DON'T GET THE 'BEETUS, KIDS: PART 1

 Not a Goodnight, Fuckers. I should be in bed because I have to be up super early for my surgery, but I'm still wide awake. They did not forbid smoking weed, so I'm about to do a bunch of that to get to bed. In related news, I've just taken my last regular shower for possibly 3 months. I changed my bandage for hopefully the last time. And I thought you might want to see what the horror looks like. The first picture is safe. So is the second. The third is a bit iffy. The fourth should not be viewed by anyone who doesn't want to see a hole in the bottom of my fucking foot because holy shit, it looks bad. If you're into gross shit, then that one will scratch the itch.

The freshly changed bandage! By the way, if you were to look at this part of my body tomorrow night, you'll see a cage installed around that leg with pins going into my bones. I'm going to be pretty sloppy on painkillers the first week as a result. Now, prepare yourself for my horrible toenails, which are impossible to cut with clippers at this point.

And now let's get inside that bandage. Let's take a look at the hole on the side of my foot. I can't see that side very well, but I was told by the doctor that she could see bone through it. Thankfully that is not visible here.

I'm not allowed to clean my foot, by the way. Anything above the ankle is fine, but below is a no-no. Only Wound Care can do that. And here's the final picture, the really fucked up one. I'm used to it by now, but holy shit. Last chance. If you don't want to see this, look away.

The white crescent is the callus growing back, a common problem with those of us who have Charcot.

Speaking of, while the surgeon is in there, she's going to do the Charcot Reconstruction I talked about before. She's going to shave some of the bone off so the callus doesn't get so padded, and if everything goes according to plan, by the time they take the cage off my leg, my foot will be somewhat normal-ish. It will never be normal again, but it will look a lot better. I might not even need my brace anymore! I don't think I'll ever be able to take up running again, but walking! I might be able to go out for night walks again! And I'll have a new neighborhood to explore when that happens!

My first alarm tomorrow morning is 3:30. Holy shit, I'm fucked. All right, they're going to keep me overnight tomorrow, so I won't be posting again for a while. Probably. When I'm sane enough, I'll take pictures of what everything looks like and do part two. Where did I put my pipe?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #869: TRENDING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

 Yesterday I got some pretty good news, but I'd already set my heart on making fun of Elon Musk some more, so I put the good news off until tonight. I'd already read the articles I was going to use as a source, anyway, and I didn't want to forget it, which I would if I didn't get it down last night. But there's good news!

I'm trending in the right direction. Yesterday I visited my primary doctor and discovered that my suspicion was correct. I did, indeed, put more weight on! My jeans are still loose on me. I suffer from Nobuttatal, so the seat of my pants always sags. But I can still pull the waist away from my belly pretty far, and I'm back to the final hole on my belt. I currently weigh in at 235 lbs. It was 222 when I left the hospital. Schwarzenegger says that the reason weight is so easy to put back on after taking so much off is because the body hungers to be whole again. My body is snapping back pretty fast.

Not only that, but it's been more than a week since I had bloody stools, and my blood test yesterday morning confirms that my blood count is picking up again. The lowest it was at was 7 out of 13, which is the exact point one needs a transfusion. When I left the hospital last it was 7.5. Now it's almost 9, so I'm not out of the woods, but I'm in much better shape than I was in after the horrorshow hospital visit.

So I followed up with my GI doctor later yesterday afternoon, and he says right now all we can do is observe and hope that my usual illness doesn't come back, and that my stools continue to look normal. If my blood count drops again, he wants to redo the colonoscopy. I really don't want it to come down to that, so I hope when we test my blood again in August that the trend will continue.

Near the end of the appointment my GI doc asked me an odd question: "When did they take you off your diabetes meds?"

A hospitalist did that. She said to continue with both insulin pens, but to stop metformin and glimepiride, my two oral 'Beetus meds. She said, and I quote, "I don't want that kind of chaos in your blood right now."

The reason he asked, it turned out, was because side effects of both drugs could cause the symptoms I was feeling whenever my usual illness took me over. I tried thinking back, and I'm pretty sure that I never had this illness before I was diagnosed with diabetes. With that diagnosis I was prescribed both of those drugs. Is it possible that my usual illness is caused by the side effects of these drugs, and no one thought to investigate that?

I went a year and a half without getting that sickness, and I thought it was because I'd quit drinking. But maybe, just maybe, it was caused by these two drugs this whole time. The only way to know for sure is if I get sick again. We'll have to see.

Just to keep me honest, when I wrote that paragraph my lizard brain whispered to me, "See? It was never the booze. Let's celebrate! Go to Williams Liquors and treat yourself!" Yeah, maybe, but even if the sickness was never caused by the liquor, I still had a pretty bad problem, and I was pretty clueless about it despite everyone's best efforts. I'm a fairly smart person. I'm not a genius, but I'm smarter than the avera . . . oh no! Whatever that word is that I pondered last night? The one I want to apply to Elon Musk? OH DEAR GOD, IT CAN BE APPLIED TO ME, TOO!!!!!!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #839: OH, THAT'S WHAT'S NEXT

 For the last couple of weeks, I haven't been feeling well. I've been lightheaded, and my sight glitched every morning like a bad internet connection. I now know why.

I was hoping it would go away, but on Thursday I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the ER to be told, much to my surprise, that I'm anemic. I was missing a whopping 58% of my blood. FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT PERCENT! More than half of my blood was gone. Where?

The #1 suspect was my GI tract. They said it happens often, people bleeding into their stomachs without knowing it. But they scoped me, and ta-da! No blood. There's the outside chance that I have a tumor in my intestines, but it's unlikely because I just had a colonoscopy, and they would have seen it growing there. They were at a total loss, so they decided to keep me a couple of days.

During that time I got a couple of blood transfusions, and by the time I left they said my blood content (weird talking about my blood content and not my blood ALCOHOL content) was stable. That thing with my vision glitching? That was due to a bunch of my iron missing, so in addition to the transfusions they also pumped me chock full of iron, and my vision no longer glitches. I still have those fucking floaters driving me crazy in my left eye, but at least I know I'm not going blind now.

Although if I had continued hoping everything would go away? I'd possibly be dead by now, and the local forensics team would be tearing their hair out trying to figure out where my blood went. Perhaps they would even get desperate enough to entertain the idea of a vampire. I'd rather be spared the suggestion that maybe a dead horror author with no blood in him should be a vampiric mystery, so we'll skip it.

Of course my back chose this particular moment to bring back my usual pain. Maybe it was sleeping in a different bed, but my back was screaming when I woke up that first day. Morphine helped, and I'm back on opioids because of this fuckin' thing. But sweet unholy fuck, now that I remember what being in the hospital is like? I'd rather not do it again. For a while there I was romanticizing it a little. Isn't it nice to do nothing all day and have people do stuff for you? It is, but it's also a trap. So I no longer have to think about that shit.

Here's what I am thinking about, though: who did the transfusion blood come from? I'm grateful, don't get me wrong, but whose blood do I have running in my veins now? The unpoetic answer is, yours, stupid. It's your blood now. But did the transfusions come from the same person? Who was that person? Why did they donate their blood? Etc. Also, it's a little silly to think about, but I've gone through 45 years of life without knowing my blood type. I know it now: B+. Be positive, man. I'm trying.

So what happened to my blood? It's not as tantalizing a mystery as you would think. I read the discharge papers, and there are plenty of avenues for me to explore. I'm sure one of them will let me know what happened to my blood. When that day comes, I'll let you know.

Dammit! It's not a vampire!

The mystery I'm more interested in is, why do I have such shit luck? My life was going all right about a year ago. Maybe not great, but it wasn't driving me crazy. I am officially fucking batty over all my goddam problems. I'm paranoid. I'm not sleeping well. I'm irritable. And I'm fucking furious and impotent to do anything about it.

Speaking of impotence, here's a thing you might find funny. Well, some of you might. For the last couple of weeks I haven't been able to jerk off. I thought it was a combination of getting old and the 'Beetus. However, while I was getting the transfusions, my dick stood right up, reporting for duty, SIR! Only after letting my mind wander a little did I realize, oh, that's why I couldn't get a hard on. I didn't have enough blood in me to get it up. Now I do, and surprise!

You'll be proud of me for not jerking off in my hospital room. But to be fair, I had other things on my mind at the time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #766: ANOTHER CLOSE BRUSH

 I've had a few close brushes with death. A few times doctors have even told me that I was dying. Once they even loaded me up with Dilaudid to help ease my passage into the next life. But each of those times I wasn't convinced that I was dying.

During the early morning hours today I knew to a certainty that I was dying. I knew there was only one thing that could possibly save me, and thankfully my plan worked, or I wouldn't be here to type this out tonight.

I woke up in the middle of the night because of a light in my room. There was a blinking light coming from my laptop. Ordinarily it wouldn't bother me, but this time, for whatever reasons, it did. I scrounged around my room, looking for something to block it or cover it. When I succeeded, I felt very strange. Like, low blood sugar strange.

I shouldn't have felt it. My blood sugar should have been very high after the dinner I ate last night. But just in case, I tested my blood. It came out to 52, which is not quite disastrously low, but pretty close. So I grabbed the almond M&M bag I kept close by for just such occasions and started eating a few. Except it didn't make me feel normal. It was making me feel worse.

My heart rate zoomed, and I could feel it straining to keep me alive. I found it difficult to breathe. I realized, holy shit, 52 wasn't my final answer. My blood sugar had to be dropping more. So I ate faster until I realized I was still getting worse. The sugar wasn't getting into my blood fast enough.

I wasn't going to make it. I was going to hit zero, and then I'd be dead. Or hopefully I'd just pass out, and the sugar would get into my blood just in time to bring me back. But that was seeming less and less likely.

My mouth was full, and swallowing became very difficult. I only had one chance: to get downstairs and get my brother's help. I stood up on wobbly legs that barely held me up while I went down the stairs, and I had to stop in the kitchen. I called out to him, and while I waited for him, I grabbed a box of Count Chocula and shoveled dry handfuls into my mouth. When he came up and saw what was happening, he went back down and came up with a whole package of Halloween themed Oreos. I sat in the kitchen and ate those until I felt normal again.

What a relief, huh? I was going to live. It would have sucked dying like that. At least with the booze people would have understood. When people asked how I died and were told the 'Beetus, they'd be like, oh, too bad. That's a rough one. He must not have been controlling it all that well.

No, actually, he died of low blood sugar.

Wait, what? He died of *low* blood sugar? How the hell did that happen?

I went back upstairs to my room and decided to watch Upload for a little in an attempt to go back to sleep. AND THEN IT FUCKING HAPPENED AGAIN.

After all the sugar I'd just eaten, there's no way my blood sugar could have been that low still. I tested it again and IT WAS MOTHERFUCKING 50. That couldn't be possible! Unless . . .

How low had my blood sugar gone the first time? Is it possible score negative numbers? Had I actually been to zero and come back a little?

I went back downstairs--on wobbly legs once again, once again trying to catch my breath and not have a heart attack--and I ate the rest of those Oreos. I overcompensated, just in case, and when I woke up this morning I scored 310, so I made sure I wouldn't die of low blood sugar, but that's a wildly high number. If I hit 400, I'd have to go to the hospital. I felt lousy enough to call off work, and I'm out of days, so yeah, this ordeal was pretty fucking bad.

It was the only time I was ever dying that I knew, for sure, I was dying. I felt like I was on a downward spiral, barely holding on by a thread. I felt like I was on the very edge when I sat in that kitchen, fully expecting to collapse and not wake up again, not even in a hospital room. Depending on what stuff of mine you read, Good Morning, Fuckers yesterday morning might have been the last of me you ever heard.

Well, I do have a postmortem GF column prepared in that eventuality, but I never expected it would need to be used so soon.

I lucked out. This time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #745: A VISIT TO THE EYE DOCTOR

 When you have the 'Beetus you've got to keep an eye on your, uh, eyes. For most of my adult life I've gone to my optometrist once a year for regular checkups, but once I learned of the 'Beetus, those visits got a little more involved.

I think it would be worse to go blind than to loose my feet, so I make sure to get the whole nine yards looked at. And I've been going here since I was a kid (I think because that's where Harry Caray got his glasses). When I was in third grade I got my first pair of glasses there. The ones with the Smurfs on the arms.

Yet when I went yesterday it was like I was a new patient because they had a brand new system, and guess who their first patient was. Oh yeah.

I hate filling out forms. I hate filling out forms online. Worst of all, I hate filling out forms on my phone, which is what I had to do. My aversion to this is because I'm terrible at remembering medical details, and I rely on the fact that I'm already in their system so I don't have to remember them. So guess who fumbled through all these questions I was unprepared for.

The first part of the exam was business as usual. I hate it when they numb your eyes and then tap on them to test pressure. At least it's better than the spray of air, though. And I can't stand eye drops in my eyes, so it was the usual struggle to get them in there, although this guy was gentler than most. Then I was sent out for more paperwork while I waited for my eyes to dilate.

Usually when this happens I take care of other stuff that doesn't involve reading, so I had a few tasks lined up specifically for this time. But did I mention there was a new system? And no one was really quite familiar with it yet? They weren't even done puzzling through this paperwork before the doc wanted to look at the insides of my eyes.

Congrats to me, nothing foul is afoot. My eyes are getting worse merely because I'm getting older. No 'Beetus interference on that score. I was able to successfully put off the bifocal conversation another year.

So I had to finish the paperwork, and holy shit, I was there so long that my eyes were almost back to normal by the time I left. I had a bunch of non-reading and -writing stuff lined up to do during this time, but since I was OK I just did some reading and writing. All's well that ends well, I suppose, but getting there was a hell of a hassle. At least I didn't have to get new glasses. That's always a pain in the ass.

On that note I'm taking another hiatus from Goodnight, Fuckers. From all writing, in fact. I go in for my hand surgery next Friday, and I've been instructed to not use that hand at all. For anything. Including typing. It's also the hand I write with, so nothing longhand, either. I've gotten it to where I post these GFs in five intervals, perfectly matching weekdays, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I'll still be writing until Friday, and then I shall stop until I'm healed enough to resume. This is assuming, of course, that everything goes well. With my luck they'll discover something that necessitates the amputation of my right hand. If *that* fucking happens, I'm going to start drinking again. I take solace in the fact that the guy cutting on me is one of Chicago's best surgeons, so he's not likely to sneeze at an inopportune moment.

Oh! Printers Row starts tomorrow. I'll be doing a live reading at the S&M Salon of a story that will be published soon. This all means that Sunday's newsletter will be a short one because I have to get back to the city by nine or ten, I forget which. This, along with the surgery, also means that the following newsletter will not happen at all. Just to give you all a heads up.

OK, try to behave yourselves while I'm gone. I'm especially looking at you . . . (casts my gaze around at you fuckers) . . . ALL OF YOU.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #677: 305

 It is 305 days since I last had a drink, and over the weekend I came the closest I've come yet to drinking again.

Diabetic neuropathy is a tricky son of a bitch. It means you lose feeling in your feet except, every once in a while, you get a sudden flare of pain. I haven't felt my feet in a few years except for that pain. It comes out of nowhere, and it takes your breath away, kind of like the second between getting kicked in the balls and then feeling the pain spread up through you. It feels like getting a railroad spike shoved into the sole of your foot for just a second and then goes away for a very long time. It's kind of like a bigger scale version of phantom limb pain. And I guess not a lot of you know what that's like, so imagine instead of the railroad spike you get a thick gauge needle instead. But the point is, the pain goes away almost as swiftly as it comes.

Except for Saturday night. I'd gone to sleep, and suddenly I woke up because of that pain. I cursed and tried to go back to sleep only to feel it again ten seconds later. Right in the heel of my good foot. And the motherfucker just wouldn't stop hammering away at me. It drove me up the fucking wall, especially when I saw that I'd only been asleep for an hour. I knew that sleep was probably out of the question going forward.

And then I remembered what I usually did when it comes to treating pain: BOOZE. I'd take down at least a fifth of whiskey, and the pain would be so distant I wouldn't care about it anymore. That's how I got through a lot of injuries from dental surgery to the time I walked a piece of my toe off (yes, the toe that I eventually lost, but not because of that moment).

Well. What liquor store would be open at this hour? I looked at the clock and realized that Corner Cottage was still open for another two hours. I could go there and get back and drink myself into a blissful pain-free sleep.

Then I looked at my calendar and saw the 302 written on that date and sighed. Nope. Can't do that. What can I do?

When I need to sleep, I take two sleeping pills. You're supposed to take one, but I have a high tolerance for drugs. So on Saturday I took four of 'em and sweated through the pain until Morpheus took me off to the Dreamlands.

And I stayed there until almost noon on Sunday. Not surprising, but it shocked me because I'm usually up--against my will--by seven at the latest.

So yeah, I lost a lot of time because of that, but hey! At least the pain was gone when I woke up.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #646: ANOTHER BRUSH WITH DEATH

I took the week off from writing these, so naturally I nearly died on my first day off. Last Monday I almost fell into a coma and died because of something I would have never seen coming.

I remember taking my insulin as directed, so that wasn't the problem. I'd eaten a whole pizza all by myself on Sunday, so in theory my blood sugar should have been high. Not dangerously high, but high enough to make my endocrinologist cringe.

I went to bed at my usual time, but for whatever reason I woke up in the middle of the night, or rather early Monday morning. I felt weird, and I thought maybe it was just the sleeping pills not kicking in. I think I woke up because I was sweating, and I can't sleep when I'm sweating. I tried to go back to sleep, but there was just this feeling in my body that wouldn't let me. It's hard to describe it, but I just knew something was wrong.

It took me too long to figure out, hey, it might be my blood sugar. I reminded myself that it should be high right now, but I decided to check it just in case. As I sat up, my hands started shaking, and I felt a little ill. More than just a little off. And I knew that my blood sugar was low before I tested it. It shouldn't have been, but it was.

I pricked my finger (very different from fingering my prick), and when I saw the blood sugar reading I was shocked. 49 was very, very close to coma territory. If I'd fallen into a coma, I would have died. The only thing that could have saved me is if my brother noticed, but he wouldn't have. At that hour he's in the basement playing online games. He probably would have checked on me at some point on Monday if I hadn't left my bedroom, but by then it would have been too late.

Luckily I keep chocolate near my bed just in case. Something my grandfather once told me to do. My doctors would have preferred it to be bread, but I needed an atom bomb of sugar in that moment. So I gobbled a bunch of almond M&Ms and waited for my body to feel normal again.

That was a pretty close call, but I've been handed a death sentence before. It's like Death isn't even trying. Or maybe I keep slipping through the cracks? No, he's got to be fucking with me by this point, right?

I was once told by friends that, despite my bad habits, I would outlive everyone. Just my luck, they might be right.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #582: MEXICAN COKE

 

Mexican Coke is the best. Whenever I'm at a Mexican restaurant, especially Pancho's in Hoffman Estates, I can't stop myself from buying a bottle. I should absolutely not be drinking these things, so I try not to frequent places that sell it, but it's one of those necessary things. I don't drink caffeine except once or twice a week, and this is loaded with the stuff. And I'm diabetic, which really means I shouldn't be drinking this.

Because it doesn't have high fructose corn syrup like American Coke has. It has real sugar in it. Because HFCS is cheaper, Coke changed their recipe to contain it instead of sugar. But hey! It's the classic taste, right? Nothing different here, pal. Just like in your grandparents' youth.

Except our grandparents got to drink cocaine in their Cokes, so maybe they should lay off that classic taste nonsense.

I went to Pancho's last week, and my teeth are still humming, thinking about that Coke. My blood sugar still has not come down, no matter how much insulin I shoot up with. But goddam, it's a beautiful drink!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #384: MEDICAL BULLSHIT

 So my longtime doctor retired over the Fourth of July weekend. That sucks because now I have to find a new doctor. More to the point, I found the doctor, I just need to get in to see him. Anyone who has had medical problems knows exactly how fucking difficult that is. If you call for an appointment for something, even if it's a big problem, you'll be scheduled a month from now, and that's if you're lucky. Your only other choices are Urgent Care or the ER, and personally speaking, every time I've gone to Urgent Care, they told me to go to the ER instead.

So my appointment with my new doctor is two weeks from now. The problem, however, is that two of my medications just ran out. I went to the pharmacy to request refills, which they usually fax over to the doctor for approval. But since my doctor is retired, it was in question as to whether or not I would get my pills.

I figured I'd call the office and let them know. I was told that my new doctor probably wouldn't refill the prescriptions without seeing me first. That threw me for a fucking loop. Would I have to go through two weeks without my two 'Beetus meds? I started wondering if my pancreas would try to kill me again before I got in to see the doctor. I asked what the odds were that the doctor would refill the meds and was told slim to none.

I asked if the person I spoke to would at least send a request to the doctor's office. He said he would, but I didn't have high hopes. When life kicks you in the teeth enough, you learn to lower your expectations.

On a whim I stopped at my pharmacy on the way home today. I lucked out. The doctor refilled me. Not for the usual three month supply that I'm used to. Just a one month supply. Enough to get me through to my appointment. That was quite the relief.

Sometimes the world surprises you. Not often, but sometimes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #96: CHANGES

When I came home from work tonight, I didn't want to do anything. Fuck my workout, fuck my writing, I was just too wiped out to do anything. So I didn't do shit. Instead, I closed my eyes and dozed for an hour until AGENTS OF SHIELD came on.

This is not the life I want to lead. Granted, I woke up early to work early, but lately, things have been happening like this. I'll get home from work, and I won't want to do anything. I have to force myself through the motions, which makes me feel even more miserable. Some of it can be chalked up to my strong 'Beetus medication, but I had so much sugar today it couldn't possibly be that.

In the morning, I'm miserable. But I'm not so miserable that I give up on everything and close my eyes and pretend life doesn't exist. So here's my plan:

I'm going to start getting up early so I can get a workout in right away, so I won't have to think about it later. If I can somehow manage it, I'll get up early enough to write before I go to work. I don't know if that will happen or not. I doubt it. The exercise, I can definitely do. Writing will probably have to wait. But as much as it pains me to admit, writing isn't as important to me right now as being healthy.

I'm wondering if maybe I should take time off from writing to focus all my energy on getting back in shape. It's really hard to do both.

My new plan won't start this week, because I already have plans. Next week is out of my hands, too. However, the week after that should be perfect.

I hope.

Because if this shit continues, why bother with trying to be healthy? Why not just give in to the urge to eat fast food all the time? Why not get drunk every night? Why not sleep with women of questionable cleanliness? Like, a lot?

Seriously. I came home from work tonight and wanted nothing more than to go to bed. The only thing that kept me from this was because I didn't want to miss an episode of a show I enjoy, because tracking down that missing episode would be too much effort.

What ISN'T wrong with that paragraph?

Maybe I'm on the wrong meds. Maybe I need a new doctor. Am I depressed? Is that it? I don't think so. But what if I am, and I'm not smart enough to realize it?

I wonder what would happen if I stopped taking my meds and behaved with my diet. Because behaving and taking the meds always leads to disaster. I'm afraid to do that, because my doctor said that people who lost their feet to the 'Beetus are people who don't take their meds. I don't want to lose my feet. I enjoy walking a great deal, especially since it helps me work out writing problems.

I'm a fucking mess. To those of you who give me shit about not having a girlfriend and/or kids, that's why. I don't want the horror in my head to be transferred over to someone else. I think I'll figure everything out someday, maybe even soon. Otherwise, I probably would have offed myself a long time ago.

The one thing I have going for me is a scientific thought process. In my weaker moments, I'm a self-loathing baby, but when I think about things--which is almost always--I can at least experiment.

I just wish my experimentation would help me find something that works for me.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #81: A BLOODY MONEYSHOT (AND YES, I MEAN A CUMSHOT ON MY FACE)

I was notified a few years ago that I had the 'Beetus. I've probably had it longer than that, but let's operate on the fact that I've had the 'Beetus for, say, three years. Now, I hate needles. Always have and always will. But my testing supplies include super-thin needles. It's not painless, but I barely feel it. I'm used to physical pain, so I can cope with these things, no problem.

But sometimes it's hard to get enough blood to test my sugars. I have calluses on my fingers because I'm a writer. I'm right-handed, which should mean that my left hand is OK to use for testing. However, I've been typing for a loooooooooong time. There are plenty of calluses on the fingers of my left hand, too. Jabbing those fingers only makes the calluses worse.

As a result, if I jab the fingers of my left hand for a blood test--and I have to, since my left hand is so weak I can't get a reliable test out of the fingers of my right hand--I have to squeeze the motherfucker to get blood out of it. Usually, I have to squeeze at the base of the finger and slowly bring the pressure up to the tip, where the hole should be. This usually results in a tiny dot of blood, which is just enough to test the sugars.

Yesterday, I jabbed myself and squeezed, thinking I'd get two millimeters of blood out of my finger. Instead, blood exploded out of that tiny hole. It was so bad that I wound up with blood in my eyes. I grr'ed and argh'ed, and I rubbed the blood out. I got my reading, which was a bit high (but then again, it was the weekend, which is when I cheat, so it was still acceptable at 140). It wouldn't stop oozing for about a half an hour. Then, I figured I was OK.

And then I saw my glasses. The lenses were dotted with blood, which I quickly cleaned off.

And then I went to the bathroom, where I saw the rest of my face. There was a LOT of blood on me, like someone had jerked off on my face, except instead of semen, there was blood. It took me a few minutes to clean it all off, because by then it had dried and cemented a little.

Still. All of that from just a teensy, tiny hole? That's fucking crazy.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #77: AW, FUCK

Goddammit. A bit of a set-back in my battle with the 'Beetus. When I tested my blood sugar after lunch, it was a bit higher than it should have been at 148. Oddly enough, I felt like I was having a low blood sugar incident, which made zero sense.


But . . . I felt something else: withdrawal symptoms. I looked the internet up and down, and there is no history of this drug being habit forming. It felt like when I quit caffeine, except without the pain. Could I really be addicted to these stupid fucking things?


Maybe it's Taco Bell withdrawal. I haven't had a Quesarito since Friday.


No, it's the pill. I took my pill, and the withdrawal symptoms went away almost immediately. Am I the first motherfucker in the world to be addicted to 'Beetus meds? That can't be right. It's got to be my mind fucking with me.


More experiments to come . . .


And I promise, GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS isn't going to be a running tally of my battle with the 'Beetus. It's just this week that's fucking with me. I'll do something different tomorrow.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #76: INTERESTING RESULTS

As far as I can tell, my little experiment is a success. My blood sugar readings were fairly level throughout the day. I felt like shit when I got home, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't work-out or write. Of course, one day isn't enough research, but I have a good feeling about this.


If this works out, I figure I'll only need my other pill for cheat days. I hope that's the case.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #75: GOING OFF MY MEDS

First of all, wow. I've done 75 of these fuckers? I thought I'd surely get bored with writing them by now, or at least I'd run out of ideas or inspiration. I still might. Who knows? Hopefully, I'll get to 100. That would be cool.


Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to try an experiment. Don't worry, I'm not going off of all my meds. I will still use my hypertension and high cholesterol pills. My problem is with the 'Beetus medications.


For a while, I'm sure you've all noticed me complaining about low blood sugar. That's pretty good for someone with a bad case of the 'Beetus, but my blood sugar was getting dangerously low. I started getting the shakes. I started feeling ill and off balance. Things like that. It threw me off so badly that almost every time I felt that way, it ruined a night of writing for me. I started drinking a can of Coke at lunch to even things out, and shockingly enough, even after occasionally adding a Monster in the morning, my blood sugar was STILL too low when I tested it at home. I got a reading of 80 that day, which is nuts.


But I don't want to drink that stuff anymore. I beat a lifelong caffeine addiction, and I'm afraid I'm going to get hooked on it again. Going through withdrawals for that was not fun. (Plus you get dirty looks from recovering junkies, which is kind of embarrassing.)


I currently take two medications for the 'Beetus, and I take each of them two times a day. That should give you an idea of how bad my case was when I first started out. I think I'm out of the woods on days I don't resort to cheating on my diet (which happens a lot more than one would think; NOT cheating, that is).


Tomorrow, I'm ditching one of my meds, and I'm going to keep a careful watch on my blood sugars, just to see what happens. If I get the results I think I'm going to get, I'll continue with the experiment. More as it develops . . .

Eat your damn oatmeal.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #63: BREAKING DOWN

Once upon a time, I was an invincible monster. I ate whatever the fuck I wanted to, I could out-drink anyone except the corpse of Jim Thompson, and I managed to do all of this while maintaining a decent weight and only ever getting sick once a year. Granted, that once was usually catastrophic, but it was only once a year.


Now I have to watch what I eat, I can't drink to excess and my weight has skyrocketed while I get sick more than once a year. What the fuck happened to me?


Many of you can point out that I'm not as young as I used to be. That might be true, but it's only been a few years. How can so many things go wrong in just two or three years circles around the sun?


I think it's something else. Someone said to me--I think it was Fitz, but I'm not certain--that my system is a lot like a transmission that hasn't been flushed in a long time. It might work perfectly, but once it's diagnosed and flushed, it goes to shit.


Everything was going fine for me up until the end of a relationship between me and a woman with Hep C.  Don't get me wrong, I took every precaution to not catch it. It's a blood disease, not an STD, although you can get it if the sex is kind of rough or you're fucking her on her period. (Okay, so the sex got rough a couple of times. And yes, I fucked her on her period once--the one time that the condom came off, of course.) When the relationship was over, I decided to go in for a check up, just to be sure I was clean. I think the gestation period of Hep C is three months, so I waited four, just to be sure, before I went in for a doctor's appointment.


He got back to me later with good news and bad news. The good news? I didn't have Hep C. Yay! The bad news? I was diabetic, I had hypertension and I had high cholesterol. Yikes.


Since my awareness of these problems, my body has been breaking down. I wound up with gingivitis and lost a tooth (for which I have an implant), my pancreas rebelled against me, I suffer from low blood sugar all the time, I'm getting sick waaay more than once a year (as evidenced by me missing work yesterday and today, hence this piece), I lost my gall bladder, I wound up getting an abscess right next to my dick, I get terrible headaches from a broken tooth which refuses to get fixed even though I had a root canal done on it and a variety of other things.


I'm sure I've had many of my problems for a long time, but what if I hadn't gotten it diagnosed? Is the power of the mind so strong that I would have gone on long after my health problems should have taken me out? Because I feel like that tranny that didn't have a problem until it was flushed out. I'm falling apart even when I'm behaving myself.


I always figured I'd die at a young age. Now? My premature death seems certain. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to fix myself. I've tried not living with all of my bad habits, but somehow I feel worse. My blood sugar gets so low that I'm in danger of falling into a coma. So clearly my body needs a few bad habits to stay alive. The only problem is figuring out which ones to keep.


Maybe if I hadn't gone to the doctor when I did, I would be the Terminator now.


Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckitty fuck fuck. Goodnight.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #58: CHANGES

I swear to fuck, I can't figure out what's going on with my body right now. I've been testing and double-checking results, and I'm in a bit of a quandary.


OK, it would seem that when I behave myself, I've been getting super-low blood sugar readings. Ordinarily, that would be good considering my 'Beetus. However, my readings are so low they're fucking everything else up.


When I act like an animal--these days, not way-back-when--my readings are a bit high, but they're acceptable. I'm getting mixed messages here.


After adding everything up, I can only assume I have two choices. Everything else sucks, because if I behave myself AND take my meds, I find myself in a hateful position where I want to vegetate instead of do anything useful. Here are my choices.


Keep up my meds but add some sugar to my lunch (maybe a can of soda). This will keep me from going into a diabetic coma while still obeying my doctor, more or less.


Or . . . I can disobey my doctor and cut one of my meds out while sticking to the plan I have now. This is fiscally irresponsible, since I just bought a three-month supply of my meds, and I'm still waiting for my doctor to get back to me in regards to my most recent blood test.


I think I'm going with the latter, at least for now. I'm tired of being angry all the time. Also, I can't fall asleep at my job. I certainly can't fall asleep while driving home from work every day. And I definitely can't bring myself to waste $40 worth of meds. I think I'm just going to add a bit of sugar to my diet. Hopefully, I'll be able to control myself so I don't need to get my feet chopped off. (Although if I had to lose my feet, it might be cool to lose them as a special effect for THE EXPENDABLES 4, if they're planning on that happening. Chuck Norris is in that series now, right? Bill Hicks wouldn't cringe too much.)


I couldn't write tonight because of my diabetic incident. I couldn't exercise, either. I loaded down on sugar until I reached the point where I was hopped up and bouncing off the walls. Except now I have to go to bed, so I administered a bit of booze to take the edge off. I feel like I'm living a lonely, isolated version of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET right now, a version that involves no money at all. How awful is that?


New blood sugar experiments begin tomorrow. I'll report the results then, if my mindless whoring of my work doesn't get in the way. Fuck.