Wet Ashes and Copper Pennies

It's 4:00AM again.  I do this without an alarm clock.  It's not like I have anywhere to go.  I haven't had an actual 9-5 clock punching job since 1991. And besides, it's Saturday. I don't need to get up, and yet I continue to do it.  Most often at 4:00, sometimes earlier.  I don't know how to stop doing it. Now that I think of it, I don't know how to stop doing a lot of things.

Just like my doctor who without fail says to me "You're going to be ok!"  He doesn't know how to stop saying it.  He's probabaly said it since he was an intern.  You know what? He's right: Either way, live or die, I'll be ok.  Either option means an end to pain.

I feel so bad.  Every day instead of feeling just a little bit better, I feel just a little bit worse.  I don't expect to last very long.  I don't think there's much they can do for me.  Had they caught it with the initial heart attack three years ago, I might be better now.  No way to tell.  In fact, knowing what I know now, I'm very surprised I lasted this long.  All they can do is feed me drugs and hope something works.

I started this blog as a kind of verbal bucket list, since I am quite beyond doing anything physical from my *other* bucket list. 

Hell, it's an EXCELLENT day if I can go to Walmart and ride one of their goofy handicapped scooters and manage to get home before keeling over. I don't know why I even bother to go to Walmart, since I can't taste a damned thing I buy anyway. 

My sense of taste has been so corrupted, I can taste two things that still taste like they did before:  Coke and sour gummi worms.  Jesus.  Everything else either tastes like wet ashes or a handful of copper pennies. I lost 23 lbs since I came home since I can't bring myself to eat wet ashes and pennies.  Even my toothpaste tastes like ashes.  I know it's spearmint - I can still smell it.

Ok, lets weigh the pros and cons in no particular order:  I am in horrible pain much of the time. If I make any movements out of the limited ordinary, I am in worse pain.  The list of food items I am allowed to eat has been drastically reduced.  I cannot taste the food items I am allowed to eat.  I can have no alcohol whatsoever. The drugs they give me are nausea inducing. They are cutting back on my pain pills.  I don't have sex.  I am still alive.  (That's only one pro.)