I stop talking to people. I mean, really I stopped calling and having people call me on the telephone. It just got to a point where I just didn't want to have conversations with people anymore. I don't know what got into me and I kind of feel the same way right now, but let me tell you when you're going through something people can only empathize, sometimes talk isn't enough. It's not that I'm looking for sympathy or even an understanding for that matter, what I'm really looking for someone I could just shoot the shit with. When I started going through the deeper portions of the sight loss before the hemorrhages happened, I just made a decision to stop talking.
I haven't talked to many people since mid to late December. I just don't have the urge to get on the phone and chat anymore. When I drove down to North Carolina from Chicago, everything changed. I'm still here in North Carolina because my vision got so bad I just couldn't see well enough to drive back. And I still haven't talked to many people. Other than logistics, there's really nothing to discuss with folks. Now I'm not some cantankerous old man who is upset and angry about losing his eyesight, I'm just an average dude who really doesn't need to hear about or discuss anything right now. People seem to have forgotten how to have regular conversation with me, like I'm a pariah or something. Fuck your sympathy! If you're not a surgeon or a specialist, then we really have nothing to discuss.
So I stopped talking on the phone. Stop messaging people. I don't send nor do I receive many text messages. I speak to my god sister in Nashville, my sponsor from Chicago who is driving me up next week, my mother maybe once a week or so, my dad maybe once or twice a month and that's about it.
Now I have shared a text with a couple of my blogger friends and someone special out of Atlanta recently, but to be honest with you it's not a whole lot of chatter going on. I don't plan on poking my head out of my ostrich hole and don't plan to go out to do stuff when I get back to Chicago. I think I'll just keep to myself. Like I said, I'm not angry or anything, I'm just maintaining. I'm just trying to stay with myself by myself and for myself. I think this'll help me recover and from what I hear, it may take up to eight months to a year for me to recover from all of the surgeries that I need to have on my eyes. So I look at things a little bit differently, and I just plan on going at this recovery thing alone, stay in the house and maintain until things get better. I really don't feel the need to be social.
Now I do plan to shoot some video, blog and take pictures to put as much information about the retinal surgery proceedure here on the blog. I think I have to let folks know what people have to go through that have retinal problems. I will do the best I can to try to chronicle as much as I can to my tolerance. It's a little difficult for me right now because I have to make a visual review of what I speak into either my tablet on my desktop computer and sometimes I just don't have the wherewithal to see the small letters and text, so I'll do the best I can.
I'll be at a retinal specialist's office here in North Carolina Monday morning very early. I don't plan on making any videos or anything for that particular visit, but I will take some pictures and I will let you guys know what happened. Until that time, you just try to have a good weekend and I will toughen up and get my ass to the office and see what happens from there.
Just as quickly as I set out to make a blog post the other day, I feel like at this particular point, I've already run out of things to say. I mean, I'm doing well… Well, well enough to be doing this, I feel like I could be doing more. As a matter of fact I want to do more but I just can't to be honest. It feels like its been a long process even though I had a hemorrhage in my left eye on December 28. It feels like it's been a year for that matter, but I maintain.
Yeah, on the last week of last year I had what's considered an 'eye stroke'. I had a massive hemorrhage - A blood vessel burst in my left eye. Now I have tiny hemorrhages in my right eye and I can halfway see out of my right but most of the vision is gone out of my left. It actually happened when I was sleep. I was preparing to make a drive to North Carolina to spend the new year with special people and special friends. When I woke up, I felt like I had some sort of epiphany or some real deep, meaningful dream that I just couldn't remember. I brushed it off, and got myself to get ready to go.
I drove all the way to North Carolina with a white film type substance over my left eye. I just couldn't shake that filminess. I was able to safely navigate the road, but it bothered me that I couldn't shake this film. Now I do have a pair of Blue Blocker type glasses that I bought a truck stop some years ago that wrap around my current prescription lenses and when I put that on during the daytime, everything turned out fine. It really didn't hit me that something was wrong to a point where particular points of damage was done until I just couldn't see anything right around the second week of January.
So of course I ended up at an ophthalmologist's office. They did digital imaging, scanned my eyes and went deep inside and took a lot of pictures. What we saw was very very discouraging to me. There is about 75% of my left eye basically soaking in blood. The hemorrhage broke and over the period of a couple weeks the eye pretty much filled up with blood. As far as the right is concerned, basically there are tiny hemorrhages and a little blood there, so they do have to go in to remove blood from the right eye as well. It looks like I'm going to need laser surgery to close up the hemorrhaging bleeding points. I'm not happy about this, but it needs to be done.
It looks like it's going to take a series of surgeries to correct all of my problems in both eyes. The part that really messes me up isn't the fact that it'll take eight months to a year to recover fully from all of these surgeries. It looks like I have to get over the fact that they're going to take instruments and put them into the eyeball itself to vacuum out the bad blood and then insert another smaller instrument with the laser beam thingee to close up the hemorrhage points. That's a lot for man to take to know that they're going to stick instruments his eyeballs. And did I mention that people don't know what to do with themselves around me? I am NOT an invalid. I don't need 'help', but I digress...
I got to do what I got to do.
Oh and I'm headed back to Chicago this weekend to set up shop, get a new place and to be centrally located close to my surgeons, support system and the VA hospital so that should be fun. Another road trip but this time I'm not driving.
ROAD TRIP!!!
I will be filming this... Hell, I can't see much, but I can aim and shoot. Gotta chronicle all of this stuff for future review. Plus, my life is a mess right now, might as well share it with the world.
I wish I could state something different, but my fight took a hard left turn and now I fight blindness. There was a physical incident late December that could affect how I live the rest of my life. Yes, I'm in physical trouble, but I'm not worried. I let go way before these problems got worse.
Or maybe this is my 'blessing'?
Eh, who knows. Just know that I'm fine and now that I finally gave in, purchased and learned to use voice recognition software (Flex T9 for Android, Mac Speech Dictate and Dragon Naturally Speaking for PC), I should be here more often. I want to blog about this process, diabetes and retinopathy. I believe it's important.
I refuse to suffer in silence, and if I can provide insight for some and information for others with my condition, or scare the hell out of some folk that just can't seem to do right, then... Let the chronicle begin.
More later. It's damn near 5am and I could be getting some sleep and not disturbing the downstairs neighbor. Speech recognition, remember?
I was assisting my brother with making a supply run for his delivery company. He called me over a month ago and asked if I could help him with streamlining and modernizing his business for added profitability. I initially balked at helping him because he uses people and never reciprocates. That and plus we never got along.
We are polar opposites, I went to the military and school to educate myself on dealing with the world, my brother dropped out of high school and started hustling on the street. He became well known for his successes and has a large crew, I was known for my successes and power moves in the blue collar, then the corporate setting and by both main street and mean street standards, we both did exceptionally well.
He owns a delivery company that started out as a hustle about 6 years ago and he needs help to stay relevant and is overwhelmed and needs to expand. My younger siblings won't look in his direction because my older brother is straight gully with his shit. he is the epitome of 'ghetto'. He has ambition and good business sense, but he's absolutely the wrong cat to bring to a corporate setting for meetings and such. So he calls about six weeks ago and tells me that since half the company is mine, he could use me as the corporate face. He knows his limitations and understands that with my acumen used on the suit side, he can stay on the boot side and do his thing as I do mine, both of us enhancing the company profile.
I reluctantly decide to help his ass, and for three days, our travels to client sites, meetings and heavy work on deliveries and supply runs became nothing but shouting matches, disagreements and ended with me putting his ass out of my car on the way to a huge client supply pick up.
We argued over two dollars.
You see, he has a new employee (3 months in) that makes food deliveries for a string of Chinese joints in which he delivers the food timely, collects payment from the customer, gets in his vehicle and just rides off. he never speaks of change or gives change to the end customer. So the owner of the restaurants, Mrs. Kim calls and my brother puts her on speaker. She's irate as hell, shouting and cussing that this individual never gives her customers their proper change and this is a make or break habit he has to break or she's switching services. I immediately explain to my brother after the call that we must enforce a zero tolerance policy and release this man from his contract. He balks. He also made excuses for the driver to Mrs. Kim and then he insulted and irritated the FUCK out of me by calling the driver, apologizing to him for the inconvenience and stated "Aye, you cool, get that money man, I didn't think that lady would trip over two dollars man."
What.the.Fuck?
My brother has balked at every single suggestion made to either improve or enhance his business. He fussed, cussed, questioned my sanity, manhood and education whenever I made any critique or suggestion. He got gully with me, so I got gully with his ass. I let him know what time it was and how i absolutely cannot deal with unscrupulous business practices as the law. I questioned his integrity after he basically said 'fuck the customer, I need to get paid' He also confided in me that he doesn't know what integrity is. This negro done lost his muthafuckin mind!
SIDEBAR: We never got along as kids. We tried to kill each other on various occasions. We had a serious Spy vs Spy, I'm gon' kill your ass thing that went on for years. We never lost touch, but purposely kept out of each other's way since 1992 or 1993.
So I said my piece and we ended out night rescuing the thief of a driver because he couldn't finish his route because he ran out of gas. My brother grabbed money out of his own pocket and used my gas can to get dude about a quarter tank of gas. Never asked for reimbursement. Even fronted on me jokingly to this cat on how I've been gone from Chicago for 14 years and how I don't know the street system. This cat is only 16 months older than me, and other than my travels in the military, vacations, corporate training, me 'dragging' my ex across the country inconveniencing her by trying to establish a home base and make new opportunities for us to become a family as well as me me trucking across the highways of America, Chicago has always been my home.
This muthafucker...
So this morning on the supply run, he brings the shit back up. So I asked him: "in this moment, can I be replaced?" He said no, but in the same breath, he said that since thieving driver dude makes him over a thousand bucks a week, he would rather keep him on than to have me around at all because all I've done in the past few days is take from him.
I pulled the car over, unbuckled my seat belt and calmly told him to get the fuck out of my car. He started talking again, so I reiterated my position and asked him to un-ass my vehicle or there was going to be a problem. He stated that he didn't want a problem, got out, and I went on my merry way. I hope to GOD that i never see his ass ever again in my natural life. I could probably tolerate his ass at a funeral or something, but other than that...
So I'm cruising thru the Delta Quadrant in my C class spaceship the other day... Or was it night? I get stardates mixed up these days.
I see this black hole forming on my long range sensors. my droid assistant is going all 'DANGER WILL ROBINSON' batshit crazy about keeping my course set in that direction. I'm calm and in newly minted deep thought because I'm thinking to myself: what can possibly happen if I get caught up in that implosion? There has to be something on the other side of time and space intertwining into nothingness, right?
I have a right to check these sort of things out... Don't I?
Well after asking my on board computers to calculate the possibility of the ship and I becoming anti-matter if we get sucked into and become inanimate intergalactic trash, I decided to have the sensors zoom in, record the phenomenon onto the hard drive so I could watch it later. I need to see how close I could get to one of those things. I marvel at and wonder about what happens if I could survive the force and anti forces and get to the other side of a black hole. I personally think they are wormholes to inner space.
My gut tells me that there is more to all of this than just... THIS. Maybe I'll meet God.
I wish I could overstand things further.
I am bored. This much travel from Mother Earth has made me long to be back on the lakefront on the south side of Chicago, watching the sisters in the lycra outfits get fit to rhythms only they can hear and the joggers and bikers navigate the trails and paved and painted paths while enjoying the gentle lake breezes and sunshine. But I chose this. Hyperspace travel puts me too far to turn around. It's just me, a one man travel cruiser and a pretty decent food replicator heading to a planet we think has humanoid life and resources similar to ours.
I'm all by myself. Well, I have a droid and his humor is dry. He's a fucking droid, so...
All I need is the simple food generated and water formed from the moisture space provides. I have terabytes of data, entertainment and recorded memories loaded onto a cache of indestructible hard drives that I occasionally view to keep me grounded, to keep me... Human. I'm not supposed to be here, but after realizing that Earth had nothing to offer me in a mate, children or family that actually give a damn, the selection process unsnagged itself when I just plainly volunteered and signed all of the waivers.
So now I float thru deep space, chasing a signal that probably isn't one. The day we received coherent transmission from someone not of our own kind, we felt the need to respond. initially, we couldn't track the direction of the signal and remained skeptical of a frequency that seemed copied and sent from somewhere out of nowhere, but the world's collective space programs quickly put together a exploration program and needed someone to man the craft in following through to have first contact with extra-terrestrial life not of our galaxy. I wanted to go. I wanted to see how much my body and mind could take being alone in the vacuum of space.
Human contact had boycotted and then left me years before I went thru the training program. My commander referred to me as one 'of the droids' in drafting the mission plan he submitted to the powers that be. i was approved unanimously to go. I was thought of as the perfect subject for the Earth to lose.
I'm not insulted.
So now my 'days' begin with some bland tasting nutritional goo and kinetic movement. I create a morning brief via webcam from various angles to display my physical readiness for the mission and give the ship's condition and fuel levels to send backward to command. I receive transmissions of the goings on of the world about six weeks late from current time, and it gets later the more I travel towards the designated spot offered by the unknown alien committee. They now prepare my briefs on news, sports and pop culture in the old Movietime News format for a change of pace. Also added are female correspondents wearing low cut tops to keep me on my mental toes. Tit shots in space... Not bad. I manage though. Like I didn't bring a stash of my own porn. They say out here in space, no one can hear you scream. Very true.
Managing the ship's operations on the mission is the least of my concerns. Command made the vehicle easy to operate by incorporating a lot of 'driving' features which helps navigation by familiarization. The unit is solar powered and also has some nasty nuclear stuff at its core to make it travel faster than jet propulsion could ever push me. The five years I've been confined to the ship without space station porting actually feels like three. At some points, I've encountered turbulence that I thought would engulf me and rattle the ship to its core, but I survive and this little thing just pushes on.
The ship has four levels with a lounge and 'entertainment area' that I can retire to to observe incoming transmissions, any of the many movies, concerts and sporting events I have stashed away or family memories recorded for me. It helps to have space. It hurts to watch my nephews and nieces get grown and accomplish teen and adulthood without my hand.
The reason I get my dates and times mixed up is because I try to memorize the history script as I try to put the ways of the world out of my head. Cheeseburgers, politics and shit. Relationships. People irking the shit out of you. What to wear to a wedding. Hailing a taxi. The clog in the kitchen sink. Stepping in dog shit. I know we all must die, but to know that the world still turns, the stock market churns either with or against our economy and the White Sox still play ball games without me physically being on the planner but am still alive kills my spirit.
I have no idea what I'm getting into. Some think that the signal sent is no signal at all. Others think it's a trap. There are a chosen few that say that God Herself spoke to us in that transmission. Either way, we ended up building a long term travel vessel that I'm utilizing to go to where they've requested us to go. We have no knowledge of the way of life, features or intent of these beings deity or not, but because I deemed my life on Earth useless, I decided that my eyes should be the first to view either the friend or foe from the other side of the universe. We have time capsules for them chronicling all of our planet's history, research and triumphs.
There is also a presentation from the world league and our president, who was deemed to speak for the world with China's leader selected as second voice. We're assuming by the sophisticated nature of the transmission received that they are able to understand us. I also have monologue to recite in our extension of open arms, peace and good will.
I'm not afraid. I've studied the map and at least in the eye of danger or death will know where I end. I have no idea where this either begins or ends. I'll be on this ship traveling east towards the actual edges of the fringe of the universe to meet something I know not of what the outcome becomes. But I was the only one without reservation... A recycled piece of trash being used as a possible conduit to the other side of the immeasurable vast thing that we call space. If these beings don't want me, then my theory is confirmed.
Unwanted is unwanted, even in service to the damn universe. C'mon ship, hurl me to the unknown. I'm ready to get this over with. I'd shit a brick if they reveal themselves as little green men with big melon heads. I need a good joke right now anyway. The droid is dry, corny and has no timing.
So I talked to my dad yesterday evening. He's not doing as well I expected. He keeps showing up at the emergency room with various ails and I know that this is his way of asking for someone on his medical staff to do something.
His heart rate is very low and they've suggested a pacemaker. Thing is, he's on so much stuff chemically that they probably can't do anything at this moment if they wanted to. He's pushing for the pacemaker as well because he knows (and feels) that the drugs are dragging him down, making him lethargic. Pops is an active guy. Hell, he's only 61. He also mentioned a few things that have the holistic healer in me angry as hell because he's still repping cheeseburgers as a way of life.
So we're knee deep in conversation and I'm quizzing him on his green leaf and water intake to which he answers 'Well I need to lose some of this weight and do like you said and get on my greens because I'm having a hard time moving around, you know?' Yeah, I know. The motivation to get off of dairy and red meat is there, and it looks good in theory, but let me at least finish this cheeseburger my wife made me and we'll discuss further after dinner. Honey, pass the milk.
I love my Pops, but...
Every time I think about or talk to both sets of my parents, I keep seeing the Tony Todd Coroner character from the Final Destination series:
Dammit! He's talking to me and I know he's right too.
So what about this whole 'calling' thing I mentioned the other day?
Well, I feel that I need to use myself as the example in gaining success and in getting healthy enough to want to sit down with folk face to face and possibly influence them with my story. Nothing more or less than that, no dogma involved, no hard pitch sales job on either a product or a service. I just want to show people that one can heal from various ills whether they be physical, mental or spiritual, and where there is no real formula developed that's what I want to show... That there is no formula!
Now I am back in student mode with an accredited healing institute paring what I've already learned and experienced academically and living thirteen years with diabetes/chronic kidney disease with what I'm learning now about holistic healing and its applied practices, and currently I can't tell you nothing but... I'm experiencing better results clinically by letting go of tradition that I ever have with the various teams of doctors and clinicians I've assembled over the years. And it goes beyond prescription medicine and a pill bottle discipline.
I just feel that if as long as I use myself as the example that my family and friends will probably take a bit of what I'm doing and will follow suit. I have a long way to go before I complete the educational and practical part of becoming a Holistic Health Practitioner, but just the practice on myself is enough to possibly motivate my parentals to want to emulate what I do and want to live.
Talking to my Pops the other night brought me down a bit. I was watching a webcast of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue rip a venue I frequent a lot in NOLA called Tipitina's to shreds in anticipation of the new album he just dropped yesterday.
click the link, go get that
I could hear the defeat in his voice.
There was a sense of give in my mother's voice when I spoke to her last week as well. I think that they feel as if they aren't working or taking care of kids or grand kids that they have no worth and there is nothing further to do. like they have served their primary function and purpose.
In America we are culturally conditioned to believe that all things white are superior and all things black are inferior. And the manifestation of that cultural conditioning is that African Americans are undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized
My parents and their spouses have lived their lives in service to their children, their extended families and the community in service via employment, and have lived their lives thinking that there was nothing more to life other than being these things to these people. And even though my father has 26 plus years on the job and my mother has over 20 on hers, they feel as if there is no reward or additional meanings for life beyond their kids getting grown and moving out of the house and them reaching the age of retirement.
And because they are so bound to tradition, religion and the forced adaptation and integration to society at society's level and not their own...
There is no motivation to move off of fast food, traditional soul food dishes that rob them of their vitality and to keep the tune in the pocket when it comes to travel, exercise and meaningful purpose in being an elder in society. I want to help them unlearn this bad practice and let them know that there is so much more to life and living in America for them than to just just give up, wilt away and die.
It seems that society hasn't much need for African American elders. Hell, the Tea Party debates the other proved that certain folk would just let a 30 year old working man with no insurance just die if he didn't have coverage.
I may be too late. For them.
But I'll die trying. For them.
For you, dear reader... I'll continue to try to live the example and show you as well.
Now my shit ain't perfect. I will fall and fall off the wagon. I will get angry and probably head out for a three piece dark with mild sauce and fries on the side until I realize halfway to the Popeye's that it makes my legs go numb and tingle and that my lower back and kidneys will ache for damn near twelve hours and I'll be blind for four. As a matter of fact, my shit smells remarkably like...
Shit.
But I am willing to live and show you my shit. Not literally. I'm talking about my actions (and inaction for that matter). Thank God there is no such thing as smellivision.
Uniquely talented, but highly reserved. In love with Hip Hop and its related subcultures to the point where I haven't had any children. A picture snapper, budding wordsmith and a retired emcee that replaced the urge to rhyme in ciphers with the spoken word. Newly minted adventurer.
