I am on hopefully temporary but currently indefinite disability due to what is clinically known as inflammation of the lateral epicondyle and colloquially known as tennis elbow. I don’t play tennis. It’s a repetitive motion injury. I ignored it when it was in the early stages and now it’s difficult for me to drive or to sit up for long periods of time because of the pain. Spoiler alert: I was driving for a living.
I will finally get to see the doctor on December 4. I don’t know if the condition can be resolved with physical therapy only. I don’t know if I’ll need a cortisone shot. I don’t know if I’ll need surgery. I know what’s going on due to having gone to the ER for the pain, the doctor being cool and, after making sure I wasn’t having a heart attack or stroke, doing a brief examination and also ruling out carpal tunnel, which I initially thought was the issue due to numbness and tingling in my left pointer finger and left thumb. It’s a good thing he did, because the carpal tunnel braces were exacerbating the pain. The doctor than had me sign a “refused treatment” form so I wouldn’t have to pay, as my medicaid doesn’t kick back in until December 1. Bless this doctor, he is one of the good ones.
It’s hard for me to type, which has left me at loose ends as I like to tell my tale.
There has been something that I’ve wanted to talk about but I feel like I can’t because of the potential for creepy, horrible fan girls to desecrate this person’s suffering, his accomplishments, and the suffering of those who loved him and whom he left behind after a long and truly fucking horrible illness. I saw photos from the press release of the memorial service, and I wanted to puke all over. The memorial service occurred on the seventh anniversary of my father’s death. I was alone and a miserable ball of sick, part of me wondering why this kind of shit has to happen and why the world doesn’t just stop.
I am not going to mention this person’s name. I have too much respect for him to make him fodder for a bunch of people whose attitudes I legit do not understand. Drooling over a bunch of ancient photos of the man when he went through something that nobody should have to go through--shame on anyone who does that.
I worked in long term care for close to 25 years. People would have old photos of themselves and their families in their rooms, or the photos were placed there by their loved ones. Some of these people were strikingly attractive before they became ill. There was one gentleman who had a picture of himself in his WWII era Air Force uniform. He was quite handsome in the picture. The individual laying in the bed had cancer that was eating away his face and was eventually going to kill him. How fucking gross and disgusting would it have been for me to disrespect his struggle by objectifying him because of the way he looked in that photograph?
The late Lemmy Kilmister was respected by women because he respected women. An interviewer once asked Lemmy how he could work with attractive women without objectifying them. Lemmy’s answer was “well, why can’t you? I do it all the time.”
The entitlement of the younger generations of “fans” also leaves me flabbergasted. They ridicule the elders who were there during the rise of the thing they claim to love, whether it be classic horror movies, or what has been termed “classic rock.” It wasn’t called “classic rock” back in the day. It was simply “rock,” or, if you were a moronic Satanic Panic adherent, it was “devil music.”
My father loved big band and swing music and movies from the classic Hollywood era. I came to love those things too. I learned a lot about those things, but I would never dare claim to know what it was like to live in those times. My parents knew. My grandparents knew. I didn’t know. While I could appreciate, I couldn’t know. i respected the experiences of those who went before me.
If you can’t respect the experiences of those who went before you, if all you are doing is posting pictures from forty, fifty and sixty years ago of guys you thought were “cute” and then shipping them together, you aren’t a fan. You are shallow, entitled, and disrespectful. Your behavior is, frankly, sociopathic.
I would like to be able to pay tribute publicly to several people who came to mean the world to me before these entitled “fans” were ever born. However, I fear that I would only be opening these people up to objectification. I refuse to do that. They deserve to be honored, and I will do so by protecting them.
I am really a mess right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to work again. I’m depressed and every day I wonder if it wouldn’t be for the best for me to swallow all of my blood pressure medication and inject all of my insulin. I don’t feel like I serve any useful purpose. But at least I’m not doing the equivalent of going onto the cancer ward and objectifying the patients suffering and dying there.
