My last week in the nursing home, I finally ran out of – well- everything.

My roommate, who had up until then been quiet, had his medication changed at the insistance of his ignorant, goatfucking inbred slumcrawling family. This made him miserable- and loud. All night, every night he would cry out to God. “Oh Lord! My God! Your God! Oh, LOOOOORD!” Nothing else on this ossified specimen worked- he was a bony, withered mummy, incapable of moving on his own- but he could HOWL.

And he did. All night. Every night.

There was no sleep. Not for days. And between sleep deprivation and the endless sounds of sobbing, screaming, confused babbling, “Yoo-Hoo”s and the other endless raving of the lost and the mad, the bedlam ambiance finally got to me. 

I lost my patience. I lost my perspective. And I lost my sense of humor.

That last week was a horrifying grind on my raw nerves. I saw no-one, I was unfit for human contact anyway. I cannot remember ever being in such a profoundly altered, unpleasant state for so long.

But, mercifully, it ended.

Getting home was a joy, but reassembling life- discontinued utilities, expired ID, etc- was a nightmare- especially seeing as I am still supposed to be off the foot as much as possible. Oddly, the DMV does not seem to care about my problems, nor do any of the various Social security/ Food Stamp/ Hellish bureacratic fuckholes that I had to limp my ass to through and out the churning bowels of. This was all topped off by the fact that I had been in bed for almost three months. Muscle fatigue, nausea, dissiness and a not inconsiderable degree of pain hounded me for a month, and nip my heels still. It’s all getting easier every day, though. I measure my progress in how difficult it’s been to climb the stairs; each day it gets slightly easier.

The last thing to fall into place was getting back online. I don’t know if I could have made it- any of it- without the support of Lonewolf_and_cub, Soulhuntre, Sparkytheboi and Irishlass. These people, for reasons I will never fathom, have bent over backwards to help me. They have taken very, very good care of me when I needed it, and I thank them.

So here I sit in my gleaming motorized wheelchair- a quiet little hovercraft of a device that allows me to stay mostly off my foot while in my apartment. (It’s especially cool on dialysis days, when I really dont want to move). I’m teaching my cat to ride in my lap, like Blofeld or Dr. Evil. (Before I mastered the speed control. it was very Dr. Evil.) I’m waiting on results from the last test necessary to get on the transplant list, and I get out to TES every so often, so I don’t go stir crazy. My house and environment are clean due to the efforts of a couple of servants who have offered me their labor, and the daily arrival of a home health care chimp, who is worth marginally more then the IQ/ language barrier she carries with her like overpacked luggage. It’s kind of like having Manuel from Fawlty Towers, only not funny and I can’t beat her with a frying pan.

I’m doing OK. I’m getting stronger. My foot is healing. And recently, something happened which made me quetly happy. I was walking into a diner for post TES food with the family- Soulhuntre, Lonewolf, Tatsumi and Kimiko. Kimi and I had gone in first to get seats, when Kimi suddenly said:

 “You’re scary again.”

“Am I?”

“Not in a bad way. In a “Don’t displease him” way.”

About time.