Poison's blog: "MY HEALTH"

What is a friend? For that fact what dose it mean to be a best friend? I'm not one to burden others with my problem but life really sucks and over the last twenty years or so it just keeps dealing me one bad hand after another, each one worse than the one before. They say that God don't give us things we can't handle but dam if my cup don't runnith over already! I guess my bad luck started about three years ago when I took in a bimbo bitch. In less than six months she made me get rid of my roommate and not long after that she had me arrested for domestic dispute. When I got out of the county jail two and a half months later coz the state drop the charges for lack of evidence she was gone…so was my apartment, my car, twenty thousand dollars of PA gear which I used to make a living with as a sound tech, my pass ports and everything else I owned in the world. It has not been easy to bounce back; heaven knows I always have before. A very short time after the above fiasco I was diagnose with liver decease, it was pretty serious coz it was in advance stages and it caused me to have to stop working. About this time I found this site and met someone who stepped up to the plate and helped me by driving me to my medical appointments at the VA hospital 3 hours away. I looked on her as my godsend, my savior, and my angel! About 8 months ago I was diagnosed with kidney decease and so now I need both live and kidney transplants…man, will it ever fucking stop? Anyway she kept helping me coz I don’t have a car anymore. She sat there with me in the transplant coordinators and told her that she was and would be my home caregiver, a requirement for transplant. Two months into trying to meet the rest of the requirements we were at the VA hospital for the psychology evaluation requirement and they needed to meet with both of us…well that day she mentioned that she could not do this any more. Needless to say that blew my opportunity for the transplant. Oh did I mentioned I had three donors willing to donate a kidney to me, which meant I had a very good chance of bypassing the kidney list which is seven years long. Nowadays I’m on dialysis and it pretty much beats me up three times a week. I called her up at noon asking if she can take me to the VA clinic here to see my doctor as to make arrangements to have this main line access remove from my chest, guess it isn’t happening…she’s got plans, hum, must be a new lunch date or something more important than my health. Looks like I have to wait till March 19 to see my doctor and even then I don’t know how I’ll get there. I refuse to ask her for another favor ever again. Unfortunately I have chosen to lock the world out today as depression grips my mind. I’m angry because she says I’m her best friend, so much for best friends right? I’m not sure how to proceed at this point. I keep thinking about quality of life, the crap that brought me to this point, and how every day that goes by I deteriorate a little more. I feel like I’m sinking in a sea of quicksand, the ifs and how’s just consume me every minute of every day. I have mixed emotions now, do I really need a friend like that I am just so angry that she would turn her back on me. Oh sure I still the go to guy when she’s depress or hurts, or if she needs a companion for lunch or dinner, seems like I’m only her special friend when she wants my company…a friend with benefits I don’t need! I’m really tiered of fighting to stay alive, the ultimate alternative looks better every day. But don’t worry I still have a small part of me that tells me not to give up just yet!

It's been awhile since I have posted any up dates on my health, so for those who have been following my decline...here goes. I have been under the care of nurce Bennet, the kidney nurce at my VA clinic, several months agos she gave the class on "end stage kidney desiese", I learned alot! first was if you're attending the class you will need dialysis and second was that I might be able to do my own dialysis at home...ah, a glimmer of hope layed on the horizon! Within the five months that followed my body was sending me signs that I was going down hill but it would seem looking back on it now...I was in denial. One night about 5 weeks ago I could not sleep, I spent 2 days and 2 night fighting to catch my breath, breathing was very difficult. 3 weeks ago it was desided by nurce Bennt and my kidney doctor that I should go ahead and have a catheder put into my belly so I would be able to do "parateneal" dialysis at home but I have to be evaluated by the surgons at the Tampa VA. They found a small hernia and concluded that I would not be a good candadate for parataneal dialysis. 2 weeks ago at my last teleconfrance between nurce Bennt, the kidny doctor and myself it was determine due to my simtoms that it was time for dialysis and there was no puting it off. The following day I was addmitted into the Tampa VA hospital, where I spent the week undergoing surgery to have a "main access line" put in. It streches all the way up to that bone that you can feel at the bottom of your neck and just to the right side. It exits just above my right nipple and has two port tubes that get connected to the dialysis machine, ont takes the blood out for filtering and the other reurnse it to my body. I hooked to it for 4 hours 3 times aweek. I also had surgery on my left arm, they had to reconstrucked a vain but the short of it is that they connected a vain and an artery together creating a shunt or a fisculor. When it heals and matures it will be the permanent access for the dialysis machine and the tube in my chest can come out...about 6 weeks! Mind you now, none of this was appealing to begin with but to have to go through all this at this time of year really sucks!!!! And it was also durring this holiday season that the two people that ment the world to me had abanded me to my missery. All I could think of as a layed there with my arm stiched up and a tube in my chest was the fun my dearest friend was having riding roller coaster at "ALL" the theme parks ar Disney Orlando, and why my other dear friend would not return my calls...it was very depressing and still is since the hollidays are not over and I have not herd from them yet, even now that I'm home. I will be working durring the next 3 months to complete and meet all the requierments that wood make me a good candadate for a kidney transplant. I have to stop smoking, lower my blood pressure, have all my teeth pulled, and have good controle over my diabities.(the teeth thing could be a deal breaker) if they won't give me general annistetic! I want to thank all that stood vitual over me with thier warm thoughts and prayers, your comments and shouts keep me going, I feel blessed to have friends such as you. xxxooo rick

This is a follow up to my “feel like I’m losing” blog from yesterday. I want to say thank you to those who responded and came to my aid with kind words of encouragement and heart felt well wishes and prayers. It’s not easy dealing with “falling from grace” and indeed, it’s a long way down. That’s not to say that my brand of suffering is greater than anyone else’s, just that it’s my suffering. Many may not realize that this site is a bit more then just a social net work, it allows people like me to vent life’s frustrations if done right. We are all here on this site for many reasons, I myself am here simply because I have nothing better to do with my time and it beats watching the idiot box. You know, I love our way of life and what this country stands for and represents...it’s the policy makers and the palsies in place that I have trouble with. It wasn’t till recently that I fear I’ll end up like so many of our vets...down and out and homeless on the streets. The reason for that is because there hasn’t been a massive public out cry for the forgotten vet. Oh sure we see the “save the children” commercials all the time, we see the massive “aid we give to earthquake shattered, famine stricken, flood ravage decease ridden nations of the world but god forbid you let some poor homeless vet on the streets of New York or any major city try to clean your windshield at a red light for a quarter and you have a cow! I’ve always said charity begins at home...and I’m the biggest charity I know of! Back in the late 70's I took part in something I’m not suppose to talk about because of quote unquote “national security” but I’ll tell ya what for the $630 a month that uncle sam give me to live on and the hoops I have to jump through just to keep fighting to stay alive.......fuck that, they’re not doing me no favors. Many of you I’m sure remember the Viet Nam War, it was several years after that, that the our so called government was pitching the idea to the American public that all our boys were home. I was part of a mission that spent the better part of five months in training while CIA and Army intelligence gathered information and formulated a plan to go in and rescue American POW’s. The mission went terribly wrong and was a failure. My helicopter was shot out from under us, there were no POW’s and I walked (more like carried away) with a broken right ankle, busted ribs and a damaged right lung that kept me in the hospital for 3 months. I was coming back from LA in my big rig once when I pulled off I-40 in Arizona once, as I turned left off the exit ramp I notice a fellow vet holding an American flag and standing proud in his weather beaten Army issue and carrying his whole world in a back pack. I knew that I would have to go by him again as I got back on the interstate and as I did I waved him over while I wasat the stop sign and slipped him a twenty. My only regret was that it wasn’t more. To this day I can still see that scrubby long beard and that hard face under the boony hat and the pain in my heart as I drove away. Any way, I find that it helps me a bit to share things like that with you. I wrote a piece or two that I would like to share with you and please feel free to comment if it moves you. I call it... “Where’s Edon” When you look into the spotlight and you close your eyes tonight, don’t forget about tomorrow. Well you begged and you borrowed, walked the Forrest but you saw no trees, can you help me find my way please. Well there’s a light out in my mind, there’s a fire in the sky and the devil’s in the way. Well I have to find the tree with the apple and the seed, going to bite it for my sanity. Well, there’s a revolution in my head, all the lights are going dim it’s getting really dark in here. Well, I’m trying hard to find it, I got bloody hands and knees, can you tell me where is Eden please ? Well, no one ever calls and no one visits her at all, looks like Adam has finally had enough of Eve! Well, there’s a revolution in my head, all the lights are going dim it’s getting really dark in here. Well, I’m trying hard to find it, I got bloody hands and knees, can you tell me where is Eden please ? When you look into the spotlight and you close your eyes tonight, don’t forget about tomorrow. Well you begged and you borrowed, walked the Forrest but you saw no trees, can you help me find my way please. Can you give me a bed to sleep on ? Can you give me books to read ? Can you give me food and shelter ? Can you tell me where is Eden please...?

I’m sitting here writing this because there’s a battle going on in my mind. The demons known as depression and lonelyness tear at the very fibor of my being.Depression is not a state of mind but a state of being that when coupled with lonelyness can drive the mind to the very peak of madness. Dealth has been lerking in the shadows of my brain erged on by depression, the fight is so intence some times that I craw and lock myself away from those that I think care. There are times someone will say a kind word and make me smile and feel like everything is alright, but then they will say something that will make me question the very reason for living. I knew a young lady once, she fell in love with me and became my wife. She gave birth to two girls and we were a happy family untill that one morning seven years later when I was working out in LA. And I get a phone call saying she had past away the day befor. From that day on my life was never the same. They say that god dose not give us things we can’t handle. I lost custedy of my daughters to my inlaws who inturn put them up for adoption and I have not seen them since. If that is true what they say about god….when is enough, enough? What I would not give to have that last week I spent in Mytle Beach with my daughters once again. My illness has left my weak and disabled. I can’t work, or do much of anything any more, seems I would be a burdon on anyone and so it has been said but not in so many words. These are the days I craw into the receses of my mind and wage war with the demons. I’m faced with having to go to dialysis 3 times aweek soon, I don’t want to be that burdon I mentioned just befor so not sure how I’m going to get there. A transplant is at least a year or more away. One of my options is to refuse dyalysis and the demon that drives that thought is growing bigger. I’m tired of being someone’s guest in their home, tomorrow I return to the comfines of my four walls I call my world, only venturing out now and then for some nerishment…nerishment, that’s a laugh, I’m not allow much of anything…to include protean, sodium or sugers, if the kidneys don’t kill me starvation will. Life has no meaning any more but yet I look for it. Live has no hope, for if I was to servive the dialysis and kidney transplant I will then have to contend with finding a liver also. Oh how I long for a simpler time, the younger days, the days of confidence and leadership. When in my mind I knew I was indistructable, to face fear and dealth in the eyes and laugh because when I sat in the pilot seat of my chopper I was a “GOD”! I guess I’ll go craw back into bed and continue the fight in my head. One thing that dose worry me is, since I have no family what will happen to my body once I’m gone? "There a revolution in my head, all the lights are going dim it's getting realy dark in here. Well I'm trying hard to find it walked the forrest but I saw no trees help me find my way please. Well I beged and I borrowed, I got bloody hands and knees... Can you tell me where is Eden please?

My doctors at the VA are just full of gloom and doom, it seems that I don't just need a liver transplant but now also need kidney transplant. Those of you who know me from talking to me know what kind of person I am, here is your chance to thank a soldier, a worrier, a friend. I'm not one to ask anything of anyone, but if your blood type is A+ won't you consider giving me the "gift of life" by donating a kidney. My options are very limited...total renal shut down, dialysis and death. There is a 7 year waiting list for a kidney unless I find a donor, I can not pay you so it would truely be a gift of life but you medical needs and expences would be covered.

As most of you know, I have been fighting lever decease for the past year and a half now. My g/f Carolyn drives over 3 hrs just to take me to the VA hospital in Tampa Florida because it’s the nearest hospital in the VA system that can give me the level of care needed. She is my god sent angel not only dose she drives the 3 + hrs to get to me we then have to drive an additional 2 ½ hrs to the hospital. Well the medical report is as follow...my liver is showing signs of normality and the hep-B levels in my blood is below 60, and according to the doc that’s almost none existent...that’s the GOOD news. As for the bad news my kidney are failing and are down to 25% function, I know have to start thinking about dalasis and a possible kidney transplant on top of everything else. Well that’s all for now till my next appointment.