Category Archives: Virtures and Views

by

mask up

Care for your family and friends and community. Mask up and do the best you can not to get nor give Covid-19 this season. The winter is dark but the sun will start returning to us soon. Like the seeds in the ground and the trees with no leaves, we can get through this dark season caring for each other.

by

even if

even if

I never see you again
you never speak to me again
you never love your bearish parts
you never let yourself get angry
you never let yourself get sad
you never let yourself feel
you tell yourself you are happy
you tell yourself everything is the way it should be

even if

I never see you again

I still love you
I still forgive you

I still love you

I hope that you truly do

find happiness

by

Free fall

I feel safest with the fallen

Everyone falls
No one is good

I am afraid
Of the people who
pretend to be good

the fallen
don’t pretend

We fell down down down
like an eternity
like it would never end

We were bad
depressed drunk addicted
liars cowards thieves

We held our arms out
There was nothing to stop us
Free fall

All we could do
was pray

We prayed
As best we could
With all our hearts
If we had no words

Falling angels
Caught us

Helped us
Claw our way back

Some people fall
Are still falling
Fall forever

Are they crazy
Or do they choose
To stay with the angels?

The people who say
They are good

We look at them

We know they haven’t fallen

They are lying to us
They are lying to themselves
They are lying to the Beloved
They want to be good
They want what they say to be true

But it isn’t

I meet the eyes of another fallen
Knowledge

I can see the memory
Of infinite free fall
In their eyes.

by

Game ball

Warning: this post contains some time out words.

How do I process the game you played?

I am the subject of the game.

Or the victim.

Or no, I refuse. It is your game. I was not playing. I am the honey badger, metabolism so fast that I have to run from one meal to the next or else I will starve. I eat whatever I can find: cobras, bees, anything. I eat or I die.

You have tethered a honey badger to oxygen by playing a game.

I am the football and you have been kicking me, throwing me, catching me, slamming me to the ground as hard as you can in the end zone.

And now that I am worn and damaged and torn, you’ll toss me away, not even notice me, and find a new ball.

You will need a new football. To play with.

I don’t envy that person.

The truth is, it will be one of you. The group will rest on their laurels, oh, we nearly killed her, wasn’t it great? We showed her. She is so stupid, took her what, 21 years to fucking figure it out? And she thinks she’s so smart.

I was looking for food because I am always hungry. The food insecurity goes back to infancy. Maybe to the womb: my mother says she was not to gain weight and spent the entire pregnancy longing for a gigantic ice cream Sunday. Think of being in a womb, attacked by antibodies to tuberculosis, and starving all the time. Might be a little bit worried when birth happens. Fuck, I am going through a tunnel, what horrors await me here? But maybe there will be more food.

Maybe someone will love me. Maybe there will be someone for me to love. And feed. We can give each other food.

My advice to you is don’t be the ball. I was the ball for 21 years. I was so hungry the whole time, for food and for love, that I kind of noticed but dismissed it as unimportant. Food and love were more important. Work and my patients were more important. You don’t matter and your games are trivial.

It will be the weakest one who will be the ball. You worry that you are the one. You should worry. You had better look strong right away. Post some horror. Write something really tough. Don’t show anyone any niggling doubts. Um, the ball is wearing oxygen. I am feeling a little bad about this. Are you feeling bad about this? The ball isn’t just crazy, it’s hurt. Actually crazy is an illness too: I know that you discriminate and think that cancer is a legitimate illness and that mania isn’t, but you are assholes. No, you’re too small and pathetic to be an asshole. You are a one celled animal that is clinging to a hair on an asshole and you get shat on daily. And you know, deep deep in your tiny shrunken heart, that you deserve it.

I am so glad I am not you.

I am tethered to oxygen. But I am healing. I don’t think you can. You are locked in your small sick pathetic triangulation competition and pretending that it’s a game that it’s ok that you are just playing.

Ick.

Meanwhile, the oxygen is portable.

I have food and I have love and I have work to do that lifts me on wings. I will go too near the sun and light on fire and fall burning, but that’s ok. I’ve done it before. The ocean heals me, always. It is so much fun to fly!

This is in memory of my mother, my father and my sister. I miss all three and I love them and they love me. Today is the day my mother died. The longer we live, the more days are days when someone that we love died. But they are still here. They are in the rocks and the sky and the trees and the coffee cup. They are not in sugary donuts or foods that cause heart attacks. But they are all around us, cradle us, still love us. Joy to you and the memories of your loved ones who have gone on. Blessings.

by

Sometimes, you have to say to yourself: It just doesn’t matter.

Sometimes…

…I wonder….

is it really your business anyway?

____

who are you to be watching?

what are you doing with your life?

spending it as a voyeur?

____

if you spend all your time watching

thinking you know who is good

and who is evil

____

what are you contributing to humanity?

____

who elected you judge and jury?

____

whatever

go ahead

sit in your castles

poke your telescope through the shades

and watch

____

seems boring to me

____

I’d rather fight for healthcare for all

I’d rather fight for local housing

I’d rather take in an elderly cat or a foster baby

or an elder whose apartment has been sold out from under them

____

what about you?

isn’t there ANYTHING

you’d rather do?

______

thanks to everything2.com for the title

by

Qia and the liars

Qia is in her first year of college, 1200 miles from home. She joins the ski team, hoping to ski. There really aren’t mountains in Wisconsin. They are hills. She doesn’t have a car so she has to get rides to the ski hill. She does get demo skis, because she is on the team. It’s mostly guys, a few women. The guys chug a beer at the top of each run. The runs are ice after the first time down. It is very poorly lit and very cold. Qia is afraid of the ice and the guys and the drinking.

At Christmas she goes home, to Virginia. She really wants ski pants, she tells her mother. She is cold. She is still skiing in spite of the drinking and the scary guys and the ice. They yell at her to go faster but she goes the speed where she will not die. It doesn’t matter anyhow. She goes to a formal race and they have three foot tall trophies for the boys and nothing, not even a ribbon, for the women.

At home, her father is laughing. He is giggling, silly. He doesn’t make any sense. He gives Qia the creeps. Her mother sails along like nothing is wrong. Qia’s little sister has gone from the extroverted life of the party to locked down so hard that her eyes are stones. Fungk, thinks Qia.

Her father loses his down jacket, leaving it somewhere. Then he borrows her mothers and loses it too. Qia’s sister has out grown hers. On Christmas morning there are two down jackets and a pair of ski pants.

The ski pants are two sizes too small. Her father laughs. The down jackets are the ugliest colors, cheaply made, junk. Qia watches her mother and sister try to smile.

Qia leaves the ski pants and returns to Wisconsin. She gets a spider bite. It spreads. She goes to the doctor. He gives a laugh of relief and says it is shingles. He has to explain what shingles is. “It either means you are very run down or have severe stress.” Qia laughs. Worst Christmas of her life so far.

She realizes the problem. Her father has been abducted by fairies and a changeling put in his place. She reads everything she can find about changelings. Adult changelings are rare but not unknown. She pulls out every stop on top of her heavy schedule to learn about how to fight fairies. She can’t afford to hire a fighter. She finds an iron sword at a second hand shop. She hangs around the gyms and watches the fairy fighters fight. She goes home and practices every move. She collects herbs.

She sets things up before spring break. She arrives home and asks her mother and sister to go with her to a specialist in changelings and fighting fairies. Qia is sad but confident. Her mother and sister both cry after watching the movie about the behavior of changelings. Qia asks her mother and sister to help her.

They both refuse.

Qia can’t understand it. But she has studied and read the books. She will do it alone.

She meets with her father. She tells him how awful and frightening Christmas was. She tells him how ashamed and scared she was. She reads him a letter that her sister wrote to her, emotionless, about having to watch him when he is curled in a fetal ball at the top of the stairs. Her mother asked her sister to watch him, so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Her sister says that she wanted to go out with her friends. Her sister is in tenth grade.

Her father doesn’t say a word.

Qia begs him to tell her the key. The word that will open the portal. She shows him the sword and lists all of her herbs and describes her training. She tells him that after she defeats the fairies he will go home and her real father will be returned. She says that she knows he isn’t happy here, with mortals.

He doesn’t say a word to her for the rest of spring break. Her mother and sister do not say a word about it either. Her father drinks more heavily. Qia returns to college.

Qia refuses to come home for the summer. She stays in Wisconsin. She does not want to be around any of them.

Her sister is three years younger. Qia wishes that she could scoop her up and take her to Wisconsin. Qia frets and is in pain. Qia’s second year starts and her sister is in eleventh grade.

Qia’s mother calls. Qia’s sister is on her way. 3000 miles away. “At the last minute, C invited her to live with them in Seattle.” says Qia’s mother. “C was leaving the next day. Your sister decided and went with her. It’s a relief because your sister was getting A’s on tests but refusing to turn in homework, so overall she was getting D’s. ” Qia is relieved. C and S have a son named after her father. He is younger than her sister. Qia also has a cousin 6 years older who lived with C and S and still lives in Seattle. Qia wishes her little sister the best.

Years later, after her mother has died, Qia asks her father about it. By now her father is back and the changeling is gone. I was angry, says her father. But your sister was getting into lots of trouble. Really bad trouble. What could I do, locked in fairyland. He does not go into what Qia’s sister was doing.

And after her father dies, Qia finds a letter. The letter is from C to her mother. It is talking about her sister going to live with C and S. My mother lied to me, thinks Qia. I am not surprised. I wonder why she lied to me. Qia thinks it is probably because her mother set it up with C and did not tell her sister. Qia thinks that her mother lied to her sister. Qia thinks how much that would have hurt her sister: that her mother chose the changeling over her. Her sister would have been terribly hurt and angry.

But so many are dead, what does it matter? Qia’s mother is dead. Her father is dead. Her sister is dead. C’s son is longest dead. S is dead. Even the changeling is dead. Friends in fairyland let Qia know. Actually, Qia and C are the only ones left living.

C did not lie to Qia or her sister directly. She let Qia’s mother do the lying.

Qia does not talk to C again.

Qia is tired of liars.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is not a story about fairies. It is about alcohol or any addiction. We must support families, because the whole family becomes ill. Triangulation, lies, competition, enabling. In my maternal family, the enablers die before the enablees. I have chosen to leave the system and I refuse to be either an enabler or enablee. If you are in that sort of system, you may find that the family resists you leaving and tries to draw you back in to it. When you do finally succeed in leaving, there will be a strong reaction. When the pirahnas run out of food, they eat each other. Stand back and don’t get drawn back in. The newest victim will need to make their own decision to stay or leave.

by

Thoughts on Ramadan

I have been thinking about Ramadan.

Those religions. Judaism, where you don’t eat pork or shellfish. We do know the reasons: trichanosis and food poisoning. And possibly that paralytic shellfish disease: that would be bad, right? People die fast. So pork and shellfish are forbidden.

But Ramadan. I have thought about it for a long time. I think I will do it next year, the diet part. Because I think I have been doing it: in 2012 and 2014 and now. I change my diet to help kill whatever bacteria I have. I go ketotic and the bacteria that require sugar or glucose or fructose can’t grow. It kills them. Quite effectively, since I was sent home after 24 hours of hospital observation when I had strep A pneumonia and sepsis in 2012, after drinking only 4 liters of fluid and putting out ten liters of urine. This is not a good thing. If it goes on, my circulation would collapse, which happens to be the defining symptom of sepsis. Since I did not want my circulation to collapse, I drank 6 liters of water when I got home. With electrolytes and MgS04 because I had a very low potassium and magnesium when I hit the ER. The hosptialist just said that I was bananas in her discharge summary, but she failed to explain the potassium and magnesium and she didn’t even LOOK at the nurses record of the oral intake and urine output. This is not my standard of care. I think one should ALWAYS look at the test results. The usual urine output is up to 2 liters. Ten liters should have stopped her dead in her tracks. Unfortunately I think she had me labeled. Bananas or not, a crazy person can ALSO get pneumonia and sepsis. Really.

She did give me a penicillin shot. Unfortunately it was the dose for strep throat. Not very much penicillin. After I failed to improve from the antibiotics for a couple of days, I thought OH. THERE ARE TONS MORE BACTERIA WHEN IT IS A SYSTEMIC INFECTION. INADEQUATE ANTIBIOTICS. I pulled my sanford guide. For strep A sepsis you are supposed to treat with:

penicillin G 5 million units iv every 6 hours

and clindamycin 3 million units iv every 6 hours. At least, that was the treatment in 2012.

Damn, I thought. Bit hard to do that at home on my own, isn’t it? Now what?

So I called a local pharmacy. I ordered penicillin V 500mg one four times a day and clindamycin 300mg four times a day and then I hunkered down and ate NO CARBOHYDRATES for two weeks.

Penicillin tablets are horse pills and bitter. Yet the first one I put in my mouth, it tasted delicious. Super weird. But my body must have been saying THANK YOU THANK PENICILLIN and released a crazy high dose of dopamine in my brain.

After two weeks I hoped the damn strep would be dead. I took myself out to dinner, feeling like shit, and ordered food. It tasted like heaven, but…..sepsis symptoms once my blood sugar went up. Third spacing fluid. It feels like sand running out of an hourglass as the fluid leaves your arteries and veins. It also causes an instant and terrifying panic attack as your body tries to tell you YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE GET FLUID HELP HELP HELP.

Which is why sepsis can get misdiagnosed as a panic attack or mania or what the fungk ever. It is by miles one of the most terrifying things I have ever been through.

Survived it. At home. While my fellow docs in my small town whispered about how I was bipolar. A physician’s assistant told me that the internist told her at a party that I am bipolar. Ok, I cried again. He sucks. How the hell does he know? He’s not my doctor.

Another woman doctor said, “I heard about you in a meeting. After all we aren’t really friends.” I didn’t say much. Afterwards I stared at the phone. I thought we were friends. Guess not. And ok, speaking of HIPAA, what the fungk did they say about me in a hospital meeting? Fungk them. Over and over and over, please. Spank them with a HIPAA paddle.

Next I read about strep A sepsis. Gosh, once you get it you are more likely to get it again. Damn. Power of suggestion. I got it again one year to the day from when I found my father dead in his house. Stress, you see. He’d left an out of date will, my sister was dead of cancer, it was written when I was nineteen. I knew what my father wanted. He’d said that I was the only person he know who could handle my sister, so I was the person he wanted to watch over her daughter. But the damn will didn’t SAY that.

So I did what any sensible human would do. I took the stupid will to an attorney and did what he said. So then the interfering family sued the executor (me) on my niece’s behalf. Stupid interfering mean and actually not very bright family. After three rounds, I said give it to her.

Half the estate? said my attorney.

Yes.

But… how do you feel about that?

It’s good for me. I will be done with her and that part of the family. It’s not what my father wanted but my niece clearly doesn’t want me to watch over her. Ok, fine. Give her the money. Never mind that her mother extracted at least 1/3 of the estate before my father died and made him cry. I was pretty pissed at my sister for making our father cry. That is when my father and I started comparing notes on what my sister was doing. It was grim. Anyhow, let the dead lie. Sometimes they do when they are alive, too.

It’s not good for the niece. Handing her that stack of money is thoroughly dangerous. And she’s over 18, so, well. It is on my cousins’ heads, whatever happens.

Long silence. My attorney says: you are a really nice person.

Well? I said. Have you known any cases like this.

Yes, he said reluctantly. A 19 year old. He got half a million dollars. He was dead in five years.

Mmmm hmmm. I said. Well, I wish her the best.

Anyhow, second round of strep A sepsis/pneumonia. And third round of pneumonia. With the hospital physicians for the most part still insisting that I was a liar. I mostly handled it at home though I confess that when I started bleeding from my gums, I got scared and went in. The kale water, vitamin K source, kicked in and it stopped by the time I got there. The ER doctor said that he wouldn’t believe me unless the disseminated intravascular coagulopathy labs were high. They were only a little high, but he broke his word, told me I was nuts and sent me home. He also told me I was dehydrated, which was comic because I’d asked the nurses for a “hat” and urinated 4 liters while I was in the emergency room. I was keeping track. I WOULD have been dehydrated except that I was drinking fluid when he was not looking. My daughter brought in a water bottle and quietly went to fill it. I didn’t trust that moron ER doctor to take care of me if my blood pressure tanked. Stupid man.

Home again home again.

This time they don’t believe me again. This time I think it’s funny. Also I caught it early enough so that I don’t have sepsis, praise to (your deity of choice)! I have been here for 21 years, doing medicine in this town. I was one of the two doctors who took the lead in the opioid overuse crisis. The hospital didn’t break down and train its doctors until 8 years after I started. You’d think they might say, wait, she has weird ideas….. but you know, sometimes they are really GOOD weird ideas.

Back to Ramadan. I think spending a month being ketotic and only drinking water during the day has a purpose. I think that it kills bacteria that require sugar, and also yeast and fungi, and possibly some viruses, too. What is the mechanism for the virus killing? Well, the cells slow their metabolism in ketosis, because the lizard brain thinks that the person is starving. Some systems get shut down, like chronic pain. Acute pain is still on line because WE HAVE TO FIND FOOD. In ketosis, the body burns fat and protein to make just enough glucose to keep the brain alive, and the side product is ketones. If it is the body’s store of fat and protein, well, that is starving, right? The lizard brain can’t tell if it’s an outside source. FIND FOOD so vision is sharper, hearing is more acute. Fast twitch muscles burn too many calories, so they are decreased. The slow twitch are ON so that we can go for miles and miles if need, cross continents… and where did I learn all this? Not from medical school or residency. There was a brilliant article in the Atlantic Monthly, about fasting for over a month to lose weight. He wrote about the history of fasting and fear of it and about… ketosis. Thank you, Atlantic Monthly, your article helped save my life when my doctors would not listen and sent me home to die.

Maybe viruses can’t get into the cell as easily when the cells slow their metabolism. Or, better hypothesis, the cells are slower so they don’t make viruses very well. They are slow. They ought to ride the short bus.

Ramadan 2022 starts April 1, 2022 and ends May 1, 2022.

I think I will start three days early, on March 29. Because I want to end early. Because… something big is happening at the end of that April in 2022.

Blessings.

by

you know you are hypoxic when

You know you are hypoxic when … all you have left are dead soldiers….

I turn them upside down when they are empty.

No, I am not really out of oxygen. Send something for oxygen to the people who desperately need it now. Because we could be next and because really: we have so much.

by

alternative medicine

Ok, I got this picture off Facebutt. I CONFESS. But I really want a doctor kit like this: so I can practice alternative medicine. I am disabled from Family Practice and I have to apply for disability payments (miles of paperwork) and I hear that even as a contractee I can apply for unemployment (miles more paperwork) and I see my hospital bill on line for the ER visit where I had chest pain and shortness of breath and the ER doc didn’t even give me an aspirin, so I want to know why I should pay them $900 and I am going to apply for reduced payments because last year I made 42 K, less then the nurses at Jefferson Healthcare (EVEN MORE PAPERWORK FOR THE REDUCED PAYMENTS) and really, it all sounds rather exhausting and I’d rather let the paranoia rise and hide under the bed. Where the OCD and ADHD will make me arrange the dust bunnies and dust elephants by size.

So this looks like a great doctor kit. If the patient sees me and doesn’t do a darn thing that I say, I shoot them with the gun in the forehead. If they do a little but not really very much, I set up the bowling pins and shoot them with the gun while I talk about how irritating it is to have patients use MY TAX DOLLARS though MEDICARE MEDICAID ACTIVE MILITARY DUTY AND THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION NOT TO MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY to get advice and not follow it.

If they are merely disrespectful and tell me what Dr. Google says, I say “Duck.” and throw one at them. If they say, “I don’t take any farmasuiticals.” and bring a bag with the 12 supplement and vitamin pills they take daily, I give them the plastic pills to replace all their stupid supplements. “Here, take this. If it doesn’t work, I have suppositories, but they are four times this size so some people complain that they are uncomfortable.”

I am not sure WHAT the thing in the lower right corner is. A hair dryer? A fentenyl lollipop? Part of an old fashioned telephone?

Anyhow, someone find me one of these kits and send it to me. Pretty please. I am not allowed to do Family Medicine any more and really want to get started on Alternative Medicine.

by

stealthie in the grass

Stealthie in my yard, two days ago. I like the current crop of grass and weeds.

Music: Simon Lynge Hallelujah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIHpeaHJJ9s

His website is here: https://simonlyngemusic.com/. Hey Simon, when do we get another local concert? Concert in the grass? Hugs, ya’ll.