Women & Blacks & Hank!, oh my...

Every once in awhile I wonder how Hank! is doing without my stepfather around to pull his nuts out of the fire. Has he learned to take responsibility for himself? Or has he found someone else to protect him from the consequences of his actions?

Back in the late '70s, Hank! was busted for shoplifting. He was caught with socks in his back pocket.

Socks. He stole socks?!

Well, I'm one to mock...I got busted stealing a freaking dollar penlight. Without batteries.

The store manager called the cops and the Old Man, who went to the store and did a little song and dance--not the first, not the last--to get his boy off the hook. Can't have him going to jail or having a record or having to pay for his crime.

Maybe somewhere there's a list. Just for the sake of blogging, I wish I'd made up a scorecard, but I stayed away from Hank! as much as possible. Guy's a dick. He went from being a shoplifting dick to a drinking dick to a drunk-driving dick to a paranoid psychotic drunk-driving dick who walked along the right-of-way in front of his mother's house holding either a shotgun or a rifle. Screamed at passers-by to get off his street. People out for a walk would cross the street before passing that house.

The neighborhood adored him.

Then--early '90s--he became a drunk-driving dick who had a car wreck that landed him in jail. There were injuries. He was facing 30 days in jail. Actual consequences loomed in his future!

...and step-pops pulled some Fred Astaire magic, that old song and dance, and Hank! ended up with 6 months' house arrest instead. In our house.

If I didn't like Hank!, my mother loathed and feared him, especially after he pushed her into a wall because she was in his way. The Old Man took Hank!'s shotgun and rifle away, so Hank! wandered around the yard with a sledgehammer instead. I hid it, so he toted a jack handle instead.

The neighborhood--different neighborhood--adored him, especially with his racist screaming at the black family next door and his more mundane screaming at the white folks.

His own mother stopped letting him stay with her, so he bounced from our house to his siter's to his son's and back, never actually welcome, only endured.

I learned something the day the old man danced to get Hank! house arrest instead of jail.

I learned that "women and n*ggers" were responsible for Hank!'s plight.

The Old Man came home from the court hearing ranting that "one day I'm going to make it my business to get even with all the women and n*ggers!"

Amazing!

The past few weeks, I've amused myself wondering what the mechanism for this vast conspiracy against poor, much-maligned Hank! might be, and which group, for example, bears responsibility for which problems in Hank!'s life.

Was it the women, the blacks, or both who forced Hank! to drink?

Which group made him drive? Was it women who engineered the traffic "accident" that brought down this mighty Titan? Black people who conspired to get him arrested yet again?

Thunderstorm kills the TV? WOMEN!

Sportsball team loses the game? BLACKS! GAWDAMMIT!



I don't really have an ending for this post, other than to say I'm glad I don't share blood with him. I can't get too smug about that, though, since I did a little digging into my birth family and found one habitual offender who could well be the Hank! of that family. Felony battery, burglary, criminal mischief, larceny, prison time, five different mug shots since 2003. Makes Hank! look like an amateur.

Medical Woohoo!, continued

Well, actually a bit of "non-woohoo" first: I had a CT scan on my aorta 4 weeks ago. They found a small leak around the upper end of the stent. I'm going in on April 6 to get the stents reinforced--almost a repeat of January's surgery.

Joy.

On the up-side, not only have I not regained any of the fluid weight that drained out of my leg while I healed up from that last surgery, both legs are emptying themselves of excess fluid the way they're supposed to thanks to the much-improved blood flow to my kidney and other innards. My legs are starting to look normal for the first time in years. Where I used to wear an 8-1/2 shoe before all the medical stuff started, I was stuck with cheap canvas size 12/13 shoes from the dollar store because no one else had anything I could stuff a hoof into. I've lost maybe 3 sizes on the right, 2 on the left. My lower legs are amazingly smaller.

Ten pounds total so far.

I've walked farther and better in the last three months than I've managed in nearly five years. First there was the 15 minutes spent at Lowe's getting a new bedroom door and doing it alone. Yeah, I got help loading the door onto a cart, but loaded it in the car, unloaded it at home, and maneuvered it into the house on my own without much trouble.

Haven't installed it yet. Got the flu a few days later, kept that for about a week, and haven't really felt like doing a damned thing since.

Still tiring easily, but not as badly as before.

Medical "woohoo!"

I'm all healed up from the two surgeries to reroute some pipes and shore up the inside of my aorta.

Gotta say, I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. Where I couldn't even take a shower without breaking it into stages with rest stops (room to bathroom, sit & rest, shower quickly, sit & rest, bathroom to bedroom...about 30 minutes), a few days ago I did it all in one round without sitting or huffing & puffing, all in about 15 minutes.

I made the 500 foot walk to a friend's house without having to stop and recover. Didn't crash onto the couch, either--though I did have to catch my breath.

My kidney doctor says my protein levels are much better, my other numbers very good, and he'll see me in a year.

My blood pressure is the lowest I've ever seen it. Still runs a bit high on the top number, but the bottom number is almost always below 100 instead of running between 105-118 all the time.

Say it, Homer:

Medical blah blah blah...

Been a rough three weeks since Jan. 5th's stent surgery.

The surgery itself went without any troubles. The recovery, though, has been a pain in the ass.

Incision's healing up nicely. Staples came out on the 22nd. I had about 2 weeks of "reflected" pain across my shoulder blades caused by the aortic aneurysm reacting to being bypassed by the stents. Percocet took care of that.

The major complication? Ever since the original aortic tear in 2010 and my bad kidney removal in 2011, this body of mine became a freaking sponge and collected about 100 pounds of water weight, especially around my waist and down both legs. Ever since the evening of Jan. 6th, when I tried to bandage the incision site right at the top of my right thigh, I started leaking like a sieve from there.

I ended up in the Emergency Room with a fever and got sent to Interventional Radiology to have a drain put in. I've got a 4th session with them this afternoon to see how things are progressing. They've treated the site with ethanol and Betadine to scar up and close off the lymph channel that's pushing all that fluid up into the incision area. The upshot of this is that I carry a collection bag, keep the incision clean, and hope that the next session will finish this off.

I have drained 6 quarts of "cellular fluid" (lymph?) since Jan. 6. Six freaking quarts. Fortunately most of that has been managed by the drain and baggies, so I'm not washing a dozen towels at a time trying to keep ahead of this crap.

The fluid loss comes up to about 8 pounds. Take THAT, Weight Watchers.

HAPPY 2015th BIRTHDAY, 'MURKA!!

pew pew, pew pew pew.