Back in the Saddle Again... 2) Catching Up

  So now, we roll ahead to 2017 and my long-unseen Dad #1. He would come over from 45 minutes away and we'd drive around town, looking at places he hadn't seen in decades...there was a Winn-Dixie here...our family owned and operated this dairy...climbed that tree in the 1940s. Drove past my grandparents' house; he died in 1977, she in 2000.

  I did some house math at one point and learned that we'd lived 9 blocks from them for a few months. In our present house, had I known of them, I could have spent some time with my grandfather before his end and two whole decades with my grandmother.

  "Out of sight, out of mind" doesn't really help, there.

  Past some of our former homes...this shopping center used to be a pecan orchard...so-and-so family owned everything north of thius road (and so-and-so-road is named for them)...he arrested Black folks in this neighborhood, hookers in that one...in one visit, I met a step-sister I couldn't remember. We went to most of the local cemetaries so he could visit old friends and relatives, more people I didn't know anymore, if I ever did. As we wound up the ride, he'd head for the local scrap recycler to offload a bunch of beer cans--and he'd split the takings with me. From there, we hit lunch at Po'Folks, every single time.

  Being around him was just like at the various schools; I was the New Kid again, outside. Even more so, since it looks like most of the family on his grandmother's side are right-wing fundies, orange-boy supporters. They all go to the same local megachurch. Outside more for the family stuff, not being the token liberal in most social groups. I'm used to that.

  Hell, both my exes are/were conservative--and so was the one woman at a former job who showed some interest in me. I kept things friendly, since there's no way I'm getting stuck with another wingnut. Apparently that's all there are, hereabouts. Single is much quieter. Peaceful.

  Father #1 was like that--scump supporter, at least. Not particularly fundie. Definitely racist, though. At one of those Po'Folks lunches, he did the look-around white folks do when they're going to say something racist: "I'm just glad they didn't elect that"--look around--"n***er," when we were discussing the recent gubernatorial elections that put a wannabe nazi into power. Funny how he was a cop, but he's okay with mobsters in power.

  Lost touch with him when Covid came around, after January 2020. Learned a few months ago that he died nearly a year ago. I didn't know him well enough with the handful of visits, a few hours at a time, to miss him. "Out of sight, out of mind" strikes again.

Back in the Saddle Again... 1) Catching Up.

   Some cobwebs in here, but those will clean up easy.

  So...when I left off, I was about to meet my long-estranged adoptive father.

  

What I know:

  My mother married him for the first of FOUR times in April 1967; they adopted me in September.

  Last divorce was April 1973; she bailed that last time with me and my sister, and I never saw him again until 2017. I never saw ANY of his side of the family--both grandparents, whatever extended family...all gone. She stripped all the photo albums and memories--even my name. I'd been named for Richard--a "Junior"--and nicknamed "Little Charlie." Bleah.

  Knowing as little as I do about Richard, I can guess he was an asshole of some sort. Mom wasn't exactly Princess Peaches, herself. But he must have done something to drive her to strip him out of everything, right down to my freaking name. I remember taking several days to choose what I wanted it to be--and I distinctly remember wanting to be "Keven," because I was seven and they would have the visual rhyme. My dumbass sister said I couldn't because she didn't like the "misspelling."

  No idea how I ended up with "Jody." Fifty years on, I still don't like it. But I picked it.

  Sure as hell not going to revert to freaking Charlie.

  So Mom remarried, now to Husband #4, two weeks after that last divorce. Apprently this one took and her 6 previous weddings/divorces collected dust. They stayed together till death did they part. Tons and tons of pictures--but never in those old photo albums.

  Dad #2--"The Old Man"--became "New Dad," for a while. I can't say I knew any different or even thought much about my previous life, since I get very "out of sight, out of mind" very quickly. An email correspondent goes dark...I might be months or years along before I remember and think to go looking. That's actually helped me in the past--and may even be an adaptation I made to adjust to this new life.

  We had quite the migratory lifestyle, we three families. By the time of that last divorce, we left Richard at house #5. Five houses in 6 years. I began First Grade in House #6, an apartment in West Palm Beach. I walked to school.

  The house I own today--inherited--was #14. We moved here the day after Christmas: I started the second half of Fourth Grade in a completely new town, new school, new kid. I walked to school.

  NINE. Nine houses in three and a half years--just think of all those friends left behind. "Out of sight, out of mind" becomes a blessing. I don't know what the deal was. Maybe the two of them were running scams, just packed up and bailed i there was a whiff untoward. The Old Man had a criminal past. Funny that Mom left a cop for him. hahahahahaha!

Part 2 posting...soon.

Road Trip: Vinyl Fever

My first official act of 2018: made a store run with a vinyl tablecloth frozen to the roof of my car.

I'm betting none of you can say that.

Why? The car's sunroof leaks. I've been using a canvas tarp to cover it when it rains...BUT...if it rains hard or long enough, the canvas gets saturated with water and basically lets it through--and the sunroof leaks anyway.

So I got the vinyl to lay under the tarp. It's got a fleece lining so the vinyl doesn't slip. When I covered the car yesterday, it had already been drizzling. Wet roof, now close to freezing, and now there's a plastic tablecloth frozen to the car.

Stupid thing stayed there all the way to the store and back. I had to pry it loose from the windshield and fold that one little section back, but other than having it flapping like an idiot flag all the way there and back, the tablecloth didn't budge. No way I'm going to try peeling it off. With my luck, it'd take the paint with it.

==

Addendum:
Looks like the thing's staying frozen until at least tomorrow. It barely broke 33, is already 32 again just at dusk.

==

Jan. 2: Still there. At least now it's 41F. But at least my interior stayed dry.

Fun With your CPAP...

It's forcing a constant stream of air into your nose.

You quickly learn to close the soft palate at the back of your mouth.

If you don't do that and your mouth is closed, you get a mouthful of air and look like Dizzy Gillespie blowing his horn.

If your mouth is open, the air just comes out there (path of least resistance). This is why people who sleep and/or breathe through their mouth get a different mask from the "elephant" one I got.

Here's the fun: if you know how to play trumpet or other brass instruments, you know how to "buzz" your lips together. With a CPAP, you get infinite sustain on that note!

If you know how to whistle, you don't even have to blow. Just put your lips together and let the ol' Snortmaster 3000 do it for you! Look Out, Roger Whittaker!

It's low pressure air, so you're not going to be very loud.

But the techs who look at your machine's data stream later might tattle to your doctor about you not breathing properly while you sleep.

==

Something to keep in mind: careful where you put the machine. It "breathes" the same air you do. So if you have it in, say, a bad spot near your bed and you (for example) break wind, that stupid thing will draw it in, filter it, and blow it up your damn nose.

Funny-not funny.

Fujimi's 1:24 Escudo 3-door hardtop.

Suzuki's Escudo is also known as the Vitara, Sidekick, and Geo/Chevy Tracker.

$22.61, free shipping from Japan, via Amazon.

Box was kind of squashed top-to-bottom, but heavily bubble-wrapped. There's plenty of space inside the box, so no damage there.

Molded in bright fire engine red; clear headlights, windows, taillights; satin silver wheels. Rubber tires. 1 small sheet of decals (Suzuki Escudo and Vitara emblems and dashboard).

Looks like an easy build. The plastic's of good quality, not soapy looking.

Very nicely molded--no flash on the body, which is bagged separately from the main parts trees.

Low parts count. All the interior detail is in the dash (radio & other controls and dials), seats, and shifters. But there's no floor or sidewall detail at all. There's a big pit behind the back seat where the fuel tank is. If there was no center console, you'd have a gaping hole over the transmission, as well.

No engine detail. The entire interior and underbody are molded in one piece with separate suspension components.

Can be built as left- or right-hand drive--just a matter of which dash you put in. Thought that was a nice touch.

About the only moving parts are the steering and wheels, which press on with little rubber bushings so the car can roll.

4/5 for lack of engine and interior detail--but only the one point off because I knew what I was getting ahead of time. A few hours with some sheet styrene and felt can take care of the lack of interior detail. Adding something like an engine compartment and opening hood would be much more ambitious than I'm prepared to be.

I do plan to paint it to match my own Tracker, inside and out. Too bad the kit's not a convertible.

Signal Transmitted, Message Received...

Things that are weird:
 --Meeting the first man you called "dad" for the first time in 44 years.

--Learning that your mother up and fucked off to Palm Beach with her boyfriend in 1972, taking the kids and whatever she could carry, while that man--her husband--was attending training in Georgia for Church's Chicken.
...and 2 weeks to the day after the divorce was final, she married Boyfriend.

--learning that she screwed him out of $10,000 by typing her own name into a deed for 40 acres of land deeded by his parents to him.

--learning that you've got a plot of several relatives in the cemetery down the street. One of them is his grandmother. I have a picture of her and my mother, with an infant me in mom's lap. She died the year after I was born.

Turns out my mother was a conniving bitch who sanitized everything pre-1972 out of our lives and cut my adoptive father's parents off.

This isn't really a surprise--well, the conniving part wasn't. She had a hell of a reputation in local Creek Indian  circles. Maybe I'll try to find someone willing to talk dirt up in Atmore. Bad blood with the Poarch Creek folks, something about her and some legal paperwork she did for them.


==

So. Yeah. He came over from Crestview yesterday and we sat and talked for a couple of hours or so. I showed him pictures and gave him a couple of me around the age he last saw me. I learned that he was a cop from the late 50s till 1995 (aside from those 2 years with Church's Chicken). Drove community transportation for another 21 years.

We have a lot of catching up to do.

CPAP Elephant.

I've been using one of these for the past 3 weeks. Not nearly as fun as this guy makes it look.

I got saddled with the CPAP thing after a couple of sleep studies showed me having a high rate of anomalies.

I got saddled with the sleep studies because I've been feeling exhausted. My main doc figured I wasn't sleeping enough, or not sleeping right, or whatever. He prescribed Ambien and referred me for the studies.

Screw the Ambien. I'm not having TROUBLE sleeping so much as having trouble maintaining it. Ever since Aorta Day 7 years ago, I sleep at most 3 hours at a time. Maybe I'll go back to sleep in a few hours, maybe in 12 or more. I never know, but once I'm awake I'm wired awake. I went from doing 8-9 hours overnight to "who the hell knows when?"

So. This CPAP thing is supposed to help me sleep better--hold my soft palate open in back.

So far, all it's doing is waking me up after an hour or so feeling like I'm suffocating.

"That's normal," the discussion groups all seem to say. "Stick with it."

"That's normal," the medical company's 'coach' tells me during his weekly call. "Stick with it."

"That's normal," the medical company's respiratory expert told me. "Stick with it."

When I've had all I can take and make it stop breathing at me, the little bastard machine at the other end of that elephant nozzle shows me how long it was forcing air up my snout, then shows me how this session rated against yesterday's. I've got to do a minimum 4 hours in every 24.

There's no slacking or cheating, either. It listens to my every breath and snort, writes everything down, then calls the medical company each day to tell them about it. The medical company makes up a report and sends it to Medicaid.

Nobody likes a tattletale.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I was calling this thing the "Snortmaster 3000"...now I'm leaning toward "Puffaluffagus." Or "Huffaluffagus." One of them was funny 10 minutes ago.

Message in a Bottle...

Mailed off a card to my...father.

Man, that sounds weird. I've spent most of the last 44 years with an entirely different man in that role. I considered the Old Man my step-father, especially during the times I was on the outs with him over his bigotry.

BUT...I never really thought of Mr. Emery as my real father, either, probably because I barely remembered him. I couldn't tell you what he looked like back in the early 70s.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on his lap and watching "Felix the Cat" on TV.

Him giving me a sip of his beer. I seem to remember puking it back on him.

Toys. There was one day--birthday? Christmas?--when I was sitting on the floor playing with one of the big G.I. Joe guys...I remember SSP/SST racers and a boxed Cox P-40 Warhawk. I don't know if these were gifts or maybe attempted bribes from one angry parent trying to lure my affections away from the other.
My mother married and divorced this guy twice.

Two weeks to the day after the second divorce, she married the Old Man. Husband number four. She was with him longer than the previous three together, so there's that.

I remember crouching in the bushes at the front of that one house, though, holding onto that toy plane still in its box. There was a small white car, I think a 60s BMW with small round taillights.

Couldn't say when that was, other than more than 44 years ago.


Kept the note plain, simple, enough to fill one leaf of a blank greeting card and part of the next. Contact info. The rest is up to him: I don't have a map for the rest of this hike.

[photo by Liana Joseph]

What do you say to a father you haven't seen in 44 years?

I was adopted at birth; I never met either of my birth parents...but this isn't about them.

This is about my adoptive mother's 3rd husband. When I was born, the two of them adopted me. I was named for him: Charles Richard Emery, jr. --actually a third, since he's named for HIS father.

I was a Charles until sometime after April 12, 1973, when they divorced. I was about 5-1/2 and only vaguely remember him.

Two weeks later, mom married for the 4th time, to the man I called "Dad" but really thought of as a stepfather. He adopted me in 1974, my birth certificate was changed, and my mother got me to pick a new name.

She scrubbed every bit of Richard out of her life--no photos, no letters, his name, probably even common contacts, family...everything. He wasn't even 40 when we left. Now he's 81, married (to a Diana...Charles and Diana, hahahahaha!), and might even have 4 daughters.

I've known where Richard lives for a couple of years; when I started tracing out family stuff, I looked for him online. A few days ago, I deepened that search and decided to write to him.

 What do I call him?

What the hell do I SAY to him?

"Hi, Dad, long time no see, how's tricks?"

I'm hashing it out...but talk about your uncharted territory.

Twenty Years since Number Two

Twenty years ago today, I met the woman I've since nicknamed "Number Two." Probably the most descriptive nickname I've given someone.

 

I would hope she's become a better person in 2 decades, instead of the mean little emotional tarball she was in 1996. I know she was miserable--bipolar, doc working on her meds, a Norplant stick in her arm, and her emotional baggage from too many bad relationships and parental abuse. She's about 90% blind, as well.

 

I got stuck in that mess for four and a half months. Happens pretty quickly, even when you're not trying to "save" someone like that. They can still pull you in, then pull you apart. She used the threat of suicide, overdoses, guilt, her disability, whatever she could to try to keep me around or just to get her way.

 

I helped her move into her own place, from an utterly shitty apartment to a 14x80 trailer with a "rent to own" plan on it. I did what I could to simplify her home life--I did all the cleaning, cooking, and whatever. She went to work with clean clothes and a daily bath. There were some good days...there were more bad ones. I learned how everything was my fault. I learned the many ways that I was WRONG:

--if I worked on my car, I wasn't spending time with her

--if I spent time with her, I wasn't taking time for myself

--if there was a problem with the car, I should have been maintaining it

--I caused her bad day at work

--she had a good day; this was my fault, too.

--If I was off from work, I was supposed to answer the phone when she called to check up on me.

--If I didn't answer immediately, I was probably cheating on her

--had to account for every waking moment not spent at work or near her

--yelled at me for 20 minutes for washing my car.

 

I had a part-time job at the time, but I was on the hunt for something better, because I had my own plans. I wanted my own place. It took almost 4 months for me to finally secure a full-time job. By that point, that trailer was a cage--and my part-time job was the lock on its door. I finally escaped--Free!--in late December and lever looked back. Like I said, I hope she got better--but there's no way I'm going to look her up to find out.

Clint Eastwood's an idiot.

Clinty says this is a "sad time in history." He's decided that he's okay with der Hair Fuehrer's racism, because it wasn't racism when Clinty was growing up.

 

Clint, you know what's a sad time in history?

 

--being a world-famous black woman who can't sleep in the hotel where the just performed.

--having Frank Sinatra browbeat the hotel manager for a room...only to have the hotel management burn all the bedding, right down to the mattress, as soon as you're out, because a black woman slept there.

 

-- "blacks only" water fountains.

 

--"separate but equal" schools that aren't equal.

 

--three white kids murdered and burned in their car for helping black people register to vote.

 

--black people being hanged for trying to vote.

 

--black churches firebombed.

"Get over it."

"When I grew up, those things weren't called racist."

 

 No? Maybe not by you. Things people were able to get away with when you grew up are unacceptable now. You need to "get over it. "

 

But maybe your Dirty Harry was right: "A man's gotta know his limitations."

 

 I think we just found the extent of yours.

Tonight's bachelor fuel: Beef Stroganoff a la Rice Cooker

--1 box of Winn Dixie "skillet dinner" stroganoff flavor

--1 can (15 oz) Hormel corned beef hash

All the "skillet meals" (Hamburger Helper and the like) are is a box of noodles or rice and a packet of sauce. Not much different from Rice a Roni, boxed mac & cheese, the Knorr side dishes, etc.

You're expected to do everything in a skillet so that you can brown the ground beef or chicken and all that, but any one of these can be done in a rice cooker--and you only have the one pot to clean up.

SO: put your noodles in the pot and add water, about 2" over the top of the noodles. Hit the COOK button and let it bring the water to a boil. You can either let it boil a little and then add the rest of your ingredients, or you can add them now. Doesn't matter.

[edit: make that an inch, not 2, over the noodles; too much water makes the sauce soupy.]

Dump the can of corned beef, the sauce mix, and a cup of milk into the cooker, stir it all together and let it go. Once it's boiling again, you can let it finish its cycle on its own or just cook until the noodles are done "al dente".

Shut it off, let it cool a little, and serve.

Variations:
Haven't tried any; this is my first time with it; there's always ground beef and stuff like beef tips or whatever, but those would require more than the one cooking pot, which kind of defeats my "one box of this, one can of that" vibe.

This was the first try, with the recipe as I originally wrote it (2" of water); I could have added some more pasta to bulk it up a little and get 4 solid servings.

Aorta Day, 6 years later.

I didn't even think about it until the last day or so...but July 12 was the 6th anniversary of "aorta day."

Short version: in May 2010, I was running 290/180 blood pressure. The ER staffers were amazed I was walking upright instead of lying on a morgue gurney after a massive stroke.

Then, on July 12, that crazy-high pressure finally tore a hole in my aorta and tore the inner lining along the full length, all the way to where it branches to the left & right legs. Hurts like hell. First there's a horrible burning across the shoulder blades, then a feeling of metal bands constricting your body as the tear makes its way down. Everything goes haywire because blood flow is interrupted along the way--so your guts feel like they're knotting up (they're dying for lack of blood).

I did a week in the hospital . Lots of doctors, CT scans of the aorta every 6 months, on BP meds the rest of my life, a full-length aortic stent...and the physical fallout: swollen legs, get out of breath just walking out to my car, screwed-up sleep cycles, all permanent.

Long way of telling anyone reading this: KEEP THAT BLOOD PRESSURE CONTROLLED. I got "lucky"--there are two versions of aortic dissection. Mine goes down, away from the heart. The version that killed John Ritter goes toward the heart. Either one can kill.

Don't think you're too young, either. I was 42 when it happened.

(echoed to my Facespace page...)

In which I do my yearly home air conditioner repair...

It's becoming tradition, I guess. Every summer since 2013, I've had to Do Something to the house air conditioner.

I don't mind being the designated "Do It Myself" guy. It does save money, but more importantly it gives me a challenge. Ever since Aorta Day 6 years ago, I've been reduced to a couple of states:

--sleeping
--sitting

I wish I could say I've made huge strides in recovery, but I haven't. I get winded walking from my bedroom to the bathroom. Last year's procedures to line the entire length of my aorta with stents didn't improve my stamina.

This means that the "Do It Myself" stuff doesn't go as quickly. Actually, if I can't put a chair next to it, I'm screwed.

So here's me Monday afternoon (7/18), already blown out from making a grocery store run with an over-100-degree heat index. I get home and feel more and more uncomfortable, thinking it's my meds or whatever. Then I realize the air conditioner's not blowing.

It's obvious right off that it's not the "usual" problem, which has been ants getting themselves electrocuted & burned to ash by crawling onto the contacts of the big power relay on the outside air unit. That thing's running 220 volts and loads of current. Bugs are like republicans, though--they will not listen to reason and cannot be educated out of their determination to fuck with things they don't understand.

I don't bother with republicans (they get zapped, they're on their own); but I've gotten good at cleaning bug husks off the relay contacts.

This time, though, the outside unit was fine. No fan indoors, though. I did my usual thing of going to the Internet and finding schematics, learning about the air handler (indoor unit), and putting together a short list of stuff to look at.

This took all of the next day, Tuesday. It was miserable enough in my bedroom that I went and bought a second fan. I could have just put the little window air conditioner in and slept and researched in comfort that night. I ended up doing it Tuesday afternoon anyway. I pretty much had to--one of my medical problems since Aorta Day is that I can't take much heat.

Tuesday ended with me finally getting my tools in from the car and opening the air handler's cabinet.

I slept comfortably...but the rest of the house was somewhere over 90. My nephew's room at the opposite end of the house from mine was sweltering. He doesn't have a window AC unit.

I slept as much as I could, trying to recharge from the previous day's overheating. I didn't exactly bounce out of bed Wednesday morning, but I got up around 11am and got to work. Then I realized I needed my voltmeter...and wasted a few hours looking for the damn thing. It was in my car.

So now it's almost 3pm and I get the tester testing...without going into all sorts of detail let's just say I had it narrowed to 2 components. One tested good, so I started calling AC suppliers looking for the other component. Every single one turned out to be a wholesale-only shop. Two of them would sell to me as a residential customer, but there wouldn't be any warranty or return on the part.

The first one wanted almost $40, and I was ready to go for it, but it was 3:50pm and they closed at four. Crap.

By the time I found the second supplier willing to sell to me, it was nearly 3:10pm. This guy wanted $20 and would close at 4:30.

I got my nephew to drive; he's a bit more aggressive in traffic and we needed that advantage. Made it, got the part, got back, and I plugged the thing in.

Nothing. No fan.

I poked at the thermostat's buttons...and the fan came on. Hah!


The AC system ran all night, nearly 12 hours. I kept an ear open, but knew it was going to take a while for it to bring the house down to 73. It finally clicked off around 4:30 Thursday.

We all slept comfortably.

Thursday morning saw me checking the system. I'm naturally suspicious of any "success" in fixing stuff. Sure as hell, the fan wasn't running and it was almost 80.

Crap! See? Never that simple.

I poked at the thermostat, since that had made it go the day before. Nothin' doin'. But the thermostat was telling me the fan was on.

I popped out the thermostat to try resetting it.

Uh.

There was a big, brown, recently-dead roach jammed into the thermostat box, belly pressed against the circuit board.

I tried shaking it out, but it was stuck. I tried prying it out and tore its ass off. Its guts and the remnants of its last meals came out, too, and introduced me to a nauseating, garlicky stink from its fermented food.

I ended up taking the thermostat apart to get that fucker out. Again, without all the details, I cleaned up the board, traced out the circuit board, and found a spot where the dead roach had apparently shorted the one freaking spot on the board that connected to the wire that controlled the fan. I've never seen anything like it before--there was enough moisture in the bug's body for it to electrocute itself in the low-voltage (24 volts!) side of the system. AND it provided enough of a circuit itself to cause damage to the board--that one component lead was eroded all the way to the foil solder pad, the solder was nearly oxidized away, and the circuit trace itself was damaged. Huh.

I cleaned some more, soldered a repair, put everything back together, and put the thermostat back in place. AC system fired up, fan came on.

Turns out I probably didn't need that controller board I bought, but it's still one less thing to go wrong later--and it was only $20. I need to bug-proof the back of the thermostat.

Now we see whether the fix of the fix is fixed.

Ah, that Florida humidity...

Today, the heat index hit 101 for a 90 degree afternoon; it's taken almost 9 hours to come down under a 90 degree index at 82. Pretty miserable. The air clings and presses against you oppressively

I'd describe it as being trapped inside The Blob, but with a SCUBA tank and respirator so you're just miserable and not suffocating.

About the only way to make it worse would be to have one of our street-corner preachers carrying on right next to me as I'm walking outdoors. Bleah.

The most "Florida" encounter I've had...

Just had a Florida animal encounter.

Went to the store. As I'm shutting the car door, I see one of our big, brown roaches crawling along the side window frame toward me. I reached out right-handed and flicked it off the car to land maybe 10 feet away, in the parking lot.

A smarter creature would have pondered, turned, and scuttled off away from me.

Nope; the little shit revved up all 6 legs and came running at me like Barney Fife on a mission--"You wait right there! I'm gonna give you what-for! These legs are certified lethal weapons!"

He covered that 10 feet in moments, like a little dragster. Pretty impressive.

So I stepped on him. Self-defense. =P

Medical...bleah

When we left off in April, I was about to get the lower half of my aorta stented to reinforce its damaged lower end from a little below the diaphragm all the way down to the branch that leads to the femoral arteries and other piping below the navel.

No complications from that, other than losing all the improvements I'd made since the upper half was lined. Everything--the improved circulation in my lower legs that saw me lose a few pounds' worth of water weight, saw the swelling in my left shin and calf almost vanish in a matter of a few weeks (MASSIVE difference), had me walking better and feeling better for the first time in years.

Gone.

I was assured by the vascular doc's nurse that there wasn't a vascular problem.

Except that...there WAS. How else to explain a sudden reversal that immediately followed the second surgery?

Jet forward to this morning, when my new vascular doc (old doc moved to Texas) asked some questions about medical tests I'd had, the symptoms I'm having, and his answer was basically "We need to get you tested; this sounds like a vascular problem."

Imagine that.

He figures that one or both of the two big veins coming up from my legs and joining the Big Vein headed up to the heart might be pinched where the aorta branches to the legs. Makes sense to me: both of  the iliac branches are stented now, which stiffened them up and could be pressing against--and pinching--the veins against my spine, inhibiting return blood flow.

That is vascular.

So now I'm waiting to get scheduled for an internal ultrasound; a needle goes into a convenient vessel headed in a convenient direction. Needle's got a little ultrasound transducer. Doc can basically scan the length of both of the veins at that possible pinch point. If there's a pinch, he can throw a stent in to open the restricted area and get my tired-ass blood flowing again.

Tomorrow, dammit, I want it tomorrow. I'd settle for NOW.

This shit's old. Very old. I've gone almost a year with so little energy that I basically sit up on the edge of my bed and surf the Web on my old laptop because moving over to the desktop computer is too much. The laptop's so out of date (running Ubuntu Linux Heron from '08; can't even upgrade the copy of Firefox that's on it, can't install another browser) that in the course of the last 6 months it stopped being able to load Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. I end up reading a few political and news blogs and a few Reddit pages (AskReddit is usually entertaining), wear myself out, and go back to sleep for another couple of hours. I get over to the desktop every few days to handle email and all that. Today's one of those days.

I haven't had a solid 8 hours' sleep since the night before my aorta crapped itself in July of 2010. It's usually somewhere from 2 to 4 hours, wake up for several, and repeat. I'm getting REM sleep, but I don't know how the interruptions are affecting things.

The one thing I DID accomplish was eliminating my migraines. This is almost worth all the other crap and all it took was one of the meds I was already using. I stopped it for a few months to see if it would help with all the swollen leg and fluid-retention stuff. Nope, no effect there--but the gawdawful weekly migraines I'd been tormented by before Aorta Day came back with a vengeance. I was back to having my room utterly blacked out, no sound, no TV, no moving, no lying down. I was practically mainlining BC Powders, the only thing that would touch those headaches from hell.

Then I saw or read something about blood flow along the under side of the brain having something to do with migraines. I went back on those meds to see if there might be a connection. Three months along, the headaches are gone. I'd dance, but I'm too tired.

***

I don't really have an ending, here, other than being hopeful that I can finally get my legs back in order. I haven't been to a fort since 2011. I'm not counting Fort Point in San Francisco, since it was CLOSED. Not counting Fort Pike in Louisiana, either, since it was not only CLOSED but fenced the hell in to protect it from generating any tourism money for the state.

Taking my grumpy ass to bed. :p

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: