Evil Spirits

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For some reason I didn't get to sleep last night. I hardly ever experience insomnia. I took a couple of pain killers my doctor prescribed and it hasn't helped much at all. I did get all fired up watching the healthcare bill get enacted into law. I was very pleased with the result. I had to find a site that carried it on the internet. None of the TV channels I receive over-the-air carried it. Poverty can be inconvenient.

I talked to this woman at the grocery store about how she felt about the healthcare bill passing. I was feeling extraordinarily well due to the Prednisone steroids the doctor ordered, so when we discovered we both favored it we had a neat group of mini conversations about how it's passage strengthens Obama's Presidential standing, and maybe he can confront the immigration situation soon, and get that off the back burner too. We might disagree a little there.

One of the possible scenarios I found myself describing to this utter stranger (with a perky "roid-like" happiness) was that now that the healthcare bill has passed people might be able to approach each other in public feeling easier that the other isn't gonna hit them up for a donation to pay for their mother's heart operation.

Oh my God! I can't believe how insincere that might have sounded. I will say just about anything for the possibility of watching the other's response to what I know they wanna hear when I'm taking steroids to relieve the stress of arthritis. As a matter of fact I took today's dosage less than an hour ago. Wiggle room, please. I don't know what the truth is even when I'm rudely sober.

I wanna say my reaction to Prednisone is similar to diet pills, but it's not really. I just talk too much when I used to use amphetamines to study in college. The effect of the steroids is that I appear to be able to adroitly reach for the exact comment I know a specific person is dying to hear someone say, and then objectively watch myself disgustingly say it.

The lights go on... they're pleased as punch... and then they wonder why I might say something so disturbingly intimate that their own significant other has never been able to say in passing, especially in an aisle at the SuperCenter. Of course I don't mean it. I just somehow know it's somehow related to who-they-think-they-could-be if only their best qualities and attributes were recognized by... well... anybody.

The autistic disconnect with other people's feelings and concerns be-co-me-s translucently clear even to me in real time when I'm flying on these prescribed drugs, that will eventually kill me (even before the disease they are created to treat does). I'm addressing emotions other people aren't consciously aware they can experience without having their soft eyes conjured by charisma.

I was having breakfast with my youngest brother who was already eating when I walked into the diner we frequent. It's difficult at times to have a conversation with him because of his iPhone. If it's active or he decides to use it for whatever reason crosses his mind he does it instantly as if I'm supposed to understand why I'm been dismissed as if not there. It's the calls that are important and not me. I had to accept I'm not important to experience gnosis. Understanding my brother is a cakewalk.

Today he got the call from his wife who had taken her brother to the doctor's office to find out about an infection in his throat. She told my brother that her brother was told that the "infection" was 4th stage throat cancer. I knew why.

He also has rheumatoid arthritis that has been diagnosed since he was in his mid-thirties. He is only in his early fifties now. I knew why his infection has turned cancerous. He's been self-injecting Humira. The same drug I refused to continue to take recently. I didn't know until yesterday he was on it. It's definitely not to die for, in my opinion, but shit happens, and things change also when you're NOT having fun.

My brother is gonna lose his wife again while she cares for the perishing in her family. She has death-watched a goodly number of her kin. It's practically a duty she accepts with practiced aplomb. Librans. Damn! Her careacting is so cut-and-dried as she accepts the burden.

A friend advised me to "be careful with them thar drugs them high-falluting doctors give you." Poor innocent. Little does he know what dying people will do when they're dealing with an incurable, progressive disease. He'll only know when he get there himself. It's quirky to deal with the fact that you're not gonna get better when life/death catches up with a body. The best the doctors can do is try to slow the deterioration down without killing you first.

I'm taking three medicines now for the condition my condition is in. All of them were designed for something besides RA. They're prescribed for their anti-inflammatory characteristics. All of them have potential side-effects that are lethal. Yet, they're the best hope the victim has for living independently for some unknowable length of ti-me. The drug I started just today is called Arava Tablets (chemically, leflunomide).

Sure, it's frightening to read the documentation on the internet straight from the pharmaceutical company that manufactures it. Contrarily, it's just as frightening not to. I didn't want it to come to this, but it was unrealistic to think it wouldn't. If I live long enough I'll end up like my aunt. A zombie without any bone joints left. No reason to live, yet won't die, and horribly unable to kill yourself.

My last doctor's appointment was on the 8th of March. Three weeks ago. The dilemma I experienced about my reactions to the Humira, and subsequently starting the methotrexate again, but without the hydroxychloroquine had me dragging ass and in a lotta pain. Oddly, the documentation on the Arava Tablets explained why I was experiencing such discomfort. Chemical buildup in my joints of the evil spirits. '-)

The pain and discomfort was something I just had to endure until my appointment at the VA Hospital came around. It's gotten to where I don't really think about the physical terror as pain as in previous, similar circumstances like when I had a herniated disc operation. My ability to abstract thought gets real slack, and I'm operating mentally on a supremely primitive level of ex-is-tense.

I kind of like it in the way it lets me explore the wormholes the sacraments led me to occasionally. Abstract constructions get in the way for the most part in that place where I feel wrapped in swaddling clothes and experience no separation from acute is-ness. It might be nice to have a control that could occasionally say, "I'm here.", but if not, I won't even gnow they're not there.
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