Hello and good morning 

It’s Thursday, the day of the week with which DentArthurDent always had so much trouble, and also the day of my prior once-weekly blog posts.  So, you know…welcome back if you’re returning, and welcome if it’s your first time.

We started working at the new office during the day yesterday.  It’s smaller than the previous one, but that’s okay, though I need to figure out where I can lock myself away to give myself a sensory break and to rest my back during the day when I need to do so.  It’s also going to be somewhat more difficult to have a restful lunch, if other people are making noise.

Still, the area around the office is nice, relatively speaking.  It’s much quieter and more tree-lined than our previous place.  There are even some reasonably nice apartment buildings across and down the way.  I can’t help but fantasize about living in one of them and just rolling out of bed to walk across the street in the morning.

Of course, the odds of that ever happening are extremely low.  I don’t think I could pass a background check for an ordinary apartment or whatever because of my record.  So, here I am, where I am, and it’s where I’m likely to be for some time, possibly for the duration.

Also of course, I’m still having significant urinary discomfort and urgency, but the spasm in my flank appears to be dying down, though I fervently hope that I won’t end up being mistaken about that.

I got the reading on my abdominal X-ray through the hospital app, but it seems a bit uncertain in its findings.  It claims that there is not very good visualization, so I don’t know if the stone is there or not. I would give slightly greater odds that it has passed than that it is still there, since one of the possibilities if it were there‒that it be clearly visualized in the ureter‒is definitely not the case.  It would be better, though, if everything were visualized with crystal clarity and there was still no trace of the stone.

I am still very, very tired.  As I think I mentioned yesterday, I don’t think I’ve had more than about an hour of uninterrupted sleep at a time since this whole kidney stone thing began.  I’m not counting general anesthesia, of course, because that’s not actually restful or restorative sleep.  Nevertheless, if someone offered to put me under until this situation is resolved, I would probably take them up on it.  Yes, there is always some risk associated with general anesthesia, but I’m not worried about that; if you die while under anesthesia, it’s just a situation where you go painlessly unconscious and then…stay that way.

It doesn’t sound like a horrible way to die.

I wish I wanted to live, but a fear of death is not the same as a love of life, and will not give you a reason to want to stay alive.

Of course, right now I’m exhausted and miserable, even for my pathetic self, so my outlook is tainted.  I suppose such outlooks are always tainted, but this seems more than usual even for me.

I would love to love my life and myself.  I even went a long time trying to say that I did, as a sort of mantra, a form of autosuggestion, but gradually I got to where I actually could not continue even saying it in my head.  I still can’t so much think the words, “I love my life and I love myself” without feeling very uncomfortable, because I know it isn’t true.

Saying that you love yourself and your life when you know you don’t is not much better than telling someone else you love them when you don’t.

I still think I need to get into a meditation habit, start a serious practice, at least for the time being.  It would be nice to be able to quiet my mind and hear the midi chlorians speaking to me, as it were.  It would be even nicer if people in the public sphere, at least, would practice mindfulness and even metta meditation.

I guess we’ll see if I do it.  In the meantime, I hope you all have a good day.

TTFN