The Sudden Interest In My Body, Butt and Denim

First , there will be no pictures.

OK, there will be one.  I think.  Anyway, I have this gender-free shot here to show how the doctors, or  nurses if its late in the day and docs haven't had lunch yet.  That's a good reason to do your colonoscopy in the morning.  The last one I had was about ten years ago (more on that later) and the Gastroenteritis who died right after my last colonoscopy in 2009. Stay away from people offering to do it for  cheap using a vacuum cleaner.  But it can be okay if you're up that late and can't stand seeing ancient Emeril Lagasse pushing his chicken cooker thing at three at the morning, another sad story of the Food Channel Monster eating its own children (with some garlic! Everybody loves garlic!)

I may have lost track there for a second or two but no worries, the afternoon drugs will kick in at some point and I will be eligible frasking corn. Be right backkkkkkk.

(sounds of sipping water}

So first you have to sign twenty or more papers to give the medical facility the OK to look  at a naked person'in the first place, then undress the person, and put on a silly looking large towel that has no ability to shield you from commentary from the nursing staff, who are trained enough to giggle about us at the assigned nurse stations near food carts, and large machinery that may or may not be part of what they are sticking up your bum shortly.

Meanwhile, the idea is to make this invasion of your dignity as gentle as possible, so the largest nurse on the floor to begin the happy job of getting you sedated. Suddenly you are part of a giant machine dulling your senses and preparing for the TV show, "Poop -free travels!"  Yes, at least, five professional in whites and goggles move toward the terrified patient, me, with soothing words and wires to go inside to make a terrorist attack upon my butt.

For those science fiction fans out there, think Borg, Cybermen, or back otar Walking Dead back of the crowd scenes.  Early on in the WD series there was a hospital scene in which Rick is trying to escape the facility, with newly dead patients, docs, nurses, and people having colonoscopies, out on the street with all that medical stuff hanging out as the now dead patient goes in search of fellow dead patients.  Rick does escape these unfortunate folks and then I've forgotten whatever went on after that.  

Here I must give a tip of my Brooklyn Tip Tops baseball cap to the doctors I deal with.  When it was found that I had MS, the docs decided I should be excused for ten years for any anal exploration.  My time expired this year, so I went through with it.  The drugs allowed me keep in contact with the hordes of people and machines watching this:

OK, two pictures.

Again, it (me) has a sci-fi feeling in this photo.

Kirk: Spock, what is this place?

Tri-corder sound.

Spock: Unknown, Captain. We appear to have beamed into a living organism of immense size.  We were invited, and were given these coordinates.  Perhaps we should proceed  along this pathway and down this hall. 

McCoy:  Jim! Spock! Wait! This is not a hallway! It's a waste passage, intestinal.  I think we need to go before...

KIrk: My god.  KIrk to Enterprise!  Scotty, beam us! Now-"

McCoy: Jim, wait! There's a light coming toward us. I think it may be a welcome device-"

Spock: Perhaps not, Doctor.  It has seen us and it is reversing course. Perhaps we have been duped into a colonoscopy for some large human like being miniaturized, and placed here for some reason. Or we remain at our regular sizes and this creature is massive version of a human form.      

A large set of pincers next into the hall and opened their arms and snatched before what be attributed to some orb, attached to left orb.

Spock: Time to go, gentlemen.  The next visit should be upon us it 

KIrk: Scotty? Anytime now?

Click. Click. Click. "Clear!" the doctor said,  stepping back off from the patient! "I could swear I heard voices in there."

"In his butt?' the nurse asked. "Doctor Mugabe, man, you are something else."

" I swear, Nurse Chapel, I could hear the voices.coming from his rectum.  Hear, the tri-corder can help. Place it at the rectal

"In your head, Doc. Not in Mr. Martin's butt."

"Let's look at the film. Run the video."

I went home so I don't know the outcome of the dreamBut something tells me no more colonoscopies for Tom until 2029  Since MS is having its way with me, it may not be a big deal. And I am

Oh ,by the way, one week after this, I was at the urologist, and bingo, pants down, turn around and bend over.  "This may hurt a bit.  Yep. But the second invasion of my person showed all is well.

My psychiatrist says I'm losing weight.  12/31/2010  193 lbs (last day at work) 10/7/2019 173 lbs.
More on this later, but I can fit into my 9th grade denim jacket.

Anyhow, I dozed a bit after the tuneup was done and woke from the enforced nap.  I had one polyp getting ready to cause problem and "snip", it went away. Was told as they won't need to see me for 10 more years. 10 more years of MS.  My heart Doc says that all  is good after tests to assure that there were no more problems when my heart beating 42  beats per minute, which when you do the math means I'm dead 18 seconds a minute.  I was in this group:

• Blue Whales. 8 bpm.
• Elephants. 30 bpm.
• Horses. 36 bpm.
• Tom 42 bpm.
• Humans. 75 bpm.

Anyway, I did feel better after four consecutive Ihop breakfasts and sitting around the house watching Hall mark the heart rate is up to 72 pbm.  Running (pretend I do) against my Nemesis is relentless tedium, but there's sometime for hope yet. And I hope to get this blog rolling again.

It's good to have goals, especially those of us with "special"  challenges. Whether it be making your bed, listening to good music, calling people who are aware what's going on and will have an ear for your needs (support teams - bless'em all)  You need to know where your health buddies are. I know where mine is. Jackie, my dear wife.  That's pretty much it.   My actual family sends a Christmas card or two for us each year.  Due to my challenges, I am a cranky SOB somedays but I try to be nice. Mostly.   And I thank you for reading.

September 1971

January 2020

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

That's it. I've turned the TV off. Goodbye 21st Century.

Four minutes ago I turned off my TV and bid farewell to "Gotham", the Fox Network's take on the early days of Jim Gordon, ace detective and eventual Commissioner of Gotham City's Police Department, and partner with Batman on the perpetual crime spree going on in that fictional city, which is just down the road from Metropolis, and a hop, skip and a jump from Starling City (Arrow) and whatever place the Flash is from.

One problem for me is that we've got like a 10 year wait before The Bat shows up.  Bruce Wayne is about 12 years old.  He appears like a smart kid, but he's still getting over the murder of his parents by person or persons unknown.  Yes, he lives in Wayne Manor with Alfred the Butler.

See, the problem is also, I'm 58 years old.  Now I've seen every Batman movie, and only 2 make the cut for me and they are both the Joker films.  Even they make me a little squeamish.  I've got both films on DVD and I've never watched them.

When you're a kid of the 1960s...This is Batman....

and Robin, of course.  And the comic books, any of them before 1970.  Yes, I am old, as noted.  I also repeat myself.  I have brain lesions.  And I am tired of seeing people killed off in unique ways with no fuss (tonight on Gotham, a city councilman and his aide were killed by having a dart shot through their eyes, and another councilman [the last one I saw anyway] was stuffed into a trash can, doused with gasoline and lit up like a torch).  Now that's entertainment.

Look if I want that kind of fun, I can watch ISIS videos.

Which brings me to The Walking Dead.  For four years I saw every episode, it was must Sunday night watching (or Monday morning watching with coffee, cookies, and my wife off to her job).  I would settle in and watch this:

And then watch everyone who was still alive run away, or, if that wasn't an option, watch Sheriff Rick and the gang stab, crush, hammer, burn and everything else to what was stumbling around the countryside just looking to feed on human flesh.  Yum.

Until I noticed last season that I started to be more interested in the how than the what.  How did they make that zombie do that? How did they work that cave in? I became far more interested in that then the story, which is just, well, silly.  Maybe I'm just in a phase with my little bit of energy that I need to place it somewhere...like the major presentation I've got coming on Thursday.

More on that later, but for right now I'd like to have The (baby) Penguin meet the Governor in a pit that's surrounded by zombies and say, OK boys, lemme know who wins and turn the set off.  You can send an e-mail.

 

I can not help but notice that we are over 10000 visits.  Thank you.

Right now I will join my wife and watch funny shows.  I hope they are.

The Walking Decrepits...( A Walking Dead Parody)

Sheriff Rick Grimes and his annoying son Carl are sitting in the sanctuary of the CDC (Center of Disease Control) in Atlanta.  The rest of the survivors are showering, eating actual food, and enjoying  comfy beds and clean toilets.  Dr. Edward Jenner is sitting at his com site watching the action on the large video screen before him and the Grimes.  MS people (called Mizzers)  stumbled around on the sidewalk just outside the CDC.

"What's wrong with that one?" Carl asked as he bit down on a Twizzler.  

Dr. Jenner leaned forward in his chair.  The walker on the screen was shuffling along being pushed around by other walkers.  The walker stopped and looked around, as if searching for a door.

"Oh, yeah," Dr. Jenner said. "That's a whyer."

"A what?" asked Rick.

"A whyer," the Doctor said, recognizing a teaching moment. "It's an Mizzer that walks around, but can not remember why it is there, or that maybe he should be someplace else.  The women ones are always looking in car windows for their car keys.  They don't last long because - well, see her there?"

Rick and Carl squinted at the far corner of the screen. A slow moving white van with a disability license plate was heading for the decrepit woman who had been gazing in the window of a blue Prius.  The van was going fifteen MPH and had its left turn signal on.  It slammed into the woman and then rolled over her as the van settled into the handicap parking space in front of the Prius.  The MS zombied man opened the door  to the van, placed his parking sticker in the van window, and walked to what once had been a pharmacy, since emptied, for Depends for Men, pain pills, and sleeping aids.  

The man called out in that weird despairing cry of the Mizzers as he saw he that the only remaining Pampers were for newborns, and yet stuffed the box into the front of his pants, and then fell over.

No one would pick him up.

"Poor bassterd," Rick mumbled.

"Why do you sound like an Australian?" Carl asked, offering the Twizzlers around.

"Sorry, sometimes I forget I'm an American." Rick stared off, seeming more interested in the mouse in the far corner that was just standing there, twitching,  first his right leg, then his left rear leg.  The mouse squeaked, urinated on the floor, and moved to the right of the small pool he just created, and waited.

"Oh, no you don't!" the Doctor yelled at the mouse. "I am NOT cleaning that up.  You had your Mighty Mouse Depends, and you would not wear them. Too bad."

Carl took out his Berreta 92, and blasted the mouse to twitching parts.

"Why'dja do that?" Rick asked, not hiding his admiration for his son's aim.

Carl shrugged.

"It's a walking decrepit, Dad. Mizzers die, right? -

Doctor Jenner raised his hand in the classic "Halt" move.

"You know, Carl," he said. "That is not necessarily true. Studies have shown - OK, you've got the gun.  I'll  shut up."

Carl nodded and turned to his father

"Besides, Dad, Mom's been doing a little twitching, too, if ya know what I mean."

"Carl, she's pregnant. Pregnant people do that."

Carl turned his attention back to the screen.  "We'll see," he mumbled.

"Hey, check this out," Dr. Jenner said.  "Look at this old guy with the beard. Looks like Santa is a little early this year."

The man was dressed in jeans, work shirt, and boots.  His white hair and and beard a bit lengthy for the summer, but he had a nice smile.  Jenner turned up the sound so all three men could hear the show.

"Now I got the cure right here, " the old man said in a professional South Carolina accent. "It's right in my car.  Come on, now."

All the Mizzers stopped whatever random thing they were doing, and turned to the white haired man. Those Mizzers that could still talk mouthed something like "cure...cure...money. Give them money." Those who could no longer speak just reached for their wallet.. Those in wheelchairs tried to rise from their chairs and join the fray, but just tumbled to the road. They crawled.

The Santa kept stepping backwards, drawing the Mizzers to him.  Rick placed a call on the speaker system to everyone inside the CDC.

"There's some guy outside who is gonna give himself up to the Mizzers.  We can make a run for it!"

Over the speaker system, all he could hear was....

"Too hot....Too cold....My legs, my legs.....Can't walk...."

Rick dropped the microphone, making too loud a noise.

"They're all infected," Rick said.  He collapsed in the chair.  On the screen was the white haired man with a slight limp.  "Handicapped Parking!" he cried, "Where's mah sticker? You don't look sick!"

"Welp, it ain't that bad," Carl said.  "knowing MS may not be genetic."

"What about that?" Dr. Jenner said. "What is genetic?"

Carl smiled and picked up his gun.

"Bipolar disorder, Dad.  Ask Mom."  Carl just started laughing.  A little too long.

One of the great things about Multiple Sclerosis is...

(I bet you thought there wouldn't be anything here.  If I wrote like that, I could get a job at Hallmark, as long as they gave me a blankie and pillow for "thinking sessions.")

Anyway, when the MS really kicks in down the line, you know that you've got just so much energy to work with each day, and each day is different in people contact, stress, and commitments.  You have to think low and then be pleasantly surprised that you've lasted into the late afternoon without looking like a Walking Dead cast member, like Milton here:

Actually, this was more my look after any meeting with a former Commissioner of Social Services who took your tax money and ran (you're welcome).  Otherwise, for the MS crowd, this might be us around 

oh,  three P.M. any Wednesday to Friday in the workaday world.

For those of us "retired" people, I can normally hold out pretty well if the day is not too loaded.  Otherwise I just mainline lattes.  Last Friday, family was dropping by and there would be a birthday celebration, and dinner out. I kept things cool, just nice and quiet, but getting too quiet and its blankie/pillow/nap time, even before the Hoda and Kathie Lee show starts, so I would do small things to keep active and once company came, be sort of in neutral.  My wife was concerned that was just going to "sit there."  It is always an option.  But I merely listened in to the conversation, glad to see the group, and we moved on to dinner.

Still idling, I read the menu, and nothing much struck me, but I ordered and sat back in the patio chairs at at outside venue in Saratoga Springs.  I do my level best to avoid Health/Horses/History town during the summer months as there are too many many tourists (and a good supply of "Those People" by which I mean wealthy and they know it boors who believe they own this area. Their wealth, real and external, is flaunted with BMWs, loud shirts, and loafers with white socks and they are also are glad to remind you who "pays your salary." End of rant.  Besides, if I was wealthy, I'd still be here with MS and white socks and loafers, but mine are cool).  So when company comes, they usually ask to go up to Saratoga so there we were.  I had a pear cider ale and a yum sandwich.  Nice job of ordering, me, I said.

At the entrance of restaurant a couple stood waiting for a table, and I realized that I knew the gentleman from my days working with Milton up there.  He had worked with me on the last project I begged and begged for and maybe that assignment was tossed at me as a bone, but we did make it work until I had to leave, and I was quite proud of it, and my staff.  The gentleman was a kind and considerate boss and even every now and then we did clash, things worked.

He retired a short time after my group began and it seemed I was the heir apparent to his job,  but it did not turn out that way, and probably for the best as MS was already invading my brain.

But on that nice last Friday afternoon I watched the couple make their way to their table and I just looked over now and as we continued our dinner.  I could feel the energy drain starting as the clock moved on toward five P.M.  The couple finished their meal, and got up. Then he saw me (you know that feeling - Did he see me? Do I want him to? What do I say? How can I-)

"Tom, how are you?"

There he was. Hands shaken, families introduced, want are you doing? I am not sure how far the DSS chatter box on old supervisors goes, so I just said I'd been busy writing, etc.

As they started to leave, I called to him.

"Warren, thank you for the best two years of my working life."

He stood there for a second, astonished, and then smiled and joined his wife.

And that is what MS gave me a chance to do that day, a chance to acknowledge to someone what their efforts had meant to me, and, I hope, the staff we'd put together.  I hope there are more days like that, and I know that time is short.  I got to think, slowly, ponder, what would I say?

And I said it.

And then it was time for cake.

Here's to you, Milton. And really, our Commissioner was more like this:

And another great thing about MS is, I've already got that shuffling Walking Dead step perfected. Look, just a little makeup, and easy-peezey zombie. Just waiting for that phone call.  

Thanks for reading. More soon. Heading to 5000.