Category: Health

Pill induced esophagitis

Yup. Perfectly explains my malaise. Jeff brought me peppermint tea which provided enough mental clarity to start running differential diagnoses. I will be on soft food and following a very strict pill taking regimen (a complete 8 oz of fluid with the pills, maintaining upright posture during the ‘settling in’ period, no lying down right after taking the pills) until I recover. I think I had this earlier this year.

Just watched a video on FB of Jim Palmer huffing helium and singing “Christmas Day in the Morning.”

feel lik crud

I am not feeling too communicative, but I’m still alive.

Threw up all my pills yesterday morning so had to take them again; didn’t feel like a human being again until sunset and was super wobbly. No vomiting since. I think All The Pill Taking has abraded my stomach valve, so I’ll be taking fewer of them at once.

I am working on a specifically feminist song. I am enjoying it. There are no lyrics except one line which comes at the end of every verse.

I can’t think of anything else to say.

sad loss

I haven’t received official word, but it appears we’ve lost a family member.

Paul got to his appointment yesterday. It was dark when we got back and I realized it was the first time I had driven in the dark for years. Unpleasant; I managed to get lost in my own old neighbourhood for about two seconds (I turned right one turn too early, had to make a left turn onto 16th during rush hour. LOL no.)

It’s 3 am and I’m up so I’m making coffee.

Gosh I’m sad right now.

pOp is on the mend, word comes.

 

quite a bit of urine

12324 words

Slept most of the day yesterday, then slept all night.  I was advised that this could happen, so it’s probably just me getting used to the new diuretic. The first time I took it I advised my brother that I was now processing fluid from the twilight zone since I seemed to have peed more than my body weight in a single morning. Jeff pictured me as a slowly turning into a raisin on the john, and I pictured myself falling into the toilet after accidentally flushing myself, so that was pretty funny.

I was supposed to get bloodwork done this past week. Today I take Paul to his doctor – appointment is this afternoon. I got the car so I get to do this; and I want to.

I feel pretty good this morning. pOp is continuing to recover well. I hope to hear more about Jim and Jan from Lois and Ruth this week and they will be meeting up with my folks on Wednesday so I’m looking forward to a full report on that as well.

We’re just cleaning up the last of the leftovers from Keith – a ground beef stew, a kidney bean chili and a tortellini stew. Much appreciated, I should tell him when next I see him.

Gotta pee, strangely enough, take my pills and then pee even harder.

my apologies for the late checkin

Power was off 10:30 last night to 6:45 this morning. Jeff shovelled (bless!) and we are now back to being civilized.

I’m supposed to get more meds today, including another shot at a diuretic.

pOp went to hospital yesterday. It’s his story to tell, but he’s still alive and I’m glad I was here when mOm called after putting him in the ambulance. I told her to take her walker, take knitting, take her phone and take a cab. Giving advice that gets taken is the crown of adulthood. He was in overnight and with luck should be back home today.

Grandson Alex is still sick this morning but recovering reasonably well.

Missions accomplished

  1. If I am accompanying Paul anywhere in future, unless we’re evac’ing from a fire, we are not taking the gd stairs. If I watch him fall down those curving steps at Royal City Square because he literally has damage to the reflex to put his hands up when he falls, not only will I be filling out forms for a year (nb this is family joke of long standing and has nothing to do with the seriousness of the event) I’ll be traumatized for the rest of my life.
  2. He looked at his blood pressure and said, “That’s not so bad,” to which my response was, “You’re teetering on the edge of a hypertensive crisis. Last November I had blood pressure like that and went to RCH.” His answer to this was to blame the coffee he drank this morning.
  3. The name for the inability to be able to recognize that you have an attested and duly diagnosed legitimate medical condition is anosognosia aka our old friend Annis O’Nose-ya and Christ alive but it’s swift becoming a walking stick among my words.
  4. Paul set himself two tasks today. When I called him to say YOU HAVE TASKS, which I am supposed to accompany you on, he blanked. But he figured it out fast enough, and I got him over here this morning before Suzanne arrived. He handed his phone over to Jeff, who did what he has long been expected to do, and fixed the problem with kind words, and then I disappeared Paul to the aforementioned mall.
  5. The store he remembered was gone. I took no offence to this at all, since it had vanished between today and the last time I was in the mall, probably a good six months ago. I mean, I’ve been into the Save-On and the Wal-Mart (the former much more than the latter) which butt onto the western end of the mall, but I don’t normally go into the mall, which is very distinguished by how, apart from the retail staff, I’m often the youngest person in view. Not to put to fine a point on it, I turned 64 this week. I felt like a mere stripling, actually.
  6. He had to poop. Took a while. Quite a while.
  7. While we were feeling sad about how nobody seemed to have what he needed, I had to poop. I was somewhat more expeditious but I fucking near ripped some plumbing out of the sink when it assaulted me. They put the DRYER AND THE FAUCET ON THE SAME THREE PRONGED CHROME OBJECT and since the ‘signage’ consisted of a teeny stamped-in logo about the size of your finger end, and which disappeared in the reflection created by direct sunlight coming into the fucking bathroom, I had no idea that I was about to stick my hand under what I thought was an automatic faucet only to get an F1 tornado blowing the remnants of someone else’s experiment in handwashing up my nose. The fact I didn’t scream blue murder should earn me a laurel in itself.
  8. Anyway, that mall is distinguished by how indistinguishable it is from other malls, and has like forty cell phone kiosks. We visited them all. We went to the Source, and Telus and Rogers and the rest of the row of cell phone kiosks, looking for an LG accessory. Please note: LG shutdown its smartphone division in 2021. Trust capitalism to orphan Paul’s tech. Finally, at a kiosk that hadn’t opened at 10 am, there was a cherubic Desi kid (he was 25, tops, short and round-faced and long-lashed and cheerful) and he said, “Come around, other side,” and found everything Paul needed (a new phone case and a new screen, which he did a skilled job of applying) and now Paul’s phone may survive a while longer. Paul was ecstatic and we got the hell out of that mall. Driving in that parking garage is one of the Stations of the Cross for New Westminster, stg (swear to god).
  9. It freaking near killed me not to go into the Purdy’s but I knew that it would be something I’d regret and I ate half a chocolate bar yesterday anyway. It was my gd birthday, I HAVE NO RAGRETS… This is a movie reference. I have never seen the movie, but I know about this image. This is the curse of thEE INTarwEBz
  10. No Ragrets Tattoo
  11. Paul almost fell down the stairs heading back to the car. I watched him in real time forget and then remember how to walk downstairs. He should not be living on the second story of a building. It’s moments like this when I understand why Katie is occasionally flashing on terrified. If you don’t live with him or interact with him it’s invisible.
  12. Paul is almost to the point of not being able to use a bank card any more. The last half dozen transactions I witnessed have been characterized by errors caused by him stabbing the keypad at random. If he hadn’t been coached by our Desi vendor it mighta got lengthy.
  13. All our missions accomplished we scarpered, I drove Paul home (we’d gotten enough WALKING going up and down the mall to POOP so I felt fine about skipping a walk outdoors).
  14. We were masked for the duration.

No brain yesterday

I realized that what was happening was that I was grieving, so I let Jeff know I’m at a low ebb and gave myself the chance to do that. I had a long soak and washed my hair and smoothed my footies, lit a beeswax candle, listed and grieved for my dead, wrote bad poetry which I won’t share here, acknowledged my other losses, made cinnamon buns, and lay in bed staring off into space (or watched the final game of the world series on DVR while staring off into space.) It certainly was baseball at a very high level in front of an extremely noisy crowd of Astros fans.

I am feeling much better this morning. I will contact Paul later on and ask him what errands he’d like to run today.

9728 Part II

3205 new fanfic

 

 

bleugh brain

I think I’ve had another small stroke. Just in the last two days I’ve lost the ability to consistently spell words, and that’s tiresome; I’ve also flatlined on any lumosity games involving words…. I type, and a word that sounds similar – but is not that word – comes out. It’s unpleasant. I’m hoping I recover a little, but right now I just feel sad about it. Or maybe it’s because my brain is tired from writing so much in the last two days compared to where my output has been.

Jeff’s home tomorrow. I will be glad of his return, and Buster even more so.

New poem – the sieve

This is not a suicide note:
I’d bang on my brother’s door and waken him
rather than leave him my corpse ***on purpose***
ew, I mean, ew

my consciousness wrote the suicide note to you
but the smelly part is still here

I know that my procession
through these eroded markers
was foretold
but the weeping was tiresome
and I had no patience with the acidic streams
for – did you know – your tears become more basic
over the course of the day, and it’s 2 am here

I pull a stray hair out of my mouth and continue
in the present tense
<<< fly back and forth
destroyers of narrative >>>
I cry as if I could be cleansed
rather than imprisoned
behind bars of vapour

quit potchkying around and write this damned thing

it is my salute to those I love who live still
and everything they taught me, all of which
I will take with me to my niche
in the columbarium
for everything I’ve learned is nothing
compared to what is coming
it’s the brutal and the lucky
who will live
another sieve for humanity

I passed through one, today
Most days I don’t know
how close I came

but I do today

another perfect day

Around noon went for a walk with Paul in Everett Crowley Park. First we drove all over hell’s half acre trying to find a decent parking spot at one of the usual parks. That’s how we ended up on the garbage dump park. It’s a good place to go if YOU NEED TO PET SOME DOGGIES. I got very very tired and couldn’t walk any farther very fast. Then we got home and I nuked up some chicken vegetable rice for Paul, and then he hung around. I did his toenails (they weren’t scandalous, like the last time, but they needed to be done). Then I checked my blood pressure which was 105 over 71.

Morty Face by KushMastaFresh on DeviantArt

This is 30 points lower than normal. What in the actual hell is going on. I don’t actually feel good at that blood pressure – I sure don’t feel like DOING anything. Picture shown above is Morty, from the sci-fi animated modern classic Rick & Morty. It’s okay fOlks! you are not expected to watch it or like it; it has machine gun delivery of multiple concepts, not always in the best of taste (that’s one way of putting it, check that face shown above). But I love Morty because he’s grown a spine over the last seasons.

Paul long-term-loaned me John’s resonator guitar.  <—- this after he realized at Peggy’s that he can’t even pull a guitar out of a case without fighting it. I have to add a string but it looks like all the bottle slides I bought attracted a guitar I can use them on. They’re the kind of guitar with a big perforated metal plate attached where the soundhole usually is.

Mike called and released himself from self-jail; he brought his unbelievably sweet new parlour guitar and played nothing but songs Paul knew, which was deft of him, because Paul has happy and enthusiastic about singing along.  He also gave Paul the long anticipated tour of the Delica. Long about five I kicked Paul out (nicely) but he got to have all that social contact and stay the hell out of his own house for the afternoon, which has a crying baby in it. Ryker has a cold and he freaks out when he can’t breathe and so there is much screaming. STILL NO FUNCTIONING FREEZER AT PAUL’S PLACE!! JFC landscum, you need a blunt punt.

above-noted picture is almost 15 years old. That’s Mike and Paul at a minimalist costume party, back in the day

I had ONE Fat Tug last night ENJOY MY ABSTEMIOUSNESS.

Mike finally got to look at Suzanne’s friend Richard’s bag of photography equipment. JFC IT’S A NIKON FE an absolute classic manual camera with one of the first built in digital light meters. AND THE MANUALS for it and the lenses. Cash on the barrelhead it’s worth no less than $250, but Mike doesn’t want it because he’s not a Nikon user. I am currently considering my options, but I think I’ll advise Suzanne before taking action.

Spoke to Keith on the phone. He appears to be doin’ okay.

Currently running a 12% kudos to hit ratio on Landslide – the number’s actually going up. This never happens so I’m finding it weird.

Found out that the Seagull (the one that isn’t Smokey) was put away in E minor tuning so I noodled away on that for a while and I think I may have the core melody of some soundtrack stuff.

Mike said he used to wear a special watch with a pulse ox monitor but he said he had to stop, since it kept telling him that he was dead every night. (Thought pOp would find this amusing.) It came with his new Samsung phone. His new Samsung phone is incredible, the camera alone is goggleworthy. I don’t care, I’ll probably get a simple-phone if I ever live alone again but I’m never having a cell phone again, otherwise.

Mike says his project – his Sisyphean work project – six times now he’s tried to set up a customer service department off shore and six times an internal shift in priorities has moved it. It was in Spain, it was in the US. It was in Costa Rica. This time he just sent his luckless lead tech into the mouth of a typhoon in the Philippines. Anyway, he hopes he survives all the corporate bullcrap long enough to get laid off, with a package, (word is as a French company they’re used to making big payouts to make employees who are now surplus to requirements GO AWAY) and then he’s going to take the Delica and drive across this country and dip a toe in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Please let me know if you want him to come visit you after he’s laid off, because he IS AWESOME. HE’S SERIOUSLY THE BEST.

Jeff keeps having interesting dreams. I imagine I dream every night, but I sure don’t remember them. I guess I keep it all for waking life.

Then, a stunning variety of products, after which we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is a good movie to watch while impaired, and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong are absolutely amazing in this. I believe I raved about it on my blog the first time we watched it, but it really is a trip to set a wildly inventive and ecstatic movie amid the drab exigencies of Chinese immigrant life. Mike was impressed as hell and said some variant of (with amusement), “It’s a damned good thing they’re speaking mostly Mandarin, if it was Cantonese it would be triggering.” This with respect to the ghastly way Michelle Yeoh’s character treats Stephanie Hsu’s character in the movie. THEN I FOUND OUT THAT Yeoh, Quan and Hsu are going to be a family again in a Disney action comedy tv show? WHO’S WRITING, ALLEGRA YELLS & chomps popcorn impatient-wise.

At some point Mike went home. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM.

Worked hard on Totally Boned yesterday; couldn’t stay hydrated. Didn’t practice enough. That will change lol. I need to drink 16 oz of water RIGHT NAOW

I had another perfect day, y’all. I’ll be checking my blood pressure again for sure though. Whatever is wrong with me, it can’t kill my good mood.

update

14522 final count on Landslide; I just posted it to AO3.

pOp fell and doesn’t want to go to hospital and I don’t blame him. Getting old sucks but he’s not alone in feeling that way. mOm’s going to try to take his bp with the new machine.

Mike’s been having a terrible terrible time with insomnia. He went on an apartment cleaning spree to try to feel a bit better in hopes he can sleep.