Rambling on

Well today I have very high pain and I am starting to go a bit crazy. My blog about traveling is seriously interrupted by my health right now. I spent most of the morning wondering if it was worth it to go to the emergency room but I have not gone yet. I have had to make four emergency room visits in the last few months and they never work out very well. The doctors usually just overload me with morphine or dilaudid or some other pain meds in combination. That does not improve my health it just gives me a couple of hours with less pain then I am right back in my current condition again. I have my own drugs here at home I just can't take such large quantities without some medical monitoring.

I am seriously tired of this ongoing medical problem. I have had pain for almost twenty years now but lately I am having a difficult time coping with it. In the past I have had even worse pain that I tolerated much better than I can tolerate this now. I moved out to the hot climate in the California San Joaquin Valley to see if I felt better in the heat. It has helped me somewhat compared to the cold wet San Francisco Bay area but it is still not enough. I feel like a prisoner. I force myself to go out and ride my bike everyday to get some activity in and frequently do fifty miles on the bike. The last few days I can barely swing my leg over the bike to get started though. When I am no longer able to ride which might be soon I will totally and finally go insane from this. Then the blog will be officially over even though it will remain online missing an ending point. I should just give up on it now since I haven't been able to write for so long I seriously doubt if I will ever recover enough to start it up again. If only hope did spring eternally maybe I could get back to it one day. I am having some more surgery in a couple of weeks over at the Stanford cancer center but I am not expecting it to help me much, if at all. I guess I have just lost all faith in doctors and the American medical industry.

There are still lots of good pages of reading in the archives if you have not read them yet. Start at the beginning , April 2010, and enjoy your reading. Reading will soon be obsolete according to a story I read on the net yesterday. Younger people are reading less and less as time goes by. They seem to have the 140 character limit to their attention span. I still read a book or more a day and without that I would already be gone. I live vicariously through those books now to escape my tormented body. This week I have been reading Jon Krakauer's books, Into Thin Air, Where Men Win Glory, Into the Wild, Eiger Dreams and next up Under the Banner of Heaven will keep me busy. It doesn't always work, but it is all I have right now. So enjoy life while you still can. PURAVIDA paparoach

The Ledge

This is an example of why I have not been posting lately. This drivel is a poem I quickly jotted down recently while in high pain on copious amounts of morphine. Depression from the relentless pain had consumed my mind like a fire would have and I wanted an escape. Read from the beginning of the archives to the right for better material.




The Ledge

Like blistering heat of flames it drives me out
To the ledge, looking up then down the abyss tempts me
I feel the urge to be free from the searing pain but
The ability to soar away from its heat has eluded me
For so long now frozen
Feet won’t move only twitching, my mind
Fuels the flames but the feet go
Nowhere despite the unrelenting agony

The heat still pushes hotter, the quicker, easier
Ledge looms always beckoning
To relieve the agony the flames cause
I look down from the ledge and realize
Fear of death is gone
In this hellish ferocity I see but one
Escape from this wallow of searing torment
My minds self-fueled flames decide for me

Inevitably the feet finally decide to move
Through the spinning spiral of redundant thoughts
I need the cool enticing descent,
Finally my feet move off the ledge to find
I am falling into the abyss but
Going nowhere still chased by flames
No difference to jump or not since the flames
Have already consumed me

by paparoach

Results

I have been going to Stanford Hospital for the last few months trying to see if they can get me back to a tolerable level of pain. So far not much help just a bunch of tests, but I am just starting in their pain management program. I have been in and out of the hospital for the last couple of months and there hasn't been much if any improvement, just more morphine and dilaudid which I hate taking. The last couple of days have been a bit lower pain levels but my body and brain are just tired of it. I doubt if I will be able to write any time soon. So just read the archives and start at the beginning which is 2010, April, Calabar. I will get back to writing as soon as I am able. Enjoy life while you can. PURAVIDA paparoach

New Tim Dorsey book

I just read Tim Dorsey's new book "Electric Barracuda" and I loved it like all of Tim's books. This one as usual, followed Serge the serial killer and had a lot of funny and some surprising twists in it. Keep em coming Tim.

I am still not going to be writing for some time. In two weeks I will get a report on the state of my health after a mess of tests I have had done. I feel lousy and am unable to write like this. I have had high chronic pain for about twenty years now but recently it has just broken me down and I am having trouble getting back going again. I am not sure why and not sure when I will feel up to writing some more.

If you are new here just start reading the archives from April 2010 and read them in the order they were written as they follow each other. Enjoy the reading and pics and feel free to email me with questions or comments. The number one question I get is, "Is this all true?" Well the answer is mostly yes it is true but I did salt a couple of white lies into the blog on purpose just for my own personal reasons. The couple of inaccuracies do not change anything of importance. See if you can guess where they are and send me a note if you think you know. I will tell you if you get it correct. And yes, I was lucky to survive. Enjoy life while you still can. PURAVIDA

Chasing the dragon

I am recovering much slower than I had hoped for and I am in no mood to write yet. If this is your first visit to my blog, please click on April 2010 in the archives to the right, then click on Calabar, Nigeria to start reading from the beginning until I am able to return to my writing.

Trying to write with high pain just produces depressing results so I will wait until I either catch that damn dragon and get this pain under control or until the pain decides to go away on its own. Enjoy life! PURAVIDA paparoach

Recovering slowly

I had my seven hours on the table last week and then got post surgical pneumonia from being on the ventilator for so long. It is just now clearing up. I still don't feel very well so I won't be writing for a while yet. I will get back as soon as I can though. Enjoy the holidaze...

Out for a while longer

I am spending seven hours in the operating room this week over at Stanford Hospital. Needles to say, I am not much in the mood for writing. I hope they can help me feel better soon. One of these days, Alice, to the moon! Bam