m locked up (figuratively) in my apartment. I’ve lost the life I loved. I just want what has become crapass chronic pain to disappear. You add that to my inability to breathe, I don’t have much left. So if I have to walk on hot coals to make this extraneous shit go away, I have no problem with it. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?

At this point, I’ve gone past weepy. My fine masseuse tells me she happened to work on the area (somewhere in or near my gut?) that is tied to emotions. She finally gave me a reason bruising is no good. Bruising can lead to scar tissue which she must later break through to get back to where we were prior to the bruising, That’s logical. This makes perfect sense. I can wrap myself around that. I don’t want bruising, because it may very well be making me less able to rid myself of my chronic pain.

That’s where we left it. I feel low. The oxycodone has long worn off. My fucking back hurts. Looking to the right is a no-no. (If nothing else, the left feels better than the right. Sometimes we need to grasp on to tiny things, because that’s all there are. Pick a mote. Any mote.) I had to write this down. Perhaps, I’ll feel better, Better enough to walk my three laps in the hallway gasping for breath. Oh yay. Isn’t life grand?

P.S. Yeah, I was right. My neck feels worse after typing out this post. Let’s just hope I feel better. (Can’t get no worse.)

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

Q-Tip

Another day, another post. Confirm that one of the common side effects of oxycodone is nausea. How great is that? I love to feel nauseated. I drool just thinking about it. Fuck it I’m taking the shit. Anyway. I drool even more for debilitating back pain, so I think we have a perfect match, don’t you?

The only time I ever despaired was the first chemo Saturday when the miracle anti-nausea drugs didn’t work. I received the chemo the day prior and appeared to handle it so well, Chip decided to spend Saturday moving the Boy into his new apartment. By the time Chip had come home, I think I had managed to drag myself up from the floor where I had lain prostrate for hours asking anybody, anywhere I could think of to make it stop. I even left a message for the oncologist on call who had the brilliant suggestion of taking more of the miracle pills that had previously been useless. Those remained useless. Uselessness on top of uselessness if very stupid. Perhaps he thought if I could distract myself from my misery, it could somehow help. Please.

In my arsenal of drugs, there was nothing to make it stop. Nothing to make it even an iota better. Trust me, there is nothing worse in your life than experiencing nausea that shows no signs of looking for a new gut to torment while it’s happy and comfy in yours. Try that in Guantanamo. (The hell of hells in the hell of hells. Nice.) It’s not like stomach flu. You get sick. You drink ginger ale. Mom’s very nice to you. You get off from school, and it’s all right. (That is I think it’s not too bad…)

This was nausea as I’ve never seen before or since. It neither worsened nor improved. And who’s to know when it would ease? It had too sometime, right? Will I have to go through this every treatment? (Good god.) I wanted to hang myself if that were so. (I wanted to hang myself without waiting for Round 2.) I was in tears when Chip made it home. I begged him never, ever to leave me on chemo weekends. He wouldn’t. He didn’t. He must have been freaked by agonizing nausea neither of us were led to expect. The Boy (bless his heart) found me weed fast. I can tell you that while it doesn’t solve the entire nausea problem, it made a magical difference and worked from toke one. Hey, I really never needed a toke two. I coughed like a mad woman. Who knew I was in the embryonic stages of viral pneumonia that helped make me the person I am today. (Somehow, I feel I should commission a monument for that bout of pneumonia. It needs to be real big and in very poor taste.)

The nausea started to dissipate sometime on Monday.

This oxycodone nausea, while annoying, is kid’s stuff.

Saw the ENT yesterday. The left ear is still no good. I have new antibiotic drops which should fix the “Problem” whatever it might be. It’s been about a month since the fever and ear infection and the heavy-duty antibiotics. Why do my ears still hurt? My hearing has gotten worse over the past week. What’s that about? After a recent shower, I touched my left eardrum extremely gently with a Q-Tip. Searing pain went from my ear to points all about my head. That’s just not right. My ENT said I must have scratched it, because there was a blood clot in the ear. But when I pulled that goddamned Q-Tip out, there was a bit of dried blood on it not fresh. The dude knows the drill. And he sure doesn’t want the blame of killing me off laid on him I can tell you. And he’s a very nice man. I’ll do as he asks.

I changed my profile picture today. I got my first haircut in over a year. My truly talented and sweetie pie of a hair stylist came over on Sunday. She kicked ass yet again. I absolutely Love my gray hair. (It really looks good.) It’s too bad it doesn’t show up in the picture. So I look great, and I’m ready to conquer the world. All right, well I can walk the long hallway outside the apartment. With copious oxygen, mind you.) I’m very proud. My profile picture now includes my ever-present accessory: the cannula and the tubing that accompanies it.

What the fuck is the point of all this?

P.S. Mazel Tov Bob! I imagine you still have a job. FYI, Fatboy has now become an integral part of a brand new playlist. I call the playlist “Newish.” It certainly is for me. The hip and initiated can have a good laugh at my expense. I’m only happy to help.

Marijuana Toast

As promised, today was psychopharmacologist day. Given that oxycodone, if it hasn’t rid me of pain (the stuff dulls it down some), has given me a life back, the rest of my drugs will remain as is. What’s really funny is that I had no life to begin with. I guess the good news is that I’m out of the minus column. (You know, I’m afraid I’m really going to regret saying that.)

I didn’t want to fuck with what works. I’m way too close to suicidal to be stupid and try and wean myself off some of this crap now. (And there’s a lot of it.) No, sweethearts, I’m not feeling the least bit suicidal and haven’t since I emotionally recovered from my recent upper respiratory infection. (Put me face to face with death, why suffer longer than you have to blah, blah, blah?) Also, going into the winter is a bad time for me to screw around with mood-altering drugs because, if you all remember I suffer from S.A.D- Seasonal Affective Disorder along with Anxiety, Depression and PTSD. (Knowing that I suffered most of my life from S.A.D. explains so much the crud of my painful adolescence. I understand behavior that otherwise remained inexplicable to me. I feel like I should always have slapped on my person huge gummy red letters, “How ‘bout that!” Not quite To Sir With Love, but that’s as close as I’m ever going to get.) Now, I just sit in front of a light box, and I remain stable. I sure wish I had it back then. (The light box. But come to think of it, the huge gummy letters would have been cool.)

Oh, why huge gummy, red letters?

I don’t know. They just popped up into my head. They feel right. Let’s try and explicate them, shall we? There’s no Bocarde around to tell me my stream of consciousness is all wrong. Which it may very well be. But I’m sorry Mr. Bocarde, you can’t make that determination. Well, you can, but who would listen? Certainly not I. What’s even lovelier (than those big, fat sticky letters) is that I don’t give a shit. And odd man that he is (was? I hope not), he’d probably like that. I think he would also enjoy like this foul blog. (“Foul” was one of my darling Suzanne’s favorite words.) Bocarde loved Suzanne.

How could he not? She ripped apart everything he had us read. Those precious works he found so important and special that he wished to share them with us. He always gave her an A+ because she shred every single point he made about any of these beloved works- like Portrait of an Artist…one rip at a time.

He ate that shit up. Bizarre as you were, you, sir, you were one of the only interesting teachers in the whole goddamned school system. But let’s not speak of such things now.

Huge, gummy red letters. Ahh! They’re so perfectly clumsy, awkward, bizarre, and impossible to miss. The adolescent me knew only a few who what went on in my fevered, little brain. (Sorry to say, it’s not all that different from the crap you’ve been reading. Except I confess my tough-guy countenance is pure fantasy. Well not exactly. I hang my head in shame. I’m actually a very sweet person. No one would ever think so from reading this damned blog, but I confess. It’s kind of true. But no matter. This time, I’d be noticed all right. I think that’s kind of cool. Hey, it’s a helluva lot better than a zit the size of Mount Vesuvius. Oh, I’d sure wear my letters with pride. Yo, I don’t consider this humiliating. I find it liberating. My scarlet letters. You know, that is kind of sweet. Warped perhaps, but sweet.

Back to teachers in the Port Washington Union Free School District. One day Mrs. El Kadi who, for those who didn’t have the pleasure of her acquaintance, was a mad woman. Flat-out bonkers. One class she announces, “Don’t you find it interesting that the smartest person in the room has the smallest forehead?” I slump in my seat. Shit. The class is looking around. Obviously, they can’t discern forehead size like Mrs. El Kadi. Finally, she breaks the suspense and points to the back of the room. At me. No one in the room gives a shit. But I’m mortified. What was this woman thinking? Who said she was qualified to teach anyone anything ever? Good old Port giving the enfeebled or just plain mad a chance to live a normal life.

Back to me and the present. After the visit with the psychopharmalocogist, Chip made an appointment at my behest with the Heebie Jeebie Lady chiropractor. Oh how soon they forget! My goilfriend the doctor recommended her because she was “a good practitioner” and right in the neighborhood. My beloved chiropractor is in Washington Heights. Among weekly visits from Tamar, the best P.T. on the planet, Rachel, the fine masseuse, and Kristen my angel, my therapist who comes twice a week, I’m physically unable to make the trip up to Washington Heights to Laurie, my darling chiropractor. (It ends up about an hour each way.) I do miss her terribly.

Besides the screwed up back (which I actually think is responding to all the attention paid to it), my head and neck decided to get in on the fun and flip out too. Sons-of-bitches. Here’s where the Heebie Jeebie Lady comes in. Since she stopped coloring her hair, she doesn’t give me those same heebie-jeebies she had years ago when first saw her. I knew I needed to see a chiropractor and fast. I really was desperate. ) With each passing moment, it became more and more difficult to turn my head left or right. (Besides being rather restricting, it was painful as all bloody hell.) C’mon, don’t I already have enough on my “plate” to contend with? It doesn’t work that way, does it?

But as she was on all my past visits, she is a fine practitioner. She’s good too. I have a head and neck back. You really don’t know how much you’d miss them if they flat-out went cuckoo on you. Not crazy. Loony tunes I know intimately. No, that they just don’t work. (I can’t even imagine what stroke patients go though.) Let’s just say you miss them an awful lot. Now, they’re behaving themselves, and I know have a chiropractor in the hood if I need her again. I think she has a new name. From now on, she’s “The Good Practitioner.”

Flattery will get you everywhere, even when you’re dealing with lumps of flesh. Oh they know. Yes they do. They just remain impassive as always. Slowly, but surely, they poke up their little invisible antennae and if you coo just right, they’ll cut you a break and stop leaving you in agony. It’s a subtle cross between love and diplomacy. Difficult. But left in the right hands, they’ll- the lumps of horrifically painful flesh - eventually cut you a break. And the oxycodone sure doesn’t hurt.

Even if it may be making me queasy. (Damnit!) Hello marijuana toast! (A most beautiful and often necessary invention.)

Heat

I never fancied myself a poet. Nor have a even tried to write one since sixth grade when we had to.

But I have discovered the source of the Nile: I can galumph forward in my life with oxycodone. Oxycodone! Doesn't that sound beautiful. It positively sings. No, I get no highs. Not ever. (I take a meagre five milligrams of the stuff.) But I can't function without it. Not because I've become addicted to it. Far from it. I literally cannot function in this world without oxycodone as I can't function in this world without my psychotropic drugs.

Without that damned drug, I'm just overwhelmed with pain. How much shit am I expected to put up with? How much can a body take? How much can this body take? I draw the line at chronic pain. Well, that's not exactly true. No, it's not true in the least. The line was drawn for me at chronic pain. I can't go on like this.

The call is in to the orthopedist. Can I just keep taking the shit? Do I need to play the old switcheroo with other painkillers from other drug families. Or in the same family?

"Shake hands with your Uncle Max my boy and here's your cousin Sid. And here's your cousin Isabel who's expecting another kid..."

-Alan Sherman

Introductions can be made.

I knew yesterday the only hope I've got is a fucking painkiller that actually works. Oxycodone doesn't rid me of pain. But it takes the edge off like a lovely glass of Shiraz. (Which I used to partake in another life. Now wine? Alcoholic beverages, what's that? I just ignore myself and don't answer. What I don't know can't hurt me.) I'd like to know if there's anything that dulls that edge just a little more. If not, I won't be surprised. I haven't received much good news in four years. Why should I now?

I know, though, that that oxycodone has some powerful mojo. In about fifteen minutes last night, I put together a playlist called "Fran Heat." Al Green (of course), War- The World is a Ghetto (it's hot, what can I say...my tastes run a little to the peculiar), Isaac Hayes (Hot Buttered Soul to Shaft...), Curtis Mayfield (Superfly sends me), Gimme Shelter...When did I last think this way? Let me make this clear. A "Fran Heat" playlist is a seriously positive thing. Those choices are very me. It's not some bizarro aberration, and I'll recover and get back to some normal choices like "You Light up My Life," "Feelings," and anything by Kenny G.

Mind you, I'm still a mess and desperately need to sob loudly with big fat tears falling down my cheeks. My darling Robyn Hitchcock has as album Moss Elixer. And now I've found mine. Staring me in the face, and sitting in the plastic, orange drugstore bottle in the basket next to my doughnut on the couch. My elixer is my beloved oxycodone.

I can slog on for another day.

I Feel Tzkruchen

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.

Spelling of "tzkruchen" courtesy of my mother who worked it out phonetically with Leah from Florida.