GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #923: CAFFEINE FREE DIET COKE

 Last week, in preparation for St. Louis, I decided to allow myself to drink Caffeine Free Diet Coke again. I've been eating dinner with water instead, so going back to cola was interesting for me. The problem is, when I started doing that again, I started waking up in the middle of the night again.

For the longest time I've been sleeping nearly through the night. I tend to wake up maybe fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off. But when I went back to the cola, I would wake up at two. Or three. Or four. And I'd try to go back to sleep, but I couldn't.

I got back home, so I'm back to drinking water at night. Somehow I have yet to sleep through the night. That irritates me. Getting a good night's sleep was doing wonders for me. It maybe even saved my sickness from coming back. It's possible that's why it's been a while since an attack.

I'm sick today, so we're keeping this one short. It's a cold, which I rarely get. I wonder if that's the trade off when it comes to my recurrent stomach problems. I get stuck with those, but I rarely get a cold. I think I'd rather get the colds.

Maybe it's a sign that the usual sickness is going away for a while. That would be nice. If I can make it to the end of the year without puking my guts out, I'll trust myself with more conventions next year.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #895: WHEN WILL THIS END?

 Sick again. Had to go to the ER. It helped. I'm not in pain right now, and my nausea is low. It's there, and I am tired of puking. I've been doing it all day. I'd rather not continue.

I don't know if I'll have a newsletter for you all tomorrow. I'll have to see how I feel. But holy shit, today was fucking rough. And I'm going to have to somehow find the strength to do laundry tomorrow, or I'm going to work naked on Monday. I've lost some weight, but there's some loose flesh because of how quickly it happened. It's weird seeing my belly button want to turn inside out. It would probably be even weirder if I was an outtie, but I'm an innie.

All right. I hope this qualifies as long enough for a GF. I'm going to try to sleep now.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #887: SICK AGAIN

 Dammit. It keeps happening to me. I'm still clueless as to why. I spent yesterday puking my guts out, praying for the pain to go away, Finally I went to the ER, where I was given the usual and allowed to rest for a bit. I got home feeling like shit, and I felt like shit through most of today. I think I'm OK now. I hope that my guts will stay where they belong, especially since I plan on getting a burger tomorrow for lunch with a friend.

I hate this. I really do. I quit drinking primarily so this illness would go away, and it did. For a year and a half. I'm sick of puking until my sides are splitting, my back screaming to not have to hover over the toilet like that. I'm sick of, after a bout like that, going back to my bed only to have to get up and do it again 15 minutes later. I hate that sleep is impossible in moments like this. It will keep me up for days if I don't go to the ER for my Zofran and morphine.

I guess it wasn't those pills I've been on for years, after all.

Every morning for the past week I've gotten up and puked. Then everything went back to normal, and I could go to work. It's just that yesterday, after I puked that first time, I got worse instead. I was starting to think it was my lot in life to puke in the mornings and get it over with before heading out into the world. I just want this bullshit to stop.

Maybe I should take up drinking again. At least that way there was something to blame my sickness on. And I do miss having that in my arsenal when it comes to pain. Instead of popping painkillers I could down some whiskey. Any time my teeth bothered me? I could take a mouthful of booze and swish it around in my mouth, and the pain would go away. I miss that.

I probably shouldn't take up drinking again. But think of this: after more than two years away from the bottle, my liver is probably in great shape!

OK, to keep up with my numbers, I'll post a GF on Saturday, too.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #876: FUCK

 I can't catch a break, can I? I felt so sick this morning I couldn't go to work. It stopped around 10-ish, but I was so exhausted I collapsed and slept for a few hours. I feel okay now, but all things considered, hopes aren't high for tomorrow.

I don't know what it is. It doesn't feel like my usual pukey sickness. Maybe it was food poisoning? I'll know for sure when I wake up tomorrow. Short one tonight. Sorry.

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 #861: BACK TO THE HOSPITAL

 I recently had another bout of my usual mystery illness, so once more I am on short term disability. Every time I'm in the ER for this a doctor asks if I have bloody stools, and every time I've said no. But when my illness concluded this time I *did* notice blood in my stools. My shit looked like used coffee grounds. So when I went to my usual doctor and told him this, he asked me when my next appointment is with the GI doctor. It was at the end of July. He said to call the office and to mention the bloody stools to guarantee that GI would see me ASAP. Because I'd also lost a lot of weight. More than usual.

I got in to see the GI doc that same day, and he said that he wanted me to swallow a camera pill so he can look in my small intestine for either a blood leak or a tumor. He left the decision to me, but he said he strongly suggested that I be admitted to the hospital for the test, and that it had to be done that day. Time, he said, was of the essence, especially if it turned out to be a tumor.

So I went to the ER and got a room in the hospital. I was not technically admitted, as this is more for observation than anything else.

Before I went to the ER, I stopped off for food, and it was a good thing I did. By the time I got my room the kitchen was closed, and they wanted me on a clear liquid diet. They also wanted me to swallow some bowel prep so the camera could see clearly. It brought back horrible memories of my colonoscopy.

The camera was about as big as the first joint on my index finger, and it flashed a light, presumably for taking pictures inside of me. I swallowed it, and they had me wear a vest that would collect the data as the camera worked its way through me. After 2 hours I could drink water again. After 4 they let me have a light snack. After 8 I could remove the vest. Finally, the next day they let me have a full meal.

The camera found nothing. It's a relief because, hey, no tumor. It's worrisome because there is still something wrong with me. I lost ten pounds during my hospital stay. I no longer have bloody stools (thank fuck), so I'm hoping whatever this is isn't too bad. But my next step is a hematologist to see if they can figure out where my missing blood went. I was down to 7.1 hemoglobin in the hospital, but it was up to 7.5 when I left. A good sign.

My health horrors aren't over, but at least we know more now. I'll keep you updated as I learn more. For a while there I was pissed off because I figured a tumor would kill me within months, and I'd never get to fulfill one of my goals: to beat my mom's high score. She died at 53. I thought I could beat that for sure. Dad's high score, 59, will be more difficult, but I thought I at least had Mom in the bag. So yeah, one of my goals is to live to 60. After that, no promises.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #836: WHAT NEXT?

 It used to be that every morning I would wake up and wonder which part of me will hurt the worst. It's a common thing for middle-aged men (or middle-aged anyone, I suppose), but my deck is very much stacked against me. More than with most people.

Thanks to those spinal injections I've been pain free in my usual spots. My *new* problem is shit just going wrong on me. Like the sudden return of the sickness that usually sends me to the ER puking and in pain. Or when my dentist said there's something weird about my implant, as it is doing something that should be impossible. It looks like its losing bone where the implant joins with the jaw. Or the thing with my eye where I have a bunch of really big floaters in my vision. It looks like a cloud of flies are constantly around my head. If I close one eye, most of them disappear . . . unless I lightly close it, in which case I can still see them swimming against the back of my eyelid.

My eyes are doing something new now. Every day I wake up it's like my vision is glitching. I can see, but any light is so blinding that I can't see clearly. Waves run over my vision, usually in time with my pulse. If I close my eyes I have retinal burns that look like inkblots. It goes away after I've been up and about for maybe 15 minutes, and sometimes if the sun is really bright out, one of my eyes closes involuntarily.

So it's fun being me.

You know what I need? A fucking Lazarus Pit. Anyone got one of those around? Or is it just Ra's al Ghul? I don't care about immortality all that much. I think I've lived long enough as it is. It's the quality of my life that I care about. I think about Dean Winchester going to Hell, then getting dragged out by Castiel. Dean marvels at his remade body, in particular his fingers. They're no longer crooked from punching people and monsters. I want to be that way. Without the hellish torture, of course. Unless maybe that makes it worth it?

I like my scars. Scars really do tell a life story. But everything else? It would be nice to wake up and not have my eyes go crazy on me. It would be nice to be able to confidently eat something in public without fear of it coming back later and sending me to the ER. It would be great to feel my feet again. And it would be nice to have all ten toes again.

So I guess I have to wonder what the fuck is next to go wrong for my body. Maybe those injections will wear off, and I'll be in constant pain again. That would be peachy keen. Something to look forward to . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #796: HEALTH UPDATE

 You know what I'm getting tired of? Writing that first post after a long time off. It always feels necessary to give you all an update, which you can probably tell for yourself if you follow me on social media. But here we are again. Welcome back!

I'm on short term disability from work right now due to a horrible illness that I was hoping to never deal with again. What happens is, I feel nauseous, and it gets worse and worse until I puke. And then I puke again. And again, and by now I have a horrible pain jabbing through my stomach and to my back. And it's relentless. It goes on for days, and I usually go to the ER three times before they take me seriously and admit me until the sickness is over. It usually takes a lot of Zofran and morphine to do the trick. I was told that if I quit drinking, I would never get sick like that again.

Lo! and behold! The doctors were wrong. I'm dry, and I'm still going through this shit. So now I've been thinking about drinking again. If it doesn't matter, why not? Well, there's still the Fear. You could probably put a shot of Wild Turkey 101--hell, Booker's!--in front of me, and I wouldn't take it.

(The Pappy might be a different story. That's a once in a lifetime drink for someone as dirt poor as me.)

I probably won't, but that's what's been on my mind.

Then there's the thing about stepping in glass. I saw my podiatrist, and he said that there's still a hole there. He shaved off a callus and showed me. Just because dead skin grew over the hole doesn't mean it's fixed. So I still have that to fucking plague me. I've been sleeping badly because of it. I keep dreaming about my left leg getting amputated just below the knee. Not fun. Especially since . . .

. . . I've started a series of four spinal injections. They're being administered by the pain clinic. The first was for my bad foot, and the other three are for my back. Oh yeah, I have arthritis in my back now. At any rate, the injection for my foot just kicked in today, and I can walk without feeling pain! For the first time in years! It would be a shame to lose that foot now that I've figured out a way to kill that pain.

My hand surgery went well. I no longer have trigger finger in either hand, and now that the stitches are out, I'm back to typing, which means I'm back to work writing. Which means Good Morning, Fuckers! is going to be new on Sunday. Even better, the middle finger on my right hand no longer sticks, so I can flip people the double-bird again!

I have an appointment with my regular doctor tomorrow so I can schedule my return to work. I think I'll be back on 2/26. There are still a lot of tests to do, including a stomach emptying study in which I'll eat radioactive egg whites and get x-rayed a few times to see how fast it moves through me. Because my gastroenterologist says I *don't* have gastroparesis, as I detailed in a previous GF column. So yeah, the sickness thing is still a goddam mystery after all these years. What the fucking fuck?

Hopefully this illness is actually over, so I can get back to writing these columns (and other stuff) on a regular basis. I have not forgotten the five-part GF series that might get me killed if I was important enough. That will take place next week. I fucking hope. Because I wouldn't wish this horrible illness on Donald Fucking Trump, and that's saying a lot.

All right. That's all for now. I'll see you tomorrow for a real GF column. Goodnight, you lovely fuckers, you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #448: FUCK THE SICKNESS

 It's been a while since I got sick. And by getting sick, I mean an actual cold or the flu or something that lasts more than a day of crud. I used to get sick once every year for about a week or so (and then the gunk would stay with me for a couple more weeks), and it was usually around the first week of February. Then my body stopped getting sick a few years back. I suspect it was because my organs started failing me around then, and I guess my body took some kind of pity on me because it must have decided that being in and out of the ER for that kind of thing was probably enough misery for me to deal with.

But this motherfucker swept in on me on January 3, and it didn't let go of me fully until this morning. It was fucking merciless. I couldn't stand up without feeling woozy. Every night one nostril would close up on me until I turned on my other side, and I'd get a few seconds of relief until the other nostril closed instead. I hacked and coughed and gagged. And then, just when I thought I was in the clear, the diarrhea showed up and had me going back and forth to the bathroom.

Holy fuck, this one was rough. With the specter of Covid hanging over us all, I naturally got paranoid about having it. I could still taste and smell things, so I suspected it wasn't it, but I started looking around for places I could get tested without standing outside in the freezing cold for more than a half an hour. Naturally, there was nowhere I could go for that. And I can barely stand up for ten minutes, what with the bad leg and all, so going elsewhere wasn't an option.

(Here's a tip if you find yourself in such a situation and you have good insurance. Go to the ER sick as a dog, and maybe exaggerate your symptoms a little. You'll get tested. Fair warning, though: if you test positive, they might not let you leave to self quarantine at home, which is what I did.)

I poured all sorts of shit into me. All the Quils I could get my hands on. Cannabis. Even Unisom for when I was trying to sleep, which was almost all the time. And I got desperate enough to see if I could drink the sick away. If you catch it early enough, that usually works, but I was already balls deep into this illness and tried it anyway. No dice.

And I drank a ton of Tang. That was my only real pleasure at the time. Because when I'm sick I can't write or read or even jerk off. All I can do is watch TV, so I did a lot of that while waiting to pass out from medications.

But goddammit, it's done with. Except the gunk. I'll have the snot dribblies for another week or so, but that's not so bad, all things considered. I feel strong enough to resume my usual daily rituals. I got some writing done, some reading. Meditation and some upper body exercises. So things are looking much better now.

Welcome to 2022. Hopefully it's not time to get familiar with cannibalism. Yet.

THE DAY I ALMOST DIED

Many of you might remember a few years ago when I suffered from a mysterious illness that caused extreme pain in the middle of my stomach and extreme vomiting. After 13 ER visits and 4 hospitalizations, as well as more tests that I knew we had as a civilization, it was determined that the cause was my digestive system. It runs a quarter of the speed of everyone else’s. Things just got jammed up in my guts, and since it couldn’t come out the correct way, it had to go back up the way it came.

Since then, I’ve been careful about how much I eat and how quickly I eat it. However, it was only a matter of time before my vigilance failed me. My bowels dried up on me the weekend before, and that’s a sign that my troubles were about to begin again. By Tuesday, I started feeling odd. By Wednesday, I started feeling discomfort in my stomach, and by Thursday, I started feeling sick. It got to the point where I had to leave work early that day. I barely made it home before I puked my guts out. Over and over and over again for at least fifteen hours. The next day, I gave up and decided it was time to go to the ER. I’d go in, get some Zofran for the sickness and some Dilaudid for the pain, I’d get some sleep for a little while, and they’ll let me go home so I can get more sleep.

It didn’t turn out that way.

They got me through triage pretty quickly, and as soon as I got dressed in the awful gown, they stuck an IV in me and strapped a whole bunch of wires to my chest to monitor my heart. Then, they gave me my shots, which made me very happy.

Let me take a moment to talk about Dilaudid. I can’t tell you how much I love this wonderful drug. If it was readily available to me, I’d be a junkie, proudly sucking dick for my next fix. It works, and it works fast. When the plunger goes down, the heat just fills your heart and lungs, and then it fills your head with a wonderful numbing cloud. Just typing this makes me want to go back and pretend to have pain so I can get more.

Unfortunately, they didn’t allow me to enjoy that beautiful rush. They took me for x-rays and then a CT scan. They surprised me on that one by telling me there would be an enema involved.

I don’t like things going in my ass. I don’t even like the mid-blowjob finger back there. But I gave them permission, because I didn’t want to suffer anymore. They told me to relax—how can you relax when something is about to be shoved in your asshole?!—and they stuck it. The pressure nearly blew my eyes out, and they kept sticking it in further and further. The juice went in, and the nurse said that I had to hold it in.

They then put me into the machine. My guts wanted desperately to shit all this juice out of me. It became painful, but I had to keep it in. Imagine having the worst diarrhea you’ve ever had, and then imagine having to hold it inside of you. That’s how it felt. Mercifully, the scan was short, and they let the juice back into the enema before they pulled it out.

As soon as I got back to my ER bed, I rushed to the bathroom and let out a torrent of diarrhea, which was for the best. I hadn’t defecated in five days.

I managed to get some rest for a while, and then a doctor came in and gave me the bad news. At first I was concerned because they were asking about my appendix, and I didn’t want to have to go through an operation. Thinking back, I changed my mind. If only appendicitis had been the case.

“You have pancreatitis.”

I’d heard of the condition and knew a little about it, but the way he said it made it sound like I was dying. Jokingly, I said, “That doesn’t sound good.”

“No. You almost died. You still might. Your pancreas is as hard as a brick. It’s supposed to help you digest, and nothing is getting through. It’s stopped working, which means it has also stopped making insulin for you.”

I almost missed most of that. I kept thinking about that part about how I might still die. A million thoughts went through my mind in that moment, and here are a few of them, in no particular order:

--Fuck. I just ordered the complete series of THE TUDORS.

--I’m never going to swap orgasms with a woman again.

--I don’t have access to Twitter. How are my followers going to know that I died if I don’t tweet about it?

--I just added minutes to my phone. That’s $30 wasted.

--When I die, I’m really going to miss Wild Turkey 101.

--I have a lot of submissions out right now. What am I going to do if I get posthumous acceptance letters?

--I’ll never get to impress my dentist with how well I’ve been looking after my teeth this time.

--I’ll never know how Clive Barker’s NEXT TESTAMENT is going to end, and THE WALKING DEAD is going to continue without me.

--What are my grandparents going to do without me?

--Why couldn’t it have been a quick heart attack?

--I still owe Forced Viewing a review for GODS AND MONSTERS.

--Next Thursday was supposed to be an unofficial work outing with Fitz, and I can’t make it because I’ll be dead.

There were other thoughts, but those were the most prominent.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“We’re admitting you. We’ve got to get your pancreas working again. It’ll take some time, but if we don’t do this, you’re going to die.”

“What caused this?”

“Primarily, gall stones or alcohol.” Since I didn’t have a gall bladder anymore, there could have been one primary cause, then. He told me that alcohol is a poison, so the pancreas isn’t very good at processing it. He also told me that it’s not suited for handling all the greasy fast food that I’ve been eating almost every day since I was in junior high. And because I need the pancreas to make insulin (I’m diabetic), the soft drinks didn’t help.

“By the way,” he added, “you can never have another alcoholic beverage again for the rest of your life, or you’ll end up back here, or worse.”

That just fucking figures.

My mouth was dry—and had been for about a week or so—and I asked if I could have water. He said no. I can’t ingest anything because my pancreas isn’t working. He said I could suck on some ice chips, but that was it.

They took me upstairs, where they proceeded to fill me full of Dilaudid. A lot of it. I liked that, but it also concerned me a bit. The doctors are usually stingy with their opiates because they don’t want to create any junkies. Becoming a junkie is usually a secondary concern for me, since I’d rather not feel pain if I’ve got it. I can deal with an addiction later. This time, they all but gave me my own drip. I didn’t realize it at the time, but afterward I discovered that they weren’t sure if I was going to make it or not. They were giving me so many painkillers to ease my passage into the next world.

The next day was very strange. I was in and out of a haze, completely uncomfortable because of the IV (and as a result, I couldn’t bend my arm, or an alarm would go off), the wires attached to my chest, the oxygen tube in my nose and the blood pressure cuff on my arm, which went off every hour. I couldn’t even enjoy the Dilaudid because every hour, they had to wake me up to take my blood sugar. By the time I left the hospital, all of my fingertips were covered with red dots, except for one. That one had a pulse monitor taped to it. Because of that motherfucker, I had to learn how to wipe my ass with my other hand.

But that was just the shitty part. The weird part came when I started hearing voices. I started seeing people who weren’t there. I started getting the feeling that there were animals walking around my room. And in one instance, I saw a nurse’s shadow shimmer under her before flying across the floor and disappearing into the wall. I had dreams about friends I haven’t talked to in maybe fifteen years. Three women I used to fuck came to sleep with me in the hospital, but there was nothing sexual about it. One time, I forgot where I was and started rolling backwards. Someone told me I shouldn’t do that, or he was going to score me on a 20 point dive. I caught myself just in time before I rolled off the bed, but no one was in the room with me to say anything.

None of this can be attributed to the drugs, but I’ve talked to a few people who have been hospitalized under similar conditions, and they all say they experienced the same sort of thing. Maybe it’s just the vibe in such places, or maybe it comes from being so close to death. I can’t explain it.

I didn’t know it was Monday, but that was when they decided I was going to live. They moved me upstairs, where the non-critical people are stored. First, they had a nurse give me a sponge bath, wash my hair and get me into a new gown. As she went over my hair, she couldn’t stop complimenting me on it. At least there’s that. My awful, wrecked body has a great head of hair up top. She didn’t mention the beard, though. Women tend not to like it. Ah well. Can’t have everything.

I hoped they’d take those awful wires off of my chest, but they didn’t. However, when I was critical, they were all attached to the wall, so if I needed to get up, I needed a nurse to disconnect me. Now, they decided to put a box around my neck, which would monitor my heart just as well. I believe it was called a Holter Box, and that motherfucker weighed me down for the rest of my hospital stay. It was so bad that it felt like it was choking me sometimes, especially when I was trying to sleep.

As soon as I got settled into my new bed, I got my Dilaudid and went off to . . . I won’t call it sleep. I never truly slept in all that time. There are no comfortable sleep positions in the hospital, especially when you have to keep one arm straight and when you’re wearing wires on your chest. But it was in this moment that I did something I’ve never done in my adult life: I shit myself.

It wasn’t a lot. As soon as it happened, I became wide awake, and I could already feel diarrhea setting into my boxers. Groaning, I pulled myself out of bed, disconnected my IV from the wall and staggered to the bathroom. I kicked my boxers off and sat on the toilet, practically filling it with mush. (It was still tinged yellow, which was the same color of the stuff in the enema, so I think that might have actually been the culprit.) I got a chance to examine my boxers, and there was just a tiny slash of shit on them. Not bad, but I didn’t have anything else to wear in the hospital.

I washed them in the sink and hung them up on a bar in the bathroom after checking to make sure the stain was gone. In the meantime, I tied a bed sheet around my legs to act as a diaper. The next morning, the boxers were dry and actually smelled pretty fresh, so I put them back on.

The next couple of days weren’t so bad, aside from the lack of sleep. I tried to read, but I knew that wouldn’t work out. I can’t read when I’m sick. The words danced on the page, and it hurt to keep them straight, so I gave up and watched TV. In fact, that’s pretty much everything I did until I was released on Wednesday.

When they brought me up to the fifth floor, they let me have fluids. Now, they let me have solid foods. The doctor was surprised by how soft my pancreas felt now, considering it had been a rock a few days ago. He told me to eat right and stop drinking. I was lucky. My pancreas was recovering at a very quick rate. He told me I’d be out in a couple of days, provided I could keep solid food down.

Holy fuck, I don’t know how people can stand watching daytime TV. Even channels like FX had the worst fucking commercials imaginable. I saw more about walk-in bathtubs (with Pat fucking Boone!), buying gold, generic internet services, depression pills that might kill you, JG Wentworth and alerts for old people who have fallen and can’t get up. But that’s not the worst part. You get maybe seven minutes of actual programming, and then you get 10 minutes of commercials.

But I did get to watch good things. I saw a few episodes of GUNSMOKE from the ‘Seventies, including one with Martin Landau about a group of robbers disguised as army men who commandeer the blacksmith shop in Dodge in order to break down a giant hunk of gold. Before that, there was an episode of ANDY GRIFFITH that shits all over the Robin Hood myth and, as a result, the poor. I caught a lot of RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, and I was surprised to find it was actually good. I caught half of TRON 2 and was actually impressed. I swear,             TRON didn’t need a sequel, but now I’m thinking maybe they should have made the original 20 years later than they did.

But the best thing I found on TV in all my time in the hospital was a movie called THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA. This is a movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. It’s a romance, but it’s the greatest romance I’ve ever watched. I think it’s required viewing for anyone who wants to be a writer. It’s perfectly structured, and it’s got great characters spouting great lines. It’s one of Bogie’s best performances. His Faust speech is truly something to behold. It might be one of the best things ever written.

They let me out on Wednesday, but not before a doctor had a talk with me about my ‘Beetus. She said my percentage was 8.1, which is insane. The last time I had it checked, I was down to 6.1, which is excellent. As a result, she decided that I needed to go home and start injecting myself with insulin once a day at 10 pm. They made me inject myself before I left the hospital. It sucks, but it’s doable. The worst part is the cost. When these insulin pens are gone, I’m just going to have to do without.

You should have seen the list of foods they want me to avoid as I build my pancreas back up. They say I need so much of dairy products, but then they take just about every dairy product away from me. The only thing I can think of that wasn’t on the list of stuff to stay away from was skim milk. Essentially, they wanted to keep me to chicken broth, bread, vegetables (unbuttered) and lean meats. No hot dogs, no pizza, no cheeseburgers.

They took everything I love away.

Well, the food isn’t forever. I’m starting to get back to a bigger menu now. I still have to avoid fast food at all costs. To keep my blood sugar down, I have to avoid drinking just about everything. I can have water, and that’s it. (Well, I allow myself my morning Tang, because I can’t let them take everything away from me.) But the big thing is, I’ve been forbidden by the hospital to ever have another drink of alcohol, which sucks because I have three-quarters of a handle of Old Crow Reserve, a half a fifth of Glenfiddich, an entire fifth of Maker’s Mark and an airplane bottle of Wild Turkey 101.

I just couldn’t accept the fact that I could never drink again. I understand the importance of staying away from booze for now, until my pancreas is tip-top again. But forever? When I went to see my regular doctor, I asked about it. He said, “Do you drink to get drunk?”

Well, of course. No one drinks just ‘cause.

“Then, when you drink, you have a lot, not just one or two.”

Fuck. “Yeah.”

“Then I don’t recommend ever drinking again.”

That’s bad news. But! His answer suggested I could drink again. I just can’t drink a lot or often, that’s all. I’m thinking by the time my birthday rolls around, I can maybe treat myself to a couple of drinks.

He wants me down to 200 lbs. He says I can do it if I stick to an 1800 calorie-a-day diet and get my exercise in. If I can do that, he promises I won’t need the insulin pens. I might not even need my oral meds. That gives me hope, and that’s why I’m actually going to listen to him this time. I could definitely stand to lose the weight. (It did, however, take some restraint not to mention the weight I lost in the hospital. I went from about 263 to 248, and I had to punch a new hole in my belt.) With that few calories, I might even get down that much by next winter.

Just before the doctor let me go from the hospital, he told me that I was very lucky. A lot of people who came in as bad as I did didn’t get to go home. They usually just died.

Wish me luck, folks. I hope to never have to go through this again.