The Disambiguation of Pain (produced the Pisan Cantos): A working theory

What follows is a live-action demonstration, from July 2009, of how to control pain using the art of distraction.

To employ this method at home, you will need internet access and some sort of writing platform (a blog, spare bits of tissue, rice paper with ink and paintbrush, etc.).  Also, if you have a legal and appropriate pharmaceutical at hand, you may take it, but take the lowest necessary dosage, decreased by half.

[Your first few times employing my proprietary blend of distraction, though, consider not using any medication at all. It may not be necessary to your relief.  Not while you have a brain!]

Tell yourself, aloud:  "I will feel better in 15 minutes. 20 minutes, tops." For a successful outcome, position yourself, your internet-accessed device, and any external writing paraphernalia (beware the literati cops!) within comfortable reach. Place everything with such care of thought that should you drift off in a cloud of painlessness, nothing will be harmed. That means, for instance:  no hot beverages!

There.  You are all set.  Breathe in, breathe out, slowly.  Engage your creativity and release your inhibitions and prohibitions.

You are about to disambiguate your pain.  Bon voyage!

***********   ***   ***********   ***   ***********   ***  ***********   *** 

Ezra Pound

I had a night full of crazy nearly-nightmarish dreams and woke to the indescribable pain caused by Uncle Kitty Big Balls licking my CRPS-stricken right big toe. [He's obsessed with toes... maybe because we had to have one of his chopped off to save his sorry hide.]

I don't plan to scrape UKBB:-:Pickle Head:-:Little Boy off the wall anytime soon. Yeah, go ahead. Report me! Turn me in! Drag me off to the slammer, the big house, get all touchy-feelly about mistreatment of cross-eyed, streetwise, stinky-pooping cats.

Lately, UKBB:-:Pickle Head:-:Little Boy has accumulated even more monikers, none of which have definitively stuck, alas. Bugsy. Gus. (I was watching, for the umpteenth time, Lonesome Dove. I have an enduring love for Robert Duvall, and had just announced that I really, really wanted a Gus of my very own, when UKBB promptly announced himself with that weird, raspy half-*ack*-*ack*, half-mee-row that also managed to denote a scruffy beard and teeny-tiny cowboy hat.)

Also: Aeolus -- Greek God of the Winds, for reasons that are air-borne and truly, truly unfortunate. Dirty Harry.

Ah, the serendipity of internet searches and plain old, errant, mindless keyboard clicks. As I began to write about UKBB and his assault, it occured to me that I did not know many synonyms for jail, prison.

What?

Is that not normal mental function? Don't you jump from allusion to allusion, gleefully following each verbal twist until your childlike wonder is definitively shown up as your unique form of mental retardation?

The first thing that popped up was "Yahoo! Answers," where someone had posed the same query -- wanting some slang for prison. Pen, pokey, cooler, lockup, clink.

Not terribly familiar with this Yahoo! feature, I decided to look into what pressing questions were on the mind of the world wide web citizenry:

What's wrong with my cat?
In Cats - Asked by Aida-Christine - 11 seconds ago

How is the average speed solved using the ticker tape?
In Physics - Asked by Dulce Amor - 11 seconds ago

What does human context mean in terms of the elements of drama?
In Words & Wordplay - Asked by LittleMiss - 15 seconds ago

HIS and STORY = HISTORY. should it be HER and STORY = HERSTORY?
In Gender & Women's Studies - Asked by Bored Observer - 16 seconds ago

Where can I buy thermal printers for embossed printing on invitation cards?
In Printers - Asked by Mitch - 16 seconds ago

I cant check my email. Some help please?
In Other - Yahoo! Mail - Asked by infantry_wife - 23 seconds ago

Do I need to be in the center of my surround sound?
In Home Theater - Asked by kc17170 - 24 seconds ago

Are muscly calves genetic?
In Diet & Fitness - Asked by єℓιzα©™ - 24 seconds ago

How do you Say this in Japanese?
In Languages - Asked by Areazel - 27 seconds ago

Whats a good acne medication or cream or something !?
In Other - Skin & Body - Asked by Selah - 29 seconds ago

Production of atp in prokaryotes?
In Botany - Asked by yashwanth - 33 seconds ago

What is the best FREE MUSIC MIXING softwware to download?
In Software - Asked by JasonC. - 37 seconds ago

After a tattoo is pretty much healed is it ok to use cocoa butter without fading?
In Tattoos - Asked by Angie - 37 seconds ago

A quetion about herbal essence shampoo?
In Hair - Asked by BoPeep - 43 seconds ago

How much are Alternators for a 1998 dodge 1500?
In Dodge - Asked by iaskquestions - 43 seconds ago

Is male pregnancy possible?
In Other - Pregnancy & Parenting - Asked by Phylisia Y - 43 seconds ago

What album tracks do you always skip when listening to your favourite bands?
In Rock and Pop - Asked by mark j - 45 seconds ago

What will the human race look like in 1,000,000 years time?
In Other - Social Science - Asked by x-jessicalouise-x - 47 seconds ago

Can you guys use the search feature?
In Yahoo! Search - Asked by Artanis186 - 47 seconds ago

Pls help me with my homework?
In Homework Help - Asked by oyoboy - 49 seconds ago

It's enough to put Darwinian theory in doubt.

So, I am almost in danger of losing the train of my thought, the choo! choo! choo! so dear to coherent conversation and logical composition. Ah, but my darling Reader-Friends, after years of living with an ADHD-driven sweetheart, a cartoon diva, and the neurotic feline Sam-I-Am -- not to mention the impact of inhabiting the Tête de Hergé? I got a mind like a steel trap.

Okay, Beloved Students, let's take a moment to assess things.  
Have you noted The Method in the madness of my various circumlocutions? 
Observe:

Feel pain; Immediately invoke the pain management technique of DISTRACTION.

Not quite there yet, FREE ASSOCIATE; Discover a strong stream of consciousness around the concepts of PRISONS, CATS, and ROBERT DUVALL.

Effective pain management requires a more narrow focus, for which I FISH, using the apparently contrarian method of SEEKING THE SYNONYMOUS.

In so doing, the hard-and-fast rule of "when in doubt, Google," returns the oddly appropriate suggestion of SEEKING THE SYNONYMOUS by visiting Yahoo! Answers.

Having achieved considerable pain relief by such perfect use of DISTRACTION, toss in some deep breathing exercises, maybe a coffee and cannoli.

EXTRAPOLATE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE SYNONYMOUS.

This almost brought me to the edge of disaster (located near the stream of consciousness), even unto the brink of the aforementioned Darwinism.

Ah! But as Ezra reminds me, daily:

When the mind swings by a grass-blade

an ant's forefoot shall save you

the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower.

--from LXXXIII

And so it is that I arrive... at pain relief by DISTRACTION, and you, my darling Reader-Friends, once again scratch your heads and roll your eyes, wondering about drug abuse, mental stability, and why I can't just stave off CRPS' impact by sheer force of will.

That's okay, I understand.

But -- the process is not over. There is much more to this pain management technique of DISTRACTION.

My mind now calm, even if my body still occasionally gives in to the odd writhe, and the voice to disembodied moan, I complete things. I "choo" the "choo," as it were! (You are not successfully circumlocuting if the ends never meet.)

Usually? I don't trust you or like you enough to show you the ending, the meeting of the circle ends. You don't know of my love for Euclid, and my secret glee, inasmuch as I am a writer, of the writerly things I find everywhere:

A circle is a special ellipse in which the two foci are coincident. (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia frequently offers its efforts at disambiguation, in which I delight, for I will refuse all efforts at disambiguation of my own text, while hungrily acquiring the nit-and-grit of that dialogue of contrariness. To wit, I usually would not go on to share that an investigation of ellipse necessarily includes a parse of its use as a rhetorical figure:

a rhetorical suppression of words to give an expression more liveliness.

Now, really, friends, isn't that a pure HOOT?! Coming, as it does, from the figurative pen of Retired Prof, Profderien? A freaking SUPPRESSION of words! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Okay, to be honest, as this has been composed in actual time during an actual episode of severe pain, I took my breakthrough pain medication (15 mg Endocet) about 40 minutes ago.

DISTRACTION as an effective pain management technique? Maybe for those perfect souls who are into suffering as means of spiritual purification. Maybe for those stellar people whom I truly admire, whose minds' natural ability to focus does indeed allow for it, like Jeisea, down under at her blog crps/rsd: a better life -- though such sites tend to irritate me because of the pride of suffering (no, I won't unpack that -- you know what I mean -- don't be coy). Also, I am jealous.

I used to be one of both of those -- seeing an overarching good in learning to live with severe chronic pain and able to hone my mind's eye to the razor's edge of a laser beam, and so hope to escape that damned pain.

But no more, unless I have to. When did the "I-have-to" Era arrive? I think when the reality of my immunosuppression and the seriousness of this apparently untreatable osteomyelitis finally made me see that the Ketamine Cure (think Keystone Cops) was too dangerous for *me* to try, that I'd never be accepted in a trial, that the SCS and pain pump were no longer available to me as pie-in-the-sky options.

Now? I try to write through it, perform it. But I also take the medication prescribed me, as it is prescribed me. Well, hmmm, that's a lie. I take less pain medication than my doctor knows or suggests. I force myself through monthly "drug holidays." I try to explore adjunct pain medications, so as to narrow the focus and thereby treat the pain more *precisely*. Mostly, that has come to mean use of baclofen to ease spasm and tics, and ibuprofen to attack inflammation.

And so, let's see: through writing this weird blog and the work that goes into it, there is significant distraction from pain, even though it usually means blogging on that very topic. Writing has become a process undertaken while waiting for conventional pain medications to kick in and do their job, or it is a Hail Mary Pass when I have taken all that is allowed. Anger emotionally fuels and informs my pain, once it has started, and so writing, again, is a way to get through that -- a way to bring the circle's ends back in line, and my mind to a measure of quiescence.

Having literally said, and also performed, this real cycle of pain -- allow me to finish. This is usually the secret part.

When last we left our intrepid painkilling thread, we were citing one of the more predictable quotes from Pound, that crazy, dangerous fool. You know, the ant's forefoot, from the last of the Pisan Cantos.

Here is a brief map of Pound's route to Pisa and on to trial and twelve years at St. Elizabeth's:

Pound met the Fascistleader Benito Mussolini, and it was in this man that Pound saw the opportunity for economic and social reform. As a supporter of Fascism, Pound's statements broadcast over radio became infamous, such as his anti-Semitic statements against what he saw was a Jewish control of the economic systems of Europe:

"..if some man had a stroke of genius, and could start a progrom against
Jews... there might be something to say for it."

These World War II broadcasts, made in Rome, were openly Fascist (it was clear that he hated U.S. President Roosevelt and usury banking), so it came as no surprise when EzraPound was arrested in 1945 by U.S. forces on charges of treason - Pound was still a citizen of the United States of America. For twenty-five days, Pound was imprisoned within the 'gorilla cage', an open cage which was situated outdoors, and was moved into a tent at the end of this time for medical reasons. This incarceration at Pisa lasted for six months in total, and during his time here he continued to translate Confucius and work upon his most famous work, the Pisan Cantos, writing it on scraps of papers and typing up his poem in the medical tent, after-hours.

Leaving Pisa to stand trial for treason and broadcasting Fascist propoganda in the United States, Pound arrived, and was examined by a panel of four mental illness experts before the trial began. Their conclusion was as follows:

"He is abnormally grandiose, is expansive andexuberant in manner, exhibiting pressure of speech, discursiveness and distractibility... He is, in other words, insane." - The judgement made by the four examiners.

Following this 1946 judgement that he was "insane and too mentally ill to stand trial" (and consequent acquittal of the charges on thesegrounds), Pound was taken to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. where he remained for twelve years until the continual appeals made by his writer friends ensured his 1958 release.

The ten cantos comprising the Pisan Cantos were composed in the weeks immediately following Pound's several week stay in one of the camp's death-row wire cages, where he had been exposed to the elements, and where he was deprived of the comfort of the human voice, as he was considered too dangerous to be engaged in conversation. When it was finally decided that he was not a high risk prisoner, after all, his health -- physical and mental -- was already in decline. They moved him to one of the medical tents, and there he composed LXXIV-LXXXIII (84 was added later, as coda).

Indicted for treason, found incompetent for trial, Pound ended up, as most crossword-puzzlers and American Lit 101 (or some other introductory course on modernism) know, at St. Elizabeth's.

Just a few months back, a very sweet woman -- who turns out to be my aunt -- filled me in on some of the more fascinating tidbits of Our Family History. My great-uncle Otis spent the last third of his life as an inmate at St. E's, the unwitting victim of tertiary syphillis.

See? It's not all coincidence and serendipity. Nor is it self-indulgence. Well, nor is it entirely self-indulgence -- this defeat of pain by DISTRACTION.

And haven't you had a wonderful time?

CRPS: Twist and Shout!

Warning... this was done as a diversion and without pretension of video quality.  It's 8 minutes of your life if you watch it;  It was 8 minutes of mine whether you watch it or not.  I was/am extremely punchy because the spaz attacks began last evening...

© 2013 L. Ryan Follow my blog with Bloglovin

CRPS Update

I should let you, Dear Readers, know upfront that this is an update on the personal level -- although I've been doing a fair amount of reading "in the field," the reading is mostly above my head or personal interest stories.  Why share that with you when I can bitch and moan on my own?

Remember the fundamental principle here at Marlinspike Hall:  Whose blog is it, anyway?

Since life switched from our Renaissance King-sized bed to my single hospital contraption, decorated with an understated trapeze attachment in matte black, I've been in a steady decline.  Well, it's not much of a leap to needing to ask for a hospital bed to that assumption, eh?

Not that my Purple Prose Gratitude Journal is getting fat with loopy handwritten entries, but I will admit that when my body goes into spastic mode, the understated trapeze attachment softly jingles and jangles, calling up memories of one of my favorite Southern Tête de Hergé's front porches and its many gentle wind chimes. Those same spaz attacks bring waves of desire for the blueberry moonshine that also rise up in memory of that ivy-covered porch.  Ahem.

Many is the time I've sworn that it is the spasms that will one day make me paper my body with Fentanyl patches and mix up a chocolate pudding laced with lethal doses of a dozen sweet drugs.  If I did not think that a peaty single malt would make me lose the pudding, it'd replace blueberry shine as my favorite strong drink.

Ah, ha ha, just joshing.

In any event, I've now become the Manor Resident who grabs sleep where she can, and that usually is long after dawn.  This is something I intend to change, and soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.  Tomorrow may also see me pitching in to help the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff, as so many have taken vacation time to warmer climes.  A little vacuuming, mopping, laundry, poofing and fluffing never hurt anyone.

Fevers are up about a degree and I blame those mo'fos for my general decline.  A febrile state makes for great melodrama (Oy! I am burning up, as if in the very flames of Hell, and so on, and so forth) and laziness (Is that cat hair clinging to my electrostatic hospital bed rails?  Ew, gross.  SOMEONE should do a bit of dusting around here, damn it!).

But, fevers also are truly... tiring.  Mostly the parts where they're going up, and the parts where they're going back down.  The steady heat is not bad.  Kind of energizing, even.

CRPS is not causing the heat waves, of course, it's the untreatable osteomyelitis, perhaps a touch of lupus. And yet, CRPS so hates to be excluded, and so tends to get nasty during a persistent fever.  So it's spazspazspaz and burning neuropathic pain married to the deep ache of the bones.

I've mentioned before, or hope I have, that I employ more than a bucket load of drugs to handle these things. Heck, I got me a graduate degree at Berkeley, so you know I turn a quick eye to all that is alternative, complementary, or adjunctive therapy.  What works best is ice... until those medical sadists, the Physical Therapist Gangs, beat it into my head that cold is bad, bad, bad, wrong, wrong, wrong.  So I moved on, but how many times can you watch repeats of Downton Abbey?  So I began an incisive, lighthearted study and practice of mindfulness.

The initial forays into mindfulness for CRPS led to anaphylactic shock until my mentors made an adjustment and removed any references to the "happy place."  Once that was taken care of, it turned out to be pretty simple.

You don't run away from the pain.  Like a cat, and some dogs, you circle three times, wiggle your butt a little, and curl up smack dab in the middle of that pain.  There you stay until you're through it.  You don't speak much about it, beyond what may be necessary.  But you snuggle into it, stare at it, see it, observe it. Thank G_d, you don't analyze it (until pressured by such asshats as physicians).

For long term and unending severe pain, like mine, you mix in the occasional distraction, and that would be best defined as whatever works at the moment.  Mahjong, when played in a zen state, can be very effective. The vogue of marathon reruns of classic television might fit like a glove one day, and repulse the next. Law and Order SVU, for example, has no usefulness any longer in mindlessness/mindfulness sessions, whereas the Criminal Intent version, or the early original shows -- the variety pack -- are entertaining.

When mindless mindfulness is flat out denied by a pouting, infantile CRPS patient, that's when such an ingrate should opt for a comedy genre (literary or televised/streamed) or the infallible humor of felines.  Being fussed at by Marmy Fluffy Butt because you dared shift her tiny frame a few centimeters gets a belly laugh every time.  Dobby in a box is hysterical.  Buddy the Maine Coon cracks a person up just by facial expression. And all three have extensive nursing backgrounds.  A kitty massage is a better soporific than anything Big Pharma can dream up.

Music requires a careful touch.  The mp3 player yields mysterious tunes in shuffle mode, sometimes so eerily reflective of one's severe pain that it's simply not a decent option.  Unless, of course, you need to cry and have not been able to produce tears, either due to the constant dehydration from the constant fever, or due to the aridity of my heart.

Most of the time, though, music is a great aid to treating pain, especially in those 20-35 minute periods before the breakthrough meds kick in.  Also, when the dark is terrifying -- you know, when the threat of dawn edges into the window pane and you think: "No, not again, not another night of no sleep."  Then you must make yourself circle thrice, settle in, and call up Nina Simone and Eric Clapton, certain bits of Neil Young, ending with the Brett Dennen of around 2004.  That's this week's menu.  Last week saw more of the Decemberists, my beloved John Hartford, and the Wainwright family, Loudon, Martha, and Rufus.  I am finding great focus for my pain in Johnny Cash's American Recordings and the very sweet beginnings of Bonnie Raitt, from a very sweet album recorded in her parents' garage, with their supremely sweet jazz musician friends.  She sounds so wavery and young, so un-twangy, that knowing every bit of her later sounds is enough to make me weep.

I'm undergoing a good many variations in the CRPS experience, feeling stuff that I thought would never return, rapid cycling from red to deep purple, cold to hot, electric strikes that produce yips of howls. The everpresent, though, is what makes "suicidal ideation" something to ridicule.  The deep, deep pain, the burning bones that are somehow also ice. The "movement disorder" -- but we've covered that.

On the up-side, I have lost most of my decrepit fingernails and the regrowth seems healthier.

Where did I put that Purple Prose Gratitude Journal?

As for how it's going, breaking in my new Obamacare doctors -- last Thursday, I met the doctor who will be my Primary Care.  She put together a hasty Problem List.  I decided CRPS should top it, and so mentioned it first.

Blank look.

Okay, so I reverted to "RSD" and before I could unpack it, she said, hand waving in the air, "Oh, I know. Something Sympathetic Something."

I shot her a bright smile. "Right!"

And when they gave me their efficient printout record of our brief initial alliance, I saw that my primary problem was "CLPS." Fred giggled.

Sorry, loves, but I have to go.  I feel a need for Townes Van Zandt.  twitchtwitchtwitch.  I think I hear his clunky cowboy boots out on the Front Porch... and the gentle call of windchimes.

© 2013 L. Ryan

CRPS Pain

It's been a good while since I've written just to write, writing as if to save my life, writing just to release toxins.  Smiling, offering to make coffee, smiling, asking which coffee he'd like to have this late morning. Saying "excuse me" to the cat whose tail is in my way.  Checking the phone to see if I missed any calls. Setting the mp3 player to recharge, for the third time in 24 hours.  I put up dishes, washed what was in the sink, all interspersed with continued exhortations to Buddy the Maine Coon to please take his prehensile tail elsewhere.

Even in the night I was thinking of the cyclone hitting India.  Between my screams, I'd have a vision of a young man standing on the edge of the spiral, the whorl, knowing that the edge of a spiral, a whorl is a cutting thing.  I kept half-dreaming him saying a cold and swift "good-bye" to what must have been a mother, nodding to an old man, who had nodded first to him, which my mind-state knew was his calling to sacrifice.
He dove into the cyclone, and as I looked down the line of the cliff, the billowing chaotic universal twist not yet touching holy land, I saw young people, serene-faced, push off powerfully, smoothly, launching bodies into the eddy.

I will hate my mind when the pictures roll in, the bodies floating, the water-borne disease predictions, and, surely, the misshapen face of of what must have been a mother, the stoic cold face of an old man in charge of pointless sacrifice.

I was angry at Fred yesterday, which meant I needed to eat.  Fred had done nothing but make sure, at intervals whose meaning meant something only to him (As long as he could stand?  Whenever he remembered?  If i made a moan?  I know that once he came in when he heard me laughing.), that I was still alive, and had taken my meds.  I went to sleep Tuesday evening with a high fever, the chief odd symptom of which was exhaustion, total exhaustion.  I slept and listened to music from Tuesday evening to mid-day Friday.  No food, enough water to take those accursed meds, the spotlight of Fred's face in mine, and that stupid question:  "Are you all right?"

So I tried to be normal yesterday, my normal and a little of what might be your normal.  I cleaned a bit, chatted cheerfully, answered emails, tried, and tried, and tried.

The exhaustion returned, but not the high fever.  I settled in for a normal night of sleep-some, read-some, listen-to-music-some.

And the dystonia, the spasms, the wrenching screaming twists and deformations hit within the hour.  I promptly informed God that "no, I can't do this," and loaded up on antispasmodics, told myself the usual lullaby:  "You will stop jerking in fifteen to twenty minutes, tops.  Whatcha wanna do until then?"

I walked using my forearm crutches, in a back and forth pattern, not wanting to fall but wanting to force my legs into normal shapes.  If I don't, it's grotesque, even for me, to watch, and hell, only for me, to feel.  When my legs decided they weren't going to move any more, and this after about 3 minutes, I grabbed a cat.  I groomed the hell out of that cat, and since it happened to be Dobby, well, that was swell by him.  Why I did not suddenly leap from the bed every night to groom him with ferocity was the mystery between his ears.
The pain increased as I kept denying muscles, tendons, various sheaths and demon parts the right to transmogrify into whatever rhomboid they felt like.  It was blitzkrieg time.

Fifteen to twenty minutes, tops.

Not quite.

Try all night long.  I gave in to the screaming.  I forgave myself the weakness.

I have residual pain in my legs, a new thing to add to their usual pain.  I can only describe it as a leftover electrical burn.  And that is why I try not to put too many words -- ha -- to the work of describing CRPS pain.

It makes you sound like a maniac.

electrocution wallpapers

© 2013 L. Ryan

Next to a decadent chocolate, this note

On my pillow, next to a decadent chocolate, this note:

Dear Retired Educator, You Prof-de-Rien, Vous!


Tonight, when you get depressed and down on yourself as barely qualifying as a waste of space, remember that you did the following things today:


You took care of the animals, meaning the indoor cattery.  Please leave the Petting Zoo Miniatures to the Miniature Experts. [If you are ever sorely tempted to meddle in that domain again, pause and think of Tiny Todd, who might have lived had you not mixed microscopic Egyptian adders with Barely There Anguis fragilis, the amoebic slowworms gifted to The Captain by County Clare for safekeeping. The same admonition, but larger, goes for the Gigantesque Bovines!  They are best herded and milked by classically trained teams of tireless Cistercian Brothers;  Good thing the Haddock ancestral manor has a monastery for its closest neighbor.]  


Anyway, you successfully fed Marmy Fluffy Butt, Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten, and Dobby the Runt big bowls of basic kibble, as well as providing nutritious treats.  In fact, you catered to their every whim, giving Marmy milk-flavored crunchy nuggets, giving Buddy handfuls of restaurant grade tuna flakes, and teasing Dobby with "liver and cheese" morsels.  You watered them, twice -- a necessity because Dobby polluted the water by giving several spinach tortellini, some stolen eye drops, two yarn balls, and a paper towel a good dunk.  


You brushed all three of them, too, no mean feat.  All praise to the veterinary techs who tag-teamed Buddy last week, successfully lopping off an inch of claw, at least, per bear paw!  Otherwise, your dream of flailed flesh might have come true.  Dobby rolled from side to side from pure joy upon the presentation of a new comb, just for him, and the persistent dandruff at the base of his tail. You tended Marmy and Dobby's runny eyes, a genetic trait, apparently, identical in this mother and offspring.  Marmy hissed at you;  Dobby blew kisses. You put some serious loving on Buddy, who is distressed by his recent virgin hairball experiences.  It turns out that he is afraid of them -- of the actual hairball, itself.  He produced one, looked at it, and ran, screaming as only a Maine Coon can.


He is in a Glom Phase and is never far away -- sniffing at my peeling feet, demonstrating proper tether ball technique, exuding please-don't-abandon-me-to-the-hairballs desperation.  Such a gentle giant.


So you did well, Retired Educator, with these creatures.  Good job!  Do your remember entertaining Dobby with one of your 37 grabbers?  [Insert gratuitous cat video here]

There is more, Madame! You did two (and a half) loads of laundry.  So what if you picked up where you left off on Monday, at week's dawn?  So what if the wet clothes had been sitting all that time in the washer?  You ended up with clean clothes, clean comfy throws, and plenty of fresh and thirsty kitchen towels to throw on the floor the next time you spill water from the cat bowls.


You cleaned the microwave.  Granted, you cursed a bit too much.  There was an incident report to Haddock Family Values, Inc. but the corporate office seems enamored of results over style, so just be more careful in the future.  You may want to review some of The Captain's favorite oaths, all considered socially acceptable, such as "Parasites! Patagonians! Pestilential Pachyderm! Phylloxera! Pickled herrings! Pirates! Pithecanthropic montebanks!"


You did the dishes, three times (and another sink full awaits your attention).  This is one of the harder tasks in your repertoire of daily activities now, and you managed it without too much complaint, and, shockingly, without obscenities. Per your one plaintive request to management, we are sending, under separate cover, the explanation you requested as to "why men think they've 'done the dishes' when they wash, precisely, only those dishes that they were responsible for dirtying?"


You cleaned the stove top.  You did a lousy job.  Do it again tomorrow, and this time, use the correctly purposed grabber to reach all the oily crevasses and boiled potato smears.  


[I mean crevices. No I mean crevasses!] 


Nowhere near exhausted, you mopped the kitchen floor.  However, you then proceeded to vacuum it.  *After* mopping it, not before.  Remember the long ago afternoon in that mountain hideout of a laundromat, with your good friend Jean, the poet, who accused you of putting your dirty clothes directly into the dryer?  You folded them all nicely, piled them in your gold plastic laundry basket, and then into the hatchback before being enlightened by God's Gift to Occasional Verse.  Her poetry was derivative, and anyone who would marry their psychiatrist is clearly troubled.  Remember, too, that she threw a heavy ceramic ashtray in the general direction of your head.  {Green Glass Wings!}


You partially cleaned a bathroom.  Oh okay, you emptied the trashcan, straightened the towels, and retrieved three volumes of Will Shortz' Crossword Puzzle Toilet Omnibus from under a 20-pound ValuPak of three-quarter ply tissue. Then, of course, you vacuumed.  Apparently, when you can no longer bend like a lithesome wood nymph done up in toothsome diaphanous greens -- because, oh, I dunno, you fractured a rib, your glenoid cavity is awash in pus, and you have no knees -- the extension provided by the vacuum is more valuable than a hairless cat.  I mean, gold.  More valuable than gold.


Because we never tire of cleaning cat hair, here in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in Tête de Hergé, do we?
[Editorial inquiry:  When was the last time you took your temperature?]


At this point, you were observed by Regional Emergency Gossip Coordinator Tante Louise as you took a short break, slaking your thirst with a generic lemon-lime diet soda.  There were several descriptions submitted to Twitter about your hair, deemed at that juncture to border on inappropriate, and judged by Tante Louise to constitute a fire hazard. 


The Crackhead Lady From Across The Way -- our local claim to fame, being a very well-known, juste comme il faut organic pig farmer -- and the inimitable Bianca Castafiore were seen a-traipsin' across the lowered drawbridge during this interlude, but have not been seen since.  Please contact REGC T. Louise with any sightings.


You went on to vacuum the rest of the Northeast Wing Manor Living Quarters.  We noted your  concentrated efforts at cleaning the new boudoir carpets ordered during the Recent Deliriums, supposed to be a rich, woven black offset with a crisp, beige diamond design.  Kudos, by the way, for your efforts to echo, par terre, the rectangular accents of color, emotion, and primordial memory hung on the walls in the form of black-framed Rothkos. 


The rug design had quickly become covered in weird speckles, however, which turned out to be a collection of massive slough-off from your Little-Old-Lady skin. After dedicating whole days to the mystery of the omnipresent white flakes, doubling and tripling the effort to keep Dobby's dandruff under control, only to learn that the stuff was falling from these hideous peeling CRPS-afflicted legs.  More incentive to clean. [Another reason to hide?]


Time enough tomorrow to ask if peeling, flaking feet are to be expected or whether some odd treatment -- a  grape jelly and duck fat marinade, perhaps -- is called for.  In the interim, flakes, flakes, flakes are everywhere.


You kept going, Dear Prof, you did not cave in to momentary defeat.  


You baked 12 muffins and three individual cakes.  Wonderful result - moist, delicious, healthy.  Bananas, apples, and raisins in a cardamom and cinnamon rich batter. A cup and a half of oats and a generous handful of oat bran.  For some reason, two eggs instead of one.  Radical time management.  Twenty minutes at 400 did not do it.  Twenty-three was perfection.


You tackled some of the mounting issues in Your Office, where it seems everything from stray straw hats to scary rocking chairs are being stored.  You finally contacted the right agency and donated the old power chair and the walker to someone who desperately needs them.  You alphabetized a few sections of books, you cleared a path through the piles of bills, at least sorting it all out into different pile categories -- now one is dedicated solely to Explanation of Benefits and another to Most Creative Collection Agencies, all superceded by the overarching category:  Dear President Obama... [This imaginary epistle might continue with references to how PCIP was supposed to insure that I'd not lose all my possessions in my fight to become and stay healthy... and might end with the reality of my checking account.]

As you put head to pillow tonight, be kind to yourself, for a change.  


Today, you broke free from inertia and the paralyzing effect of outside opinion, at least for a while. You made an appointment for outpatient surgery to have your port removed:  April 20, 9 am.  


You threw away keepsakes that had followed you several times around the world, but that you did not love and did not want.  Dusty postcards, snippets of textile, photographs.


You sometimes cried as you vacuumed, you miss some people like you might miss a left arm.  But you kept moving, now into a laugh, now into new friendship, now into being okay with things as they are.


You did good, girl.  


Tomorrow?  Washing trash cans, repairing blinds, one-pot wonders, more bills, and heightened efforts to recover Fred's sweet smile.


Grosses bises,
The elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle Editorial Board

Countering CRPS Dystonia With 32 Fouettés En Tournant

32 fouettés en tournant (fr. 32 "turning fouettés") is a movement in classical ballet. It is 32 consecutively-performed fouetté en tournant.


One fouetté rond de jambe en tournant is an action where the dancer stands momentarily on flat foot with the supporting knee bent as the other "working" leg is whipped around to the side, creating the impetus to spin one turn. The working leg is then pulled in to touch the supporting knee as the dancer rises up en pointe on the supporting foot. The ability to consecutively perform 32 of these turns is considered a bravura step by the ballerina, emphasizing her strength, stamina, and technique.




War is hell, and in my latest campaign, that means lots and lots of ballet.

The spasms have returned.  There were inklings and insinuations over the past several days, feelings of building electricity, an excess of backlogged potential.  Hints of a twitch that I defeated with long, evil looks.

Is it coincidence that the bone infection symptoms have also returned full force?

At some point during the hospital stays in January and February, my orthopedic surgeon attended a conference in San Francisco, and returned a complete chatterbox.  There was much talk of stubborn post-implant infections and a relatively new concept called biofilm.

If he said it once, he said it twenty times over the next few weeks:  biofilm, biofilm, biofilm.

Still, it wasn't until my conscious self accepted the return of the infection a few days ago that I even bothered to look it up.  I thought it was a cop-out on his part, a saving grace, the excuse we were gonna use to explain this expensive failure.

I'm still trying to wrap my curly head around the Wikipedia entry, which does, I think, a superb job of framing what the biofilm discussion is about, and its scary implications -- without scaring the reader away:

A biofilm is an aggregate of microorganisms in which cells adhere to each other on a surface. These adherent cells are frequently embedded within a self-produced matrix of extracellular polymeric substance (EPS). Biofilm EPS, which is also referred to as slime (although not everything described as slime is a biofilm), is a polymeric conglomeration generally composed of extracellular DNA, proteins, and polysaccharides. Biofilms may form on living or non-living surfaces and can be prevalent in natural, industrial and hospital settings.  The microbial cells growing in a biofilm are physiologically distinct from planktonic cells of the same organism, which, by contrast, are single-cells that may float or swim in a liquid medium.


Microbes form a biofilm in response to many factors, which may include cellular recognition of specific or non-specific attachment sites on a surface, nutritional cues, or in some cases, by exposure of planktonic cells to sub-inhibitory concentrations of antibiotics. When a cell switches to the biofilm mode of growth, it undergoes a phenotypic shift in behavior in which large suites of genes are differentially regulated.

At the bottom of the entry, there are some references, one of which turned out to be pure gold.  There is a Biofilm Community!   No, it's not a chummy chat room and I don't sense too much political intrigue -- though intrigue there certainly is, apparently in the form of lurking corporate presence. (Go figure.  It's a growing problem.  An expensive growing problem.)

The Biofilm Community, then, is a repository.

I haven't immersed myself in the slime talk yet, because as I said, I've been in denial, I mean, I've been twitching.

You probably don't believe that despair comes instantaneously to me when the spasticity hits.  But it does.  Instantly, I am yelling, moaning, cursing, writhing, trying to rock my legs to and fro, to beat the gesticulations at their own game.

Fred slept through most of it -- across the Manor, cuddled with Buddy and Dobby, snoring on the horsehair loveseat in  La Recepción -- remember La Recepción?  

The space that we are in today served [the Haddocks] as Reception Hall during the American Civil War, and for roughly 60 years afterward. Back then, it was worth their Snooty While to allow a more plebeian sort of individual to attend the legendary Marlinspike Hall Afternoon Teas. 

Marmy stuck with me, while the boys were off bonding in a snooze.  She climbed onto my chest and flicked my face with her famed fluffy tail.  Then she *ack-ack*-ed at me in a clearly derisive manner.

"Fine," I countered, between screams, "What would you have me do?"

And with that, she danced the Rose Adagio from Act 1 of The Sleeping Beauty, one of the most challenging pieces for any feline ballerina.  I think she actually did it more effortlessly without the four props, Aurora's rose-bearing suitors.  I loves me an Aurora who doesn't hang on to a Prince's hand, don't you?  Marmy extends from attitude to arabesque, my little kitty Cojocaru, with nary a thought of support.  I'd insert the Cojocaru video -- as I couldn't grab the Flip recorder fast enough to document The Fluffy Butt's rendition -- but YouTube won't allow it to be embedded.

Anyway,in addition to a calm and sovereign Aurora, the cat has a point.

I can lay here flopping around like a detoxing crackhead or I can sublimate my intense pain and existential terror by watching YouTube ballet videos, feeling the power, flex, and release of every step, every leap, every stretch.

The spasms have returned?  Pshaw!  Game on.

[First up in the Distraction Campaign?  Chroma -- a lovely way to pass 25 unmedicated minutes.]

in::dire::need

I've been in dire need of pain medication for six hours now.  Yes, I have the medication.  No, no one has told me not to take it.  Some of it is scheduled, meaning that I take it at certain times, whether my pain is stable or out of control.

I have been doing very well with it, truth be told, and even plan one of my unauthorized periods of abstention in early April.

It's something of a game, what I am doing.  How long can I go?  How bad is the pain, really, hmm*?

[*Question:  Why is "hmmm" a misspelling?]

Okay, well, this is ridiculous.  I pried open the stiff lid of this irritating laptop in order to create a pithy, amusing verbal snapshot of my Sunday morning.  Complete with cats, Fred, Bianca (and Sven).  Rounded out by The Story of Our Unwieldy Trash.  I also wanted to bemoan more medical bills, particularly the $26,000+ being paid to Doctor Ewwy-Gooey Infectious Disease Guy's office.

With such lofty intention, why am I writing about that amber bottle, one-third full of salmon-pink tablets, one of which fits precisely within the dimensions of an eye's vacant pupil?

Because I HATE this PAIN.  And yet, I don't often face it, not really.  I don't stare at it, I don't assess it purely on the basis of what it is, how it is.  I don't do the ontology of pain.  I don't have much respect for it, in spite of the accumulated evidence of its power and importance.

If I am suddenly so keen to interrogate pain, and to probe it with my dull and rusty knife, why not keep to my plan and wait for the organizational advantage of my scheduled withdrawal next month? It wouldn't feel so much like sport, like a pickup basketball game on a blacktop court without a backboard, a hoop without a net.

Okay, so basketball is in the air here at Marlinspike Hall, permeating everything.  I hate to say it, but I am still disappointed in Duke -- and I'm sure Coach K and the players wish I would lift the heavy burden of my dead and dashed hope from their shoulders.

This is an absolute marvel: A site dedicated to connecting players to pick-up basketball games.  I am finally convinced of the usefulness of the world wide web!

About InfiniteHoops

Founded in 2003, InfiniteHoops is a Seattle-based service for finding basketball games and players worldwide. Our mission is to make it easy for basketball players to connect and organize pick-up games with players of similar ability and skill.

InfiniteHoops was the first site in our pick-up sports network. It was followed by sites dedicated to soccer, softball, football and hockey - InfiniteSoftball, InfiniteFootball and InfiniteHockey.

In 2010, we incorporated our sites into InfiniteSports LLC. Soon after, we partnered with CALLE to buildUnderground, a site for pick-up soccer.

The service was founded and developed by Tosh Meston. Contact him on LinkedIn.

The trick I just demonstrated was so subtle and sophisticated that maybe you missed it.  See, I can use writing, and even looking up seemingly silly things, as a means of distraction, and as anyone experienced in pain will tell you, distraction is the best painkiller of all.

It doesn't make for a cohesive blog, unfortunately, but I make no apologies.  I have a manor to run, detoxing carnies to supervise, a festival to organize, an odd, craggy, rich old sailor to appease, and a moat full of algae.

Besides, I took the breakthrough pain medication about five minutes ago.  The placebo effect is very real, even if its reference is to ephemera.  I get almost instant psychological relief from knowing that in 20-30 minutes, some actual help may arrive.  Will arrive.  Usually arrives.  Please, arrive!

Good God, Zimmerman, that deluded, self-important fool, clearly executed young Trayvon Martin. Sorry -- various 911 calls have been released to the media -- and you can hear, on some of the recordings, and you can hear it clearly, Martin calling for help.  I read somewhere [a detestable phrase!] that Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic man, has claimed to be the one calling for help.  One of his neighbors offered a heartbreaking deconstruction of that lie.  She explained that, first, it clearly was the 17-year-old "crying," but if one wished to dispute that fact, one would have to wonder why the calls for help came to a sudden mid-word halt when Zimmerman pulled the trigger.

Oh, out with it.  I fear that the infection is already back!  How?  After two "washouts" of the joint, removal of the tainted prosthesis, replacement with an antibiotic-laced spacer, a few weeks of intravenous vancomycin, six weeks of intravenous Cubicin (the "new" antibiotic of last resort), and now eleven days [out of a planned thirty] of a large dose of Bactrim DS?  Really?  How the heck can this be?

And yet, I am ridiculously informed as to what my body, mind, and soul experiences when the infection takes hold.  I say "the" infection because my mind refuses to wrap around considerations of "new" or "different" problems.

Acting out of habit, I emailed my MDVIP Go-To-Guy late last week, as I had several favors to beg, and included in my list a lamentation of the fever, nausea, and malaise that was once again plaguing me.  A new order was needed to the outpatient oncology clinic that kindly flushes my implanted port every four-to-six weeks.  Blood work was requested by Doctor Ewwy-Gooey Infectious Disease Guy's PA.  And, oh, by the way, I am again running hot, again feel invaded, again, again, still, still.


Go-To-Guy replied with what most of you are probably saying to your monitor right now: "What is your major malfunction, numbnuts? Don't tell me, tell the Ewwy-Gooey Infectious Disease Guy!"  Who knew he was a Full Metal Jacket junkie, and channeling Gunnery Sergeant Hartman?

Of course, I got that message at 4 pm on Friday, not the time to bother the ID people with a problem of several days' duration.  "If it continues through the weekend," I said to myself, "I'll call them first thing Monday."

Here it is, Sunday, and I am already waffling.  Mostly because I don't want to hear what I am going to hear.  Also because I forgot that tomorrow is largely dedicated to an appointment chez Pain Management Dude, who currently heads my Shit List.

I imagine that the ID crowd will huddle up, confer, and then change antibiotics.  They may want testing first, which means a trip we dread, mostly due to the parking difficulties (and cost!) as well as the physical layout of the place, which recently moved into one of the hospital doctors' buildings, reachable only by a bridge and three elevator rides.  Or maybe that's just a smokescreen of an excuse.

I never ever feel "sicker" than when I am in that office.  Everyone is clearly ill, and seriously.  The doctors and PAs are candid and compassionate, and to see such able folk nonplussed can be upsetting.  Still, in the spirit of the place, I adopt the same abstracted, bland, blah expression as my infected mates.  We're a desperate group, pretending that nothing matters anymore.  We are, sadly, cool.


You must be really regretting the pithy and amusing account of my Sunday morning that this post was meant to be!

I did visit briefly with the three felines, as they are strangely separated today.  Marmy has coopted a comfy chair, and looks like she will never budge again.  Dobby is sulking, but sticking close to me, as is his wont, lately. And young Buddy is prowling about, vocalizing, and begging for food.  He sleeps as much as the other two but hasn't yet learned to anticipate his naps.  He just sort of collapses wherever he happens to be when fatigue hits him.

Believing that homey cat videos can salvage even the most disparate of blog posts, I present to you Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten (enjoying some bonito tuna flakes and growing in front of my eyes) , Marmy Fluffy Butt (the embodiment of aloof), and Dobby the Runt (trying to remember why he's pissed at me).

Unfortunately, I didn't spot "triumverate" until the movie was made, and, well, I'm hoping you'll forgive me.

I'm freezing and gonna crawl back under the covers.  Me and Dobby, Dobby and me, forever....

Thanks for the distraction!

Directed Dreaming: Elephant Teeth and Roller-Coasters

Enchanted Kingdom, Sta. Rosa, Philippines, photo by  pattyequalsawesome (Patty Lagera) 

Without meaning to, this blog has become a chart of sorts, plotting the course of the infection in my bones, and the always amusing neurological affliction that is CRPS.  As I approach a new surgery date for the removal of my left shoulder prosthesis and a good old-fashioned washout of the joint, the primacy of the physical seems to be reasserting itself.

No, that's not true.  More the primacy of misery, a matter of pure choice.

You'll be forgiven if you added: "Don't forget the insanity and considerable free-floating anxiety that is your baseline, dear, dear prof-de-rien!"

I passed an uncomfortable night, marked by fits of chills followed by hours of very painful spasms, mostly in my right leg, but also with some jerkifying input from the left side.  I still have the chills and am happy to own so many soft and organic layering pieces, happy that hoodies are the rage, as my hoods are up, up, up.  My temp is only 100.6, not abnormally high for me, but I cannot stop shaking.

So distraction is the name of today's game.  It worked now and then during the night, taking me through several hundred pages of a trilogy I'm reading -- all the while continuing my obsession with peach yogurt and kettle corn.  Buddy the freakishly large kitten appreciates my food fixations (see the video from a few days ago featuring buddy and the yogurt carton).  Seeing him with the container stuck on his head has become a common sight but it still cracks me up...

In good news (there is always something from the Order of Good going on, if I will just look):  I continue to sleep way more than usual.  I also continue to have fascinating dreams -- thanks, I believe, to a doubling of one of my medications.  Drug-induced or just happenstance, I enjoy dreaming, so long as the oneiric life is not one of terror.  There are some interesting recurring characters my mind has developed, including one anorexic elephant who speaks with a lisp and sends me on scavenger hunts for obscure culinary items.

Okay, so by "recurring," I mean "twice."

My charming pachyderm doesn't have a name that I can recall, but he does have a cyst or something in his mouth, along with a huge, single tooth smack dab in the middle of its lower mouth (jaw?).  Clearly, I am challenged in the field of elephant anatomy but a quick read tells me that my dream very much misrepresents their dentition. Most teeth of our acquaintance originate from the top or the bottom of the mouth, but these creatures have molars that emerge from back to front.  Their tusks are considered incisors and they are without what we call "canines."

"Most teeth of our acquaintance..." -- another landmark moment in my writing history.

I was doing fine with my anorexic and thoughtful (though rather demanding) elephant until I started looking up teeth among the order Proboscidea. You'd think photos and illustrations would be helpful, but no, in this instance, I just grew more confused.  Finally, the Honolulu Zoo provided a description that cleared things up:

Think of them like a conveyor belt moving slowly from back to front. When the foremost tooth is so worn down and is of no further use, it is pushed out, mostly in pieces and replaced at the rear by a new one. An elephant grows only six complete sets of these molars during its lifetime; the final set finishes growing in at about the age of 40. This method of replacing teeth prolongs their dentition until that age. Many elephants do reach the age of 60, but few elephants reach the age of 70 because the teeth will be worn down and decayed to the point of them not being able to eat any more resulting in death by slow starvation.

It will be fun to see if my dream elephant changes now that I know his tooth is an aberration.  Good thing there were no challenges to his ability to speak English or to his love of ham and cheese sandwiches -- provided you can find the correct bit of pig, because otherwise, he would as soon do without.

Right.  Still there?

I also hope to program myself to dream something in particular.  This is a recurring effort, one that I've never completely actualized.  On several occasions, I've been able to "direct" my dreaming but only in the most general way.

What bit of directed dreaming do I hope to achieve?  Well, as usual, Fred started it all.

We ran into each other, quite literally, around midnight, in the kitchen.  (Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, with the Lead Pipe)

In my attempt to reconstruct how we got from Subject A to Subject H, I believe much of it stemmed from a remark I made about Dr. Greg House, lead character on the television series House.  It's not a show I watch often.  For instance, I have no idea how House ended up in prison, friendless, trading favors, mopping floors, still dispensing acerbic medical advice but claiming to no longer practice that art.  Clearly, that situation not being the premise of the show, it is a temporary thing.  Somewhere in all of that how-the-mighty-have-fallen stuff, House says something about an enduring interest in physics, and makes a passing reference to black holes.

That bit of insight into the man demanded sharing -- in the chilly kitchen at midnight.  In my defense, Fred mentioned House first, in the context of Marmy Fluffy Butt needing a diagnostician.  She is refusing to poop in any of the available litter boxes.  She will urinate therein, but daintily steps out and away to finish her proverbial business.  Having to deal with her contributions directly, Fred could not help but notice streaks of blood in her stool.  We have taken her to the vet twice, and even had a fairly extensive workup done last week, and have been repeatedly told that she's in robust health.  If she weren't such a fierce poop and pee segregationist, and if it were not for the presence of blood, we wouldn't press the issue, but we love the crazy cat.  As we were cogitating over Things Marmy, and both of us were tired, and since we were, after all, in our own darned kitchen, Fred launched into an imitation of one of those House scenes -- you know, where The Team is gathered around their Chief and a whiteboard listing the symptoms of some patient's diagnostic enigma, shouting out "it could be lupus," and suggesting a bolus of a billion milligrams of hydrocortisone.  Fred loves the "lupus" line and -- because of an intensely personal love/hate relationships with prednisone, which I have been on, almost continually, since roughly 1997 -- he always reacts to the easy mention of corticosteroids.

The vet had mentioned possibly putting Marmy on a course of steroids.  He mentioned it ONCE and I suppose our eyes bugging out and the involuntary hissing sound that flew around the cubicle stymied a second attempt.

So I didn't just say, "Fred, House is interested in physics."

There was a well-established, straight-as-a-line context.

Once apprised of Greg House's proclivities, including the black hole part, Fred decided it was the perfect time to share fascinating tidbits about theoretical physics.  My contribution for the entire rest of the conversation was this phrase, repeated:  "What I don't get is how no one ever calls them on the fact that they're constructing whole paradigms out of what is clearly *theoretical*, just hypotheses!" (Over and over and over.  I really, truly don't get it.  I mean, I can think of scads of unproven and unprovable things that are fascinating and interesting, but that won't bring me a tenured position anywhere, harrumph!)

Fred knows to include accessible anecdotes that infinitely approach whimsy when he attempts to educate me about anything beyond the Chanson de Roland, and so it was that he regaled me with a story of Einstein developing his various theories and foundational axioms (?) by imagining himself flying through the universe on a roller-coaster.  To hear Fred tell it, and I did, it was like tripping alongside the very phenomena one wants to explain. Being able to wildly coast at the speed of light and see -- well, I have no conception of what he might have seen, maybe just distortion at a more observor-friendly rate?  Like I said, I. do. not. get. it.

Of course, this bit of fluff turned into something phenomenally important when I couldn't sleep, when the pain, the chills, and the jerks set in.  When no novel could be witty, scary, or remotely interesting enough.  When peach yogurt, even, could not avert the inward gaze.  Popcorn? Don't make me laugh!

Talk about a diversion!  Me, on Einstein's roller-coaster!

But not, for me, to figure out great mysteries.  Rather, I rolled up, I rolled down, swerved left, and swerved right, all midst events I had seen mostly in photography, homely and amateurish as much as great, or by words alone, my stepmother's tales of dancing en pointe until her toes bled (in a midlength romantic tutu of black over shimmering slate gray tulle), the imperfect waltz of the Bovary, and Pliny across the bay from the erupting Mount Vesuvius, all slowed to an observable rate, directionally mine, reversible even.  The great cosmic roller-coaster ride, with the cosmos, like the emphasis, being mine.

Of course, Fred had gone on to talk of evaporation within black holes, who have their own thermodynamic laws, apparently, and of the universe conceived as a ginormous hologram, or as projection, anyway.

The last thing I actually remember, word-for-word?

"Imagine what might happen if you were cruising along in your spaceship, precisely even with the speed of light... and you turned on your headlights!"

Fred knows how to talk to silly thinkers like me.  I knew immediately what would happen to that poor soul, doubtless in possession of his spaceship operator's license for mere moments before the fickle decision to put on the brights popped into his little tiny head.

Whiplash, that's what would happen!  Pistons and gears, oil and water, futuristic unitards in a bind!

I do love Fred.  And tonight, as I prepare to dream, I'll be hoping to make wild coaster runs, maybe with my friend the anorexic elephant, who will lisp into my ears possible explanations for the wonders we'll fly through, and who may reveal what we can do to calm Marmy's gut, and my legs.  There's gonna be some major Einstein hair come morning.

*************************************************************************

Of probable interest:  The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride by Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo in Scientific American, October 14, 2007.

Extreme Unction: Last Rites of the Insured

Here we go, Gentle Readers, setting out on our first LIVE blogging event!

The occasion? If you will direct your eyes to the upper left corner of the page, you'll see a countdown clock, ticking away the seconds until I join the ranks of The Uninsured. See it?

As I write this, it reads: 1 day, 12 hours, 51 minutes, 35 seconds. 34, 33...

And so, down to the wire, with my sour stomach in a knot, I am getting ready to submit for refill as many prescriptions as I can -- because at the moment, I am covered at 100% for medications. That'll drop to zero in 1 day, 12 hours, 48 minutes, and 51 seconds. 50, 49...

Yes, right *now*, I am fulling covered for everything from hospitalization, tests, and office visits to durable medical goods (I'm tempted to try and get a new wheelchair while I can... but don't worry, I won't).

"How wonderful for you!" you may be thinking. Good thing you're not actually here. I might have to hurt you. I might have to explain that in order to reach this level of coverage, I had to bleed many, many dollars -- an amount far beyond what I can actually afford, such that now (1 day, 12 hours, 42 minutes, 6 seconds to go! 5, 4...) I am up the creek without insurance.

The pharmacy I use for all medications except the strong painkillers I take is only a few blocks away, part of a large national grocery chain. The drugs for pain I fill, monthly, in the pharmacy housed in the same building as my pain management doctor, so that the pharmacist knows me or can easily doublecheck my legitimacy. I fully understand -- dispensing methadone and endocet is serious business. I saw the pain doctor last week -- or rather, I saw the PA, who is infinitely more on the ball than he is. She, at least, knows how to keep a small measure of hope alive. Whereas he makes a Pointed Point of telling me, whenever he sees me, that there is nothing more to try in my fight against the pain, primarily from CRPS/RSD and collapsing joints -- except for pharmaceuticals. His average time with me is under two minutes, and given that this includes that Pep Talk? Well, it really is a freaking shot in the arm to talk to that... man. His PA, though, shares information from the conferences she attends, tells me of things other CRPS patients are trying, and tries to resuscitate my flagging faith in the medical arts. Through her efforts, I believe I am taking the appropriate amount of narcotics; When he was running my show, I was overmedicated. I would rather hurt, which I surely do, than be befuddled and vacant. It is a fine line and I am happy to have her help me walk it.

I didn't tell her I was losing my insurance coverage. I sat there, chatting away and panicky inside because I knew time was running out. The way this physician operates, you must make a $195 office visit every month in order to receive pharmaceutical pain management. He is a physiatrist -- a specialty foreign to most people. In fact, most times, when I write "physiatry," I receive kind corrections from people who explain that the correct spelling is "psychiatry." I don't mind. I understand how they might make that assumption! A physiatrist is a doctor specializing in rehabilitation:

Rehabilitation physicians are nerve, muscle, and bone experts who treat injuries or illnesses that affect how you move. Rehabilitation physicians have completed training in the medical specialty physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R).

In other words, my doctor resents like hell being asked by my s.u.p.e.r.b primary care physician to write monthly prescriptions for pain medications. He does not like to treat patients solely with drugs. It's confusing, sometimes, his attitude --which is fairly legible upon his face. He is so resolute about there not being anything else to try -- when common sense might dictate that he would be first in line in favor of alternative, and more permanent, measures.

In fact, he and one of his partners proved to be the roadblock preventing me from getting a Spinal Cord Stimulator or an Intrathecal Pain Pump -- both things that might afford me real relief. And now, of course, as it has turned out -- there is not a surgeon in the world who would agree to implant another foreign body. Until the source of this osteomyelitis is found, it is too risky. Even then, since I am now severely immunosuppressed -- well, blah. And bleck, too.

Now, of course, I have no choice but to tell him and the PA that I'll be paying out-of-pocket. I am scared he will say that he won't negotiate with me -- neither about price nor about frequency of visits. Perhaps he will seize this as an opportunity to finally dump me as a patient altogether.

Sometimes I wish I felt secure enough to tell him how I never take as much pain medication as I am "supposed" to... how I force myself to take drug holidays every few weeks... but I don't think his reaction would be positive.

1 day, 11 hours, 52 minutes, 39 seconds. 38, 37...

Well, there is no putting it off, this list of medication refills. The pharmacy I'm using allows for submission of refills via the internet, so I'm just clicking from this window to another to finally be done with this.

Since the latest Wordle Contest has been such a bust, maybe I should start a "Guess the Grand Total" Competition. The closest to the actual cost paid by BCBS gets The Castafiore for a day! It matters to me, the total, even when they pick up the final tab -- because I pay upfront, and then am reimbursed. I've never had too many problems with them refunding my money (in about 3 weeks or so) but, at the moment? I would not be surprised by anything that bleeping insurance company does...

It can be scary to put all of these things on a credit card every month, trusting that a refund will arrive in a timely fashion. For what it is worth, I pay my credit card balances in full each month. At least, that was my habit.

Here's the list, in no particular order. Last week, methadone and endocet were filled at a cost of $106.28 (remember, too, that these are the negotiated prices).

Prednisone (generic)
Hydrocortisone (generic)
Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine, generic)
Lumigan
Nexium
Starlix
Glimepiride (generic)
Baclofen
Tizanidine
Amitriptyline (elavil, generic)
Alendronate sodium (fosamax, generic)*
Cymbalta
Lasix (furosemide, generic)
Zofran (ondansetron, generic)
Diabetic testing supplies**

PLUS -- I'll be calling my trusty pharmacist to see if I have any antibiotics with refills, just to have some on hand in case Infectious Disease Dood wants to give any another try.

*I'm filling this instead of Forteo. I mean, scope out how much that costs! I am afraid to charge it this final go 'round, because several times already, BCBS and my doctor have come close to brawling over it. I'll tell you a secret. Shhhh! We are. No, we were giving this daily injectable a shot (sorry) in the hopes that my poor disappearing, "avascular," and infected bones might be reincarnated. I do have severe osteoporosis, but it is as a function of osteomyelitis, severe AVN, and CRPS. If my s.u.p.e.r.b primary care physician had his way, I'd take both Fosamax and Forteo.

**Actually, I may pass on these. I am not technically diabetic. However, due to the combination of steroids and infection, my blood sugars have been too high. I know any doctors and diabetics out there are likely to curse me -- but I prefer not to do a lot of testing. The results don't influence what I do and I think the hemoglobin A1C is superior to my dripping blood all over the damned place. As I lose fine function in my hands? Diabetic testing is not so easy anymore.

There's been quite a lag in between the last paragraph and this one. I'm starting the daily afternoon climb of Febrile Mountain, and that, combined with pure anxiety, has left me acting much like someone hopped up on speed. I've dealt with paying the mortgage, VISA, the electric and gas bills, as well as the phone and internet.

I had a brief internal debate as to whether or not internet service should continue to be a necessity, or whether it was a luxury I cannot afford. The decision -- to keep it -- was based on its capacity to entertain and distract me, lessening the need for breakthrough pain medication. Does that sound strange to you? Hmm. It probably does! Makes perfect sense to moi. Also involved in that decision is the fact that The Fredster, La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, and
-- though she doesn't think I know -- Marmy, all rely on the internet as well.

I may start passing the hat, though! Uncle Kitty Big Balls is in charge of Feline Accounts Receivable and has hissed in my general direction that some "accomodation" might be possible.

Anyway... so I've been wasting time, trying not to deal with this Final Rite of the Insured. Did you know that "Anointing of the Sick" has replaced "Extreme Unction"?

1 day, 10 hours, 46 minutes, 58 seconds... going, going, gone.

photo credit -- f 128 Simple, Strange, Roots Photography

Geoffe Haney is a photographer that holds a BFA in with a concentration in photography. He enjoys alternative process to make his images. He utilizes digital, pinhole, Polaroid and other methods to create the perfect image to his eye...

Prints are available in limited editions. If you are interested...He can be contacted by writing to geoffe@gmail.com