ASD

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Monday morning, wearing down

Well, it’s Monday again.  Time keeps marching on without respite, as it is apparently wont to do, “progressing” in the direction of increasing entropy, whether time is a fundamental aspect of the universe or an emergent phenomenon.  In either case, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of time stream or time vortex like in Doctor Who, but rather a process that simply is a linear dimension with some “entanglement” (not to be confused with quantum entanglement) with the dimensions of space, such that motion and acceleration in space changes one’s “motion” in time, in an updated version of the Pythagorean Theorem.

For those of you who like to share the joke about “Yet another day when I didn’t use a2 + b2 = c2” you’re really depriving yourself of a deep understanding of something that turns up in and governs a ridiculous number of the things and processes in the physical reality in which you live.  Consciousness—despite clever but tortured sophistry (in my opinion) by some prominent philosophers of mind—in no way appears fundamental to the universe*.  On the other hand, the Pythagorean Theorem, which was neither invented nor discovered by Pythagoras, applies in all levels of dimensions, however many you might conjure, and with the modification to make it reflect velocities, it applies to spacetime as well.

There can be no readily conceivable brains** in two spatial dimensions, but Pythagoras nevertheless applies.  In one dimension, it doesn’t really apply, but in one dimension there are no triangles of any kind, so it doesn’t make much difference.  It’s difficult to imagine how consciousness could possibly occur in one dimension (notwithstanding the seemingly one-dimensional paucity of ideas held by so many people, especially in politics).

Anyway, enough of this nonsense.  Well, it’s not nonsense, but it is rather pointless meandering of random thoughts that interest no one but me, and will probably lose me readers.  Weirdly enough, people seem to come and read more often when I write about my depression and self-hatred and anxiety and ASD and how there’s absolutely nothing going on in my life that makes it worth living.

Well, rest assured, all those things are still present and active and driving me toward an early grave, which in some senses will be a release, or at least an escape of sorts.

I keep trying to think of things to engage myself and my interests, but so far to no avail.  I think about asking my boss to give me back my black Strat to play at the office, or I consider bringing in another guitar, or maybe even getting a portable keyboard or something, but when I think of any of them, I cannot even imagine doing anything but sort of staring at them as if I don’t even know what their purpose is.  I don’t play my guitars or my keyboard at the house, either.

It’s likewise with even fiction, other than silly Japanese light novels that take a day or so to read (not continuous time).  I think I like them mainly because of the social interactions of the characters, many of the main ones of whom are somewhat socially awkward.  It can feel, however briefly, that I have a social group of some sort, as I read the stories.  Of course, that means that once I’m done reading there is a comparative let down, which sometimes makes me feel worse than I did before.

I tried to read some of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics, but I lost interest almost immediately, though he was a brilliant and engaging teacher.  I also tried to read some of Anthony Padilla’s Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, which is also very good and fun; if you’re interested in who he is, you can check out the YouTube channel Sixty Symbols, and sometimes Numberphile.  He shows up in both places fairly often.  But in any case, though I like his book (I’ve read it before) it has not been able to grip me.

I’ve also tried to start reading Stephen King’s novella The Life of Chuck, since it’s now a movie and is getting positive reviews.  At least Stephen King is almost always an engaging read.  But I’m not sure I’m getting into the story.  Quite a while ago, I started the first story in If It Bleeds, the collection in which the above novella appears, but I couldn’t get into it at all.  When I can’t even get into reading Stephen King***, things are looking bleak.

I did watch the rest of the latest series of Doctor Who, and it was pretty good, and quite surprising at the end, but Batman only knows when the next series is going to happen, and there will only be a handful of episodes if it keeps up as it has been.  That’s too little too late for me to use as motivation for continued existence.

I don’t know what to do.  I really don’t know.  I feel very lost and, more importantly, very much without any internal impetus.  I can’t even listen to songs I like, let alone try to sing along (or play) without feeling like I’m going to cry, though I don’t understand why.  I’m at the end of my rope (I have two, and both are tied into nooses, just for “fun”).

Anyway, that’s enough.  Sorry to bother you with my crap again, but in my mind, you asked for it by complaining about my tedious math and science stuff.  I hope you have a good day.  Unless you’re lucky (or I am) I’m sure to be back again tomorrow with another blog post.

*The only reason I can discern why some people think consciousness is fundamental to the universe is that consciousness is fundamental to human experience—indeed, one could say that it is human experience—and of course, such people seem tacitly or implicitly to think humans are the measure of all things simply because that is what they are.

**The degree of interconnectivity is just too low.  Connections between 2D neurons would be terribly limited, as would room for such things.  I suppose that, since we can always map anything three-dimensional onto some two-dimensional surface, à la Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy and the holographic principle, we could construct a sort of brain in 2D, but that’s a tortuous process, and seems quite unlikely.  Of course, 4D would give us even more available connectivity than 3D—also there are no knots or tangles in 4 spatial dimensions—but there are other issues with 4 (macroscopic) spatial dimensions that would seem to get in the way of life as we know it, such as the nature of gravity (and other forces) and the rate of such forces’ diminishment.  For instance, the force of gravity (and electromagnetism, etc.) in four dimensions would fall off at a rate proportional to r3 rather than r2, and there are apparently no stable orbits in such situations.

***What’s worse, I cannot even get into reading Tolkien.  I’ve tried.  When neither Stephen King nor Tolkien, nor even well-written science books, can engage me, something indeed has happened.

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Lost then found thoughts about lost connections

While I was getting ready to go this morning, I thought about writing this blog post.  I thought about my usual starting point of saying something like, “Well, it’s Wednesday morning again,” or some other such inanity.  But then, as I was thinking about that, another, more interesting beginning and an actual, rather interesting, topic occurred to me.

Then, by the time I got ready to start writing—i.e., now—I had completely forgotten what I meant to write.

That’s terribly frustrating, but it is par for the course.

Oh, wait!  Maybe what I was going to write was about my realization regarding the effects of having a very uncomfortable crisis, but one that is inherently finite*.  It’s probably pretty obvious to you that what made me think of this was my recent adventure with a kidney stone.

Of course, while it was happening, it drowned out everything else, especially in the acute stages.  If that had been something without an endpoint, and if there were not sufficient medication to control the pain, then death would have been the only feasible alternative.  Even later, with the stent in place and the literal, constant, burning feeling that I needed to urinate for two weeks, things were pretty harsh.  But though it did not truly drown out my depression, and it was thoroughly exhausting, it did rather overshadow much of my chronic pain.

The day the stent was taken out I felt a fair amount of relief, of course.  But before long my usual existence asserted itself, with all its emptiness, and of course, with all its chronic pain.  And I remembered that, really, I have nothing going on in my life at all, nothing to which I look forward in any kind of long-term sense, and I have no further clue about or hope for my future.

It’s a bit reminiscent, on a shorter time scale, of what happened when I was a “guest” of the Florida Department of Corrections.  Though I was/am innocent of the charges that were created against me, I took a plea bargain for three years (toward which time served applied) because it was tolerably short and I didn’t want to risk the possibility of the much longer sentence with which the prosecution threatened to try to get, risking the outcome on the potential of a jury of my peers to see past my (apparently) not terribly endearing personality and the simple fact that I was a doctor and thus, to those who might be in a typical jury, a generally hated “elite”**.

I think it was the best available choice at the time.  And while I was “up the road” I was able to console myself with looking forward to seeing my children again once I got out—and to see them before they were adults, which would not have been the case otherwise—and that gave me the optimism to write first Mark Red and then The Chasm and the Collision and then Paradox City while I was at FSP West.

But then, of course, once I got out, it turned out that my kids didn’t really want the discombobulation of me having visitation or anything of that sort.  While I was heartbroken, I didn’t feel that I had a right forcibly to disrupt their lives when I had already fucked everything up, first with my personal health problems, then with my misguided attempts to help other people with chronic pain that led me to be arrested.

So, I bit the bullet and kept on writing at least, on my own, though I think my stories grew steadily bleaker and darker over time.  And I learned to play guitar and wrote and recorded a few songs, and did some covers and everything.  But I still didn’t see my kids, and haven’t even communicated with my son other than to receive his email stating that he didn’t really want to have a relationship with me (“right now”).

At least I got to see my youngest when I was visited in the hospital with my kidney stone.  That was a gift that was well worth even that much pain.  But now I’m back to my nosferatu existence, and like Vermithrax***, though I don’t feel pain as severe as the kidney stone, I still feel constant pain.

There may be people who can have chronic pain without getting depressed about it, and indeed, without losing their zest for life, but I fear I’m only left with the squeezed dry pulp of mine.  It seems to be just the way I’m built neurologically.

I suspect that most people who keep their spirits up despite chronic pain and disability do so because they are surrounded by a local support system of some sort****, and they probably do better at connecting with and getting along with other people than I do.

I’ve only ever really been close to specific, core groups of people, and with ones nearby, that I saw nearly every day.  I’ve never been good at connecting over long distances, and I have a hard time even picturing people when they’re far away.  I mean, I can “picture” them in the sense that I know what they look like, and I will be able to interact with them if and when I see them, but I cannot in any intuitive sense “model” their existence elsewhere.  I cannot really get a feel for what they might be doing and certainly not for what they might be thinking.

When even the people I love are far away from me, they really exist more as concepts than as people whose reality I can feel.  They are missing in a bleak and rather horrible way.  I feel terrible about that fact, and I hope it doesn’t come across as insulting—though it has probably hurt the feelings of people about whom I care on more than one occasion—but it seems to be just the way my brain works.  It’s also probably related to the fact that I never have for an instant imagined wanting to be someone other than myself, even though I hate myself; I just cannot even conceive of what that would mean, let alone wish for it.

Oh well, whatever, never mind.  I’m back on the train, yeah, and here I go again, on my own…alone again, naturally.

(I do like to quote things, don’t I?)

I hope you have a good day.

*Of course, as far as we can tell, pretty much everything is inherently finite, but some things are much more constrained and contained in time than others.

**This is based on what my attorney, and my attorney’s supervisor, said to me.  I don’t think they were trying to be unkind, and though their judgement was and is fallible, it was likely better than mine would have been.

***I know, I’m mixing fantasy metaphors and similes.  That’s okay; I like them.

****And most of them are probably not “ex-cons”.

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Missing AC units and one man’s lack of mental health

Well, it’s Tuesday morning, and that’s better than it still being Monday evening, which wasn’t so fun.  I got the notice that my AC unit had been delivered yesterday afternoon, but when I got back to the house, it was nowhere to be seen, and my housemates had not seen it let alone brought it in out of the rain.

It was raining, in case I hadn’t told you.  It still is.

Anyway, I looked around the nearby houses and then I checked with Amazon, and I called FedEx, who said that their info was that it was delivered.  I went to the website with them and saw the delivery picture‒which was not of the house where I live.

I got pretty frustrated, because it was raining a fair amount, but I looked at the picture and thought it might be the neighbor’s house.  But it had not been there when I’d looked around.

I was already wet, so I went to their house and knocked on the door, so irritated by the whole process that I was willing to interact with other people.  It turned out they had brought it inside because of the rain.  They graciously (and with some difficulty, since it was both heavy and awkward) brought it out for me.

Then I had to lug this 50 pound box, with no real handles, back to the house.  I’m feeling the effects of that in my back quite a bit, and I hold FedEx responsible.

In the end, at least I got it set up and started using it last night.  I won’t say it was miraculous, but I was able to use a blanket part of the night last night for the first time in a long while.

I guess it can’t expect it to make a life-changing difference, but it’s better to be at least a little cooler than I was.  It can’t be a bad thing‒or, well, it’s always possible in principle for it to be a bad thing, but I would give that quite a low likelihood.

As for everything else, well…I’m still at a loss.  I don’t know what to do, and I feel no why to do anything.  I guess it’s appropriate that June is (among other things) Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, though it might better be called Men’s Mental Lack of Health Awareness Month.

Apparently, according to the statistics I have recently seen (this was on social media, so the precision and accuracy must be considered at least potentially lacking) men die from suicide three times as often as women.  And, of course, people with autism spectrum disorder die from suicide a similar multiple compared with those who do not have it (and the proportion may be as high as 25 times that in non-autistic people, but I’ll stick with 3 times for the moment).

So, if those variables are independent, which they probably are not completely, then I would be nine times as likely to die from suicide as a neurotypical woman.

That sounds alarming, doesn’t it?  Nine times the risk?  Like corduroy pillows, that’s the sort of thing that makes headlines.  But if you think about it, those statistics and probability ratios give you almost no information.  Before you can decide to act on that risk multiplier, you need to understand the baseline risk/rate of occurrence.

If 10% of neurotypical women die from suicide (an absurdly large and entirely imaginary percentage) then with my relative risk of 9 x the baseline, it would seem that I would have a 90% risk of suicide.  If the women’s rate were a bit higher, my risk might even seem to be more than 100%, which is a mathematical absurdity.

On the other hand, if neurotypical women committed suicide at a rate of .000001, or one in a million, then my risk would seem to be .000009, or just shy of one in a hundred thousand*.  That wouldn’t be too terrible.

This is why you should not get alarmed if you hear some statistic such as “people with red hair have a hundred times the chance to spontaneously combust as non redheads”.  You need to know what the baseline chance is to know if there’s anything worth worrying about**.

As for my personal risk of suicide, well, that’s not vanishingly small.  I have numerous risk factors, including the single biggest predictive risk factor.  As a rough estimate, I would say that, despite the fact that I’m a 55 year old white male with some pertinent family history, I think my risk of death by suicide is significantly higher than my risk of death due to heart attack; it’s probably bigger than my chance of having a heart attack, even a relatively minor one.  That’s not a fixed number, of course.  Many things can change all these relative risks.

Unfortunately, I don’t honestly expect my own risk of suicide to go down significantly, or even at all, as time goes on.  My internal life seems to be steadily growing slightly bleaker, and even blanker, every day, and none of the things that used to bring me comfort or at least engage me seem to be of any interest.  If anything, I feel my likelihood is increasing over time, though maybe it’s staying the same but each day is a new roll of the dice, so over time, the likelihood increases.

Oh, well.  What are you going to do?  I don’t have the wherewithal to change the situation myself; if I did, I wouldn’t be in this situation.  I’ve already tried a great many things.

Anyway, I hope the weather is more pleasant wherever you are, and that you have a very good day.

*The actual rates, while apparently difficult to tease out with great precision, are quite a bit more alarming than my second scenario.  In the UK, for instance, it seems that about 1% of people are autistic, but 11% of suicides are by autistic people.  The rate of suicidal ideation among people with ASD is way higher than that in the general population, starting in childhood (which I can confirm in my case), when the rates of ideation and attempt are reported as high as 25 times that of the general population.  Also, overall, the expected lifespan of autistic people has been measured at about 54 years.  Even given typical statistical variance, I’m about due.

**Since there is not a single confirmed case of spontaneous human combustion, despite what you may have heard, even a multiplier of a hundred may leave one so close to a zero probability that being hit by an asteroid might be a more realistic concern.

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What shall we do now?

Well, it’s Wednesday now, and since I have no appointments for X-rays or anything similar, I am heading on in to the office.  It’s continued to be a hectic time, and today is supposed to be the day on which we finally begin to do business in the new office, though many things have been moved during the day over the last few days.  I would have thought that the uprooting and shifting would have made working more difficult, but we’ve had very big days, especially yesterday.

It’s good I guess, but it’s annoying, because it means I’m very stressed out by more than one thing.

I’m still quite beat, by which I mean I’m so very tired and worn down and exhausted.  I told the boss yesterday that this last week plus had been one of the top five hardest weeks of my life‒and I pointed out the various other horrible weeks I’ve had so I could try to put it in perspective for him‒but I really don’t think he quite got the point.

I think my inability to convey how I feel, or the tendency for it not to show, as well as my own inherent tendency toward a kind of nihilistic stoicism, means that people don’t really know or at least don’t understand when I’m feeling truly horrible.  I’ve said before that this is why the line from Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage resonates with me so much:  “And if the cloudbursts thunder in your ear, you shout and no one seems to hear…”

I don’t even feel I’m at some breaking point anymore; I think I’m already broken, but I’m hobbling along because of inertia, holding the remnants of me together with paperclips and twine and baling wire.

Anyway, I’m exhausted.  I wish I could get back into writing or drawing or creating songs and doing music or studying more science and math, but though I have had passion for all those things at various times, there is only so much one can do to produce creative things in a vacuum, with nearly no feedback or appreciation, before one gives up.

Van Gogh had a similar situation, I guess (not that I am comparing my ability with his) in that he produced many brilliant works of art, but only one was bought by anyone in his lifetime and no one but his sibling appreciated his ability.  And, of course, finally, he shot himself in the torso and died from the wound not long after.  I can sympathize very much, even with his choice to shoot himself in a way that would not be immediately lethal.  It’s both a fear thing‒a lethal shot is scary to do‒and a form of self-punishment and self-hatred‒one doesn’t feel that one deserves an easy death.

I don’t know what I, myself, am going to do.  I’m just too exhausted from my current situation, and from the feeling that I need to use the bathroom 24 hours a day.

Okay, well, that’s enough for today.  I’m very tired, as I said, and it’s only early morning.  But, of course, my sleep is even worse than usual because of the whole bathroom urgency and flank pain thing.  Ah, whataya gonna do?

I hop that what you will do is have a good day.

***

Addendum:  Well, I’m at the office, and even though the Wi-Fi was supposed to be still active this morning in the office, it seems the movers, such as they are, took the router over with them.  My phone’s mobile hotspot function doesn’t get good enough reception here, and so far the public Xfinity Wi-Fi doesn’t seem to have any ability to do adequate data, so I cannot get anything done at the office.

Why did I bother to come in?  Well, of course, that was largely because I couldn’t sleep and there was no air conditioning at the house, but I also like to get a head start on office stuff.  I’ve even finished the last of the series’ of “light novels” with which I was trying to distract myself, so I can’t even count on any reading to help me.

I apparently will not have a closed area in the new office where I will be able to be at least partly cut off from the noise and all.  I wish I had just stayed at the house today, and maybe never left again.  I don’t even have a guitar here anymore, because I gave away my black Strat.  That action was one of those “gesture” things, to be honest, and I was hoping someone would pick up on the point of it, but either they didn’t recognize it, or‒more likely‒they don’t really much care.

I shouldn’t be surprised.  There are very few people for whom it would actually matter if I die.

I’ve finally been able to get the Xfinity thing working a bit, so I should be able to post this.  After that, I don’t know.  There’s just too much for me to deal with right now.  I wish I could just go to sleep and stay that way.  I hate this life.

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A quick, belated post

This is going to be brief (I suspect) in addition to being late (already).  I have an appointment for an X-ray this morning to follow up and see if the kidney stone has passed, which I hope it has.  So, I’m going to the office late, and writing this‒well starting this‒as I wait for my ride to the hospital to get the study done.  I don’t expect to finish it until afterwards, but who knows?

I wonder whether the little app thing for the hospital system will give me the result of the X-ray when it is read, before I see the urologist.  That would be kind of cool, actually.  I like being able to review my labs and radiology reports without needing the priestly intervention of the physicians, especially since I am one, though no longer in practice.

***

Okay, I’m done with the X-ray, which went very quickly.  They seem to be a very well-run place over there.

It’s terribly frustrating that I have to quick duck into the restroom at every full stop (and even some commas).  There’s just a never-ending sense of urgency, probably because of the stent in place and the thread that goes from it to the outside world, and I don’t want to ignore it, of course, because the last thing I want to do is create circumstances for more kidney stones.

It’s a bit of a negative nostalgia situation, as well.  I was the youngest of 3 children (well…I still am) and I tended to have to pee a lot, certainly more than anyone else in my family.  So I ended up having to hold my urine in much more than did my peers*.  Not that people were unkind (though my sixth grade teacher gave me the nickname “Straight Pipes” which is somewhat unkind, I guess, but I took it as affectionate teasing).  But it just means that I have quite a lot of nonspecific memories of desperately trying not to wet my pants while waiting for, for instance, the family car to get somewhere I could use the restroom.

I don’t know, maybe that tendency has something to do with ASD.  I wonder if it could be some sort of sensory sensitivity.  I’m probably overthinking it.

Anyway, this’ll do for now.  Sorry for the delay, and please have a good day.

*Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

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It’s Saturday now

And I’m in the office.  I haven’t come to the office this time, of course, I’ve just been here since yesterday, as I noted in my confusing and single-paragraph post yesterday evening.  I slept at the office, on the floor, and it was just as comfortable in many ways as if I had been at the house.  True, I couldn’t shower, but I’ve buzzed my hair down to 1/4 inch after seeing how it looked after I was in the hospital, and so it’s impossible to tell just by looking that I’ve not showered.  I usually have deodorant and other toiletries at the office, but those are already moved to the new office now, so I’m going to need to go over to the convenience store and get some deodorant and mouthwash this morning.

As for the house, well, there’s a reason I don’t refer to it as home.  It’s not a home to me.  I haven’t felt like I have a home since before I went to FSP.  No, it’s just a place I can hide for a while at a time, and not have to interact with anyone, and where it’s just my stuff inside, such as it is.  But I don’t feel at home there, I don’t feel comfortable, it’s just a place I’m existing.  I don’t even have a real chair there, though I have a piano bench and a folding metal chair tucked into a corner.  When I’m at the house, I just recline on a pile of pillows on the futon on the floor.  It’s good for my back in the short term, though after I stay there for a while it tends to backfire*.

Everything in my existence orbits around pain.  I guess it’s no irony that one of the two songs I have had memorized on piano for decades now is the Police’s King of Pain (the other is Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles).  Maybe it’s because I memorized that song that my life took on its current aspect.

I don’t really believe that, of course.  That’s absurd, magical thinking, and there’s no evidence that it’s the way the real world works, except through confirmation bias and the like.

Right now it still hurts to urinate, with spasms up in my right side and flank, which lingers a little even in between.  It’s nothing compared to the acute onset of the issue, but it’s still there.  And my back and hip and leg pains haven’t ceased to exist out of some strange courtesy.

I’m overwhelmed, and not in a good way.  There is too much happening in my head and around me right now, too many stupid little, annoying changes, too many deeply unpleasant surprises, too much chaos and randomness even in the day-to-day routines.  I am overwhelmed.

I used to be a person who could accomplish things, at least partly because I had people around me whom I loved and for whom I wanted to make things good as much as I could.  I cannot do good for myself.  I cannot live for myself.  But I used to be able to do good and make good things and relieve suffering.  I’ve saved people’s lives and even helped ease people’s deaths when it was appropriate.  Some of the most copious thanks I’ve ever received were from the families of patients who had died.  I was told by one family that, before he died, their 96 year old father/grandfather said I was the first doctor he’d had that he felt that he could trust.

Now look at me.  Or rather, don’t look at me.  I’m disgusting to start with, with my teeth that used to be good but have been ravaged by years of pain killers and prison and then just an inability to have the energy to take the very good care of them I used to take.  Also, I’m currently crying, and there’s snot on my face.  I don’t look great at the best of times anymore, and certainly no one is going to want to look at me now.

I’m caught in the pincers of some kind of weird metaphorical tweezer.  I cannot stand the thought of trying to change my situation; the idea of moving, of trying to change jobs, of trying to find something, is literally horrifying–imagine needing to wade through a swimming pool filled with roaches and centipedes and maggots and other larvae, above which soars a nearly-opaque cloud of mosquitoes, all female.

But staying where I am, doing what I’m doing, is just as horrifying, and now there are a bunch of new stressors, not the least of which is my fresh, new pain problem, which hopefully will be temporary, though it isn’t gone yet.  I guess a week is a relatively short time, and maybe I’m expecting too much, but it’s a fucking huge level of discomfort, and I don’t have the mental resources to deal with it, not on top of everything else.  Why I am I continuing to endure my already-existing chronic pain, my anxiety, my depression, all the other things associated with my hitherto undiagnosed ASD, and then now dealing with newly discovered problems?

I’m overwhelmed.  I cannot summon the will to make a change, or even the conviction that I ought to do so, because I cannot really think straight.  I cannot imagine what to do.  I don’t know that there is any way at all to escape, except by dying.  And I am always afraid.

You might think that after having pain every day for decades and having lost basically everything that ever mattered to you and for which you had worked so hard for so long you wouldn’t have any need to be afraid anymore.  What do you have to lose, after all?  But fear is not a rational thing, it’s not the conclusion of a thought process, it’s an emotion, one in which nature has invested heavily, and having pain after pain for a long time, of various kinds, can cause a “learned-helplessness” reaction related to depression, but even then, fear doesn’t go away.  One is always afraid of yet more pain.  One is afraid of facing another day with the same old pain.  One is a afraid that one is going to live a long, long life and never for one day of the rest of it not be in significant pain.  One is afraid that one will also be alone for the rest of that long life, with no comfort and little joy.

I don’t know what’s going on.  I mean, I’m writing this post, of course, that’s going on.  But I don’t know what else.  I’m falling apart, I think.  I’m breaking down.  Like I said yesterday, I can practically smell the melting plastic and circuitry in my mind.

Whatever.  Nothing I do or say matters, nothing I am matters.  I don’t know what I expect to happen because I’ve written about this.  I feel a bit like Frodo crying out for his friends in “Fog on the Barrow Downs” after they’ve been separated, but the only answer I will probably get will be from some foul undead spirits.  There’s no Tom Bombadil out there to come rescue me.  I wish there were.  And I could really use Elrond’s healing power, or even Aragorn’s.

That’s enough.  Go on, go read something else.  No one wants to feel miserable, and that’s how I tend to make people feel, so you should probably find something comical or at least entertaining to explore, and just try to have a good weekend.

*Honestly, no pun intended.  I didn’t even notice it until the editing process.

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You blogs, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday, and here I am writing another blog post to prove that yesterday’s was not a fluke nor a false flag nor any other term beginning with “f” other than perhaps “fair play”.

By the way, I may have previously used the Shakespeare-based title above‒it’s just so easy to make, and I’ve always loved that line from Julius Caesar‒but I don’t care.  It’s too perfect for my current circumstances to miss the chance now.  I mean, blogs and stones?  Come on!

I’m on my way to the office, and speaking of stones, I am far from being over the process of having, let alone passing, my kidney stone.  I’m trying not to overuse my pain meds, largely because they tend to have diminishing returns, and I want them to work when I really need them.  Also, they are quite…well, constipating.  Now, it’s true that I didn’t eat all that much over the course of the early part of this week, and of what I did eat, much of it didn’t stay down.  Still, I went Sunday through Wednesday without doing anything but peeing.

I have been doing a lot of that of course, deliberately.  It is not pleasant.  The pain is not like it was Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday, but it still doesn’t let me forget.  And, of course, we’re moving office this week, and that adds extra hecticity*.  

I don’t know how much you all would want to hear (that I haven’t already said) about what went on in the hospital.  I did talk about it a great deal yesterday.  I suppose I’ll play it by ear and just bring up things that occur to me as interesting.

I have not yet made my follow-up appointments, but I need to try to do so today, if I can.  Even writing about it makes me feel very tense and anxious.  I know there’s no good reason for feeling anxiety and resistance toward such things, but at least now I know something of the cause:  It has to do with ASD, with possibly some pathological demand avoidance, but also just with associated, fairly severe, social anxiety.

But I have to try, and I want to try.  I’ve been rather impressed by the hospital and its associated staff and attending physicians and their network and such, and I would like to get myself plugged into their system if I am able to do so.

They seem quite generous and caring as a tendency and policy.  They do everything from providing free meds for when you go home to getting you a Lyft if you don’t have a ride.  I think that’s pretty nice.

It was oddly nostalgic, being in the hospital.  Well, I suppose it’s not so odd.  I spent much of my earlier adult life in and around hospitals, from med school to residency to medical practice, nineteen years in total.  I guess I miss it.  It was nice working with intelligent, disciplined, professional people at all levels and being able to relieve and even prevent suffering, all while getting a good amount of intellectual stimulation in the form of understanding and solving complex problems.

I don’t expect that I will ever do it again, though.  There are ways, I am sure, to fight to try to get my license back and so on, but it’s not the sort of process for which I have any avidity.  When civilization falls apart, as it appears to be about to do, I can perhaps find a time and reason to lend my skills to the survivors, if I am one of them, which seems unlikely.  Otherwise, I don’t feel a lot of enthusiasm for supporting the world as it is.  Humans have revealed themselves over and over‒by and large‒to be inadequate to tasks that require actual cooperation and consideration and compassion and humility.

It’s ironic that humility is so challenging for humans.  Given how profound their limitations and failings are (despite undeniable strengths, as well) you might imagine that humility would be easy.

But somehow, the default setting even of those who try to be humble is to characterize themselves as absolutely worthless‒which from a certain point of view is always true, but which misses the point of real humility.

Humility is not self-hatred or self-contempt or self-destruction (from which, to some, the only rescue is through some imaginary supernatural being); it is a recognition that one is and will always be limited, capable of error, and incapable of being perfectly objective about oneself and the nature of one’s existence.  With such self-knowledge, one will tend to be better able to make good choices about oneself and others.

Maybe I should try meditating again, to try to keep myself calm when possible.  It might help with my serious social anxiety.  It would probably also help me to get less upset over the idiocy of the current administration**.  And perhaps my mind would then be more useful overall.

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day and try not to get too upset, yourselves.  The world is going to end soon, but that has always been the case‒it’s just a matter of time scales.  On other scales, even a single mayfly’s life is practically eternal.

TTFN

*I think I made that word up, but it seems too good not to use.

**It would be nice to administer a fair amount of current to the members of this US administration, though‒alternating current, with enough voltage and amperage to cause serious discomfort, but not enough to kill them…at least not quickly***.

***See?  Upset.

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I am not Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror…

…nor am I King Under the Mountain.

Nevertheless I return.

I hope no one was too worried about me these last few days, though I have probably given you cause to worry.  Honestly, though, I was in a fairly dire situation.  On Saturday night/Sunday morning I woke up just after midnight with what started as right lower quadrant abdominal pain, which at first I thought was some “normal” GI cramping, maybe from something I ate that I shouldn’t have eaten.

As it rapidly worsened, I became more concerned.  I checked myself for fever (didn’t have one) and for abdominal tenderness, including rebound tenderness.  That wasn’t really there either.

If you are a medical professional, you might recognize that I was worrying about my appendix.  And though the location was right (lower quadrant, ha ha), there were some things missing.  Still, I was concerned, and the pain was worsening.

To make sure I wasn’t being reckless or silly, I bothered my poor sister with a phone call in the middle of the night (she was very kind about it).  She asked me a few questions, tried a little light-hearted banter to try to relax me (I was, regrettably, not amenable, and I fear I might’ve been rude).  The final thing she said was to point out that I have chronic, often severe, pain.  If this was much worse than that‒and it was‒then I needed to get it looked at.

She is wise, my sister.

I had to finish the call quickly and call 911 because the pain continued to increase.  There was no other credible option but an ambulance.  I don’t have a car, but even if I did, I was not capable of driving at all, let alone safely.  There was no one who could drive me, nor was I going to call an Uber or Lyft.  The delay in that, both at pre-pickup and at the hospital, would be intolerable.

As I tried to keep speaking with the 911 operator, I went outside, onto the back patio, where I eventually laid down on the concrete, confusing at least one cat to a level that would have made Monty Python proud.  I figured it would be easier to get to me there, outside.  The lying down part was because I didn’t want to sit or stand, and didn’t care about getting dirty.  I also didn’t have any shoes on.

Then it occurred to me that I didn’t want to awaken my housemates, who have dogs that would bark if people walked up beside the house with a stretcher, so I made my awkward way to the front of the house, to the sidewalk, where I sat down, first with my back to the gate post.  Then the first real right mid-back (or flank) pain added itself to the mix and I think I cursed as quietly as I could and slumped to my side, trying to ease the pressure.

The 911 operator told me the EMTs were just arriving, and she was right.  I thanked her and said goodbye (my Mom and Dad did not raise their children to be rude to those who legitimately and professionally help others in emergencies).

The EMTs were very professional, and they were the first to recognize what turned out to be the case, though the ER doc also took one look at me and ordered an immediate non-contrast abdomen and pelvis CT which revealed the specifics of what he and the EMTs had clearly recognized:  I had a kidney stone in my right ureter.

So, to bring an already drawn-out explanation to a provisional conclusion, that’s why I’ve not written a blog post either on Monday or Tuesday of this week.  I’ve been in a torture chamber of my own body’s making.

Still, there are some compensations.  One gets pretty thorough evaluations when in hospital.  I learned, for instance, that though my blood sugar was rather high at first, largely due extreme physical stress, it came down to just above normal.  A hemoglobin A1C that was added on showed that I was high normal/low abnormal, or pre-diabetic.  Diabetes does run in my family, and also, I’m sure I have chronically elevated levels of cortisol and related hormones in my body that make such things worse.

Of more mild interest was that I had lowish hemoglobin and hematocrit, and my blood concentrations of hemoglobin and RBCs were low.  In other words, I was borderline anemic.  This was a mild surprise until I thought about how much aspirin I take.  As part of taking that aspirin, I also take acid blockers to protect my stomach (and to combat GERD).  So, from two ends, that can explain a bit of anemia:  some low-level blood loss over time from aspirin’s antiplatelet effects and probably chronic gastritis, and somewhat decreased iron absorption, since the acid in one’s stomach facilitates that absorption.

I know this much in such detail because of a cool service the hospital offers, which is an app on which you can access your test results and (to some degree) other medical records.  It’s really quite nice, because too often, people have only vague ideas of what their tests mean, and they arrive when the occasion might already be fading in their minds.  That doesn’t happen to me, of course‒mine is the superior mind, like Khan, who was even more in his own way than I tend to be.

Ha ha.  I am of course exaggerating, and not just about Khan being more in his own way than I am.  This app’s data is great information to have.  They even give you little notification dings when new stuff is added.  It can be handy.

I’ll go more into what happened in the hospital at another time, but I will give a spoiler or two now:  I have not passed the stone, but I have a stent in my right ureter and I am on meds to try to help that to let the stone pass.  My pain is not completely gone, but there is only a bit of right flank ache and spasm sometimes when I use the bathroom*, and a fair amount of blood and irritation in the urethra from the stent placement.  That’s always fun.

Also, I kind of pushed to get out earlier than they really wanted me to leave, because I have to do payroll for the office today.  It would be possible for my coworker or my boss to do it, but when you’re doing something you don’t usually do, there are much more likely to be errors, and I don’t want people to be accidentally underpaid (or overpaid).

Even before I finished the first draft of this blog post, I already found two places where that would have happened had I not come back.  So, while I was probably somewhat foolish‒I’ll tell you later about another extremely foolish thing I considered doing when my pain first subsided a bit on Sunday‒I am also confirmed in my judgement.  And the needs of the many (ceteris paribus***) outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

One final thing, the most important of all things, before I go.  While I was in the hospital, my youngest, Ezra, having followed my little comments on Threads or Instagram, realized that I was in the hospital and why and contacted me and came to visit me in the hospital!  That’s right, for the first time in almost 13 years, I got to hug my child.  They also made plans to get together with me more regularly.  

So, let me address the notorious question:  Is a kidney stone the worst pain I’ve ever experienced?

Absolutely.  And I’ve been through open-heart surgery and fractured my right scapula and had back surgery and “failed back surgery syndrome”.  We ASDers, supposedly, do not like to exaggerate if we can avoid it, but there was at least one time, and I think several, when I was asked what my pain was on a scale of 1 to 10, and I said 10 with no hesitation.  Sometimes I only said 7 or 8.5 or 9 or 9.5.  I try to be as precise as feasible.  But there were 10s in there, and I normally treat 10s on such scales like massive objects trying to go the speed of light, or probabilities in the real world trying to get to 1.

Was it worth it to get to see my child again?  Well, I would be afraid to offer to experience it again with that outcome in mind, but I would be willing.  Yes, it was worth it.

I will speak more about this tomorrow.  Thank you for your patience and apologies for any anxiety you might have had on my behalf.

*Perhaps because I’m not using it for that for which it is intended, which is, obviously, to bathe**.

**That’s an attempted joke.

***In the real world, ceteris is almost never paribus.

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The blogger, learning, physic, must all follow this, and come to dust.

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday.

I was inclined to make that the whole post today, just, “Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday.  TTFN.”

I still don’t think I’m going to make it much longer than that.  I don’t have anything new to say.  Everything I have to say has surely already been said here.

Nothing is any better than yesterday, or the day before, or the year before, or the decade before.  I have no reason to expect that anything will be better tomorrow.  It’ll just be another day gone by, so I’ll be a little more used up and fatigued and probably a little more pessimistic.

I’m waiting for the train now.  I expect today to be pretty much as always.  There is nothing to which I look forward.  Music isn’t interesting, whether playing or listening.  I can’t eat foods that give me any kind of even momentary surge of pleasure, because those foods also tend to give me GI problems (and then apparent metabolic problems).

I don’t really even know the full state of my physical health; I haven’t been to see any kind of doctor for several years, maybe almost 10, not since the time when I went to an urgent care because a respiratory infection I had was persisting longer than expected.  They found that I was desatting* a bit, so they told me to go to the ER, where I was admitted.  While I was there, they did an echocardiogram, and supposedly (I never saw the actual echo myself) there had been a slight…I don’t know, a recurrence, a reopening, a relapse of the ASD** that I had that required open heart surgery when I was 18.

I was supposed to follow up on that recent echo, but after my infection was treated, I felt much better, and I didn’t and don’t have insurance.  Honestly, the thought of going through all that shit with my heart again now, almost 40 years after the first ordeal, is not acceptable.  Besides, honestly, there wasn’t and isn’t any reason for me to try to preserve my life and/or health.  I’m disappointed the thing hasn’t caused me any problems so far.

Many days I wish I would just have a heart attack or something, or get a severe infection.  After my little semi-humorous footnote yesterday, I thought about just trying to inject some shall we say less-than-sterile liquid into myself, and I even ordered some syringes from Amazon for that purpose.  If I do still have any kind of irregularity in my heart, that would provide a good nidus for the beginning of an endocarditis.

I may do that.  It’s simple and straightforward, but it could be a very long process.  It’s probably not a very rewarding option.  It’s too slow and too reversible.

I’m so exhausted.  I’m so tired, mentally, physically, and “spiritually”.  I wish I could just go into a field somewhere and collapse and just lie there not moving until the elements took me.  And I feel so tense and angry so much of the time.

Never mind, this is all stupid.  Sorry, again.  I’m sorry that I’m whining so much.  Yeah, yeah, life is hard, the universe is hard, the world is idiotic and no one is in charge or in control of much of anything, but it’s nothing new.  Humans‒at least some of them‒do have the potential to do great and relatively enduring things, but all the other idiots who want to think of themselves as special and important to some divine creator, but who are, ironically, much more akin to chimpanzees and savages than are those who reject superstition, get in the way almost inevitably.

Anyway, enough of this.  Again, I’m sorry.  You’ve been kind and optimistic to read my daily excretions, so here’s a slight break for you.  I hope I won’t write a post tomorrow, but I probably will.

TTFN

*Short for desaturating:  when the percentage oxygenation in the blood drops below normal, healthy levels.

**Atrial Septal Defect in this case, not Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Apparently it wasn’t much more than a patent foramen ovale at this recent stage, but that still shouldn’t be there.  I mean, my heart surgery was done by the guy who literally wrote the textbook on the procedure.  That was in 1988, of course, so things have surely improved, but still.

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Morose, meandering musings of a misautonomous moron

Every time I write a blog post on a Wednesday morning, I feel the urge to include a reference to the Beatles song She’s Leaving Home, as in “Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins…”

There, see, I just did it again.  At least it was self consciously done, not some quote put in as if it were my own words, intended only for those “in the know” to recognize.  I guess that’s a way for me to feel vaguely clever‒and sometimes funny‒while actually just following the often irresistible compulsion to quote shit* at every turn.

In high school, when I was a senior (and maybe when I was a junior?) I was pretty confident in my place as one of the “leaders” of our school orchestra, and I used to go to the orchestra room first thing in the morning before school, usually arriving before the teacher, and then I hung out there (with other orchestra members and friends who arrived a bit later) until time for classes to start.  While there, pretty much every day, I would write a quote from something‒Shakespeare**, Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, Poe, etc.‒on the board.  I even won the “Dusty Cello Award” at our end of the year orchestra party because of it.

I’ve always had that habit of quoting books and movies and plays and shows and so on, and even doing the voices of people when I could.

I think reading fiction in particular was very good for helping me to understand what goes on in other people’s minds, at least in principle.  But I also just liked being able to go to those other worlds and other lives.  It’s better in general than watching TV or movies, though the latter are easier and also easier to enjoy with other people, if you have other people with whom to enjoy them.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.  My past and my thoughts about it are of no moment to anyone but me, and even I find them boring.  It’s just that they’re all I really have.

I’ve tried to interact with people to some degree online, but that just gets me weird feedback, like getting almost 3,000 “likes” in less than 24 hours for pointing out in a comment that the biblical Jesus would not approve of a particular, supposedly religion-based, exclusion reported in a thread about a shopkeeper toward a trans woman (ironic for a nonbeliever to be pointing out Jesus’s very clear attitudes, but I am one who remembers characters and quotes).

On the other hand, when I noted yesterday on the same site that the office where I work was 3.4 miles from the nearest “beach” (and a fishing pier) and I thought it might be good to walk down to the shore, kick off my shoes and socks, and just start swimming east into the Atlantic and not come back (pointing out that it would leave no need for cleanup, and it wouldn’t mess up anyone’s day, or anything of that sort) I got 3 likes (after quite a while) and only one comment by a person saying she doesn’t like to dwell on such thoughts.

This is, supposedly, Mental Health Awareness month, but I don’t know what good such a thing does, especially if such is the response to someone expressing suicidal ideation.  I’m aware of mental health in general, but it’s been a long time since I had any personal experience of mental health (if I ever have).  It’s been at least 13 years since I’ve had even moments of mental pseudo-health.  That was the last time I saw my kids in person, for one afternoon.

I’ve only recently realized that it’s now been a longer time since I saw my children than how old they were when I last saw them.  So, I’ve missed more than half of their lives now, and that fraction is only going to get bigger.

What would I possibly know about mental health?

Physical health is not my biggest attribute either (not many people had open-heart surgery at age 18).  But I know it gets very boring for people to hear about‒for instance‒the fact that I feel right now as if my entire right side from the lower ribs on down to the ball of my foot feels as though it’s filled with molten lead, which is quite painful, in case you were wondering.  But that’s always the way it is, for much longer than 13 years (more than 20, actually) and though it waxes and wanes and shifts locations, pain never fully goes away while I’m conscious (and probably contributes to the worsening of my insomnia).

Anyway, I know, Waah, waah, waah, shut the fuck up, Robert, no one wants to hear all this shit*** over and over again!  It’s tiresome to face nothing but complaints.  I’m sorry.  I’m very, very sorry.  I really am.  To everybody.

I really should just try that swim.  There isn’t much to prevent it.  I’m not particularly afraid of drowning (other than in an instinctive sense) though I do have misgivings about sharks and other sea creatures.  That’s probably silly, since, even in shark infested waters, statistically people are far more likely to drown than to be attacked by a shark.

I have to do something, or at least to have something done to me.  I don’t have the will or the wherewithal to take action to save myself in any way (and wouldn’t know where to start if I could) but I don’t have the strength to keep living, not for much longer.  And I don’t have any good reason to keep living.

But that same problem with “executive function” or whatever it is makes it hard for me to take action to kill myself.  So, for the moment, I just hurt myself to try to distract myself from other pain and to punish myself for being such a lame and shitty person, but weirdly, I have a hard time making such things hurt very much anymore.  Maybe I’ve always got too much pain medication in me, but I just don’t realize it because it doesn’t do all that much for my back and joint pains.  It’s weird.

Then again, I’m weird, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Like the song says, “I’m a creep.  I’m a weirdo.  What the hell am I doing here?  I don’t belong here.”

I don’t belong here.

*This is the nonjudgmental version of the word “shit”.  It’s more or less synonymous with “stuff” but it flows better (so to speak).  I don’t mean to imply that the song to which I refer is in any way shit.  It’s one of the most beautiful songs I know.

**Yes, I loved Shakespeare even back then.

***Here, the use of “shit” is much more in the derogatory, excrement-related vein.  Though if someone had excrement in their veins, they would be in big trouble, because that excrement would be carried to the lungs and then heart and could cause horrible endocarditis and pneumonias and so on.