The Allen Paradox

I've given up carousing, quit drinking, quit fast driving and now quit smoking.
  How come the cleaner I live, the shittier I feel?

A Question of Reality

I was reading a fellow bloggers post about a patient who was hallucinating. She tried to help him, but he was beyond help. Whatever he was seeing terrified him. It's gonna stick to him after all this is over. The fear generated by hallucinations is more powerful than reality. This is the hard part to explain. It's not a dream.
 I honestly believe that hallucinations during a recovery are the brains way of protecting itself. I believe the organ detects a crisis and tries to save itself or explain its situation to itself by creating an alternate reality that will support it. (Example: When I first started coming out I tried to talk. I had no language abilities. They put me back down. The next time I came up I hallucinated that my languages were being fed into me from a wire recorder commonly used in the cold war. First english, then italian, german, and even fragments of other languages I had picked up. The oddity was that both the spool and the "me" were seen in the third person. I perceived both source and target as entities not me, even though "me" was the target.
He said he had no face. Does this mean that the part of the brain involved in facial recognition has been damaged?

New Experiences

This morning mom dragged me to the VA Med Ctr. I didn't want to go because
I)It's a long ways from home and
(If IV=4 how does II=2)
next, I don't honestly believe anything will be accomplished. But mom can be convincing and painful.
  Upon arrival I was directed to a reception desk in the rear of the hospital. I signed in and almost immediately felt a strong camaraderie with the others waiting. A few that knew each other were talking and laughing about the most terrifying moments of their lives. How to kill a VC  and stay alive yourself was the general thrust. The laughs came from the screw-ups that almost cost their life (Being so cheap he didn't waste the extra bullet to ensure the VC was dead). What was amazing was the snowball effect that swept the room. It was damn near a party.
  I was called in to the case officers office. Turned out she was an incredibly helpful NP and I am now her property. If anyone, anywhere in the VA system gives me any crap, I call her. She easily accepted moms presence as my brain.
  All in all this was much less objectionable than I expected.
  I barely made it home when psychiatry called and made an appointment.
  I'm also assigned to a psycho neurologist. May take a while to get an appt.

So Strange

One of my daughters wrote about some Korean food she had. At the same time I was watching The Godfather. All of a sudden a wave of nostalgia swept over me and I remembered when I had 2 offices. 1 on post and the second in a Tea Room in Itaewon. Monday thru Thursday I would be in the tea room with mamasan and her family conducting business. Friday and Saturday nights in a Korean country western bar eating Bulgogi and listening to "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Sink the Bismark" etc. And I loved both.
   Incidentally, I'm thinking about writing my bio here or maybe on another blog. I've had a sufficiently off the wall life. As I think back, it's a wonder I still have what sanity I do.

2d entry today:

Holy Shit
I had to stop myself. Last night as I was going home, a very good friend and EXTREMELY accomplished person asked why I didn't have a Lifeline type device to call 911 when I have a seizure. I found there is no such thing. I want one anyway. 
Starting with a bunch of medical brains and moving to design brains I started organizing a network of various disciplines to get me a Epilepsy Lifeline thingy.
I realized what I was doing just before I got GE Aerodynamics involved.
Who said you can never go back?

I Write Because I Can't Talk

Sometimes subjects come up in conversations with me that I can't talk about. For some reason my throat constricts and I tear up. It's annoying as hell. One came up this morning when I decided to go to work. My wife asked "why?". Well, unfortunately I'm one of those people that lays around at night asking the same question, "why?". Why do I insist on going into the money pit, as one person called it. I know it's a money pit.

I go because I have to. My body is screwed up. Between the pain and the constant fear of falling over face first into the toilet, I probably shouldn't come in. But that would be surrender, quitting. Every time a person quits one thing or gives in to fear, it's easier to quit or surrender the next time. When does it become easier to just stay asleep rather than wake up and do? It's not in me. God, I hope it's not in you either!
See the last paragraph in post of Wednesday, February 9, 2011 (From the Beginning.)
Disclaimer: I was insane and hallucinating at the time of the attempted escape (most notably that I was a POW and my thoughts were being monitored via a fiber optic cable inserted into my neck from a sensor planted in my head.).

For those who want to know

I just came home from the wound clinic. On the 28th of this month they will do an angiogram on me. I managed to convince the doctor who is doing it, that putting me to sleep is safest for all concerned. He believed that coming at a terrified, phobic retired soldier, with a big needle, may not be a great idea. My wife pointed out (on the way home) that I could just be tied down for a couple of hours. I didn't think of that at the office but I'll let arrangements stand.


Here's the reality:
1. I am terrified and phobic
2. I am brain damaged (hypoxia in the lower portion) from a previous problem
3. My friends have learned that 23 years of training don't disappear just because you're 60 years old. (Don't startle me, I now react faster than I think)

It takes all of the control I can muster to let a lab tech take a sample. I used to watch the puncture and blood fill the little tube. Now I Turn my head AND close my eyes.

What got my attention mostly was this doctors inability to appreciate the extent of my fear. He got hung up on the technical (It's just a needle I stick into your groin...) and was completely incapable of see from my perspective. It was only after I included the possibility of damage to his wrist, arm or shoulder that he started listening.
Why?

From the beginning

I get yelled at a lot, by people who love me, because of things I do, or don't do. I'm scared, really scared, for the first time in my life. For anybody that knows me and what I've done that's quite a lot to say. I'm scared  because of what happened in the fairly recent past and I still remember it. The "Shit Happens" argument doesn't work because that's what I'm scared of. Shit happening again. I still remember my hallucinations, being woken up from coma to ask if I wanted morphine to stop the pain of having some tubes pulled out of my chest. The blinding pain of arterial blood samples taken at every shift change. Sitting around for a year and a half wondering where the missing hard drive I backed myself onto was lost and what was on it. I still remember the day I woke up and saw my wife and daughter standing next to my bed, trying to talk to them and finally realizing they couldn't understand a word I said because I lost my language. Losing 77 pounds and being so weak I couldn't hold my head up, let alone wipe my own ass. Waking up in the middle of the night thinking I was a prisoner and trying to escape. (I got as far as the floor in a bloody, shit covered mess.) The 3 headed dongle that hung out of my neck for dialysis and had to be changed three times due to infection. (Incidentally it was an NP that got me off that. My doc gave me 10000:1 odds of getting off dialysis.) 

I know what I need to do. But damn, don't preach at me. I'm still terrified.

Holy Crap - 2 Subjects

1. Superbowl - Christina Aguilera, in fact all the entertainment I saw last night was an inch past detestable. I didn't think LCD TVs smelled bad and then I looked down ans saw that I had vomited in my lap. In fact, just remembering it makes me want to...


2. About Me - We all know about my crying. I think I've figured it out. Actually a friend of mine figured it out a while ago, told me and was immediately dismissed. I'm overly empathetic. It's that simple. Once upon a time I was a (professionally) cold hearted SOB. Grinding people is what I did for a living. I had been tested by a certain unnamed agency (a modified MMPI) and found suitable for what I did.
  I believe the Mandala has come around. Even small things bother me now. Earlier example: In On The Beach everybody knew they were going to die from radiation. But they didn't let that stop their lives. Now whenever I hear Waltzing Matilda I'm off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_o8vX8lGss&feature=related

Another memory

Today is Superbowl Sunday. While stationed in Pirmasens, FRG tonight people would come from all over northern Europe to watch the game. They came from as far away as Flensburg and Holland. And of course my section was there. The children (supposedly) were locked up in back. Language could get pretty foul with a bunch of combat arms soldiers watching a ball game and full of beer. We would down as much Parkbrau as we could find. The game was taped and after the game duplicated to be sent out to the units our friends came from. AFN didn't reach them.
  This wasn't a solitary event. New Years Eve was at Jeff and Vanessas. July 4th started at the fireworks behind the chapel then move to Dave and Glorias. Thanksgiving was held at a gasthaus out in the woods on BS10. Even the Germans liked to party with us.
 I hear people talk about lovefest at Woodstock. Not Even close.

Things I never figured out

While writing my last post, I started remembering other incidents from my life that seem inexplicable.
I'm going to list them as they come back to me here. I'll probably be updating this post as time goes by. I don't know if you'll be notified but what the hell.
 My last position on active duty was considered extremely sensitive. I was responsive to the NCA. I conducted investigations for NSA. I managed the cryptosystems for Nuclear release for NATO.
 After I got hit in the head and my epilepsy started it was decided I could continue doing my work. When the doctors reported that Dilantin was controlling my epilepsy, my access was pulled. I was OK to be epileptic and have grand mal seizures, but when the seizures were controlled it was not acceptable. Dilantin is/was considered a psychoactive drug. That's when I decided to retire.
I'll be adding here as I remember.

How to evaluate a patient

Doctor: Where does it hurt?
Patient: Right now it doesn't. The pain is transient and mostly in my left foot.
Doctor: So, your hip hurts? When did that start?
Patient: About 2 years ago.
Doc: So, both of you hips hurt and you can't walk?
Pat: No, one hip hurts but I walk.
Doc: And your legs hurt so bad you can't walk.
Pat: I walked here. I can and do walk.
Doc: No, no. Your legs hurt so bad you can't walk. And both your hips are in pain.
Pat: Wrong. I'm not saying it again. My hip hurts because your therapist walked off and I fell over backward. My legs don't hurt. The bottom of my feet hurt.
Doc: Come back next week and don't get your foot wet.

The above is a pretty close transcript to my last encounter.

The terrors are back.

I just found out that I need an angiogram of some artery in my abdomen, probably followed by a stent implant.
Meaning: To them a routine procedure clearly outlined in some book.
To me, another chance for HIT and several weeks in coma, loss of most of my muscle mass, destruction of my kidneys, learning to walk and talk again thru weeks of physical therapy.
Who here thinks I should have a big sign made that says "NO HEPARIN ALLOWED HERE!" and hang it around my neck.
On the way home from the hospital I had a waking dream. It was a bunch of doctors dancing around a fire shaking my body parts and pointing to my conscious head in a pickle bottle.

Something's up

For the first time my doctor didn't yell at me to quit smoking, just to cut back. I may be a lot of things but I don't think stupid is one of them. My heart/lungs are working well. No COPD. No congestion. No coughing. The rest of me is falling apart. I have a feeling they suspect something but aren't telling me until it's confirmed. A periodic cigarette helps reduce the pain in my legs. I wasn't offered pain killers. Just told to cut back on smoking and quit eventually.