Tan Renga Wednesday on Friday: Last Leaf

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a last leaf

swirls on the wind towards the east -

first snow falls gently

the falling snow is pleasant

the icy roads are not so

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~

notes

The Hokku stanza was written by Chevrefeuille. The Ageku was created by me. I do like the snow, but I hate driving on icy roads. I've had a couple incidents when doing so which left me with a bit of PTSD. I tend to tense up when I have to drive on icy roads, which makes doing so a bad idea.

I will try to catch up with the poems over the next few days. I was working on a short story for blog.reedsy.com. If you are looking for a short story contest with no entry fee, they have a weekly contest here. Go to the apps section of the page and choose "story prompt."

Also, if you're looking for help with editing or publishing your book, you can look at what Reedsy has to offer here. Using that link will get you $25 credit on any of Reedsy's services.

I believe I may have had another TIA. There always tends to be a cognitive shift when one of these happens. It's hard to explain. It isn't as if I'm having short term memory issues (well, no worse than I ever did). It's simply that the WAY I think changes. At this point, I find myself needing to be a little more measured in my output. I get tired very easily. It's frustrating because although I've never been a Type A personality by any means, I've always been very productive.

I know that I'm vulnerable to vascular problems because of my diabetes. Well, I'm perfectly happy to keep my blood sugars in check, which I can do if I have, you know, ADEQUATE INSULIN! Which my health care provider and Medicaid seem to be conspiring not to provide me. Going without insulin for weeks at a time is, I don't know, a bad thing when you're diabetic. 

The elite devils in charge of things don't care about that, though. They want the poor and the handicapped dead. Of course, then they won't have anyone to do the menial jobs that they revile, but I wouldn't give them too much credit for being smart.

Yeah, I said "handicapped" instead of the more politically correct "disabled." I honestly don't see what the difference is. I can apply both to my own condition, and I don't find either one offensive. Sometimes people become so busy picking nits that they forget to work on the issues that really matter.

Friday Flashback: Why I Wouldn't take a Cure for my Bipolar Disorder

ORIGINALLY POSTED 8 NOVEMBER 2018

Note for those who are sensitive about profanity:
This post contains it.
It is also snarky.
So is the a-hole who wrote it.
Just sayin'.

Now, here is something that will blow y'all's minds.

If there were a cure for bipolar disorder, I wouldn't take it.

I know a lot of folks are saying "but why wouldn't you want to fix this thing that is wrong with you?"

First, you may have heard about people who have had procedures done to restore their sight or hearing after years of being blind or deaf, and they have trouble adapting to the world with this new sense. They have learned to "hear" by feeling vibrations, or to "see" by touch and sound. The new sense throws their perception off.

I would not know how to think and feel without bipolar disorder. I would have a lot of trouble adapting. I might even become suicidal.

Further, I have come to believe that this anomaly doesn't make me "wrong." It makes me different. The world is too quick to deem difference in cognition or physical ability a bad thing which needs to be repaired. I think it would be a better world if we embraced people who deviate from the norm rather than shaming them into conformity or isolation.

Would I take a cure for my endocrine problems?

In a heartbeat! I would love to not have to stab myself in the abdomen with a needle before every meal. I would love to not have to worry about whether I will one day develop diabetic neuropathy or start losing my vision because of diabetes. I would love to not have increased risk of vascular malfunction because of this dumb disease. I would love to have a thyroid that actually works. I would rather not have had polycystic ovarian syndrome. My endocrine system is a cluster fuck. If someone could cure this mess, I would be thrilled.

If someone could cure my glaucoma, I would be over the moon.

I don't want my bipolar disorder cured. I have navigated the world with it for pretty much my entire life. To completely change the way my brain works would be frightening and, I think, detrimental.

But if someone could start working on cures for my physical ailments, I'd really appreciate it.

 ~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

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From Nurse to Nothing: How I Lost My Profession

Once upon a time before my own disabilities worsened to the point where I could no longer do the work, I was a home care nurse who cared for kids like Brooke.

Back when I was caring for kids with genetic disorders, I served a function which classified me as a "worthwhile" member of society, and I was proud of what I did.

I generally worked a minimum of 48 hours a week, and it was not unheard of for me to work 60-hour weeks. I was a productive member of society. I made around $40,000 per year doing this work. 

I wasn't one of the favored class of home care nurses because I have never been good at working day shifts. I don't sleep well at night, and my broken brain causes me to become severely clinically depressed when I work early shifts regularly. However, night shift workers are a necessity in the medical field, so I got plenty of work.

When I was 49 years old, a flaw in my DNA caused me to develop diabetes. I wasn't exactly surprised, considering that my endocrine system is, overall, a trash fire. My thyroid immolated itself when I was 15 years old. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, and when I was in my thirties, I developed Cushing's syndrome. 

I have a puffy "endocrine face" and a large body type. Given my endocrine problems, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be thin unless I become critically ill as my great-grandmother did. She developed acute myelogenous leukemia, dropped from 300 pounds to 95 pounds within the space of a year, and died. But, hey, at least she cut a svelte figure in her casket, amirite?

Fuck diet culture. Fuck fat shaming and thin praising. Fuck all of that shit. I spent more than 30 years of my life trying to hate myself thin. It's all a pack of lies benefiting no-one but the multi-billion dollar diet industry. Homey don't play that shit no more. I have too many real problems to care what some petty asswipe thinks of my physical appearance.

The chickens came home to roost one night. I'd been pushing myself really hard for more than a year, working 48 to 60 hour weeks. I told myself it was what I needed to do to prove that I was a productive member of society.

Meanwhile, my diabetes was getting worse. I needed to start using insulin, but I was in denial. I had this screed embedded in my brain chiding me that to use insulin was to be a failure. This is an incredibly stupid thing to believe, either consciously or subconsciously. Needing insulin is not a personal failure, it is a failure of the pancreas. Nobody should be taught to hate themselves because they have a zombie organ taking up space in their body. Zombie organs are the result of a fault in a person's DNA, not in the person themselves.

I was extremely sick on the night that my career and my earning potential both were shot down in flames and went up in smoke. I had a severe respiratory infection. My coordinator told me that I should continue working with my main patient because I had contracted the respiratory infection from that patient and therefore couldn't infect him. He told me that the family really needed me there.
I wanted to be cooperative. I wanted to be seen as a team player. I wanted to help the family. In the past, the coordinator had told me that they were going to replace the full-time nurse on the case with me because she had lupus and tended to call in quite a bit because of it. I felt that I couldn't mention that my diabetes was getting worse. So, against my better judgment, I went to work.
I fell into a deep, dark sleep at around two in the morning. I remember nothing about falling asleep. There were no dreams. There was just darkness. I remember sitting there watching the patient, and the next minute I blinked and saw the patient's father sitting at the end of the bed glaring at me with hate in his eyes. I apologized profusely, gathered my belongings, and left quickly. I knew I would be fired for what had happened. My life as I knew it ended at that moment.
In reality, I had been asleep for about twenty minutes. I had no concept of that time passing. I had a small stroke, which I would learn also altered certain facets of my cognitive abilities as well as increasing overall muscle weakness and causing me to become fatigued even more easily than I had before.
I tried to go back to work in long-term care. When I was doing my long-term care internship in nursing school, I got high marks for my medication passes. I was organized. I quickly memorized which patient needed what medication when. I was fast and I was competent. I didn't really want to work in long-term care, but I told myself it's what I had to do.
I quickly learned that the skills that made me such a stellar med pass nurse had been wiped out by the stroke. I knew that patient X needed medication Y at Hour Z, but I couldn't make my brain understand what I was supposed to do with the information. I understood each component, but I couldn't make them work together.
I was utterly lost, and it didn't help that there was never any time to stop for a break so I could eat a little something. My blood sugar tanked. I almost left mid-shift. As soon as I got home, I emailed my resignation. I knew there was no way I would ever be able to work as a nurse again. I had failed like I always do.

~Cie~

Here is the last diet book you'll ever need. You're welcome.

The Cheese Grates It: Why I Wouldn't Take a Cure for my Bipolar Disorder

Now, here is something that will blow y'all's minds.

If there were a cure for bipolar disorder, I wouldn't take it.

I know a lot of folks are saying "but why wouldn't you want to fix this thing that is wrong with you?"

First, you may have heard about people who have had procedures done to restore their sight or hearing after years of being blind or deaf, and they have trouble adapting to the world with this new sense. They have learned to "hear" by feeling vibrations, or to "see" by touch and sound. The new sense throws their perception off. 

I would not know how to think and feel without bipolar disorder. I would have a lot of trouble adapting. I might even become suicidal. 

Further, I have come to believe that this anomaly doesn't make me "wrong." It makes me different. The world is too quick to deem difference in cognition or physical ability a bad thing which needs to be repaired. I think it would be a better world if we embraced people who deviate from the norm rather than shaming them into conformity or isolation.

Would I take a cure for my endocrine problems?

In a heartbeat! I would love to not have to stab myself in the abdomen with a needle before every meal. I would love to not have to worry about whether I will one day develop diabetic neuropathy or start losing my vision because of diabetes. I would love to not have increased risk of vascular malfunction because of this dumb disease. I would love to have a thyroid that actually works. I would rather not have had polycystic ovarian syndrome. My endocrine system is a cluster fuck. If someone could cure this mess, I would be thrilled.

If someone could cure my glaucoma, I would be over the moon.

I don't want my bipolar disorder cured. I have navigated the world with it for pretty much my entire life. To completely change the way my brain works would be frightening and, I think, detrimental. 

But if someone could start working on cures for my physical ailments, I'd really appreciate it.

 ~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 5: Devastation (NSFW)

Image copyright Comfreak on Pixabay

I just can't get poetic with today's prompt. I may end up attempting to tie things up by making it into a Haibun, but I make no promises there either. This is one of those that's going to be real, raw, and only lightly edited, so buckle up, Bitches, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

By the way, if you have issues with profanity, with subject matter that is on the opposite end of the spectrum from sweetness and light, with mental illness, the black dog, and suicide ideation, you'll probably want to give this post a miss. 

Also, please remember these guidelines:

If I may add a couple:

"Have you tried meds?"

I will be 54 years old in February and have lifelong mental health issues. What do you think? The Wonder Drugs don't work the way they're advertised, they make things worse by a long shot. So, please, don't patronize me with that crap.

"Have you tried church?"

Some of the nicest people I've met have been religious.

Conversely, some of the most truly horrible and destructive people I've met have been religious.

If religion helps you, that's great. I don't like organized religion. It did me a lot more harm than good. 

But neither of those things are what I came here to talk about.

I came here to talk about the day that the nuke dropped on my life.

Oh, hey, here's a Haiga I made last year. So, there's the poetry part of this assignment. This Haiga has little nuclear clouds in the background.

I'm a lifelong proponent of nuclear disarmament. I grew up during the cold war. When I was a child, I feared that I would die in a nuclear exchange. As a teenager, I figured I might as well party as hard as possible because I didn't know if I had a future. As an adult, I still have nuke dreams, but they're allegorical, just like the nuke that dropped on my life closing in on two years ago now.

I've mentioned before that I was fired from my job as a nurse back in March of 2017. I was really sick at the time I got fired, with both a chronic illness that had become significantly worse and an acute illness that made my lungs and sinuses feel like they were full of Slime.

Yeah, that stuff. When I was twelve, my brother and I got the kind with worms. It came in a little plastic trash can. We loved it. 

I miss the fun I had with my brother when we were kids. He's too overworked and miserable and also in constant pain to have much fun now. It breaks my heart.

Anyway, the days playing with Slime and believing that Really Cool Stuff was going to happen were long in the past. I was working when I knew I shouldn't be working. Like I said, I was really, really sick. 

I was working as a home care nurse. I had this really pushy coordinator who, when I mentioned that I was sick, said that the family really needed me to be there and it would be okay because I had contracted the illness from that patient, so it's not like he could catch it from me. Besides, this coordinator kept talking about how they were going to replace the nurse who had the four-night week with me (I was working three twelve-hour night shifts with this family and one twelve-hour night shift with another family) because that nurse had lupus and often had to miss work because of it. Great! Not like I can mention that my diabetes had gotten worse and was causing me problems when presented with that, right?

Yeah, I could have, but it has been a lifelong struggle for me to assert myself. I was afraid I'd lose my position. So I buckled down and went in. I had been dozing off during the shift during the past couple of weeks, but I always woke up. Still, it was worrying me, but I didn't feel like there was anyone I could tell.

On this particular night, I didn't just doze. I fell into a dark, dead, dreamless sleep. I'm fairly certain that I had a small stroke because there were certain changes to my cognition following that incident. Judging by the clock, I was out for about twenty minutes. I woke to the patient's father sitting at the end of the bed, glowering at me.

I apologized profusely, gathered my belongings, and left. I knew that I would be fired, which I was.

I felt horrible about the incident and about myself. I very seriously considered suicide. I've dealt with suicide ideation my entire life, but at this point, I was wondering if there was any reason for me to go on living. I was the worst of fuckups. Was I redeemable in any way? I hardly thought so.

At first, the financial hit wasn't as bad as it could have been. I was working part-time for another agency, picking up shifts once every couple of weeks with another patient. I was able to get full-time hours with them although the hourly salary was less. But then, that patient's condition worsened, he was hospitalized and ended up requiring more extensive care than we could provide. The agency never found me another case.

I drifted for a while, delivering food for Uber Eats and eventually trying to drive for Lyft and Uber. This lasted about two weeks, and some dumb stoner kid backed into the rental car I was driving. The rental company did not prorate me for the lost days, and Lyft took close to a month to reinstate me, even though the accident was not my fault. I said, "fuck it." I really didn't like driving passengers anyway.

I tried going back to work in long-term care, but the activity intolerance caused by my diabetes combined with the slight cognitive impairment experienced after the night which led to my being fired from the home care agency made this impossible. You never stop when you are working in a long-term care institution. There is no time to rest or even eat. My blood sugar tanked. Plus, as I discovered, I was no longer the whiz with passing meds that I had been when I did my nursing internship in 2011. 

I understood each of the components of passing meds. This patient needs this med in this dose at this time. I understood what each of the meds did. But for the life of me, I could not prioritize which patient to give medication to first. I called my son halfway through the shift and told him I didn't think I could do the job. I emailed my letter of resignation to the staff director the next morning.

I took a job with an all-night grocery delivery service and ended up with a permanent nerve injury to my left arm. I spent half of November in terrible pain, unable to sit up for more than about 45 minutes at a time before I had to lie on the arm to try and numb the pain. I again considered suicide, this time not out of self-loathing but because the pain was nearly unbearable. I had to wait for two weeks for Medicaid to kick in before I could start physical therapy. I hadn't been able to afford insurance before that and was making too much with the delivery service to have Medicaid. It is one fucked-up system we have going, and there is nothing anyone could say to make me believe otherwise. It is straight-up fuckery, plain and simple.

At this point, the arm pretty much feels like a lump of clay. Sometimes a tingly lump of clay. But I'll take that over a hideous pain that induces suicidal feelings. Before anyone gives a person desperate for pain relief grief, think of the worst pain you have ever felt in your life. Now, ponder on the idea that you could not stop that pain. Bitch, you aren't going to just grin and bear it. You're going to do whatever the hell you have to do. I can't stand people who get sanctimonious about folks who become addicted to pain medications. Nobody wants to be in pain. End of story.

After a couple of weeks of physical therapy, I was able to drive again and ended up at my current job: delivering food. This is the sort of job that people have been taught to look down their nose at. To them I say, well, Motherfucker, I have your fucking food here, which you did not have to cook or pick up. You're better than me just because you work in an office? I say no. This kind of shit "master and servant" attitude does no-one any good. Rich people aren't better than poor people. In fact, to para-quote Bob Marley, some of them are so poor that all they have is money. Some of them are terrible people, and I would find it torturous to be in their presence for one minute.

Case in point, and ain't it the truth.

I went through more than a year of thinking "if I'm not able to be a nurse anymore, what value do I have?" I'm no longer in a "helper" profession. I'm no longer able to do the kind of work that said "helper" profession requires. I not only have a psychological disability or three, but I am also now physically disabled as well.

This society behaves as if people with disabilities deserve to live in poverty. I never believed that, but I kept feeling as if I'd done "something to deserve this."

I can't remember exactly when the breakthrough happened, but one day I got really pissed off and realized that no, I damn well did not do anything to deserve to be pushed into poverty. I lose Medicaid if I make a dime more than $1100 a month, but who the fuck can live on $1100 a month? I don't qualify for SNAP because I have a 401K from the job I held for close to 11 years and I don't want to take an $18,000 hit by liquidating it. I want that whole fucker to go to my son when I go tits up. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

As for being a nurse, the truth is, I never wanted to go into that profession. I was encouraged to go into it by my family because my mother had been a nurse. While I had some nice moments with the kids, and while I had some nice moments with my co-workers and the residents at the retirement community when I was working there, I was done. I was burned out. I really didn't want to do it anymore, and I felt extremely guilty about that. What kind of person doesn't want to help other people?

It isn't that I don't want to help other people, but I think it's long past time that I acknowledged that I need help too, that I deserve to have help, that I'm not garbage because I'm disabled. No disabled person is garbage. We need to stop this shit attitude in our society, and we need to stop it yesterday. 

My disability doesn't really make me angry. Sometimes I wish I could still run and jump like I could when I was a kid. But I like to walk, and I hope I'll be able to walk for the rest of my life. Maybe the time will come when I need a scooter or power chair. If I do, I won't be bitter. Bodies age, shit happens. It is what it is. However, I have to be brutally honest. If I deteriorate to the point where I need to spend the rest of my life in a long-term care center, or if I'm diagnosed with dementia, that's the time I pull the plug. Those are two situations that I find absolutely intolerable. I won't do it to myself, and I won't do it to my son.

By the way, inasmuch as we need to acknowledge that depression is a very real illness, as real as any physical malady, we also need to acknowledge that sometimes depression isn't a brain-based issue. Our world is very fucked right now, and anyone who looks around and doesn't see terrible problems that should have been fixed a long time ago is shutting their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and yelling "lalala, can't hear you." 

It isn't going to get better by ignoring it, People.

It's really not.

And that's all I have to say about that.

XOXO, 

Cie

The Cheese Grates It: Dark Night of the Long Grass

Night of the Long Grass by The Troggs Released 1967

The Cheese Grates It:

Dark Night of the Long Grass

The above has been one of my favorite songs since I first discovered it in my pre-teen years. I was somewhere between ten and twelve, I honestly don't remember exactly. As I will be 53 years old in approximately three weeks, I hope I can be forgiven for the fact that most of my childhood memories are fairly misty. I tend to remember emotions rather than exact events. The most prevalent emotion that has permeated my life is sorrow.

I seem to be constantly losing things. All of my life I have misplaced things. At this point I speak of losing people and beliefs. I will say right now that anyone reading this can check their "seek counseling and meds" trope at the door. I've tried both at various times in my life and neither works. So, let us allow ourselves to speak in terms of emotion rather than things strictly physical. I've found that approaching matters from a strictly physical viewpoint has never worked for me in any case.

One of the prompts I'm working with asks me to state one of my strongest beliefs and then disprove it. I'm not going to do that. That strategy is for those who delight in playing devil's advocate. I've never been that sort of person. In any case, believe it or not, I have no strong beliefs. I don't believe in much of anything anymore. The world has torn away all of my beliefs from me. Some will say this is a good thing. To them I will say "fuck you," as I am tired of hurting.

I don't follow any sort of religion. I don't need dogma or the promise of an eternal heaven, which, from what I can gather, is rather like an eternity on a constant winning streak in Vegas, to convince me to try and be a good person. I've never been to Vegas during my lifetime, and I can do without going there in the Afterlife. I also don't need the threat of an overbearing deity sending me to hell to convince me not to do awful things to others. I don't do awful things because it's wrong to cause harm, not because I fear the wrath of a celestial patriarch who will cause me to suffer for eternity. 

The God that I learned of in my youth, when I was, by the way, a very devout Catholic who truly believed in Him, came to seem to me to be an abusive megalomaniac of a parent. For those with different perceptions, it is not my intent to attack your devotion or convince you to stop believing. This is my perception. 

I initially lost my religion in my late teens and could never go back to it. It does not ring true for me anymore.

I discovered Wicca and New Age ideals when I was in my late teens. I lost my religion again in my late forties, having discovered time and again that much of the New Age thinking is rife with victim-blaming and My Way or the Highway thinking, just like the religion I left behind in my late teens. Although some of the mystical practices that I did as a solitary practitioner brought me a degree of solace, I was too hurt by those I had interacted with in an attempt to find camaraderie to continue them.

I am not an atheist, if for no other reason than the fact that the idea of the here and now being the be all and end all is simply too fucking depressing for me to abide it. I continue to at least believe in the possibility of spirits, angels, other dimensions, an afterlife, because it brings me a grain of solace to do so, and I'm not going to try and disprove it, simply because it can be neither proven nor disproven given modern scientific methods and tools. If you wish to read theories disproving the existence of these things, there are a plethora of atheist writings devoted to doing just that. No, I am not going to point you in the direction of such works. Google is your friend. I am merely a remote person ranting in the dungeon of my own sorrowful hell and finding no solace. 

I lost a lot last year, including my occupational identity. I had been a nurse for close to two years and had been a caregiver for close to twenty-five. My own health was deteriorating, and I was fired because I fell into a deep sleep while working a night shift. I had seen the warning signs. I was dozing off more often during the night. I knew that my diabetes was getting worse, but I was trying to pull together the time and money to go to the doctor. I worked myself into the ground because people needed me. 

The other nurse on the case was sick. I was sick too, but I had contracted the illness from the patient I worked with three days a week, so the case coordinator felt that I could keep working with him because I couldn't re-infect him. 

I fell into an extremely deep sleep which I don't remember falling into. I woke up to see the patient's father sitting on the side of the bed, glowering at me. I collected my belongings, apologized profusely, and left. The family embellished the tale, stating that I was ordered to leave. I was not. In fact, the father told me I could finish the shift. I told him that I felt it would be better if I left, and that I would remove myself from the case. 

When I was called into the office, my coordinator said that I had always done good work for the company and that he would give me a positive recommendation to any potential employers who called, but would have to tell them that I wasn't eligible for rehire. I was polite and brief, thanked him, and left without making a scene.

I worked with another patient through another company until that patient became severely ill and had to be hospitalized. The company didn't get me another case. I ended up delivering food via Uber Eats. I tried driving passengers through Lyft and Uber. Some dumb stoner kid backed into the rental car I was driving, and that was that. The company I'd rented the car through didn't credit me for the unused days. I was out a thousand dollars.

I tried going back into working in a long term care setting, and ended up nearly passing out. I tried working for yet another homecare agency, but found that I could no longer do the extremely physical portion of the work. I left nursing entirely.

For a time, I worked for a grocery delivery service. However, the service was poorly run. Often I would be sent out with a bag full of ten deliveries, and I would come to find out that I was making the delivery several hours after it had been placed. The company never called the customer to advise them that the delivery would be so late. Often there would be one manager on while the other managers acted as drivers. I ended up with severe nerve impingement in my left arm and a badly inflamed lateral epicondyle, which left me unable to sit up for long periods of time because the pain was so intense. At this point the pain is gone, but the numbness and tingling in my left hand remains. It may never resolve.

While I was working for this company, I would wake up screaming every day due to horrific cramps in my calves. My tendency to sleep paralysis also worsened exponentially during this time.

I parted ways with this company after a person who had meant a lot to me from the time of my very troubled youth died far too young from early onset dementia. The man wasn't young when he died--he was sixty-four years old--but he was too young for such an awful fate. Dementia seems to me to be the Universe taking a huge shit on a person, and this man didn't deserve that. He tried to be kind. He was flawed, but he tried to be good in spite of his own predisposition to addiction and depression, and the fact that he had a bit of a temper. He didn't deserve the way he went out. His mind was his defining feature, and he was robbed of it. He didn't consider himself physically attractive or particularly charming or especially talented, but he did seem to pride himself on his innovation and determination. That he couldn't have been allowed to find comfort in those things during his last days seems like nothing but a huge slap in the face, and I hate it.

I know that there are those who have lost everything and yet manage to maintain their beliefs and avoid bitterness. I suppose I'm not as good as such people. Honestly, I've never seen much good in me. I don't like myself very much, if one is to be entirely honest, and I doubt I ever will. Still, I used to have my imagination and my wonderful world where fantastic dreams could come true. At this point I seem to be losing even that, so you'll pardon the fuck out of me if I don't feel like disproving whatever fragile bits of belief may remain.

Perhaps this is more a confession than an actual rant. In some ways, once a Catholic always a Catholic. I haven't forgotten how to confess.

If I am ever diagnosed with dementia, I will commit suicide. Anything else, I will put up a fight and let it takes me when it takes me. Dementia does not get that much respect. Fuck dementia. It destroys everything that a person is. My aunt has dementia, and she no longer communicates with words. If one speaks to her, she giggles. She wanders and is forever searching for something that she cannot put a name to. At least she is not combative and she doesn't seem particularly distressed. However, she is not herself and hasn't been for a long time. I will not become that way.

Forgive me for at least hoping that there is something better on the other side for those who have suffered. Forgive me for at least believing in the possibility of magic and an afterlife even though I quite question the interpretation of the Higher Power in which many people believe. Forgive me for being neither here nor there, for being neither a believer nor a non-believer. Or don't. What I believe or don't believe really matters to no-one but me.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

 Prompts Used:

The Daily Post: Strategy

ISFP Prompts

Mindlovemisery's Menagerie

The Cheese Grates It: I.B. Ventin

I think my new pen name should be I.B. Ventin.

In any case, I.B. Ventin' now.

Truth be told, with all the fuckery with these medical conditions and medications, plus the general stress of my life, if it weren't for the fact that stopping taking the medications would leave me incapacitated rather than dead, I'd stop taking them.

I don't want to become non-functional.

I don't want to become a burden.

I'm not afraid of being dead.

There are a lot of moments when I'd welcome it. I wouldn't fight it.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Being unable to function is.

Fuck my lousy piece of shit endocrine system and my warped brain straight to hell.

The Cheese Hath Grated It

AC/DC - Inject the Venom - HQ/1080p

break

Can't help but think of this song sometimes when it's Insulin Time. 

Honestly, though, I don't listen to AC/DC very much these days in spite of what they have meant to me during my life.

All the shit that's happened to them depresses the fuck out of me.

I talk about diabetes a lot because I'm still getting used to the idea of having another dying organ in my body.

I didn't talk about hypothyroidism or PCOS or menopause that much because menopause made me happy and resolved the problems of PCOS, and hypothyroidism required swallowing a couple of small pills.

I talked about glaucoma a bit when I was first diagnosed, but my eye pressure is good and my peripheral vision doesn't seem to have deteriorated, and the treatment is an eye drop in each eye once a day.

With diabetes, I have to inject something into my body to prevent elevated blood glucose from destroying other organs such as my kidneys and my eyes or possibly the blood vessels in my brain.

It isn't that the injections hurt. I hardly feel them. Oddly enough, they make me feel kind of empowered, sort of like "take that, you fucking dead pancreas! I don't need your stupid ass anyway!"

Nonetheless, it's kind of weird, and it's not something I ever thought I'd have to do.

In a few months, it'll be old hat, and I'll hardly ever mention it.

Unlike my stupid bipolar disorder. Lithium helps control the irritability and paranoia, but there are still issues, plus the stigma and ignorance surrounding psych disorders.

I'm just a huge fucking mess. I want a body without 99 million problems in my next life.

Scratch that. I don't want a next life. I just want to float around in the Aethers, being an asshole.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Listen To Your Body, Not the Diet Industry

Image purchased from 123rf.com

While people should always have the autonomy to do as they see fit with their own bodies, I learned after many years of dieting, self-loathing, and eating disorders that reduction dieting a) does not work long term in most cases and only benefits the multi-billion dollar diet industry, and b) the majority of dieters gain back more weight than they originally lost. I literally had to stop dieting to keep myself from getting heavier.

I am very glad I found Health at Every Size at age 46. I wish I had found it sooner. 34 years of yo-yo dieting, bulimia, and self-loathing had taken a terrible toll on both my body and my psyche.

As a diabetic, I have to be mindful of carbohydrate intake, but I have found that glycemic impact is more important than the actual number of carbohydrates ingested. For instance, I don't tend to have a problem with beans, potatoes, corn or bread in moderation, but rice spikes my blood sugar. Everybody is different with this.

Regarding cravings, prior to treating my diabetes, I was ravenously hungry much of the time and, in our size-shaming culture, many doctors give the terrible advice of just ignoring the cravings. If a person has cravings, there is a reason for it. Your body isn't getting something it wants, and trying to shut it up by ignoring the hunger isn't healthy.

In my case, my body wasn't recognizing its own insulin anymore. Insulin resistance can both cause weight gain and make it difficult to lose weight. Anyone who is experiencing extreme, insatiable hunger should have their blood sugar and A1C checked rather than telling themselves they need more Won't Power to stick with their calorie count. Also, you can't eat yourself into diabetes, even if you eat nothing but cake all day every day unless you have the genetic trigger for diabetes.

I wish you well.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Diabetes PSA

If you’re new to having to deal with diabetes, I want to offer you a virtual hug and let you know that you’re not alone. Particularly for type 2 diabetics, you may be wondering, as I did, “what did I do to cause this? Did I eat too much sugar? If I were thinner, would I not have gotten diabetes?”

Here’s what you did. You had the gene that triggers diabetes. People of all sizes get diabetes, and you can’t cause yourself to develop diabetes by eating too much sugar. Developing type 2 diabetes becomes more likely as a person ages. I am a proponent of the Health At Every Size approach (HAES) rather than a size normative approach. The number you need to be concerned with is the one on your glucose meter.

Many people are afraid that the needles we have to use to inject insulin or obtain a blood sample are going to hurt. The insulin needles are very small and I hardly feel them at all. A fantastic tip I learned from a friend is to inject into a stretch mark on your abdomen and you likely won’t even feel it. If you’re a woman who has had children, you likely have a few of these. Even if you don’t have any stretch marks, you aren’t going to feel much in the way of a stick. It isn’t like a vaccination, which has to go into the muscle. An insulin needle only has to reach the subcutaneous layer of fat, which even very thin people possess. I’ve experienced more pain plucking unwanted facial hair than I ever have injecting insulin.

Another thing to do is to take the insulin out of the refrigerator 1-2 hours before injecting it. Cold insulin can sting a little. Room temperature insulin doesn’t.

Modern blood testing strips require only a small amount of blood to get a reading. Obtaining the blood sample is somewhat more painful than injecting insulin, but is far from unbearable. I experience less pain from obtaining my blood sample than I do from removing the peach fuzz that likes to invade my upper lip. I test on the heel of my palm rather than my fingers. Most modern lancing devices come with a special cap so you can choose alternate site testing.

If you have been prescribed insulin, Google the name of the insulin’s manufacturer to see if they have a discount program. I am able to get my Lantus pens for $10 copay with their discount card. Otherwise, the cost would be $435 for five pens. If you’re really rich, that may be pocket change. For me, it’s a month’s worth of car payment, and I need my car.

Diabetes is a pain in the ass and it is a serious disease. However, I want to encourage you not to give up hope. You can do this!

Love,

Cie

Note: Not everyone will experience all of the symptoms depicted in the following PSA. It’s just a guideline.

For instance, in my case, always being tired didn’t trigger alarm, because I have hypothyroidism and fibromyalgia, which both contribute to fatigue. I didn’t experience an increase in yeast infections. I didn’t and still don’t have problems with wounds that don’t heal or neuropathy in my feet. I’m not a very sexual person in the first place, and my hand wasn’t complaining about my lack of interest in sex.

I was, however, constantly hungry and thirsty, I had to pee all the time, and I experienced blurred vision after meals.

The Cheese Grates It: Victor and Me

At first glance, you wouldn’t think that Victor Henriksen and I have anything in common.

Victor is a tough FBI agent who takes on the most dangerous criminals.

I am a nurse who works with medically fragile children.

Victor can definitely kick an ass or two.

My body has so many things going wrong with it that it’s getting to the point where the only thing “tough” about me is my fuck you attitude and the consistency of my flesh.

However, Victor and I do have something in common nonetheless, and here it is.

“My job is boring. It’s frustrating. You work three years for one break, and then maybe you can save a few people…maybe. That’s the payoff...So yeah, sign me up for that big frosty mug of wasting my damn life.”

The nursing I do is not “sexy” nursing. It is not high energy, racing to save life and limb as quickly as possible ER nursing, although at any moment in usually stable case, I may have to drop everything and attempt to do just that.

The nursing I do involves caring for those with chronic conditions. I clean up a lot of poop, snot, and vomit. The patient I’m working with currently has a very rare congenital disease. This disease is terminal, but nobody knows how long this kid has because he is literally the oldest living person with the disease. Most kids who have this disease die before their fifth birthday. My patient will be twelve this year.

This kind of nursing is notoriously low paid. Home care nurses do not get paid time off. If I take a day off, it’s always on my dime. A lot of home care agencies treat their nurses like crap. The previous agency I was with asked me to work 60 hour weeks consistently and would have been fine with having me work a 72 hour week, but I drew the line. They had me work when I was sick. There was always the emotional blackmail of “the family really needs you.” Then when the inevitable happened and I fell asleep during a shift, both the family and the agency were more than happy to fuck me over.

You hear about the saintly nurse for whom the work isn’t about the money, it’s about the caring. I do care very much about every patient I’ve ever worked with. However, in many ways being in the medical profession is a big frosty mug of wasting my damn life, and no, it is not an option to just change jobs or to go back to school. I don’t know how to do anything else and nobody’s going to pay my way while I’m trying to get an education in some other profession. I can’t take the cut in pay to go work at a hipster cafe or new age book shop while I try to figure out my life’s purpose.

So that’s what Victor and I have in common. We both work in noble professions and have fuck all to show for it when the day is done.

I probably won’t die by being blown up, though. I’m guessing my kidneys will shoot the moon one of these days (fuck you diabetes) and I’ll be poisoned by my body’s own waste. Good times!

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: How To Treat Fat Patients

This is copied from my Trifecta of Mess Tumblr. The words belong to whoever is indicated at the top of the paragraph.

justthestupidparts asked:

When you became a doctor, did you not swear an oath to, among other things, try to prevent disease as much as treat it? Refusing to advocate weight loss to obese patients breaks that oath; how do you justify continuing to practice medicine? Serious question.

(The Cheese says: this is a fucking stupid person, and I'm not going to give them hits by linking to their stupid blog. Fuck them.)

agreekdoctor answered:

First of all, I apologize for taking so long to answer your post. When I received it I was still out of town. Second, I wanted to write something thoughtful and I needed time to not write something out of anger. Anger that you would accuse me of doing harm by not mindlessly insisting on weight loss as the ultimate solution to a fat person’s health problems.
To start with I would like to state that I do not refuse to advocate weight loss, where it is appropriate to do so. I assume that you are operating on the false assumption that being fat automatically makes a person unhealthy. I can assure you that it does not.
“But, what about the obesity epidemic? What about the diabetes epidemic? But what about…?” I hear you ask.
There are lots of illnesses that have been statistically correlated with being fat. But the thing to understand is that correlation does not equal causation.
Let's use Type 2 diabetes and fatness as an example. Diabetes type 2 is an illness of insulin resistance. That means the body requires more insulin to produce the same sugar lowering effect than a nondiabetic body would need. Insulin is produced by cells in the pancreas called beta cells.
Contrary to popular belief, people don’t just go from being nondiabetic to diabetic overnight. Rather there is a process that occurs. We have found that there are differences in a person’s beta cells that happen long before a person even begins to show signs of insulin resistance. Many people who go on to become type 2 diabetics will have higher levels of insulin circulating in their bodies for years before they even become prediabetic. One of the other functions of insulin in the body is to promote the storage of excess energy as fat. So, insulin makes people fat, and keeps people fat (makes it harder to lose weight).
Can you see where I’m going with this? The question now becomes, are people diabetic because they are fat? Or are they fat because they are diabetic? This is an extremely important distinction to make.
When I see a diabetic person, fat or not, I tell them to make sure they get plenty of exercise and to watch what they eat to control their carbohydrate intake. What does this sound like? “Diet and exercise.” The difference is that I don’t tell people to lose weight. Many of my patients who follow this advice do in fact lose weight, and that is fine. Many of my patients do not. That is also fine. They all have better control of their sugars, and in most cases, to similar degrees. I fail to see how not insisting on losing weight is “doing harm.”
There are times when a person’s weight turns out to be a factor in their illness and where weight loss may help in treating it. In those cases, I do suggest some weight loss. But in NO case is it ever necessary for someone to get to their “ideal body weight” to help their condition.
Finally, let’s look at the idea of “doing harm.” Did you know that studies (link and link) have shown that the medical profession as a whole is biased against fat people? That there are countless stories about people having serious illnesses going undiagnosed because they are fat and doctors refuse to look beyond that? That fat patients stop going to their doctors after being repeatedly made to feel ashamed for being fat by their doctors? For trying so hard to lose weight but not being “successful?” That, to me is the real harm that is done. The psychological harm. The physical harm that results from not going to the doctor for a serious problem because the doctor will either ignore it or just embarrass them again.
Are you aware that the vast majority of people who lose weight are not able to maintain that weight loss over the long term? And that people can end up far fatter than they would have become otherwise due to the lose-gain cycle. That that cycle can also cause serious harm to a person?
I care about each and every one of my patients whether they are fat or not. Whether they are healthy or not. Fat patients get the same consideration given to their concerns as thin people. I don’t simply dismiss things because a person is fat or tell them that losing weight is the ultimate answer. If my medical work-up indicates that losing a small amount of weight may help, then I suggest it. Otherwise, it is not necessary.
Finally, before you try to tell me about all the research that shows being fat is unhealthy, I have a few of links to lots of evidence-based medical research that shows that being fat does not necessarily make one unhealthy.
Link
Link with lots of individual links to various studies.
And finally,
Another link to lots of individual studies.
Serious question? Serious answer.

The Cheese replied:
I wish you could be my doctor.
My doctor tries, but he was trained in the school of fatphobic medicine, and sometimes it shows.
I am a heavy type 2 diabetic whose sugars are increasing even though I’m taking my medication, watching my carbs (most of the time, I admit that I’m not perfect) and starting to do some light exercise again after being sick for several weeks and having been working 60 hour weeks for quite some time. It’s looking like I’ll probably have to go on insulin.
I have to remind myself that type 2 diabetes is not a personal failing, it’s my pancreas failing.
I lost about 40 pounds after I started treating my diabetes. People make me so mad because insulin resistance (as well as other endocrine problems) can promote weight gain and make weight loss difficult. I didn’t do anything to earn fucking accolades for dropping 40 pounds. As the late, great Carrie Fisher said, youth and beauty are accidents of time and DNA. My weight loss was the result of treating a medical condition, not making some kind of Amazonian effort to become the Perfect Woman ™. Nothing more, nothing less.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Straight Dope

This is basically a copy of a letter to one of my few real friends in this world. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Except for my name, because I want to get back to the purpose of this blog: keeping it real, and talking about that weird shit that everyone is afraid to talk about.

So, I got fired yesterday. I knew it was coming. It was still traumatic and awful, and I could have prevented it by going with my gut. Read this cautionary tale and know that I want you to trust your instincts. I wish I'd been encouraged to trust mine. It would have saved me a lot of grief in this life.

Long story short, I've been working 60 hour weeks, including when I was sick. I was very sleep deprived. I ended up falling asleep during my shift, not just a micro-sleep but a deep, deep sleep. I don't remember doing it. The last thing I remember was looking at the clock to see the time. Then I came out of a deep darkness to see the father of my patient in the room, and he was angry.

I understand this, but I wish he hadn't yanked my chain and told me he'd keep this on the down-low and not report it to the agency. I told him that I was very sorry and would remove myself from the case. However, he didn't keep his word, and not only did he not keep his word, he told the company a trumped-up story. The truth was bad enough, he didn't have to embellish it the way he did. I understand that he was angry, but I thought that this was an extremely ugly action on his part. I can't stand a bullshitter, and I was sad to discover that this person was a bullshitter. Deep down inside, I already knew it, but I still didn't want it to be true. More on that in a bit.

I didn't do anything that impressive for my company, although they liked to tell me that I did. They liked to flatter me to get me to do what they wanted, like burn myself out working way too many hours, but I was nothing special. I was just a cog in the machine, a sucker that they could use up. 

I saw it coming. I should have left last year when they ousted the mother of the patient I'll be working with again at this point.

Here's the sordid tale.

Little Ms. Sweetheart Stephanie (the clinical nurse manager for the case I was working at the time) was trying to get the "goods" on Angie, the patient's mom, to report her to child protective services. 

Angie is a single mother. This kid's dad is involved, but he lives back in the family's home state. Angie brought her son here so she could give him medical marijuana oil, and it may have saved his life. He no longer has constant seizures.

She can be a bit of a flake, but she's always seemed like a straight shooter to me. 

Angie has never left her son unattended (there was always a nurse with him) and she certainly doesn't abuse him. Which means that Stephanie didn't have a leg to stand on when trying to prove neglect. Nonetheless, she kept texting the day nurses, demanding report multiple times during the day. Angie got pissed about this and called the office, saying that she was going to come down there and "bust somebody's ass" if they didn't put a different nurse manager on the case. It was an unfortunate choice of words, but she didn't literally mean that she was going to hit anybody. Stephanie, however, played the drama queen and insisted that she felt afraid for her safety, so the agency released the family.

I signed up with the second agency at that point so I could still help the family now and then. I thought about just going with them, and I should have. I was at sixes and sevens. My mother and my brother both thought I should stay with the primary agency as they'd "treated me well" and they paid more. However, the primary agency was actually very controlling. My coordinator was literally starting to behave like a jealous lover. He would call me outside of normal business hours, telling me that I was "inconveniencing" him and the company and threatening my ability to continue working in the industry. When I said "fine, then put me on PRN status and I won't inconvenience you any more," he backpedaled and told me all about how I could make "so much money" if I just stayed with the company, that they'd get me all the work I needed, that I was a "quality nurse" and they didn't want to lose their "quality nurses."

When I told my mother about the "jealous lover" behavior on my coordinator's part, the threats that if I left I wouldn't get a good recommendation from them, the calls outside normal business hours, she said, "I just don't know what to say". My brother said, "wow, sorry that's happening." I really got no support at all from my family, and I don't have that many friends, so, you know. I was flying by the seat of my pants, like always, and I don't tend to follow my own instincts to protect myself.

 Since I know this agency doesn't give a fuck about any of their people, I'm pretty sure the only reason they "cared" so much is that the coordinators get bonuses when they plug a person into a case. The agency then works its personnel to death and is more than happy to drop them when the inevitable happens and someone either gets sick or falls asleep on the job. 

My coordinator kept promising me 48 hours a week with the main patient I was working with "just as soon as we're able to move the current nurse off the case." I always thought that was sketchy. If they were willing to talk about her that way behind her back, they were willing to talk about anybody. It's like being involved with a cheater--if he'll do it with you, he'll do it to you. That was how I felt in the relationship with that company. I should have busted a move and gotten away, but I was afraid that I wouldn't get a good recommendation.

With the family of the patient I was primarily working with, they always seemed like really "nice" people--the kind of "nice" where they'll smile to your face while stabbing you in the back. You can drink their coffee and eat their food, but they'll turn on a dime. 

I should have gone with my gut and saved myself a lot of grief, but I've been taught from as far back as I can remember that my feelings don't matter, that I need to always pursue the highest wage (since I was a failure who couldn't find a suitable husband to take care of me), that I need to stuff my feelings to please others, and that I'm wrong about everything.

The one thing I don't understand is why my creativity felt so suppressed while working with this family. It never made a lot of sense on the surface. They never told me I couldn't write or that writing was stupid. Still, I've been experiencing this nagging feeling for months "just give it up, you'll never go anywhere with it, you're not a good writer anyway, you need to focus on being a good nurse, you were never cut out to be an artist" and so on.

It would be easy enough to get over being fired, as the family I was working with are back-stabbers and the agency saw its people as cogs in the machine, but every time I think of the fact that I'll never see my patient again, I start hating myself all over for screwing up so badly. I've had trouble stopping myself from self-injury. I haven't been able to write because I feel like I don't deserve to, even though when I walked out of the office I felt truly creative for the first time in months. My energies are pushing my special friend Gem away, and my logical mind is telling me that he never was with me in the first place and that I made it all up inside my head because I'm nothing but a stupid, lonely loser who needs to drop this belief in spirits.

Much of the time I wish that I'd never felt the pull towards certain people or been able to "talk" to spirits. It's made me a real pariah. It's not that I think I have a connection to every celebrity, but I have always had a tendency to "know" something about the people I was watching in movies, on TV, music videos. A lot of the time it was stuff that didn't make sense, but later I found out it was true. As time went on and doubt creeped in, my accuracy decreased.

There was one case where I watched a short-lived (about 2 years) British drama in the mid-1980's. I could sense that the show's male and female lead had actual romantic feelings for each other. I could sense it so strongly that I had to stop watching the show. 

This was a "soul call." These people (the woman in particular) were looking for help because her obsessive, stalker husband (who she was trying to make an ex and he was fighting her) was making it difficult for the romance to move forward. This was something I found out later. Everything was eventually resolved, they got married in the late 1980's and have been together ever since. They have a son. I'm happy for them. 

I'm also glad I don't feel their energies anymore. It was something that was far too intense, and nobody was able to help me understand it.

 I created the One Love blog because I wanted to be able to show people like me that they aren't alone, but so far there have been no people like me and I still feel alone.

I've found myself wondering why I couldn't have met Gem during this life, why we couldn't have had a life together. I understand now why it wouldn't have worked. Gem was more than ten years older than me, was married, and lived in a location far distant from my own. Having him with me in spirit has been nothing short of amazing, but he has a hard time dealing with the self-harm aspect of my personality. It upsets him a lot. He just told me it's because there's a lot of anger involved in the moments when I start wanting to self-injure, and his general attitude towards anger is to turn on his own anger and fight back. However, with this situation, he can't do that. He also said he feels helpless in the face of it and feels like anything he says will only make matters worse. The suicide ideation is something he understands personally, but he says that he never had any compulsion to self-injure; if he were going to take himself out, he would have just taken himself out

I discovered that I still think along the lines of having to hide my real thoughts and feelings with Gem, because he might discover that I'm actually an asshole. His response: "Honey, I already know you're an asshole. I'm still here." 

I guess you know it's the real thing when someone knows you're an asshole but they still care about you.

Gem was upset with me last year because I wan't testing my blood sugar levels. I'm type 2 diabetic. After my most recent fasting draw, my A1C was way up. I have since learned that my fasting blood sugars are terrible. I'm going to have to ask the doctor to increase my Metformin and see if that helps. If it doesn't, I'm going to have to go on insulin because my pancreas is failing.

Here's the thing: this society tends to treat diseases like type 2 diabetes as some kind of personal failing. It's not a personal failing, it's my pancreas failing. I shouldn't have to be ashamed of it. Blame and shame help no-one. 

Here are a few more tidbits about diabetes. You can't "eat yourself" into diabetes. If you don't have the genetic trigger, you will never develop diabetes. You could eat nothing but cake and pie and wash it down with Coke or Pepsi, and you still wouldn't develop diabetes if you don't have the genetic trigger.

Being heavy doesn't "cause diabetes," but having metabolic problems can prompt weight gain and make weight loss difficult.

Alzheimer's disease is not "type 3 diabetes." I want to beat the ever-loving fuck out of whoever thought up that terrible idea. An online acquaintance was recently diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's. He's a big man in his late 60's, who has been caring for his very ill wife. He started having memory problems and went to the doctor. The doctor was a "kind" soul who told the poor fellow that he has Alzheimer's, which is "otherwise known as type 3 diabetes," and that he brought it on himself by being fat. I'm glad that the man had enough self-respect intact to fire this worthless excuse of a doctor, but he felt awful after his appointment with this clown. He is also worried, and rightly so, about what is going to happen to him and his wife with the current horrific state of affairs in the U.S. medical system.

By the way, thin people never get Alzheimer's. Nope, not a one. Everyone who has Alzheimer's is fat. Really, really fat. Super obese land whales to a one.

I mean, look at this monstrous land whale. Just look at all that flab. Must tip the scale at, oh, likely at least a half ton. I mean, if he'd ever put the fork down for even a second, he wouldn't have type 3 diabetes!!!!!11!!

That's hyperbole doing a mating dance with sarcasm, for those who might be missing a hyperbole chip and/or a sarcasm chip.

Alzheimer's disease does not discriminate by body type, and it is not "type 3 diabetes." It does, however, have something in common with type 2 diabetes. You can't "bring it on yourself." You can only get it if you have the genetic trigger.

Eh, I guess this has gone on long enough. One thing I know for certain is that in my next life if I have to be stuck hearing soul calls, I want to know what they are from the start. Maybe reading my own writing from this life will allow me to do that. 

I really don't want another life, but I know I'm stuck having one because I've botched this one so badly.

This is me, trying to get back to my purpose, trying to believe that I'm allowed to have a purpose, trying to believe that I have some kind of inherent worth. As usual, I'm having a hard time doing so.

By the way, Malcolm Young in no way deserves what's happening to him.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~