I had a very strange trippy weekend. No drugs were involved. (Edit: I had a week of hell.) I just got one hell of a case of the fevers and chills Saturday night. Tried my best but didn't sleep worth a hoot. So, I didn't even bother getting out of bed Sunday except for maybe an hour or so that afternoon, then right back under the covers. Had difficulty last night as well, probably from having slept most of the day away, but still managed enough to hopefully get through today. My broken sleep was filled with the strangest of dreams, half forgotten now aside from the weirdness. Reality, too, seemed weird this morning. It was actually cold outside. I cut the daylights out of myself trying to shave this morning. There was a chill in the air that made me dread the shower. Still, it felt wonderful to lose the ickyness from having spent the last two days in bed. When I got in my car and began to back out in the road, I had to stop for a second to get my bearings. All morning long, the world has seemed a bit off, a bit strange. I assume it must be me and not the world that is out of sorts. Neither my mind nor heart and soul are up to this bull today. I am honestly hoping people will leave me alone. I'm just not up to socializing or jumping through hoops. They should really count themselves lucky that I showed up at all. Sicking out crossed my mind several times, and it wouldn't have been a lie. I'm still feeling tired, out of it, and just plain weak. I am not sure exactly what has kicked my ass so thoroughly, but it is definitely the winner and new champion. Of course, maybe the chills are just from it being cold. Not since I was a teenager have I seen it get this chilly so early in October. Maybe by Halloween, but certainly not barely into the second week. I wonder if this is a portent of a really rough winter this year. My house is far better at retaining heat than it is at holding in the AC. So, for now, my electric bill will be much lower. Now, when it starts dropping down into the 30s, I'll have to run the heat. The 40s are chilly as hell, but my indoor temp stays in the 60s. The dividing line is a bit lower. I would like to resume my goodwill trips. I quit going when my electric bill got so damn high. I only wish my workplace was as good at holding in the heat as my old house is. Damn, it's cold back here! I am glad I thought to bring my jacket, but damn, my hands are freezing! And it seems I'm not over whatever it was that sickened me over the weekend. I just flat out feel like shit today. Tired, weak, feverish, chills, and just plain exhausted. I accidentally power napped my morning break. Lunchtime will be on purpose, no phone, no food, the ol tummy is doing cartwheels as it is. No, just a 20-minute power nap, no distractions, disturb me at your own risk. Maybe a few Z's and I can get through the rest of the day. And if I'm not feeling any better after lunch, I might just go home. Like I said, I'm not up to this shit today. I can't battle both shitstorms at the same time. I've spent all morning fighting one hell of a battle not to pass out or hurl. As one might expect, that has affected my interactions and behavior. Sick zombies were never the best at intellectual conversation. Unless you wish to discuss the finer points of the human brain. I'm fairly sure I'm not coming down with a cold or flu or whatever. My breathing is just fine. The only thing I can think of is maybe I ate some bad food, or maybe it was the bug that flew in the open door and bit me square in the back. Could it be the diabetic problems finally kicking in? It runs in the family just like my blood pressure problems do. Dad, Momma, Grandma, and recently my almost 20 year old son. Or maybe my BP meds aren't working right, and it's sky freaking high. I sure ain't gonna check it at work. That would get me sent home for weeks, and I'm already barely making it as it is. In short, the not so simple question is what the hell is wrong with me? (Edit 3: Pay close attention to this boneheaded thing I am about to do.)
The next morning.
I basically passed out when I first got home yesterday afternoon , but I woke up around 8 last night feeling sicker than ever. I got sick several times before the fever, and the nausea finally started to ease. I quite literally passed out. There I was, in the blissful embrace of the best sleep I've had in almost a week... " Beep, Beep, Beep!" What the hell is that annoying noise? Turns out it was my alarm that had been going off for the last 40 minutes. Somebody or something must have pressed my Off button. So, I threw myself together and managed to make it to work on time. As far as how, I'm not even sure. I am feeling much better now, aside from the exhaustion. I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years. In light of the last several days, my belief has been reaffirmed. What belief? That the human body is to the soul what an iron maiden is to the human body. A literal torture device. I haven't been picked up and bodyslammed on my ass quite like this in a while. My closest guess as to what got me is a bad case of food poisoning. It seemed that all the symptoms went away after I got sick that final time in my side yard. Only the exhaustion remained, and it seems another lunchtime power nap was the thing that finally got me feeling human again. (Edit: The full effect of my dumb mistake is about to hit.)
The next day:
Not so fast. I stayed home from work, I'm in my bed and on fire from the inside out. I feel as if I might burst into flame. I've been half crazy, half delirious. The fever is back and worse than ever. I haven't been this damn sick since 2014. I went to the doctor and I'm on antibiotics now. Powerful ones for the belly. It was powerfully expensive, too. He ordered lab work as well. But that's not happening. Not until I get my insurance straight. I hate to break it to J P Freely, but not every worker can afford 4 figure and beyond bills. A stick up man in a dark street is at least more direct with your money or your life. Living poorer means living shorter. For full-time workers who can't even afford the overpriced, underpaying insurance their cheapskate employer offers, They should at least tie the health care rates to their income. I made 27,000 last year. Before all those silly things like food, shelter, and transportation (Also inflating!) I can only buy so many Cadillacs for folks who make a whole hell of a lot more money than me.
(Behold, the stupid mistake I made)
Today, I learned that some antacids are like turning up and downing a box of salt and will make my blood pressure freak out. I was doing awesome with my BP, the last 2 doctor visits. I won't be doing that again. Note to self: Do some research next time! As for now, I am waiting for those Richy Rich Rockafeller antibiotics to finally kick in. People with hypertension, please don't make the same dumb mistake as I did. Do your research even if it's otc. Some things on store shelves are effectively poison to people like us! No wonder I kept feeling worse and worse. Today's dummy is not Howdy Doody. But me..
It has been 6 days since I first fell ill. It has been hell. My fever comes and goes, though my stomach no longer hurts. I have been drinking as much water as I can, but I can only sweat while the fever is gone. I managed to get my blood pressure down. My body's not right, but worse, my mind's been off, too. I am dizzy and disconnected, and there have been late night scary moments, fever dreams, or waking delirium. This is the sickest I have been in a very long time. It doesn't matter if I sound like a drama queen. Those were genuine moments when I thought I was going to die, that when I call out for Momma and my baby sister, they just might start answering me back. So this is how it all ends. Had I known, had I been smart enough to research, I would not have made that mistake. I am not exactly ready for death, and sure as hell not ready to go down in such a miserable way.
The Next Week And Feeling Better:
Cassette tape memory: I had a lot of tapes when I was in my teens. Only one survived long enough to be digitized. It was recorded in June 1990, roughly 30 minutes of me recording off the radio, 33 years ago. Damn! I wish I had saved more of them. There's a lot of history from my favorite radio stations back in the day. I even showed my grandmother how to record off the radio, and I remember she had a bunch of tapes recorded by the time she passed away. But, before that, before that, I recorded a tape for her of a lot of her favorite country songs. But.... But.... I forgot to make sure I recorded over all the stuff I already had on the tape. Soooooo. I was working out in the yard with my Grandpa, when suddenly I heard the voice of Rick James maybe? singing, "Doin the butt, awww sexy-sexy, ain't nothin wrong, if you wanna do the butt all night long..." You've never seen a grandkid run so fast into the house to erase the end of Grandma's tape! Another random thought: I once saw a book that a coworker had, titled, "Where Do Vampires Go On Vacation." I remember thinking, "Not to the beach!" Hmmmmmmm "Count Dracula's Surfing Safari" Hey, Hollywood, this script basically writes itself! More randomness? Okay! I've heard a lot of talk about space aliens, even celebrities saying they've seen them. Now, while I believe extraterrestrial life most likely does exist in this vast universe, I also believe the closest intelligent life is hundreds of lightyears away at a minimum, and probably a lot farther away than that. To even pick up a radio signal would be like hearing from the ancient Egyptians if they had radio, and they didn't. "Breaker breaker 19, Ramses II, you got your ears on, good buddy?" So my amateurish scientific conclusion is that the only alien sightings and close encounters had to have been of the chemical kind. I remember loving that opening scene of the movie "Contact". Sadly, even then I knew that anything below 30 Mhz isn't much on leaving the Earth's atmosphere. I still had high hopes for VHF and UHF, though. Then I heard that a lot of that fades into background static within one lightyear. Too bad, because I love the idea of aliens 60 or 70 lightyears away watching "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners." Homini homini homini and all that jazz. Two space aliens walk into a bar: One turns to the other and says, "Meep! Meep! that hurt, damn it!"
This world and life does not become any more forgiving or easy just because you get older. If anything, the intensity increases, and that youthful strength and resilience that once powered us through is no longer there. If anything, life just gets harder. I wish do-overs and save points were a thing in real life. I would go back to the beginning and do things right from the very first day. I would welcome the return of that youthful strength and resilience. And, I would rock and roll all the live long day. I would be all for making a deal with whatever devils or angels would be interested in drawing up the contract. Send me back with the chance to apply all the lessons I have learned. I wonder what I'd have to give in return. There are some things in life that are just plain hard. It is good when you have someone to talk to about it. It's awful lonely when you don't. I know this isn't an only me thing. Every human being feels this way sometimes. And my heart goes out to all of you who have or had this going on. We're not robots, are we? But it sucks when Rome is falling apart, and you just don't have the legions to keep holding it together. So you patch what you can, fix what you can, and try to do your best each day to show the world you're trying, knowing that a lot of this is beyond your control. You can't carry the whole world. You can't take care of the whole forest. You can only wake up each day, pick a tree, and take care one by one. That is what I do figuratively speaking.
The Saturday before last, I fell ill. It had been a long time since I was so sick. I think it was some bad food, but I had fevers, chills, on fire from the inside out, nauseous, weak, confused, even a bit delirious... And actually feared I just might die from whatever this was. My head is still a bit fuzzy, but my strength has come back quite a bit. This being too weak to do a damned thing was very frustrating. Then I did something monumentally stupid, taking a bunch of antacids that are loaded with sodium, when my blood pressure already runs high. Between that and the sickness, I was in an extremely bad way. I missed two straight days of work, something I haven't done since losing momma. That short paycheck is really going to bite. The antibiotics and nausea medicine were close to 200 dollars, and the doctor charged an additional 75. Being sick is expensive without insurance. I feel a lot stronger today. I hated being so weak. It is good to be more myself today. I still feel a bit weird, tummy wise, but that may be the after effects of that super strong antibiotic. I guess I feel uneasy, too. I can't pay my own doctor bills, much less anyone else's. My youngest will be 20 in a few days, and I'll help where I can, but it has been enough struggle for me to keep my own bills paid. I already pay a higher auto insurance rate to keep a tag on that old truck he drives. I'm living paycheck to paycheck, can't afford to save, struggling to keep from slipping further into debt. Things have been slow and weird at work, so there is also the worry I might find myself unemployed. Basically, my future is on a precarious edge, even without the prospect of humongous medical bills. Things might work out okay, but nothing is certain. This is just the sort of thing to get my anxiety to a fever pitch. And I am just so very tired of living this way. I need a future that gives me a real reason for getting through the present. Not an abyss of certain doom. I am so tired of worrying and stressing out. I am so very tired of everything around me going to shit and feeling so damned powerless to stop or change it. Everything's screwed, and as I try to accept this, it brings me down nonetheless. I ask myself again and again just how everything became so messed up. I ask myself if there is anything I can do about it. There are no doubt some things I can change and other things I can't. I spent a good deal of time and effort this past summer on a few things that I could actually do something about. There is progress, but I fear it will never be enough. I really need to find something to work torward and look forward to. I do have that one thing, but nobody I know could ever understand. So I need a second thing. I did a lot in the yard, and it's looking far better since the start of summer. Still, the old house is falling apart, and there's not much I can do about that. I'd like to save up for something new, but hell, I'm barely covering the bills as it is. It just makes me feel like curling up into a ball and crying my eyes out. It's not macho, but then again, neither am I. At least not on a Randy Savage level. I keep getting these ads about a certain hotline. I wonder if Google's robots ho through my writings, and calculate I need the S hotline. Rest assured, I have way too much to do to even consider such drastic measures. As for the hotline, I hope it helps people, I just don't get the point myself. While I can't argue with the good intentions behind such a thing, I could never understand how pouring out my soul to a complete stranger would do any good. I have opened myself to very few people in my life, and they were the ones who knew me best. The one person I told more than anyone else is now a long gone memory. I could never imagine giving some disembodied voice the keys to my heart and soul. Not gonna happen. More power to the people this may help. I am only saying it's not for me. Only you, Universe, dear sister, dear reader, know the full extent of my soul. As for the rest, I plan on taking it all to my grave. Whatever gods or devils beyond can sort it out, though it is my hope that it is dear Oblivia, the goddess of eternal peace, that becomes my caretaker then. I hate to admit that part of me looks forward to that day. Which part? The part of me that is just plain tired of life. But no, I have no plans to make it happen any sooner than it's fated to. I think the money grubbing medical profession is doing far more to speed up my meeting beautiful Oblivia. But yes, I've been thinking some heavy thoughts. Death, mortality, yadda yadda yadda Yoda. Since losing Momma and Marsha, since being as sick as I was, and half expecting to actually see them again in that semi delirious state I was in, actually believing this just might be it. I know it sounds dramatic and a bit crazy, but those were my thoughts. Probably the most unnerving of those thoughts in retrospect was my disappointment upon realizing that that wasn't, in fact, it at all. Never did I hear their voices. Never did I see them. That certainly meant I wasn't dying, merely very sick, or worse, that spirits are truly not a thing, and I will never see them again. Now, while I am not religious, I do want to believe in spirits, in the human soul, that complex energy that forms in our brains, not destroyed but set free. Yes, I know it it's a crazy way to think, but one I do not wish to let go of. In short, it's complicated. And in my weird disconnected way of thinking, it actually all made sense at the time. As I have come back to myself, I have begun to wonder. The real truth is that I know nothing at all. I may never know. I've been winging it, flying blind for a long time now. Many days, it takes everything I have, physically, mentally, and spiritually, just to make it through. I collapse, exhausted onto my bed, and I sleep, and sometimes, dream. Mornings happen too soon, and the night seems never long enough. I often wonder what it would be like to sleep forever. Nothingness? Oblivion? Would I dream about those I love? Or would I see and know nothing forevermore? Yes, these are my thoughts, they're crazy and they're mine. They're nothing new, only intensified by these last couple of years and even more these last two weeks. Maybe after a while of having my strength back and feeling human again, those thoughts will fade.
I have been sticking with dry foods of late, peanut butter sandwiches and of the like. My stomach is still acting weird, but I sure as hell can't afford all those tests the doctor wanted me to do. No way am I going near a hospital with no insurance. If it's something fatal, well, I guess this is goodbye. Living poorer means living shorter in the good ol US of A. I'm on the don't get sick plan, and then I got sick anyway. My fever is long gone, and the mind fog and dizziness are gone too. I'm just a little funky in the tummy. I'll just prescribe myself dry foods and stay away from anything that might not set right. I hope that'll do. It absolutely has to. No choice. Meanwhile, I've got to figure out what I'm going to do about the sudden lack of coverage for my kids, soon to be in their 20s. My youngest is diabetic and my middle kid has seriously impaired vision. Apparently, I'm too rich, although I can't see it. I'm living paycheck to paycheck and barely covering the bills as it is. I honestly wish I were as rich as they seem to think. I'm living in an old, run-down house that I lack the funds, the knowledge, and the energy to fix. I'd both love to and be embarrassed to give them a tour of the poverty I live with every day. And I work! I was unemployed about 10 months in 2015-16, but aside from that, I have been constantly working since I was 19. I have never been one for spending sprees, and I have always had to run a tight budget. I have been in the workforce most of my life now, damn near watching every penny. My employer is a stingy one, but they're close, and driving a forklift isn't the worst job in the world. It just sucks that burger flippers and Wally World stockers make more than a dollar more an hour than I do. Change scares the hell out of me, plus I'd lose these two weeks vacation I earned after 5 years in this place. Maybe I should take a second job? I might have to just to cover the health insurance. I just don't know. I do have one idea: I'm generally off work on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I am seriously thinking about taking on a second job. I don't wish to leave my current job if I can help it. Everything is awesome about it, aside from both the pay and benefits, leaving a bit to be desired. Life is always a battle between time and money, isn't it? There is never enough of either. Right now, I'm just thinking, brainstorming, yadda yadda yoda, whether the loss of time would be worth a bit more cashola.
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