Serious Shit — Parts #1 & #2
Part #1
My Body Conspires Against Me
I don’t want to have you running out of the room screaming TMI (Too Much Information) so I’ll skip on many of the details in this saga, but the word diarrhea is not avoidable.
The tl:dr (too long; didn’t read version): Somehow I contracted an e-coli infection and spent 2+ days in the hospital with serious kidney, blood pressure, and other body organ issues. I am mostly out of danger now. All this while having intense spike migraine headaches —(imagine someone poking a knitting needle in one spot on your head, hard enough to make you jump, every 45 seconds or so) — an occasional issue I have — which usually I take a pill for and they go away. This time the medicine didn’t work.
Thursday evening feeling a bit off.
Friday morning — as Tammy was leaving for a three-day conference in Hershey, PA — I was feeling more off-center. She offered not to go, but things weren’t very bad so I gently pushed her out the door with wishes for safe travels. By Friday afternoon — and onward — diarrhea of Niagral proportions. Texts to keep in touch with concerned Tammy and reaching out to my kids.
A horrible Friday night, trying to keep up with hydration. COVID home tests negative. Saturday morning, I went off to the urgent care center. With blood pressure (usually 120/80) down to 75/55 and other symptoms, I was told to head over to the emergency room immediately.
•[Mayo Clinic — e-coli infections]•
•[ecoli on the streets of NYC- CBS BNew York]•
Yet another reason for me to love the millions of privileged New Yorkers who all need their Stockholm Syndrome'd Mammals on Strings!
I chose the hospital nearest me (mistake), one of the Mt. Sinai franchises. After a few hours of waiting with fearful lightheadedness and trembling I was finally hooked up to an IV. The dehydration had sent my kidney numbers into a range that the doctors expressed serious concern about. Both my legs went into severe painful debilitating cramps.
From that point on there were endless additional bags of saline solution via IV interspersed with blood tests to check progress.
The spike-migraines continued. I’ll be going to a neurologist in the next week or two to see what’s up.
The attention I got was perfunctory. The doctors, when they did come around every 5 hours or so, were informative, and the rotating nurses ranged from kind and attentive to my wondering why-they-choose-this-as-a-profession. The place itself was pretty dirty, both of the cubicles I was in had old dried blood spatters on the walls and ceiling.
The numbers on my kidneys were getting better slowly. I was told I’d have to spend at least one night. No beds were available so I was in a lounge chair — after many hours and me begging I was given one of the many available rolling cots so I could stretch out under blankets, which I also had to ask for amidst my trembling.
Tammy meanwhile was making preparations to take an early train home. Her friend Kevin arrived to gift me a phone charger and a sandwich — I hadn’t eaten almost anything since Friday morning.
A Catalog of Indignities is available upon request but summed up: hours of no sense that anyone was paying attention to the curled-up old guy in the corner.
Sunday night — after a false-alarm incident regarding doctors getting manically seriously concerned about my blood platelets and talk of a possible transfusion (caused by poor nursing blood extracting procedure) — I was allowed to go home — with Tammy by my side... my gratitude overflowing.
[That Wednesday morning, with non-hemorrhoidal pain when trying to sit, I went back to urgent care – who suspected an abscess inside — I went to another emergency room. This time at the NYU Langone Hospital, which was sunshine to the other hospital’s nightmare. Clean, efficient, with constant contact with staff. I was wheeled through a seemingly never-ending labyrinthian place of machines that went "ping", medical staff, and very sick people.
A CT scan showed no abscess. A follow-up with a gastroenterologist is in the works – but whatever it is, the pain has slowly reduced to mere discomfort. And I’m home and recovering.]
• • • As of this writing, one week later, Tuesday morning (after a lovely day trip to Philadelphia on Sunday, with our friend Robert, to a painter friend Phillip’s home, to sit for the beginnings of portraits) Tammy has fallen under the spell of the same infection starting on Sunday night! An urgent care visit yesterday showed that her vitals are good — we now know how to address the dehydration etc — and we're both just resting and working our way through the symptoms.
Musical Interlude and Plea
Help" by Mary McCaslin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkSv9hKRKbo
Part #2
The World Outside Must Be Addressed
“Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down, and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ― Audre Lorde
I left Facebook at the beginning of this year after 14 years.
Certainly one of the top reasons is the nightmarish underlying algorithms which reduce users to metal fragments being pulled around by magnets from underneath — cogs in a wheel, with just enough of an illusion of freedom to keep ‘em coming back for more.
And once they’ve front-loaded the application with their “friends”, the monkey gets quite comfortable on their backs.
“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” —Howard Zinn
During the past few years as the politics of the United States went further and further into hellish manifestations of the military-industrial-complex — certainly after the morally despicable crews fueled the invasion of Iraq under obvious pretenses.
I’ve felt the need to speak up (scream) as the machinations became more and more evident. I read a lot, deeply, beyond the agendas and narratives of the government, and tried to share what I learned.
I was among those who thought Bernie Sanders was something seriously different. And watched, twice, as the DNC’s assaulted his campaign as it gained momentum.
[ https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/27/dnc-perez-regime-change-agents-israel-lobbyists-wall-street-rig-game-bernie/ ]
(My history with all this U.S. militarism goes back to Vietnam, before this world of the internet and social media, with all its promise of shared communications and availability of truthful information — which turned out to be yet another tool of the corporate-controlled beast that hatched from television — keeping the population clicking and scrolling in pursuit of serotonin entertainments.)
I had 200 “friends” on Facebook. Maybe two or three others would share something more substantial than selfies. Politics were limited to Facebook-prepared little virtue-signaling “I Voted’ stickers around their profile picture, and any of my attempts at conversation would get infested with crickets — silence!
And then along came Ukraine and the blue/yellow profile virtue-signals.
A proxy war with Russia utilizing Ukrainian blood and providing a great money laundering scam for U.S. weapons manufacturers — run by a useful puppet actor/comedian dressed up as a green-tshirted moral superhero. Americans love superheroes.
In case they've still got you mumbling the false narratives that Ukrainian bloodshed has something to do with freedom or democracy here’s my brief essay on that from last year.
Facebook always felt like a place where nobody cared to speak up or dared to speak up outside their tribe bubble. The limits of the Comfortables' political activity would be to post some dopey anti-Trump meme and repeat that everyone should bend over and Vote-Blue-No-Matter-Who. That was the extent of speaking out or taking action. And don’t ask for lube.
(To some degree I stepped back from the deaf ears on Facebook, and stopped flogging the dead horse. Leave it to the selfies. And then I left.
But here I won't hold my tongue — and so, if need be there is an unsubscribe button at the bottom for the meek! — (who will NOT inherit the earth.) Or, on the other hand, share the subscription button on the bottom with friends.
And now‚ Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Guess who is again the No. 1 weapons supplier — while performing stunts like airdropping food (after 5 months) — with monsters like Anthony Blinken spinning narratives to assuage the Gullibles and serve the guy who has a history of supporting wars: Joe Biden.
How long before Americans see through these deceptive vile war criminals, as at least some did with the Cheney/Rumsfelds?)
The bleeding hearts of the mass media spill crocodile tears for the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, while at the same time, the U.S. slowly murders Julian Assange.
And here comes the election and the realities of money-controlled ”democracy” rise to the surface.
An arrogant idiot television reality show clown and a genocide-supporting neoliberal Somnambulist are what are presented to be the leaders of the country.
(Although the latest theatrics are desperately reshaping the image of Kamala Harris into a leadership role so they can sell her to the Vote-Blue team who as we’ve seen will go along with anything.)
What the fuck do we do?! To refrain from panic people are forced to play their team colors — whip up reasons why one or the other is more evil—and not admit that the entire system is the problem, the corruption bleeding out of the duopoly’s sides.
Sorry — but that is not acceptable when the world is burning!
(I support Cornel West for president because he speaks far more truth than anyone else in the arena. That counts for a lot. Those in power count on people staying scared and keeping their votes in line — but — nobody with any real power cares about your vote!
____________________________
Anyway — that’s all for me.
I have to go heal my body and do what little I can do with my words towards trying to stir up dissent against the madness of the narcotizing official narratives.
I ain’t got much time.
Maybe neither does the world.
Here's a gorgeous piece of guitar music to help you through the day.
“Desperate Man Blues” — John Fahey
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQQjTJ4zTPo <
Enjoy!
