A DAY OF BURNOUT

I try to be strong, I really do, but there are times when I just burn out and today was one of those days.

After two trips to the ER within nine days, plus the regular time and energy drain that is dialysis treatment, returning home from the hospital in the wee hours last night left me mentally and physically spent, so I crashed hard and slept soundly for something like nine hours. I then got up to have some breakfast, but after I ate I just felt too wiped-out to do anything other than return to bed.

Sheer mental and emotional breakdown, so I ended up back in bed for about four hours, bundled up under comforters while listening to Douglas Adams reading THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY on low volume. It registered mostly as mumbling, as I wanted the sound mostly as ASMR — when I want bedtime sounds that I can really pay attention to while going to sleep, my go-to is Stephen Fry reading Greek mythology and/or short stories by Oscar Wilde — and I spent the hours of that audiobook in a state where my mind had more or less turned off. Not quite asleep, but definitely not awake and alert.

My head just needed a serious time out.

MORE FUN IN THE ER

It's 1-something in the AM and I just got home after another trip to the ER.

I discovered an ugly open wound on my left big toe and, being a diabetic, I was concerned that it might be another case of infection like a few months back. So I hauled ass to the ER at Brooklyn Presbyterian Methodist and landed on a night when the place was packed and the staff was super-busy. I waited for two hours before I was admitted, and once inside the ER I was shown to a lounge chair where I sat for another two hours before getting my foot X-rayed.

 

After that it was back to the lounge chair, but I managed to finagle a bed in the aisle — it was a dialysis day, so I was exhausted to my limits — and a box meal featuring one of the hospital's stellar tuna salad sandwiches (seriously, I love them), fruit cup, 1/2 pint of low fat milk, and some apple juice. I enjoyed the repast, and some time later a podiatrist showed up. She told me the toe was definitely not infected, and then she debrided a good deal of the dead, callused flesh away. I was also set up with a local podiatrist to call and book an appointment with, which will spare me having to schlep all the way up to Mount Sinai for the same service.

 

Anyway, I am finally back at home and exhausted after a day spent in two medical environments for a toital of just over ten hours. Oy a broch...

RETURN OF THE LIQUOR MAN: THREE'S COMPANY(?)

Today's driver for the journey home from treatment was the infamous "Liquor Man," and I found myself in the role of his therapist.

He was freaking out over having been involved in a threesome with a pair of swingers over the weekend, a threesome where he was one of two men involved. He got into it because the woman in the equation was "a Dominican chick with a so-so face, but that slammin' Dominican body," but her partner was a black dude who stipulated that he would get to have sex with Liquor Man. I'll spare you the graphic details, but after Liquor Man had his fun with the woman, he found himself on the receiving end of a solid buggering from the guy, which led LM to note "My ass still hurts from it. Extremely painful." The freakout was due to LM realizing he's not into guys, but he liked the way the guy touched him. That revelation was punctuated with numerous utterances of "I'm not into guys" and "It's just not for me."

I spent the half-hour ride assuring him that the experience does not make him gay, and if anything it served to clarify his stance on his sexuality, and hearing that made him feel better about something he swears up and down he will never do again. And bear in mind that the guy is a fat, unattractive 50-something who you would not look at twice of you saw him on the street.

Oh, and he also went into more detail about his early-30's career as an oral sex prostitute to bored housewives. He claims he plied that trade for nine months and enjoyed it very much, but he quit after encountering a client whose state of feminine hygiene was roughly equivalent to the bottom of a particularly nasty birdcage. (Not how he phrased it, but you get the idea.) It was like hearing Fred Flintstone confess his hidden history in the most crass and graphic language imaginable, and due to his face, the sound of his voice, and his body language, I believe every word he said, no matter how absurd and unlikely this unattractive slob of a guy getting up to Skinemax shenanigans. His fear and confusion over his sexuality in the wake of getting raunched up the fudge tunnel was 100% real.

UP MY NOSE WITH A COPPER HOSE

 The eagerly-awaited manoscopy went well, though having a camera on the end of a catheter shoved up my nose, down my throat, and into my stomach was...interesting. It was new state-of-the-art equipment, so a team watched the procedure and learned in the process. My gastroenterologist will review the findings and get back to me soon with where we go from here, but for now, SLEEP. (Insomnia once more plagued me, and I had to be up at 6:30 for 7:30am arrival at the endoscopy concourse. Worse, the COVID test that I sent in was too old by three days, so I had to go out of the hospital to a rapid results COVID test truck around the corner for an up-to-date test. That only delayed matters by a half hour, but still.)