Archive for February, 2009
Maddow on Jindal
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Procrastination
Thanks, c_pt
Housekeeping Post #1
I wanted to write a quick note about a housekeeping milestone, and then I realized that I never did post what I had planned to be a thorough background on the topic as it pertains to me. I don’t know what I wrote back on September 3, 2008 and failed to post, but I’m going to dump it in here now, in whatever state it might be in, and then I’ll jump ahead to why I was going to post right now…
[2008.09.03] I’ve been trying for weeks now to get myself to write about my problem with household chores. It’s a difficult topic to bring up, because it’s so much more complicated than just saying I’m bad at them or that I need to do them. Explained insufficiently, and I imagine people will try to comfort me by telling me how household stuff is tough for them, too. Advice is not what is needed.
The fact is, I don’t know how to do any of this stuff, and I’ve gone so long without knowing how to do it that it’s impossible for me to make a significant dent in anything now. Oh, how this language could apply to so many problems of mine, but I am referring specifically to household chores.
I grew up in an environment in which clutter and mess were inescapable. I will not delve into the reasons for this, but I could not stand it. I was embarrassed, but I had no ability to change the situation. I would grow up, get out, live my own life, and these circumstances would be part of my past.
It has not turned out that way. I never figured out how to break the cycle and live in a clean, organized environment. Move after move for the past 15 years, I’ve never completely finished unpacking, so I’ve never been at a place where I could maintain something that was in a clean state, from dorm rooms to apartments to this bungalow. I hate how things gets, but this alone is not enough to motivate me to be able to magically get my act together. I hate how I shy away from having people over, and I hate that I am embarrassed in the rare event that people are over. Wanting something is most definitely not enough to make something so, and I hope most people can appreciate this. (Of course, this, too, applies to just about any problem in life where something desired is lacking).
I won’t detail specifically how ill health has made housekeeping harder than it might be otherwise. It has. But let’s suppose I am able to summon some energy and conquer some task of significance, it will be with much exhaustion, little satisfaction, and scant acumen. And, as I alluded to the other day, I can put forth what I think was a significant effort, and no one will realize just how hard it was.
The best example of this I can think of us is how I hosted a potluck event for a couple dozen people about 18 months ago. I had moved into my house, then just renting, a couple of months earlier. The place looked horrible, and I worked harder than I ever had to clean up the place and make it presentable. I pretty much succeeded at the reaching the minimum level of presentability that I needed to. However, in the final countdown to the event, I got flack from someone because there were all of these things I had not quite gotten to or done as well as I would’ve liked. This person didn’t realize how draining it had been to do what I had. The event was probably a successful, objectively-speaking. However, in the aftermath, I still felt shitty. My place deteriorated after that, and it’s not gotten any better since.
Well, it’s gotten somewhat better since September. My living room and kitchen look a lot better. The living room is even hospitable, I dare say. However, someone visiting me for the first time would have no idea what a struggle it is just to have what most would consider an unsuitably-messy house. I have a little personal satisfaction knowing it’s a little better. The very few people who have been in my house and know what it used to look like can vouch for the strides I’ve taken. Anyone else, unless I took great pains to try to tell them otherwise, would simply assume I am lazy and/or content with my surroundings.
Anyway, I only wanted to post tonight to say that I moved my bed. WOW, Toastie. Well, you, see, I moved my bed just so such that I think my tiny bedroom can now contain my bedroom furniture and not be impossible to keep tidy. It is still quite far from tidy. It is quite the mess, in fact. But I see how it might soon be manageable, and if I get my bedroom to be manageable, it might help me sleep, and if I start sleeping better, I might have more energy, and if I have more energy, I might feel more inclined to do lots of things, like housekeeping.
Modern Medicine
Over the weekend, I saw my grandfather’s grave. I would have a 100% certainty of sharing the same fate if it were not for “the miracle of modern medicine”. This is NOT a consoling thought.
The gizmo you absolutely have to own
WARNING: Contains a moderate degree of profanity
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work
How do you exorcise ghosts?
Serious question. I’m talking about the ghosts in our heads, the ones that prevent us from moving forward. And I don’t necessarily mean specific people…I mean events and mistakes you’d rather forget. I’ve got lots of these. Lots. Right now, I’ve got a couple of months stuck in my head that I’d just like to extract.
May 2008. Details matter not for the purpose of this exercise. But I keep beating myself up for it all.
April 2007. Ditto.
April 1996. Ditto.
And like I said, lots in between.
I want to take it all and roll it up into a ball and chuck it into the Grand Canyon. However, I imagine whirling this ball of crap so hard that it circles the globe and smacks be right in the back of the head. Actually, that’s pretty much what happens.
I realize this is all quite generic, and, at the same time, one of those “huh?” kind of posts.
One of those hilarious dialysis blogs
I have long wondered if there would come a point at which I’d write about my kidney-related health on a regular basis such that it would start to resemble a disease blog. If I just extracted the pkd-tagged posts, I’d essentially have a PKD blog. I have no I have had PKD twenty years. In all this time, I have not sought out the stories and experiences of others who have had the disease. I have been forced to hear the details of my mother’s experience with PKD, and can honestly say that I have only found it depressing to learn of what can potentially happen to my body. There has been no comfort of hearing of how others have coped or even in how others have overcome. ‘
The fact is, if you read a newsgroup or a blog chronicling people’s bouts with the PKD (or any other disease), you’re likely to find mostly unpleasant stories. And then the comments for the “community” of similarly afflicted people, while including plenty of encouragement, will also include plenty of comparative anecdotes. My impulsive reaction is to shut it all out. I do not want to do know of all the worst things that can happen, for even if some of them are preventable, I do not think I have the self-discipline, positive attitude, and support around me to ensure that they’re preventable.
So if I write about this stuff, I’m doing so in the hope that it is in some way therapeutic. I’m not seeing a therapist to talk about this stuff, and I’m doubting that I will, for all sorts of reasons that I can write about some other time.
I know people who don’t know me are going to find this. I know I’m already listed somewhere as a “dialysis” blog even though I’m not on dialysis. That’s fine. However, it’s the times I remember this that I start to feel bad the rest of my blog’s contents. I start to shy away from expressing myself. I sometimes wonder if people will think that this whiny, atheist, over-sarcastic s.o.b. doesn’t warrant any sympathy. I know there’s that chorus of people who’d say I shouldn’t worry about that. But I worry about that. Hell, I worry that I don’t deserve a new kidney, period, because, after all, I’m not likely to do anything useful with the rest of my life.
And then there’s the people who do know me. I’m sure this is not a comfortable read. This isn’t exactly the type of self-reflection that inspires lots of people to conclude, “Wow, I sure want to hang out with this guy!”
Well, this is what it is. And that’s my preface for what I meant to be a simple statement of the facts of my illness as they are right now. When I went in for surgery a couple of weeks ago for the fistula repositioning, my creatinine reading was 7.5 I hadn’t seen that number until today. 7.5 is a really bad number. While the amount of protein (creatinine) left in the blood not cleaned out by the kidneys is not the only indicator of renal function, it’s a pretty good one. While the number could’ve been especially high as a result of factors related to the surgery, today’s measurement of 6.8 would not be, and 6.8 is just about as bad. It translates roughly to 10% kidney functioning. (Go to Wikipedia or something like that to read about creatinine and kidney function. I cannot speak with complete accuracy on what it all means, even though one would think I’d be able to after 20 years).
So, these numbers essentially mean that, now that I’ve got a nice working fistula, I’m all set for dialysis. All I need to do is start to get really sick (intense nausea, fatigue, etc.) I have dreaded dialysis for years and now it’s here. It’s almost certainly going to happen in 2009, perhaps within a few months. Three-and-a-half hours of being hooked up to a machine and having my blood flushed out, cleaned, and flushed back in. Three times a week. And I do this until I can get a new kidney, which I’m not counting on happening for perhaps another five or six years, during which time, my kidney function will continue to get worse until it is essentially zero, and the dialysis is a life-or-death necessity.
Now, dialysis doesn’t need to be so dreadful. With my well-developed fistula and relative youth and fair health compared to other renal failure patients, I may have a better experience with dialysis than most. Actually, I’m counting on that. I cannot even bear to think about not having a “good” experience with dialysis. I know how susceptible to depression I am. I honestly am afraid I will not survive five or six years on dialysis.
