A friend recommended…

A newfound friend some of you are familiar with, Claire Lynch, challenged me to write an app that would make communicating by Morse Code faster than texting.

Claire, I never imagined you’d influence my dreams.

I woke up from a night of coding in my subconscious — experimenting with the length of time that designates a pause and when it’s a pause, exactly what kind (space between words, space between sentences, etc.), as well as the definition of dots and dashes when one is “clicking” a touchscreen device like a mobile phone or tablet PC.

Of course, I haven’t got out to any Android or Apple app store to see if the app in question already exists.  Create mine first and let the competition wait with bated breath.

Lost in Allemagne

Whatever it may be, it is what it is.  I no longer have a mind, or semilogical thought set.

Where is the guy who can spin off cantankerous cacophonies of kaka like it’s nobody’s business?

A new list of names to add to the list of names of people to thank for being people.

Can I be too tired right now to name them?

Where is the amateur professional amateur when I need him to stand in my stead and mount the steed like an Android tablet that suddenly displays a need to find the mount drive named something like /mnt/, which amounts to mountains of rubble and gibberish rubbish to the noncomputersavvy.  Savvy?

Of course not.

My father is dying, dying, dying and I’m past the point of pain, pretending to pretend my father is there in some form of his old capacity while pretending in pretense, past tense, tension (the hyper kind), that he’s like a newborn child all over again, like adopting an autistic child with no clue which clues to the child’s nonclues indicates the child’s needs without pretending.

Is my father clueless or stubborn?  Is he ignoring or is he tired?

He never liked dwelling on discussions about his health, his PRIVATE health, with strangers.

But he loved talking.

Now he grunts, coughing out sounds we interpret as “yes” or “no” to the best of our ability until he indicates we were wrong.

He is weak, getting weaker, never the weakest this week.  Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.

To have these moments with him in his time of indiscernable thought patterns.

To read much, little or nothing in his eyes, from when he chooses to look back with a blank stare.

Not even a smile.

Is it worth writing about the shriveled hands, the sunken cheeks and hollowed-out eye sockets?

When the family chooses to put in the feeding tube, the PEG line, these are the consequences we get to face.

It is up to me to serve as a warning to the rest of you — resist the temptation.

I don’t want the last memories of my father to be these moments of diminished capacity, well beyond the twilight zone of believability.

I believe I have no choice.

Suffer the insufferable.

Go with the flow.  It’s all relative — many have suffered worst fates with friends and family.

And yet, not so.

Time to revise my living will — there will be no PEG line for me, no stretching my life into wide-eyed stares with no productive, contributory communication to give back.

Let me die in strength.

Let me fight the good fight while I have the capacity to say no.

While I have the fingers to type or, at the very least, the ability to dictate via brain probes.

Something…anything but this.

I am beyond crying.

I am tired of being tired of being tired.

If my thoughts aren’t worth reading, plop me in a wheelchair and push me into the woods.

That’s the joy of having no children.

Let me feed wildlife with my set of states of energy in entropic flux.

Where labels have no meaning to an ecosystem designed to eat the weak and the dying in an effort to convert energy into the ebb and flow of species sets of states of energy in regenerative reproductive mode.

Auf wiedersehen, Vati!

My Kryptonite

When I was a program manager for a large computer equipment manufacturer, I dealt with the global supply chain on a daily basis.  I worked with people and machines.  We weren’t interested in creating headlines for headlines’ sake.  We just wanted to accomplish the tasks we assigned one another in our give-and-take of getting products and services to our internal and external customers.

Conspiracy theories were for the quacks parading and masquerading as popular newspaper columnists, radio/TV talk show hosts and pulpit pounders.

I never met a spy or an industrial espionage mole.

The flow of information across business borders (which sometimes crossed political borders) was the natural course of action of human endeavour.

In other words, I grew into a member of the global economy.  I was not tied to any one gender, race, creed, religion, country or local/regional ideology.

I don’t have turf to protect or children to instill a particular belief set into.

I am, was, and will be a proponent of Earth-based lifeforms because I was born here first.

However, I look forward to the day when lifeforms can consciously/intellectually say that our solar system (and eons from now, our galaxy) is their natural birthplace.

At least, that is the storyline told in this blog, mixing in realism and tall tales to give us a perspective many of us have envisioned from our foggy toddlerhood.

Keeping in mind that my weak side — my Kryptonite, so to speak — is the medical/emotional details of family life that distract me from telling our story in the view of a visitor 1000 years from now…

Chemistry… “Live it. Love it. Wear it.”

While the world stares blankly at the U.S. arguments about national “universal” healthcare, I delve into the healthcare provided to one person: my father.

I observe and listen.

I take the advice of medical pros like Dr. Little and delve more deeply into the mixture of medications poured down my father’s throat on the advice and scripts of his doctors.

Drugs like pyridostigmine, prednisone, and paroxetine given all at once.

What if the medications are causing side effects that doctors are treating as symptoms, prescribing more medication to treat the symptomlike side effects that causes more side effects which look like new symptoms, etc.?  A vitreous cycle, wouldn’t you say?

You see where I’m going with, don’t you?

For the sake of keeping this civil, let’s call it “human nature.”

What is that phrase I tend to forget in moments like this…?

To err on the side of caution is good human medicine, to forgive Divine for bad acting is unnatural?

Something like that.

More like to wade Kendrick Creek during one’s spring break is fun, to build a bridge on Gibson Mill Road in summerlike heat is exhausting.

I just hope we can get Dad back before it’s too late.

If any of him is still there…sigh…kinda like USA soccer/futbol, here the next moment, gone in an Olympian tie the next…

An Attitude of Gratitude

More thanks:

Bonnie and Warren in ER at HVMC; Glenn, registration; Connie, nurse practitioner; Steve, hospital security; Adel, MD; Haley, RN; Sharon, liaison; Gloria, PCT; Amy, RN; Lilli, RN; Elabassi, MD; Nina M, care team; Missy and Luanne; Halie, RN; Sammi Jo, PCT…

I’m shooting for calling my Dad’s symptoms Hill Syndrome, setting a new standard in grouping symptoms under a convenient meme.

= = = = =

New medical term of the day, probably unrelated:

Sjögren’s syndrome

Time Share

While computing quantum computer computations, the Committee today announced a joint agreement between major professional sports organisations and carpark services.

From now on, tickets to a sporting event are leased an on hourly basis only.

For instance, those attending American football events such as an NFL game may lease an assigned seat for up to two nonconsecutive quarter periods, but not the first and fourth, first and third, or first and first (figure out the last conundrum on parchment paper, preferably highly-combustible flash paper near a blast furnace).

In a motorsports event such as a Sprint Cup NASCAR race, tickets will be issued on either a per wreck or per time-period basis, as well as both.  One may use a seat for up to three wrecks in any fifteen-minute period, or three laps, whichever comes first.  No refunds for snoozefests.

Carparks may remove vehicles occupying a carpark space greater than 50% of the time length of a sporting event, towing vehicles to impound lots on the other side of the ocean via moldy cargo carriers, stowed behind impenetrable chainlink fences and guarded by dogs impervious to taser attacks.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has announced that, contrary to popular belief, Miss Baker‘s cryogenically-preserved body had not been fused with the DNA of Merkozy to create the lab specimen Francois Hollande allegedly planned for a secret launch to the ISS for the first orbital celebration of a French citizen taking office without getting elected or giving rivals the guillotine while smoking nicotine and drinking Ovaltine outside the Oval Office.

On a personal note, thanks to the cast of billions supporting my father’s health change adventure.  May the moral of this story (or the storal of this mory) be a tale worth regaling with humorous (or “humour us!”) afterthought, aftertaste and a sweet aroma of eau du backwash.

More as permits time (or Kermit mimes).

Where do we go from here?

ImageTo friends and fellow followers, my blog has been under “attack” by IP addresses associated with .pl domains — they know who they are, the dastardly spammers!

Thus, I am moving to another blog location, currently undisclosed and hidden in plain sight, as usual.

Picking up my things and moving to a new saloon, or cafe, or mountain outcropping — you’ll see.