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"[...]a vessel cleaving the dungeon of the waves[...]"
You're Love in the Time of Cholera!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by
sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give
consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the
one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions
barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff
could get you killed.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Never miss a word
You're Infinite Jest!
by David Foster Wallace
While you1 consider yourself2 to be clever,
there are those3 who think you're just full of yourself or, perhaps worse,
playing a joke4 on everyone around you, and yet you are pretty sure that
you really are that brilliant after all, since people would hardly take the time to
get to know you5 if they didn't care very deeply about what you had to
say to them, to wit, about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their
drug habits, and of course what videos6 they prefer to watch, since,
after all, your impressive vocabulary and tendency to go on and on7 makes
you seem superior, able to educate them, and really drive a sense of something
ineffable into their measly little skulls while you are not above making a cheap
gag or really going after anyone or anything or telling them about incredible
futures involving tennis, geopolitics, and
1Meaning you personally, not someone like you or your own
personal daddy, for example.
2As well as you can see yourself, which, frankly, may not be that well.
3Though we wouldn't deign to be so peripatetic as to name them here, mind.
4Jokes, though not common in Victorian England, were known to originate
sometime in ancient history, perhaps as early as the time of Babylon, or even before.
It is thought that the history of the joke plays an integral role in the mindset of
the characters depicted here, though you may disagree at this point, in which case I
am facing quite the dilemma in relaying this narrative, no?
5It is rather time consuming, after all.
6Ha!
7and on and on and on...
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're The Metamorphosis!
by Franz Kafka
Though you think you're in the midst of a dream, the fact of the
matter is that your life has become a nightmare. The nightmare at first seems
horrific to you, but you are slowly able to adjust to the facts of the matter
and settle down and make do with what you've been given. There are those that
would say you're pointless and absurd, but you're really just trying to
demonstrate that people can (and do) adapt to anything, no matter how absurd
it is. Not that this will really inspire them to change, because they probably
don't understand.
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
About Me
- Σφιγξ
- possesses wholly unmerited academic pretensions; examines love as an entomologist; collects haunted dollshouses; notes the lunar phase as regularly as the temperature; peruses field guides; reads like a serial magazine subscriptionist; functions through coffee and "mood" music; draws to the very corners of the page; takes notes on unlined paper; reads poetry as prayer; observes textual authority with the incredulity of fiction; suppresses the smart-ass answer(s); adapts as well as anyone beseiged by her own bibelots; she is a sensation seeker in spite of all of this.
17 comments:
"Because obesity is associated with lower circulating concentrations of testosterone, our results suggest the hypothesis that androgens may play a more direct role for early-onset or hereditary prostate cancers than for sporadic prostate cancers."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12928350
http://www.patienthealthinternational.com/83137?itemId=6285641
The man my mother married, his father, died an agonizing death of prostate cancer with bone and colon metastases. I helped her take care of him.
You shouldn't ask the question if I could smother you with a pillow like Haneke's Amour (2012), but could you smother me?
No one knows how one will go, but the endings in which I have participated, it did not come to that, and we could all accept the outcome. I tell people never to be a DNR because at least it gives you time to get your family at the bedside, if and when one withdraws care.
I will never leave the bedside of a person I love. Deciding when to end it is hubris. Usually there is an answer all can accept.
We have had several cancer patients recently; one with metastatic SCLC and one with CRC and a LVAD. One was easy to be around, and one was miserable and screaming at me because I could not give her oxy, when she was nearly obtunded after radiation and chemo that day. I could barely rouse her.
The Rambam states that most doctors go to hell because they lose their empathy, and the recognition that the treatment and recovery is not ultimately in their hands.
"But they don't use the word
once dropped it might break
They do not say that they have loved
for who can say
We were killed yesterday"
https://soundcloud.com/muterecords/04-youme-meyou
Exercise 91.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EtJD6qvyPyoC&pg=PA310&dq=14+iyar+pesach+sheni&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd39uMm6GGAxXFlYkEHYuqB4I4ChDoAXoECAkQAw#v=onepage&q=14%20iyar%20pesach%20sheni&f=false
I had trouble sleeping last night because I heard my mother down the corridor coughing, persistently, all night. A cardiac cough. She does not have lower limb edema; more likely central edema, but one of the symptoms of heart failure is dyspnea and persistent cough at night. Not a violent cough; like a throat-clearing cough.
https://cvrti.utah.edu/coughing-and-cardiovascular-health-understanding-the-warning-signs/#:~:text=Regarding%20cardiac%20cough%2C%20the%20body,tries%20to%20eliminate%20by%20coughing.
Due to the fulminant viral infections overlying her COPD in 2023, her symptoms are suggestive that she had chronic inflammation contributing to heart failure. I suggested a 2-D echocardiogram outpatient? This is a noninvasive snapshot of heart pumping efficiency, and it can check for valvular defects.
"For example, it has become apparent that almost 50% of HF patients may have HF with preserved left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (HFpEF) (3), a disease that represents a diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic challenge. Echocardiography provides a large amount of detailed information regarding cardiac structure and function in an easily accessible and cost-effective manner and is currently recommended in the diagnostic workup of patients in whom HF cannot be ruled out clinically (4)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958420/
"The risk of post-discharge incident HF was more pronounced among patients who were young (i.e., <65 years old), White, and those with established cardiovascular disease."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31834-y
I am not one to diagnose a situation, but having the foresight to check issues , and then to take temporizing measures is wisdom.
It seems close to home: she is within four years of your birth cohort. The issues that concern me in my life have happened to many nurses: devastating ischemic stroke from dehydration.
My issues are blood-borne, not heart or lung-related.
*Temporizing measures in my context is almost always hyperkalemia in surgical patients with delayed or in process dialysis. Giving IV insulin, D50W, calcium glucose, and Lokelma, for good measure, prevents life-threatening arrhythmia.
If the Creator supplies the insight, then there remains the possibility of a treatment.
Humility in all things.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1znmScSRzl9jNFmu01fWDS88DAcEFXGt4/view?usp=drivesdk
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8841953/
Elevendy*
One of the refrains of my generation is how a peer group can accelerate/decelerate one's potential. We were not educated in public school for high school. Keith was, one year, after being expelled.
Elevendy*
Once again, the mother got high and bent her glasses. They spent a day from their vacation plans finding am optometrist to fix her frames. It is agreed that the burden of education will not be on her family.
https://youtu.be/IHYtYE8_bzU?si=mZVnNljaRPIgVTWt
When I mention that Linda, Keith's de facto MIL, is heading toward long-term care, I do not say it flippantly. She has her divorced spouse's pension, but is it fair that my mother should work and provide her housing in perpetuity? Particularly, when it appears that she will be unable to work? In one week, she is transferring from bed to a wheelchair. As a gesture of good faith, she should be moving around and trying to remain independent.
The ugliness of aging without forethought applies.
The obligations to a spouse or primary relative stipulate different degrees of sacrifice.
I am leaving it alone. If she is bedbound or if they have fifteen children, then it is in the hands of Hashem. In my incapacity or lack of merit for it to be otherwise, I cede.
https://calicocritters.com/en-us/catalog/item_detail.php?product_id=2556
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fisher-price-thomas-friends-wooden-railway-edward-engine-and-coal-car-fisher-price/1140338902
She is walking again.
I work a lot in December, and my goals are to finish things at my bachelor hut before I interfere there.
https://www.ctsnet.org/article/port-access-and-minithoracotomy-mitral-valve-surgery
I had a physician summon me to the bedside of his family member to tell my surgeon that his femoral incision looked like a seroma was forming. I politely told him, with all due respect: the incision is soft circumferentially to palpation (no hematoma); there isn't a mobile mass to suggest a fluid-filled seroma, and isn't professional discourtesy, to critique a colleague's work, uninvited? Pictures had already been taken and forwarded, and that he would be in punctually for bedside rounds 0700.
The general surgeon conceded that this surgeon is the best, that he did his mitral valve repair, sixeen years ago, and he left.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/01/07/outage
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