Time games

People are funny with their 'time games'; I mean I used to do them , but I can't believe people still do them.  

I know you've have had one of those friends where you jump in their car and you notice the car clock.

Oh shit , you say, we're going to be late.

Nah laughs your friend, I set it ten minutes fast so I always have time.

........k.......  I wonder if it's a subconscious need to do math every day.  Oh shi- wait....minus ten....nice!

My other favorite is the snooze alarm.  I've heard people hit that thing at least twenty times before getting up.  Wouldn't you rather sleep until you couldn't and then just ...get up.  Why all the interruptions ?

Hurry up and wait.

So now I reside in a 'holding pattern', where I await my body to get sicker so that I can get a transplant.  Unfortunately this is going to be a financially tight because I've been out of work since last summer and with no end in sight , my income, and health insurance is going to dry up.  (there's got to be a better way to get a liver...)

So currently I eat 19 to 18 hours a day through a tube in my veins(at home which is good!!); and f
or the past two months I've been dealing with puking issues.  Like every time I try to eat something or drink something.  I have to let my stomach rest for a day or so and then try again.  The trick is eating the right foods and slowly.

My brother and Candice came to visit for ten days from  Saudi.  It's always a pleasure to have them around.  They wouldn't know this the way that I treat them;  I'm such a jerk when I'm sick.  I'm trying to work on it.  They are the best though.

Home is hang your TPN bag.

Home today!!!!   Yeah! My peeps.  See, not always bad news.  Can't wait to play some of my new vinyl...including HEROES SYMPHONY and some Ziggy Marley....

Plus I'm getting an original game boy in the mail today!  Peew peew!  Sweetness.  

Everyone cross your fingers so that I stay out longer this time.  This place hurts my soul after awhile.

Best,

Esch

Billy Rubin

   Did any of you hear of yoppie joppie or ibs growing up?  It was basically like pig Latin exept with yoppie joppie you'd alternate between switching all vowels to op or opie. Ibs was the same.  So, 'my name is Eschenbach ' in yoppie joppie would be.... Mopie Nopmopie Opshopenbopch.  

What does Billy Rubin refer to? ( answer in ibs)

A) Jewish baseball player from the 50's

B) the waste material of Red Blood cells that are flushed from the blood when they die.

C) A famous Deli known for their steak and cheese.

(Ribd Sibll's wibstibie mibtibietibl.)

Billiruben

   So this is what causes people to have yellow look about them when they have Jaundice.  The liver and kidneys can't properly dispose of the waste and it builds up in the the body.  My levels went up a little yesterday so the doctor's got there pibntibys all in a bunch and may be keeping me longer.  "roar" I hate this disease.

Basically the past month I've been in and out of the hospital trying to get my weight up with out barfing and now that I have that down the Gopdopin Jewish baseball player hit a foul ball at the bottom of the ninth , 2 outs, bases loaded.

anyway....

check ya,

Esch

if any wants to see a informative quick video on the history of Japan....type history of Japan into YouTube ...first entry.

FOOD.

I finally got the doctors to drop the tube feeding.  So I can eat normal food again except I have to pack on the calories and protein.  So a few ensures here....extra ice cream please.  Cottage Cheese has a lot of protein in it.

Of course I'm sitting here waiting to eat as usual because I can't eat or drink anything before an upper endoscopy.  

Just to let you all know...I'll be in the hospital quite a bit over the coming months so don't be surprised or alarmed.  It's just the nature of this bastard illness.

Short one,

Love,

Chris

Waiting for Doctor

    So, sorta have been incommunicado since I was released the first time.  However to sum up what has happened since then:  2days home start vomiting over a bowl of cereal I had.  ER...sends me home after testing tube feed (for an hour!). Home over night /vomit /back to ER...ER admits me....stay 10 days / back on tube feeding; everything is Hunky Dory as long as I don't eat. Released/home two days/vomit cause I need to hydrate and I try drinking water.  Back in the Saddle.

       Yeaaaaaaaah, it's been an annoying few weeks.  All the while I'm craving foods like a big bowl of Spicy MIco Ramen from Sapporo in Porter.  Yum yum yum.  And foods I haven't even eaten yet that I want to make, like these Polish steamed cabbage dumplings.  I walked into whole foods last night with Sarah so she could get some grub and I realized it's citrus season!  Damn my illness.  I hope I'm paying off some serious karmic debt-that pumpkin I threw through somebodies parked car window when I was 9th grade.  BE WARY OF YOUR TEENAGE SHANNIGANS.  

    My new roommate for the most part is quiet but he has hardcore demensha (sp?)  , and he'll talk calling for no one in some Slavic language .  When I enter the room he looks at me wide eyed and calls out.  I want to reply but I escape to my bed feeling creepy.  One of the nurses came in and he started to speak and she was like ," yeah yeah".  Clearly white noise to her, however it did take the burden of creepiness off my chest.

   Came back in because a,) vomiting , b) malnourished .  Losing a little weight (especially in the winter) is cool; but brother when you're gather your bones together to take a bath.  When you look at your leg and think..'hm?  I never thought the bone was shaped that way'.  When your hands look like Grammies hands.

My Plan of Attack                                                          There Speculated plan.  

Stop tube feeds all together go back to food. Yum.           Hellbent on tube feeds , get me back on.

High fat and carbo diet. (Heavy cream on cereal...just.      Tubefeed mixed with eating (EEEE (family 

Kidding).                                                                             Feud noise))

Anyway I'll try to keep yern in the 411.

Be good to each other,

Chris

Visit from the Lama

  The Lama chaplain came by today to do some medicine Buddha mantras with me and offer advice when it comes to sickness.  Great meditation session and embracing the idea that purifying my past karma and dedicating my suffering to others so that they may be healthy puts a good spin on my attitude of this whole matter.

   I was home for maybe two days and I couldn't tolerate normal food and starting vomiting again so I had to come back in.  Hopefully I only have a couple more days left here.

Home

Well the light at the end of the tunnel finally came, after the holidays of course.  But whatever.  If you don't have kids or you're not a grandparent, Christmas is really about materialism.  With children there's so much more.  And New Year's is just ' another reason to drink' holiday.  

   So the final day I'm there I start getting that bad heartburn/gas pain in my chest while I'm sleeping.  I'm thinking , oh shit not again.  Cause last time I was ready to leave everything was packed up, Sarah was on her way and then Wabam!  I started ralphing again and had to stay a couple more weeks.  So I'm actively dealing with this...(see Facebook video). As I'm dealing with this, Mr Wei's family start in on this frantically emotional prayer circle around him where everyone gets a solo.  There are moan of agreement and disagreement like in a revival tent; but smaller and in Mandarin.  

   Anyway back at home now and loving it.

"Don't it always seem to go , that you don't know what you got till it's gone."-Joni

Goodbye David....man you were interstellar.  A real starman.

Nor-Easter to Georgia lemonade sipping summer time.

I just want to say for the record that's kept on the highest shelf in the tallest building in that desolate land you never heard about;  that sometimes ....you never....never ever ever...........ever.......know.  

  That being said I didn't know as I was hanging in the solarium meditating having just hung out with a Lama who's been coming to see me.  He's helping me with my Bodichitta and with patience.  I went back to my room and laid down...started watching Schindler's List.  All of a sudden I am shivering like a mad man...."I can't get warm enough!  I can't get warm enough!"  I ask for another blanket and a temp reading....97.7 on your fm dial means your fine.  I wasn't.  Did a temp reading a half hour later 103....BOOM.  Fever time.  Turns out all that stupid phlegm I've coughing up all week finally got around to dropping the bomb on my lungs.  Tylenol , Chest X-ray (I had to go downstairs they couldn't bring the droid up) urine sample , phlegm sample.  I took all my blanket down with me to the basement.  I looked like a retired Sith Lord .  This technician guy walks in while I'm waiting for the X-ray .  I don't even look up as I am dozing but I smell him....smells good.  "Somebody smells good." I say out loud. He's like ' yeah it's Egyptian musk'. 'Nice.'  Some women behind says ' yah he flew all the way thayah just ta get it'. ' I bet you found it at the bottom of some triangle in the desert' I say...and that tickled his ribs.

So now....3am ...fever broke and it's a Georgia summer in my room with Mr. Wei.  You never

EVER

Know.

Bad nurse BAD!  That chick sucked at dressing.

Needles, tubes, and Noobs. Part one.

I remember when the thought of going for a check up at the doctor's was accompanied by a mountain of anxiety of getting a shot.  I'd sit on the table bed with the paper cover...."let me look in your ear...yes yes...say 'ahhh'"  Knowing the inevitable was coming my heart rate would slowly increase throughout the appointment.  When it came time I'd beg and plead, start crying, and then eventually 'boy-up'.  The adult equivalent of " OW!  Son of a bitch!"would be thought and I'd be on my way with a red flag lollipop.

Now...you could drive a 3/8 inch tube down my nose and into my stomach and I wouldn't bat an eye.  This past couple weeks I have had a lot of these annoying invasive tubes on top of the ones I currently deal with.

   The feeding tube, through which an ensure type beverage is piped into my colon runs from my right nostril to my colon.  There is also an anchor ; which is two tiny pieces of plastic that come together through the septum hole in your nose.  My anchor became lose and the tube slipped back into my stomach- which is a problem. My stomach was filling up with nutrients and not given enough time to digest it...so it would just come up (politely speaking).  When the reinsert it, the doctors have to put a very small metal wire to help keep it stiff as they push it back into the colon.  This is painful and I can only imagine I sound like Arnold Swarzanegger (sp) while they're doing this.  The doctor keeps saying to me "Think of your favorite food....think of you favorite food....THINK OF YOUR FAVORITE FOOD!"  Scrambling my mind thinks of beef stroganoff .... Finally I'm like "why do you keep saying that! Is it suppose to cheer me up?"  Apparently when you think of your favorite food it cause the doors to the abyss to open a little.

When when when.

I don't know if there is a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to this current hospital stint.  And what's unnerving is, so far the doctors don't know either.  I feel like I'm in the opening of Beckett's Molloy:

“I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I’d never have got there alone. There’s this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don’t know how to work any more. That doesn’t matter apparently. What I’d like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, finish dying. They don’t want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But it’s always the same one that comes. You’ll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I haven’t much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week’s. They are marked with signs I don’t understand. Anyway I don’t read them. When I’ve done nothing he gives me nothing, he scolds me. Yet I don’t work for money. For what then? I don’t know. The truth is I[…]”

Excerpt From: Beckett, Samuel. “Three Novels.” Grove Press, 1947. iBooks. 

I went down to radiology yesterday for a contrast dye MRI.  They didn't tell me that I should be ready to drink 4 cups of a dye enhancer.  I drank half of one bottle and I thought if I drink anymore I'm going to boot.  Sorry MRI ladies.  They were cool with it though.

I had a break down a couple of days ago in front of resident Doctor Javier.  He was like 'how do you feel?' And I stupidly off the cuff said "I feel like blowing my brains out".  Let me tell you don't ever say some like that in a hospital.  I visited by the three psychiatrist of Christmas past , present , and future.  I did get my name on a Buddhist monks list for a visit though...so that's cool.  

   I'm currently sharing my room with Mr Weh, 1st gen Chinese American.  He's cool and I never thought I'd meet someone that get's chillier that me I'm roastin' in this room.