This Is It

These stents don’t do shit. It’s not only embarrassing when I ask all my therapists, “Could you please repeat that?” over and over and over again. If I can’t get it all the second time, I just nod. These are extremely problematic when spending my two-hours a week with my talk therapist. If I can’t hear when she’s telling me, what good is it! Please tell me I’m in a nightmare and I’ll wake up soon.

I woke up from a nap the other day with such a start. After I told myself (thought balloon) that this is it. I was beyond demoralized and sat up, bleary-eyed. I had never allowed those particular words to enter my mind or- good heavens- (in that order, otherwise I do use the word themselves quite often, actually) to enter into my conscious mind. To quote Group Captain Lionel Mandrake in Dr. Strangelove on learning that the United States had entered into nuclear war with the USSR, “Oh hell.”

The impact the prospect of nuclear suicide just about equals this is it.

I will not get better. Ever. Years pass. And I’m promised help in ten years (“So hang in there!”) no matter how many have passed when this all started. Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland says it best “Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today.”

So fucking much has been taken from me. Please, not my hearing too. All I need are allergy tests and the appropriate shots. But my allergist won’t take the risk with my piddling lung capacity. I’ve gone beyond the EpiPen. Doesn’t the U.S. give out awards for shit like that?

I’m reading Catch 22. I’m not sure, but I think I may have read it a couple of years ago. Since my short-term memory is such an abomination, it’s a plus to be able read books over and over again and have no wind of it.

I have to assume that I’ll have a really heavy depression after every visit from my lovely masseuse. (Because, lo and behold, it happened again.) She must have the means of getting close to the spigots whereas I’m totally clueless. It isn’t at all fun, and I hate putting you in this position, but Rachel, look at it this way, you’re doing me a mitzvah. No one’s come close to doing what you do.

Charlie, your comments go straight to my heart and each time I read them I get weepy. (But no, they’ve never sent me into anything close to a massive depression, so, please don’t take that as a reason to stop commenting. When you feel like it, please do. They’re important to me. I know you get it. And how.) Thank you.

So this is it. Oh hell.

Urinetown

My last appointment with my therapist this week was highly unusual. My did I suffer- about what to do about what I figured would be a likely break with my brother (!) and his family. (At least for now.) This is assuming I chose to be a hard ass about the vicious, interminable email I received from my sister-in-law. I’ve never been hard ass. This is virgin territory for me, not only sticking up for myself but also telling someone to shove her cruelty up her ass.

I actually had a moment of zen. When I knew that I had to shake off her idiotic nonsense. She and my brother are poison to me. I can rip myself apart all by myself thank you. I felt confident and relaxed. Big move, Lipman.

In my first life, I tended to float with the breeze rather than risk confrontation. Not to say that I had no opinions. I always had opinions except for years and years I didn’t believe them to have any validity, so why voice what was clearly wrong? So I floated. But I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

In another world, I’d still be a good little girl and take the punches from my sister-in-law. I could always take punches. ARDS and Bronchiectasis (gesundheit) are two powerful diseases. They taketh away way, way too much, but they giveth back one nasty, fantastic chip on the shoulder. No more floating. No more acquiesing. Late, but better than never, I have finally learned to assert myself. (At least when pushed to the extreme.) I won’t take shit I don’t have to take. I have to take my limited lung capacity. I have to take funky bowels that have no business being funky since ARDS and Bronchiectasis (gesundheit) attacks lungs lungs only. So lay off my gastro-intestinal tract please.

Then why I am I so completely, out of control tonight saying over and to myself, “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t do this anymore?” Or, “I have no life.” That’s actually kind of true. But how can I share something so horribly bad with anyone? I know there are people out there who love me, but how to explain this…? Really what does a visitor say to me, “Feeling any better?” Well, of course I don’t. And I won’t. How does a person make a conversation with that? I’m stumped. I guess that’s why people attend groups with other people in the same infernal boat. It sure makes the initial explaining part move quickly without any, “What!?” “Huh!?” “You’re kidding me!?” We can get right to the nitty gritty (see below). No one has mind-blowing thought balloons. I don’t much like mind-blowing thought balloons of this kind. I can’t imagine anyone who would. My sister-in-law?

Just last night, I had an episode straight out of the August 25, 2010 (Hide the Knives!) post without the Exorcist-worthy projectile vomit. (Too bad. That was cool. And I tried to be so polite about where I’d leave it. Why add a stranger’s vomit to somebody else’s pathetic, little life? It just didn’t feel right to me.)

The gist of the problem are the times when I’m in desperate in need of air. (Like the gasping I do after I take my walks in the apartment hallway.) And when in dire need of oxygen, my body (as would anyone’s) tries to excrete everything it can.

To save me from suffocating? Nah, it has to be a fear response. I don’t know where I read this but in Auschwitz, many of the people chosen to be gassed right off the bat excreted everything out of every orifice where it was possible to excrete anything while on line awaiting their fate.

My original experience of that fun sensation of “mega excretion” was just after a chemo treatment. In all his thirty years as an oncologist, my doctor never had a patient who responded to receiving chemo like that. Yay me. The usual time it should take to begin feeling the chemo is four hours or so. And that doesn’t include excreting anything when not planning to do so.

But last night. I always spend an inordinate time in the bathroom before going on my hall walks to empty my bladder as much as humanly possible. On occasion, where I get back to go (do not collect two hundred dollars), I feel close to losing the drop or two that had refused to exit my body. Slowly, my breath returns. All is well. Last night, post night time ablutions as I put on my extra-sexy Lanz of Salzberg flannel nighty just seconds from hopping into in bed, I sat down on the grey bench meant to help the disabled get into the shower, (we just use it as a bench). I started to pee. I don’t know why. And as during the post-chemo episode, once the excreting starts, there’s no stopping it. I screamed for Chip to get the Clorox wipes and a washcloth for me. As I’m always very thoughtful in moments like these, I hiked up the oh-so-sexy Lanz of Salzberg flannel nighty so not to soil it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the nighty remained clean. As did the bathroom rug.

There must be a million things I haven’t yet thought of to make me desire to lay down and die. But as soon as they happen, you can bet you all will be the first to know.

One tiny thing. I’m very deaf again. I now have stents in both ears, and they aren’t doing shit. They were put in earlier in the week, I think. I’m not holding my breath on these. Permanent stents next? And why does mucous fuse itself to my throat which makes walking the halls a fearful event? (Chip has found blogs of very angry people who can’t believe that the medical establishment has nothing to remedy the situation. It’s true. There’s nothing except Cepacol lozenges which don’t last very long, but they’re all we sufferers got, so no excessive complaining. And I get to use a word lozenge that isn’t required all that often. !!! I just love the sound of it: lozenge. Beautiful. It’s a shame that Cepacol Oral Anesthetic/Analgesic, instant acting lozenges don’t taste as good as they sound. They’re kind of nasty. ) How long will it take to be able to breathe again? This qualifies for excitement in the Lipman-Sleeper household.

P.S. Karen, what other Karen do I know? I am apologizing thirty years too late for being such a miserable correspondent. I didn’t do the right thing. You deserve the apology so fuck you and accept it whether you like it or not. I (love you, and I miss you terribly, by the way.)

Thinking, thinking, thinking...

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past week or so. (FYI, don’t ever waste your time doing this. About anything. All that thinking doesn’t lead you to enlightenment. I’ve learned it can only lead to trouble. So naturally, this week I managed to upset myself more than if I had stopped thinking altogether and played Maggot Brain ten times in a row. (I find it soothing. Go figure.) My brain began getting out of hand.

Stopping function of the brain in its tracks (if it had tracks to stop) can be done. With less effort than you imagine. A bit of thought will remind me that I’m not responsible for the problems plaguing humanity. What a stupid thing, wasting a week worrying myself about other people’s insanity. Specifically, worrying about my brother and his family who went apeshit when I accurately described my sister-in-law as an extremely unpleasant person. Comparable to a shrew.

If I had taken simply trashed the unintelligible email she sent on over to me last week (me?!), I’d end up in the same place I am now minus all that lousy hurt. That’s what thinking gets you. Feeling like shit. So don’t do it.

To my dear family in Texas, do any of you realize that you’ve created a cozy, bizarre existence? Of course you don’t. No, my honey of a sister-in-law, you saved poor Eric from the evils of the Lipman family. Just to make this crystal clear, the New York Lipman’s are still the coven of devil spawn (thank you Allen). To be completely honest, we always have been and we rather like it. (Perhaps this explains my love affair with Rosemary’s Baby.) Better yet, we really like it this way, so we’re not going to change. That you can bet on.

This is all so simple. I should be dead. And if I’m terribly unlucky, I could get a stupid bug, and it’s wham bam thank you ma’am. Pay when you pick up your urn.

Don’t you see? Don’t waste your time with all this crap. I refuse to play these mean games that you all seem to like to play. They’re part of your innards, aren’t they? But they’re not part of mine. I have twenty-four percent lung capacity. Medical science has no treatment for me. I work my ass off to maintain physical strength on the sheer chance (My friend Mike the microbiologist says it will happen soon. A decade at the latest? Anyway, he ‘d rather I not off myself with treatment on the horizon. I hope he’s not just blowing smoke up my ass.)

And I take lots and lots of drugs to avoid despair. I will do my damndest to live as serene a life as I can in this apartment. I have too many demons of my own to wrestle with. Please take your dysfunctionality elsewhere. It is not welcome here.

See, why did I get myself all worked up over this? I knew what I needed to do all along. Like Dorothy. (I, too, already had the ruby slippers.)

Stay away from bad shit.

All the Sturm und Drang for that?

P.S. To my niece: you are the only innocent of all these loutish Lipmans. You didn’t ask to be born into this crap. I totally understand if you want nothing to do with me after this most recent tectonic shift. If you ever change your mind, I’ll be here. (Let’s assume I will be.) FYI, Doug is a seriously cool dude. And even better, he hasn’t crapped on anyone that I can think. (Unlike me.)

Back to regularly-scheduled programming next post.

A Shandeh

I was greeted with an email Monday morning. Three pages long. From my fucking sister-in-law. It seems this email was prompted by the fact that she doesn’t much like being called “a controlling harridan.” Who would? I understand her fury. And I may be wrong (about "the controlling harridan" part). She feels she’s been entirely misunderstood by me and the rest of the ever-shrinking Lipman family. (I feel, post-ARDS, I've become half a person...) I’ve been wrong before but I feel pretty good about this one. I’m right on the money.

She demanded that I never mention her or Eric again in this blog.

Now, of course, this shandeh, for which I am now paying for dearly, calling a person such a name must stab my brother in the heart. For goodness sakes, my brother and sister-in-law are each almost sixty years old! Do you think that they may be old enough to deal with a wee bit of unpleasantness from an annoying relative (me)?

And what about me? I’m a loving (and my Eric knows that to be true and Eric, if you don’t, DO, because it’s true) sister who wonders in her blog how her friendship with her wonderful brother could become all farcockteh? I said nothing that came as a surprise to anyone.

Before I became ill, I always was polite (at best) when I encountered my sister-in-law. Post-ARDS, who or what am I holding back for? Oh, I’m not going to go berserk or anything. ARDS doesn’t give me a license to kill. But I don’t have to play a silly game anymore which only makes us upset. Now, we’ll get upset out in the open. I don’t need to get colitis again. (Yeah, long before my current despicable disease took my life away from me, I had colitis. Fun.) I had to learn not to swallow my anger, because all it did was make me sick. Instead, I learned to deal with it. Hot damn! No more colitis! And no more tough guy.

Oh, dear people who are still with me after my long absences, I’m a different person from the pre-ARDS Fran. I want transparency. I want to say what I mean. (Not what I think I should.) As I want all of you to do with me.

My mother’s first reaction to the Mother of all Emails, was to placate Eric, and asked me not write about them (him and her) anymore. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I said that if I place parameters on the blog, I am tucking my new-found voice into a pocket, never to be heard again. Then, it really wouldn’t make any difference being alive or dead, would it? If I live a life where I have to think, tread on eggshells, each time before I tell you how I feel, what is the goddamned point?

I think I told her that using other words. She is not a blog reader. She has no point of reference for this. She had no idea what the blog means to me.

I’ve said, probably too many times, for me, this blog needs to honest. First and foremost. I don’t care how stupid I might sound. How ridiculous I may seem. If I salient point to make, I must make it regardless how of how it makes me “look.” What’s that? (Especially the youngish looking middle-aged lady with the Hannibal Lector mask. (Hey! I always have a Halloween costume!) And in honor of my belief in transparency, the mask is transparent. Coincidence? Oh, I don’t think so.

I don’t look for ways to be mean. I’m sure I have been, but I really don’t want to be hurtful. (Karen, I know I pissed you off time and time again for never writing you back. I deserve totally your opprobrium. Just so you know, I never wrote back to anyone else either. Love you, sweetie, by the way…) Will you let me know how I’ve screwed any of you, please? (I apologize in advance.) But my sister-in-law has issues. How can I ignore my estrangement (getting fuzzier, a good thing) with my oldest brother?

So I won’t. I’ve had it. This is all I have, and I won’t ever be mean (certainly never intentionally) and I will not use this as a vehicle for passive aggressiveness. Any problems (and I hope there are none because I’m beginning to love you) will be dealt with for real and in private.

Just the thought that this blog could be something made ordinary and impersonal makes me feel that that would be the end of me. My connection with all of you in my connection to the world and to life. To hell with my sister-in-law.

An Angry Bear

I’m sitting here all washed and scrubbed with a back that still hurts and klonopin that appears to be not doing its job. This is so strange, every single day without fail, about late afternoon, early evening, I get a bout of anxiety. My hands shake. (So no more cursing the yarn as I have a thousand more French knots left to do. Yes, I’ll behave. Like hell…) I’m crawling out of my skin. Right now. It’s just s slight shake, but it comes fully-loaded. I’m nervous. Irritable, unable to sit still. And the disgusting belief that I must be useful. And I don’t have enough hours In the day to do it: walk the hallways, “exercise,” sew my baby’s clothes, write this blog, write the new book which is going to be a bear.

I like bears, but I suppose we’ve all seen either in photos or at the zoo, when they’re pissed off. I guess I expect this writing this new book will either scare the bejeezus out of me or eat me alive. I’m curious myself how this turns out.

French knots on her clothes. Never sew with yarn. Oh, she’ll look great. When she’s done and ready to rock Manhattan. I hope she won’t be too disappointed that she’s a shut-in doll and stuck here with Frau Frankestein.

I am a masochist. I bought two more on ebay. Rosita the some sort of Latina girl and Michi who is most definitely Japanese. The goal: complete all dolls before I’m dead.

That’s a big part of my problem. I think I may have so little time left I must get these things done now.

Perhaps this is one of those tricks like Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ giving me a taste of the hell where I’ll be ensconced sooner rather than later.

If you remember the movie, Jesus is offered a normal life. Gets married. Has kids. He sure looks happy. But no, he doesn’t let himself be enticed by the proposition before him, and he chooses to be nailed to the cross. I could never do that. I guess that’s why I’ll never be in the running to be God’s long-lost (really lost) daughter.

You know what people? It was only after seeing that movie that I understood Jesus’ story. My brother said the same thing. I was in tears when he chose to stay nailed to the cross. I’m Jewish. I don’t know this stuff. That movie showed me how Jesus was special, was different. No, Mr. Scorcese didn’t make a convert out of me. (Especially difficult when an atheist Jew.) But I got it. I felt it.

Isn’t that the point? Certainly in that movie. Make your audience feel what your protagonist feels or at least understand what he feels? I never understood why that movie was boycotted and condemned by some believers. Hey, if Scorcese changed or mangled the story, isn’t this a perfect Sunday school topic of discusson?

Anyway, if you are not of the Jewish persuasion and despised the movie at least you know two Jews in New York found the story very moving. (And we got it!!!)

But if I were Jesus, I’d accept the offer (a no-brainer, really- c’mon now). A normal life? Happiness? I’d accept the devil’s offer in a nanosecond. No need to ponder. You mean, I can breathe again and have a life? Sign me up.

No this is not what makes me a Jew. This is what makes me a desperate, lonely human being who is completely unable to make any sense- no, fuck, forget sense. I am stubbornly refusing to accept my crappy existence.

And if I don’t, I guess I spend the rest of my life in misery. (I’m not feeling the suicide thinking these days. I don’t have a clue why that’s so but it has been sent to the back of the room for a “time out.”)

My lovely masseuse, Rachel, will be here later today. To quote Bette Davis in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” I hate going through it. Never the massage (which ain’t fun, it’s deep tissue massage which is not for the meek), only the aftermath. Kicking the rubble.

A Very Merry Un-Birthday...

This was the most non-birthday I have ever imagined. The stars were aligned, the moon was in the seventh house, Jupiter and Saturn played Ring-Around-The–Rosie, and the Super Bowl (an actually interesting game at that) was aligned with Mars How insignificant is a birthday compared to all this gobbledygook?

I was thrilled. I wanted to ignore the day, and the universe helped me in my duty to myself most handily. My mother and brother came over at dinnertime just as I was collapsing into the couch for a nap. I had a right to be exhausted, I was put through the works by the best P.T. (and I’m not joking) on the planet, Tamar Amitay.

Look, I still don’t think there’s anything to celebrate in my life. There are amazing people in my life (Chip, first and foremost) who take such good care of me and keep me going when I want to pack it all in. The remarkable Tamar, the best P.T. on the planet, Kristen my therapist brought to me by the angels, Sweet, caring Rachel my masseuse, Laurie, my chiropractor whom I miss terribly. (I need these people for mojo. If I’m to have any mojo. I’d like some, I think.) They deserve to be feted. Not I. They humble me. I’ll party with them, for them and love them forever and ever. But no celebrations for me yet. I’m not ready.

I awoke from my nap sometime late in the second quarter and Chip brought me a turkey burger from the joint across the street. They make really tasty turkey burgers, but I wasn’t interested in any food let alone that fine turkey burger.

I’ve been having eating issues as of late. I still slobber over my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I drool just thinking about it. For me it’s sandwich heroin. After starting my day with choppers blazing, I lose all interest in food. There can be only two reasons this is happened and they’re not mutually exclusive. (Is anything, these days?) One is that I take so much fucking medication, it’s screwing up my appetite. The second is losing the desire to eat is a symptom of depression. Duh.

Instead of real meals, I’ll down bottles of Ensure (on the rocks, please). Eat bowls of cereal. (Cheerios and rice milk. That shit tastes pretty good.) And Zone Bars. All three are quick and go down easy. Problem solved.

All right, there is a third reason for my lack of appetite. Eating takes time. And time is the one thing I can’t rely on. I have too much to finish before I die. (And no, I’m not talking suicide. I’m taking about a quick upper respiratory infection and it’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am. You can pay as you exit. And have a nice day!) I’m being compulsive, because there are too few hours in my day to get everything I want done, done.

I’m rewriting Since When as a mother/daughter story. I have all the pieces in my hot little hands. No, I don’t have all the pieces in my hot little hands. What is this new book about anyway? It took me ten years, before I finally figured out that the original Since When is about. (It’s about loss.)

This too is about loss. I can’t get away from that. But this book will be trying to say what about my mother’s and my relationship? I need to keep rolling this around over and over in my head and create chapters that flow naturally from the immigrant girl and the confused Long Island kid.

I never could figure Port Washington out, but I think I can figure out the crux of this new book. Frankly, I think that figuring out this book is a helluva lot easier than figuring out Port Washington even from my vantage point as an adult. I just can’t imagine why anyone would actively choose to live there. I think the five Lipmans would agree on this though my Dad did find that elusive place he clearly needed away from everything: Bar Beach. Facing those gorgeous smokestacks in Glen Cove. I don’t get it, but the man spent hours there was his New York Times. New Yorker, and New York Review of Books. Go figure.

Back to my problems…I need to get a grip on the story I’m trying to tell. I’m afraid I still may be too close to be able to see it. I have pieces of this book already written. How do they all fit together? And once past that, together in a way that will keep the reader interested from start to finish and cut and cut and cut and make it as good (sotto voce) as the original? (Rich, please don’t think you are any less Spectacular than you are. You amaze me, All the time. Our Since When is sacrosanct. To be self published? I’ll keep you apprised of all happenings. And don’t be surprised if you receive an email asking for your professional opinion about lord knows what. You know I will, too.)

I certainly won’t achieve any success if I write gazing at my navel. My apologies. I have no free seconds. I’m exhausted so much of the time. Don’t forget, I have my Indian Princess doll I’ve been sewing like mad. She’s the one Mom bought for me thirty years ago. I will feel so happy when she’s done. We’re spending so much time together, she’s my new baby sister or new baby or something like that.

And I started a Brian Aldiss (sci-fi) book I should have read eons ago.

I have so much to do before I die.

Let’s get cracking.

(This post started out okay, but I’m sorry if it became a dog post. I’ll try harder next time.)

Hit It and Quit Part II

I promised a Part II after the last post.

Part II

I’m not one to often fall short of her promises. (Being human (I still am), it happens now and again. I like it not one bit when it does.)

Perhaps, the key to this problem is to transform from a human being to something else. (Yes, becoming a beloved house cat is awfully tempting. They’re expected to break all promises. We beg them for what should be our due (snuggling and purring) for the room and board we supply. Yes, I know the truth. We humans are due nothing. Not one damned thing. And we stupid humans don’t seek out a more rewarding companion. (Goldfish?) That is the perfect beauty of being a cat. That’s the point of them.

We, Chip and I, must have shortcomings. Otherwise, why would Conway deliberately turn his back to us when we coo at him and tell him what a sweet, wonderful boy he is? Yeah, I’d like to be one of our cats. They’re bloody spoiled rotten, my sweet little peaches…

This all may be moot. The unshakable depression, like toilet paper on a shoe, needed an alternative to the Effexor that made me truly insane. It’s best when I feel like that to spend the day sitting quietly and/or doing what I consider exercise. Like putting on my sneakers. Do you realize that I actually have to sit and catch my breath after putting sneakers on my feet and tying the laces?

My doubling the Klonopin seemed to make matters better. But I think, with zero evidence to back me up except my bodily functions. Especially brain function. How I’m supposed to evaluate my own brain function is a mystery to me. “Chip, honey, I think I’m feeling that my personality has been disintegrating for the past week.” However, I really meant it. I’m usually precise in what I want to say. I learned early to drop the hysteria, leave room for people to agree or disagree with you. Without the air, most people feel pressured and get annoyed. As they should be. When the fuck did I become the authority? About anything?

In this particular instance, I lost interest in all things, all people; when my darling brother and stepson were over the other day, it was too difficult to follow conversation. (Could you just imagine me at a party?) My toe stayed in the human pool, because I was and remain perpetually weepy. Given the possibility of losing all of myself (can it be so?), this is a very good thing. I just want to have one goddamned out and out cry. Wailing. Rending of clothes. The whole nine yards.

Besides the weepiness, I had a great time watching the hour-long HBO shows leading up to the Winter Classic, and the “post mortem” show. Great stuff. I can also live on a diet of Real Sports. That HBO again. Who knew my needs were so easy?

However, I did have a very real problem on my hands. What sucked royally is that instead of going back to being plain depressed- the very reason my doctor upped the Effexor- I had that horrible anxiety. You know that crap. When you feel like you’re jumping out of your own skin and mine combined that with “the shakes.” Now I have been diligently working on the doll my mother and I never made thirty years ago. I sure know why I didn’t tackle it and her friend then (Mom bought two of the kits), they are for people who really know what they’re doing. But now, this is my new baby doll. (I haven’t made her hair yet. I’m assuming she’s an infant rather than a cancer patient until it’s done.)

A couple of days ago, I had six pieces of fringe left to decorate. After a seriously long learning curve, I’d finally got it. Woohoo! It was late. I chose to leave the last six for the following afternoon.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to figure out how to do the goddamned French knots that decorate the goddamned fringe the first time, but I did, after a fashion. We all know, the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.

Sonofabitch, I remembered nothing from the day before. Nothing. I looked at those fringes as if I had never seen them before. (Fuck, I’m in trouble.) It took a long time, but I figured it out all over again. There was zero carryover from the day before. I’ve noticed other weird brain functioning problems post ARDS nightmare, but this one was the worst.

Okay, okay. I got it now. I picked fringe number two. I looked at it as if I’d never seen it before. Holy shit, there was no carryover from five seconds ago. What the fuck is going on?

This happened five more times. For each of the fringes I had left to decorate. I was completely unable to extract anything I had taught myself on that day’s fringes let alone the ones I had completed that day before.

So if any of you tell me something, I’m warning you all right now, there’s a damned good chance I won’t remember you spoke to me a moment ago, And about what, pfft, don’t be ridiculous.

I don’t know if I have brain damage. If this is the worst of it, I guess I emerged from hellhole number one, one lucky bastard. I’m confident I don’t have Alzheimer’s. But no wonder Alzheimer’s scares the bejeezus out of all of us.

Being cognizant that my brain is behaving as if it’s turning to mush is paralyzing and frightening as bloody hell. Hey, I’m on tons of medication. This could be screwing with my brain. C’mon, the drugs are supposed to screw around with my brain. They’re just not screwing around with it correctly yet.

Dr, Ira has addressed the anxiety issue and I’ll need to assess my brain function (and shaking and creepy-crawlies) and whether the new stuff is sucking the remnants of human energy like the Miele vacuum does with all that cat hair. I’ve had this perpetually running nose. It’s too bad these new pills don’t come with a hepa filter.

But I do think it’s funny that the patient is, in effect, running the funny farm. Even though I’m nuts, I’m the person the doctor relies on for symptoms and interesting new funky bits to decide which medication should make me sane.

P.S. These posts are a wonder. I find I very often I think of a word like “what” but instead type something like “wagon.” My brain wanted “what,” but my fingers stubbornly insisted on “wagon.” I often leave whole words out of sentences. Important ones like nouns and verbs. Sometimes they’re easy to fill in when I reread this mess. Other times, I’m as stymied as anyone reading the incomplete sentence. Please be patient when you bump into one of these. Thanks.