Unhappy camper

I've not been posting much around these parts for fear that it would be filled with the typical downer screed of recent entries. Suffice it to say, I've been trying my best to make good out of a bad situation, and, frankly, it's finally started to wear me down. This past weekend was our last camping trip of the summer. Jeff was stuck working, so I managed to load up the stuff into the truck, fetched the trailer then headed on up to Hillside for the final time of the year. THis time it was a bit different, since we had guests already staying on the site earlier in the week and had been awaiting our arrival. I had a bunch of wonderful help in getting set up, once that was done, however, I was in so much pain I was miserable, and that fact was not lost among my fellow campers. Since I was not going to take any of my Rush Limbaugh feelgood pills before piloting nearly 50 feet and six tons of truck and trailer a couple hundred miles with a crazy dog in my lap for fear of falling asleep at the wheel (the damn stuff knocks me out), by the time I had arrived, set up and tried to unwind, I was a twitchy, pain-addled mess. Once I popped the pills and stretched out, I eventually felt a bit more comfortable and enjoyed my company. We all turned in early that night, and I was blessed with Hillside's eerie silence before the weekend people began to show up. The 'contin makes me have strange, often extremely entertaining dreams of a vivid nature that make Yellow Submarine seem like a budget planning meeting by comparison. The very cool (mid-40s!) nights made sleeping more like hibernating, only adding to the psychedelia.

Jeff came down the next day after having to work on his day off (sound familiar?), and he joined us in the evening before dinner. He was having his own pain issues as well, but we made the best of it. I was stuck hanging around the campsite again, though I did make one trek up the hill to the afternoon party on Saturday, but did not stay long. I'm sure I missed out on seeing some folk, I hope to see them again in the future when I'm not such an invalid. The weekend overall was positive for me, but I know I was being quite antisocial despite my efforts to the contrary. I just don't do well around friends or crowds when I am ailing. And since this condition has kept on progressing for the worst, I'm pretty much Groucho Grouchy McGroucherson (nee Crankypants).

I sense that Jeff is finally starting to tire of my condition as well, and even my ability to make use of my time is starting to fade. Slowing down like this puts me into a deeper funk, and I mostly wander off now just to minimize my effect on others. I'm still waiting for a time for my unavoidable surgery, which has become more involved than originally planned. The laminectomy that was to be performed on a single vertebra has been increased in scope to the L4, L5 and T1 segments, for a total of three. While I am being reassured that I will maintain most if not all of my mobility/abilities, something tells me that having not just one, but three consecutive sections of bone removed leaving the muscles unattached to anything but themselves leads me to believe that a lot of what I was able to do as a young punk is now firmly in the past. Time will tell, of course, and anything would be better than what I am currently experiencing. My bruised shins from stumbling and falling are outward evidence that life is not all peaches and Mayhem anymore. Jeff had tickets for the Penn State opener next weekend, He sent them away, hopefully to be used. I know he was looking forward to this game, but dragging me along to is was probably going to be an exercise in (more) futility for him. I feel awful for that, and I really wish I could crawl under a rock.

I will manage all of this in some way. Having my finances now firmly below the poverty level will add another layer of stress. At least it's not zero. Yet. Now all I have to do is try and get the medical end of it all in gear. Things move at a glacial pace for some reason. All I wish for is for this to be over and a return to normalcy in my life.

But I didn't shoot calligraphy

A one-two punch in the gut

Today I drove to the MVA to put in the paperwork and get a temporary handicapped parking placard. The place was packed, with the usual feel (and sound, thanks to the P.A. system and loud talkers) of a third-world country. When I inquired about where I had to go to get things done, I was directed to the far end of the building. On arriving there, I was greeted with a non-moving line of probably 100 people, folded back and forth by a corral of tape guide posts. I cannot stand in one place for more than five minutes, much less the time needed among that claustrophobic mess. I walked out. Granted, it was later in the day. I'll try earlier again tomorrow, if I'm greeted with the same noisy mass of humanity that teabagger nightmares are made of, I'll make my own scene with the folks running that show as to what a poor sot like me is expected to do. I was incensed.

To top things off, my cell phone rings on the way home, and I'm informed that my surgery date is not until fucking October 11. Another goddamn month and then some to endure this ever worsening hell before I can even hope for any relief. I pulled into a parking lot and tried to keep from falling apart, with limited success. Jeff finds me later that day in the garage, in a gloomy funk though trying to keep busy with stuff as good as I can. I told him the news, he stood shocked at the date so seemingly far in the future. We talked about it all through my haze of frustration, he tried to cheer me up in a bit of an inopportune way, to which I threw my project on the floor and recoiled. This made him go off in a huff, with Kodi in tow, and there I was, soaking in the knowledge that despite all appearances, I'm really alone in this fucking battle. I totally lost it. I'm really trying my best, but unlike the way I'm used to things, I am far too reliant, and withheld, by external forces beyond my control. In the grand scheme of things, compared to what I've dealt with in the past, and what some friends of mine are dealing with, it's relatively minor. But the circumstances, the pain, the financial bits, the often humiliating situations I find myself in and the absolute glacial rate of progress through this ordeal is really beginning to beat me down. I'll manage, I'm sure. My fear is that this episode in my life will leave a mark on me, and I don't mean a surgical scar. I'm afraid I will become an old, cynical, practically hateful man ready to snap at people and situations that would normally slide off my back.

Perhaps I shouldn't have posted this. But I needed to vent.