Twenty-six years ago I placed my hand on my father’s chest to feel his last few heartbeats. It was the only encounter with death that I’ve witnessed. Today my Mother is living ten year’s past her mental function. I was going to put up a post a day ago called “Wayfarin Stranger” about her condition but didn’t have the time. I’ll make this brief because I suddenly notice a bunch of phantom auroras across this typing that make typing a little more of a chore. Claudia gets such things all the time and tells me they are associated with painless migraines. Maybe…..Claudia hates it when I say that to her.
I just scheduled a physical for Monday because of the odd sensations I’m picking up in my chest. If my general well being is such I’m told that its nothing that alone should lesson my anxiety and make them ease off. I’ve blogged ad nauseum about my fears for the Duluth School District in recent weeks. I should be crawling in bed with my grandson in the morning like I did today rather than fretting over stressing to death over something I have such tenuous control over. I’d like to make it to his college graduation and that’s a few years off yet.
I’ve got a buddy who I regularly piss off by badmouthing Republicans. Ours is an on again off again correspondence. We have had a doozy over the last couple days which, if I find time, I might put into a new post. I’ll have to plaster his emails with asterisks to hide all the
in it. Even so he sent me a link to this story about a physician who was obsessed with death and who recently died. Its well worth reading.
I had dinner with Shep Nuland once, along with several other Yale students. It was right after he had given a talk on his battle with depression, his near complete loss of will. “All my major surgical cases,” he said, “I was scheduling them for twelve, one o’clock in the afternoon, because I couldn’t get out of bed before about eleven. I clearly became increasingly depressed until I thought, my God, I can’t work anymore.” He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where every treatment failed: “it got so there was a throbbing, there was a ferocious fear in my head. You’ve seen this painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream. Every moment was a scream.” He nearly had a lobotomy but a resident physician convinced the staff to try electroconvulsive therapy, and after twenty cycles, ‘I’ve never forgotten. I never will forget standing in the kitchen of the unit and thinking, ‘I’ve got the strength now to do this.'”
This put me in mind of the wonderful British series Doc Martin. Its a delicious series about a prickly surgeon who gives up his high powered London practice for a simple GP practice out in the sticks because he has developed a blood phobia. He can not suffer fools (meaning most of his clientele) gladly. I think my buddy and the Doc have a lot in common. You can live stream it on Netflix.
I’m going to go take a quick nap. I can barely see my screen. Got to get my eyesight back. I’ve got a lot of emails to write.
