did i tell you fred bought a piano?

Flickr -- By emster214  

 Emily Chastain

ready to stop, ready to give in, up.  give out.  [how many prepositions work with "to give"?]

monday got me.  the screaming meanies, the spaz attacks, dystonia, whatever -- and i don't give a royal poop if you are a regular reader and know what i'm talking about or if you stumbled onto this blog in your quest for "XXX Porn, Live, Totally Naked Women, XXX Porn!" -- variations of which are my number one search terms.

not that i was stunningly functional over the weekend... i got so low that i asked fred to simply sit and hold my hand. it helped because we got to talking about brooklyn and old maps, i got distracted, and so had a few minutes of wonderful.

i cannot see -- fuzz is the operative word.  double vision, or vision with a charming echo is what i trot out for medical types.  "i can't see shit" is what i say in more normal circumstances.  sometimes i say seemingly contradictory things, like "you see that?  i can't see that!"

of the three new drugs i was excited about, it looks like a possible triple play -- all called out before getting any chance to slide for home.  pain has returned to normal 8-9 out of 10 on the freaking pain scale.  the screaming ninny-meanies are worse than they've ever been, unrelenting and soul destroying. the memantine? how am i to judge?

last week i went to the eye doc, who snickered when i said i was ready to have that surgery she had been referencing -- a combo cataract/glaucoma operation.  it turned out none of the anesthesiologists at her hospital would touch me with this active bone infection.  she did give me permission to get new glasses, finally.

so... monday.  pain management dood's Nurse Practitioner, then Fred would peel off to the pharmacy while i went to the lab and made deposits, following which we'd meet up with dear darling ruby the honda crv and toodle off to Tête de Hergé's single WallyMart west of the Lone Alp.  the eye doc had opined that the new eyeglass script might last a month, three months, a year, five years, she had no freaking idea.  so i planned to sink very little money into these spectacles.

but i was shopping with the aid of one of the world's most reknowned consumer know-it-all. my fred.  when i rejoiced over finding a NINE dollar pair of frames that would do nicely, he snorted.  i found myself led by the nose to the maginc "flex" frames, frames he claimed i could not destroy.  i never plan, of course, to destroy my frames, but sometimes do.  i toss them on the bed and a feline waits for the dulcet tones of my sleep apneic snoring before snatching them for a good chew, to be followed by a great, fun game of "where the hell are my glasses, you nasty cat?"  i drop them several times a day and pick them up with the unforgiving tines of my grabbers.

so the flex frames were my pick.  yes, i looked at a grand total of 2 frames, and even those 2 i couldn't really see.  that's why fred was not set loose upon the WallyMart, he had to serve as fashion consultant to this prednisone moon-faced, fat pads galore, perpetually confused looking visage.

"um, you know this a pretty serious prescription," stammered the 12 year old eye specialist. "it's going to cost extra,"

of course, it is gonna cost extra, dear heart!  c'est moi!

then i had a shopping list that we proceeded to ignore because i was fading fast.  would someone please tell me these fat people are driving carts all over the store, stopping with a screech in front of the generic "muffin top" super-sized bags of cereal, leaping and pirouetting from the constraints of their motorized, armored golf carts to grab 'em?  some of these twirling folk stopped to talk to me, figuring i was both simple-minded and bodily disabled, as i was peering at the line up of products with a drooling incomprehension.  it looks like a yogurt container but it could be ricotta or cottage cheese.  it costs with 5-something or 8-something which seems ridiculous for any of those possibilities, except maybe a fine ricotta.  or a whole milk actual greek-from-greece yogurt.

i had a long grocery list but gave up after frozen strawberries, frozen peaches, frozen mixed berries, yogurt, and milk.  and fake sugar.  all of which fred had to find and i had to buy.  [these are my comfort foods.  frozen fruit with milk -- consumed while still frozen -- makes me feel, at least, less febrile.  yogurt is also a necessity in this world of eternal antibiotics.

we got home, i got into bed before going to the bathroom and cried for half-an-hour about that, got up and walked to the bathroom, crying the whole way, made it back to bed, but barely, as i was a-rockin' this a'way and that a'way.  then i just lay there and allowed my legs to jerk and spasm while i watched the wind-up to the foreign policy debate.  i thought for sure that would stop 'em.

and i lied.  i lied to friends, family, and doctors.  i kept up the story of the drugs helping 30%, or maybe 25%, except for the one drug that i had not yet titrated to the highest dose, of course.  the one making the spaz attacks worse?

i won't get labs back until this afternoon but i got a preview late yesterday.  super nurse called to tell me to stick to the 150 dose of the spaz med and not double up to 300 on wednesday.  i took the chance to ask what my hemoglobin was, as i was convinced it had to be under 7, i was that tired.  nope, 11.  however, my wbc was 14.9, and, again i say, that is on the antibiotic...  i don't know about liver function or kidney function, or c-reactive protein, that'll be later today.

but i don't care.

i listened, as i could not watch, to frasier and the golden girls, followed by hours of i love lucy all night long.

i have failed at everything.

oh -- i did manage to ditch all my GOOG at $700 last week just after they resumed trading.  i guess that's something of a coup, as i only lost thousands of dollars versus more thousands of dollars.  yay, me.

i would like to be put in a nice, old-fashioned hospital, snowed, washed, wrapped in clean sheets and blankers, my vision made perfect, the nurses offering gentle massage whenever i should arch an eyelid open, followed quickly by more no-jerking, no-pain magic meds.  there would be a strange lack of doctors and tests and surgeries.

and fred, of course, would be set free with his guitars, ukulele, and the new piano.  did i tell you he bought a piano?  my only criteria was that my laughing buddha could still sit in that spot, front and center, belly begging a rubbing.