Out of the number of maladies I’ve dealt with in my 8 years of chair-dom, I must attest that diarrhea, going on now 9 days, with an ugly, feverish buildup all the previous week, has been one of the most challenging.
I haven’t had to deal with the big D in those years save mild one-day things, but this one, and coupled with ongoing MRSA, and an open wound where the diarrhea, once several showers have been taken and the bandage has come off exposing the wound, now 3 months and counting, to the…flow of effluence emanating 5, 6, 7 times daily…
This one…is trying.
Gut extended like a Biafran, appetite then none, cold, effing cold, and it’s only 70’s. The wound, only days ago looking good, ain’t so lately. A parasite I picked up on the road and should be tested for and probably drugged? A gastrointestinal virus of some sort that just does it thing then moves on, drugs and treatments be damned? A spirit that doesn’t like me and has decided to make my autumn miserable?
It may be, and I’m going to the doc in about an hour, that the MRSA has gathered renewed strength due to my weakened GI tract, and is assailing me big-time. Seems a dormant boil exploded yesterday, and the misery I’m experiencing may be due to its return. Or, MRSA got into my GI tract and that’s what’s been taking me out of the game. Yesterday was one of the worst days I’ve experienced all year, and I slept poorly and am exhausted -and worthless- today.
I’m sharing this with you again with that sense of urgency Fall brings, a clutching of the chest in melancholic reflection remembering -and watching- Time, and its Seasons, pass; and from the idea that this misery I’m living is shared and in many cases oh, so more worse than my own state of decay, but bear with me, the description of the misery, the sitting in rank diarrhea and being unable to immediately clean oneself, like a baby in diapers yet plagued by the very adult awareness of knowing I’m sitting in shit, the agony of humiliation, perhaps not shared by all plegics, but felt deeply in this one, this description must be heard, and felt, too, by our nation, and our nation must respond.
Our nation must invest in curing its crippled. I’m sick of this condition, that’s why I’ve traveled about looking for any sort of relief, and probably will again. The condition is intolerable, yet it must be tolerated, accepted, dealt with; the condition eventually must return you to the world, or you rot.
In my travels now, I have seen much rot; now, my own. An end to this nightmarish shit, geez! Enough!
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