What you think about about when stuck on the toilet.

I have been away from you for three months.  Here is what has occurred:

1. I still have PPMS.  Damn.

2. I have a heart problem.  Guys my age(61) have an heart rate of usually 80-136 beats per minute.  My heart rate is about 46 bpm. A sleeping cat has a bpm of 120. I'm at 46. That means for 15 seconds of each minute I am the hobbling deceased (doesn't that sound classier than Walking Dead?)

3. I figured that I must be a prime candidate for Hobbling Deceased as:

• I have many different walks. I can do the Frankenstein lurch, the dazzling pirouette when stepping away from an object like a chair, table, wife or most inanimate objects (my wife is not an inanimate object - unless The Young and the Restless is on).  I can also fall over on cue.
• My mouth doesn't always form the words right so it may seem what I say is a mumbling that could join a group of walkers and hang with them for 15 seconds.  There are enough early kills on the two shows, Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, that I could fit in quick enough (for a zombie)to get a Michonne autograph, and then hobble down the road, mumbling.
• I do have some concerns about how they are dressed.   I'm more of a t-shirt and jeans guy, and cleaned both well.  The blood and guts things on the Walkers can be special effects added later, so I might squeeze by, especially near Michonne.  Quick note: I stopped watching Walking Dead years ago - tired of the blood and gore of a ridiculous premise TV show, when I finally told myself that I was watching the show only to watch the special effects explained on the Talking Dead.  Once a nerd...

4. My heart medicine was put in place 20 or more years due to my high blood pressure at that time.  The blood pressure, I figure, was from my job at a DSS office, and of course, family, primarily my mother (who blessed me with her bipolar disorder as well) and the struggles of processing 5 family deaths within two years.  Other people have much worse, I know (re: DSS work).  I retired from my job seven years ago, there're few relatives left standing and no real attachment among us.  My blood pressure is fine, except, of course, the slowing of my heart from taking pills for a condition that faded years ago.  So I have a new cardiologist, and we're trying to do what we can do.

5. All right, here's why the title of this piece is what it is..   I mean, my fellow MSers, the worst thing about this rigamarole,  at least for me, is toilet time.  Unless I have a warning that what is about to happen is going to happen BIG and I better be prepared, I just do a quick visit with usually a rapid notification of disposal of waste and I'm out of there.  However, one Thursday morning in November, I was notified of a required visit to the bathroom, but it appeared to a quick one, and so I just sat (that's one thing I've learned with MS and bathrooms - no matter what you may think, guys, sit - ladies, you are as always prepared).  So I stopped in, and sat...

And I was there for two and a half freakin' hours!  It never stopped! Anytime I tried to get up, it would start again!  I didn't dare move, but no reading material or iPod within reach made for a very disappointing morning.

Cleanup of both myself and the bathroom filled in more time.  An image of the toilet seat had embedded on my butt! Really, it was. And now I could understand the people's fear on the two Dead shows.  It's going to barge into your world and terrify you so much that you never want to see it again.  But it...never...stops...coming, there's always more  and more


So, as we are tolled by all the MS Hucksters, until there's a cure, there's simply

This is what's inside....

and this is what's outside.

And they will never stop coming after you. Maybe I'll start watching Walking Dead again, and root for the zombies.  My kind of peopleHappy Holidays.

Wait, wait!  Here's another bit - There's the investment of your time.  When you get the official notice from your digestive track that you may be seated  for a while, you can always grab a book, your cellphone,  or other amusements and distract yourself.  So you seat yourself comfy, grab the latest Stephen King story, turning to page 7289, and by the time you are on page 7296 realize that nothing has happened at all, for you, anyway.  Steve might have killed off most of Maine in those seven pages, but the action you thought was to happen for you (or to you) doesn't occur, except perhaps a trickle and a toot.  That's our Nagan MS. He's swung his baseball bat with the upgrade barbed wire wrapped around the business end of the wood.  Always that service with a ... Damn, gotta go! Maybe