THE ROAD TO HELL

 Remember a little while ago when I got a cage installed on my bad foot? I remember thinking at the time, I'd better not suffer my mystery illness. If I do, I'm fucked. How am I going to get to the bathroom on time to puke when I'm dragging this thing around? (Dragging. In reality, I'm on a walker until the doc can take a look at my foot.) I feared it more than anything.

So of course it happened. I had just joined the BWA online meeting on Sunday morning when I felt my guts go south on me. I suddenly had to drop off and shuffle to the bathroom, where I puked for the first time over the next few days. I had my liquid vicodin, but for some reason it wasn't working this time. (I had a lot of time to think about it, and I suspect it was because I was on stronger pain medication for the foot. That has to be the reason. It's the only different thing in my life at the time.) I drank a whole bottle of the stuff trying to stop the illness, but it was a no-go.

I dreaded going to the ER down here because they didn't know me, and I suspected it might take a while to get the treatment I need, as it is on the unusual side. I never imagined the horrors to come.

I first tried St. Joe's, which is easily the worst ER I've ever been to. They had zero wheelchairs on hand even though there was no one else in the waiting room. When they got me to triage, I was surprised to learn that this would be my ER room. They gave me an EKG sitting shirtless in the triage room. That's a bad sign. They also tried to get 5 IVs on me. One of them worked long enough to give blood before it blew. By the fifth attempt I noticed, while puking in the bathroom, that the IV just sort of fell off. That was the last straw for me. I did something I tell everyone to never do: I pulled my own (the third one that might still be useful) IV out like a TV character. I suffered zero blood loss from it.

Then I tried Silvercross. They're bad, too, but only because they insist on the mystery. They had to poke, scan and prod me even though they could have just called Elmhurst for my records. I told them to do this, to talk to someone over there, so they don't cover the same territory. My reason was, they wouldn't give me morphine until they were certain I had a problem. I wanted them to know that they wouldn't find anything on my CT scan or anything else.

After eight hours I got an ER room, and then they said they'd hold on to me overnight, and they admitted me. However, they left me down in the ER. And kept me there. And kept me there. They did give me Zofran and morphine, and it did stop the sickness, but they wanted to run more tests. They told me there's a GI doc who wants to see me. When? To be determined. My sickness was coming back because I hadn't been allowed to go home and recover on my own.

I told them I was leaving before things got worse. They advised me that wasn't possible, and I checked myself out AMA.

I swear to fuck, if this happens again, I'm making the miserable drive to Elmhurst's ER. My family thinks of my experiences at Elmhurst and thinks they suck. Compared to these other ERs? Elmhurst is top notch, and they at least know me there. They can actually help me.

So I got home, and the sickness was ramping up again. I had nothing more to puke up. I'd been dry-heaving all day at that point. It got so bad that I wrote a note, put my IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH envelope underneath it, and I stared at my insulin pen a while in the dark. It's never fully dark in the basement in Joliet, so I could see that I'd turned the pen up to 40 units. These incidents always drive my blood sugar up through sheer stress alone, as I'm incapable of eating anything when I'm having an attack. I realized that 40 might not kill me, so I notched it up to 50. That should do the trick.

I thought about how scary low blood sugar is, and I decided that it was worth it to never have to be this sick again. One hurdle to jump, and the fight would be over. I thought about the chorus for Ensiferum's "One with the Sea":

No more fighting
Just the abyss
Soon I'll be
One with the sea

No more pretending
Only the bliss
Soon I'll be
One with the sea

That bliss sounded amazing. But as with my last suicide attempt my survival instinct kicked in, disgusted with what I'd been thinking about.  I gave myself 25 instead (because the hospital said I was up to 380) and tried to sleep.

For a marvel, I did. And when I woke up the next day I felt normal. I was able to eat, which was a miracle on its own. This morning I took a shit, and that's usually the indication that the episode is over.  I might even take a shower today.

Sometimes waiting is the best option. Action demands instantaneity and is always full of confusing emotion. I'm glad I waited because I feel things are about to turn around for me. I really hope so.

Here's something that always cheers me up. I'm glad I'm alive to listen to it this afternoon. It feels like I'm constantly walking the road to hell, thinking I'm making my way through the worst of it at any given time, and that the rest of the walk will be easy. My flesh is scorched and blackened, my eyes blinded by the flames, cognizant only of the pain, kept alive by the hope that my endless walk into the flames is almost over. It never is, though.

Live for the Kittyman.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #309: LIVE TO YOU FROM THE HOSPITAL!

 First point, yes, this is a weird time for me to be posting this, but after I do so, I am going to go to sleep, as I have not done so in a very, very long time. Bringing me to my second point. I am doing this from the hospital. Once again, my insides have risen up against me, but like the Pentahook, I'm a bastard who can't be killed.

Why am I doing this instead of sitting back and enjoying the morphine while my death wracked body begs for mercy? I found out something so horribly disgusting today about maybe the toneless and most greediest thing I have ever heard about.

So I'm in the ER, just about learning that I was to be admitted, when the nurse and the tech started talking about a possible raise they were going to get. I'm a personable guy in these situations because I know how difficult and sometimes horrifying their jobs can be. One of them said she thought they'd get a flat 3% raise. The tech said it had better be 5. I wished them good luck, as they were about to leave to handle a patient who wanted his fluids orally because he was scared of needles.

"I hope we're lucky," the nurse said. "They just took away our 401k plans."

Wait, now what? Who? And who suffers? Well, they were recently bought by a corporate entity, and while I believe the idea came from these new administrators, I highly think that they would never apply such a grim plan to themselves. Doctors? Lucrative, I'm sure, but somehow I feel that the doctors had the pull to keep them out of it. Nurses? Techs? You know, the guys who do the real work? When was the last time you saw a doctor put in an IV or one do a CT Scan themselves? No, they just make the big money from looking at the results and from sometimes making you say "Ahhhhhhhh."

Just so we're clear, the front-line responders at a hospital, the one who get most of the hands on experience, are doing so during the most deadly plague we've experienced in a while and having the most risk of getting it are now doing this with the sudden absence of their 401k plans?! What fucking CEO-in-Robocop prick came up with this solution? Did he laugh to hookers in chains while wiping at the cocaine ring around his nostrils? What kind of evil shit is this?

This hospital, I should mention, has proudly bragged about how awesome they score on national tests. It's a very effective place. I use it a lot, and it's only let me down twice. I've been here once a month at least every month of this year. In May, I went here a staggering four times in five days. I almost had you beat, October! Damn it! Damn you!

So every time you see all those children's signs on the outside, keep in mind that while those are pretty good, they would much rather have their 401k plans. (Hey, I did this all on morphine. I think I did a fair job.)