Nose Bleed Fears

The weather has been crappy these last few days. My nostrils are drying than an old woman’s cunt (I’ve always wanted to say that, by the way). This leaves me in constant fear every time my nose begins to drip. I quickly hold my hand over it, and then check if the fluid’s clear of it’s red.

Just a moment ago, something fell out of my nose. Gross, I know, but it wasn’t liquid. I grabbed a tissue and swiped it up from the floor and notice it was both green (gross, I know) and red. Fuck, early signs. Other early signs? About two or so weeks ago, Philosopher and I were at Barnes and I suddenly got a whiff of blood - the iron scent that chills my spine.

Most people get nose bleeds every so often, or whenever they can’t avoid shoving a finger or three up their nostrils. Mine, however, are caused with humidity rises or the air becomes awfully dry - thank goodness I live in the butt fuck of South Texas, right? And not to mention around Spring/Summer time when my allergies are at their worse. So I bleed, but because I’m blessed with such thin blood and a weak body that doesn’t heal so quickly, I really just gush out blood. Stream actually, like those lawn ornaments that piss water from their peckers, only my hose is shoved up my nose (thank you John Travolta!).

I had my last nose bleed about a year ago. The fucker gushed like you wouldn’t believed and I was in class when it happened. The weather was cooler - I know because I was wearing a jacket and the sleeve was soaked in blood by the time I got into the stall. I whirled the toilet paper and grabbed me a gob of it. I let it bleed in there for a while and sat still on the seat - yes, I checked if there was piss first. After a while I decided that the bleeding had stopped so I grabbed more toilet paper and blew my nose. This time, a gob of red goo had flung out of my nose and into the red stained paper. It was gross and it started more bleeding. I let it flow into the paper again and then blew my nose, this time being careful not to allow more gobs of goo out.

Later that week, my nose started bleeding again - nothing out of the ordinary because I’ve been bleeding like this since I was a kid. This time, I became weak because there just was so much blood coming out of my nose that it made me dizzy - Note: I wasn’t dizzy because I lost pints of blood (it was probably a cup or so) but because it seemed I would never stop bleeding. I wiped my nose, felt that I still had more blood to lose and placed a tissue into my nostril. When I felt it stop, I pulled the tissue out slowly, and lo and behold, another gob of goo, this time, still connected to me. As I pulled out the clot - I’m not sure what to call it - I felt it coming from deep up my nose. Oh great, that’s all I needed to know, my brain was really trying to escape.*

I bleed some more and then it stopped. I began to fear that the nose bleeds had finally taken on another level and were now trying to end me. My father suffered from nose bleeds like I did and the only way to correct it was through surgery. I’m afraid my pour nose will have to endure that.

*This refers to a short story (Bizarro) about my brain escaping. If you’re good, I’ll post it up, or at least a video of me reading it.

Sleep to be Awoken

My father, the man who never had a role in my life, the stranger in the crowd, a phantom of a man, was an alcoholic and, so, by natural psychology, I am at risk of being one. I don’t drink. Never have and I don’t want to. It’s the only goal in my life that I’ve the pleasure to announce I’ve kept. When I was a teen, I never wanted to drink illegally. As an adult, I am the sober man at the party, the loner, the unfunny one, lifeless and devoted to his sobriety. It shocks people to find this out. I’m sure some of you are staring at the screen with uplifted eyebrow questioning my honesty. In fact, the only alcohol I’ve consumed is always a part of a recipe, and never out of a bottle.

This probably puts a lot of people who have read my stories to question them. All my characters drink. They hang out at bars and grow drunk, hating society, becoming shadow men incapable of loving. They drink to regain a certain ease with themselves. To become happier than they have ever been. But it is fiction. The accounts of the characters are neither myself or anyone I know.

And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling “Make it go away!”
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered “How can you do this to me?”

I lost my cousin to his addiction to alcohol. New Year’s Eve 2003 I went to bed. I woke up in 2004 to hear from my mother my cousin was dead. The medics said he didn’t feel pain. That his neck was snapped the moment he collided with the object he crashed into. The wreck was so bad that his legs had to be amputated. He was cremated, his ashes somewhere, forgotten.

At times, I still find myself thinking he’s not dead. I never saw a body. Never seen the evidence of his death. When I see a chubby guy with a scruff beard, I still think he’s around. I think it’s the guilt of knowing that I was the one that expressed that he wasn’t welcomed in my mother’s home anymore. I wonder if things would be different had I not said that. Would he still be alive?

When Teddy died in 2001, I think I was a little distraught. No one I knew had ever died before, not a friend and never someone my own age. I was in my BCIS class when the announcement that Teddy had not made it. He’d been in a coma for some time and was struggling to live through. I think that was the first funeral I ever attended where I felt this coldness growing in me. From that moment on, I never wanted to be associated with the substance.

I canceled all my friends who were drunks. I promised never to grow to close to them. So when I found out my girlfriend at the time favored the drink, I was distraught. Despite the fact that we probably weren’t made for each other, the one thing that was a constant for me was her passion for the drink. I didn’t want to stand around and watch someone fall into that trap, confusing alcohol for happiness.

Addiction’s held you back
But you don’t care
Cause you’re on a high again
And it’s not fair
Consuming alcohol
While I gotta drive
Take a hit from the drugs you stole
And try to survive

Since your life was over
You haven’t yet been sober
You have held me back so long
Everything you do is wrong

My brother, the middle child, named after my father, following in his footsteps, is also an alcoholic. I’ve seen him in and out of the system since I was a kid. And while I love my brother, I have absolute no respect for him. He’s wasting his life on the bottle. He’s a rotting mess. It depresses me that I don’t know how to talk to him, or what I can say to make this disease leave his body.

And the saddest part of the story is that my brother is painfully aware of his condition but refuses to do anything about it. Alcoholism, like all addictions, is an ongoing battle between the alcoholic and the substance. I’m sure my brother feels like he’s losing his, which was made clear to me when he asked me to kick his ass if he was ever a bad father - he told me this at 7:00 am as he and his friend were still up drinking from the night before. I told him I didn’t have the time and I’ll deal with him after school.

You are one of God’s mistakes.
You crying, tragic waste of skin.
I’m well aware of how it aches,
And you still won’t let me in.
Now I’m breaking down your door,
To try and save your swollen face.
No, I don’t like you anymore
You lying, trying waste of space.

Now I sit here and stare at this screen thinking how I came to this point. After swearing never to care about people who might be headed down the path of a bad addiction, I find myself compelled to take care of a certain person. As I told this person, I don’t want to be up at night fearing that the phone call will be someone telling me of their death. I worry enough about my brother, I don’t need to worry more about someone else.

I just hope that this person seeks comfort in something else instead of drink. That drinking shouldn’t be for the buzz. This, of all things, is now bringing me closer the edge than I have before.

I tried to help you once
Against my own advice
I saw you going down
But you never realized
That you’re drowning in the water
So I offered you my hand
Compassions in my nature
Tonight is our last stand

I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And our scars remind us that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel

Getting Healthy

I’m not sure, but I think it’s physically impossible for my writer’s body–you know the stereotype body of one who makes a living, or at least attempts to make a living with writing: the Hemingway body, the nice packed flesh that is common with one who sits around and researches and doesn’t have a healthy diet, not that Hemingway was unhealthy - to bend in the way the Yoga lady and the Yoga man asks of me. I’m doing instructional videos, rather than dishing out the cash to take a course. Why yoga? I dunno, of all the calming physical activities that one can do - now don’t let the stereotype lead you to believe that yoga is 100% sweat free, when Darsow had us doing the Salute to the Sun stance, it was straining. I remember a bead of sweat dropping from my nose down to the wooden, supposedly waxed floor, puddling there as a warning - If you’re sweating from here, so are your hands. Not to mention that this piece of exercise, if you wish to call it that or not is up to you, also brought back a high school injury that I’m too ashamed to talk about here.

So in the aftermath of my shoulder pain, and the panic attacks, insomnia, lack of energy, overeating, weight gain, a lot of spare time due to not being employed, the headaches, the heavy breathing, the fact that I can’t move too long without feeling overwhelmed, the shitty foods I’ve been shoveling into my body, the lack of judgment - “but that cheeseburger really looks better than the salad I have at home” -, the fact that I mainly sit here reading article after article, blog after blog, book after book, laying in my bed, watching TV, the only exercise I’m doing is walking to get the mail, I have realized I’m not the healthiest of people. In fact, I’m probably heading straight for a disastrous road of being completely 100% All-American, with more than enough belly fat jutting out in front of me, limper than a 100 year old penis, sloshing around in front of me, my thighs the size of cannons, rubbing up against each other making that wonderful music most of us snicker at when we see them pass by. I always said that most of those overweight people brought it upon themselves and I have to say I’m no different than that. We’re an unhealthy people. And I’ve got two strikes against me because I’m a Hispanic, a Tejano, a Mexican-American, and well, those of us in South Texas (and I only speak for us, and not for Hispanics of Mexican descent as a whole) have three staples in our diets: Cheese, grease and, damn, I forget the third one….tortillas?

The fact that I’m an Americanized Mexican-American, so I’m pretty much looking at a horrible future if I continue down this road. I’ve done the dieting thing in the past, but stress and income always come to play. Healthy foods don’t come cheap. I was on the Abs Diet last year. Of all the diets I’ve tried, it was the only one that didn’t leave me hungry. In fact, I ate more foods (most of which I normally didn’t eat) and found myself, paired up with exercise, losing weight wonderfully. But then the summer ended and school began again, and I found myself even more overwhelmed than I had been in the Spring, solely because I wanted to leave my mark with Sigma Tau Delta. I ate and ate and ate some more. Stuffing my face while “studying” and “planning” agendas. It’s my fault, really. I’m not trying to blame stress and other forces because it was always in my control.

Now with school gone, jobless, thinking about the world that we live in, I’m confused about what I’m supposed to do. Now the weight isn’t coming off by itself and I’m finding it harder and harder to move around. Damn, have I become so fat that a few steps around the new Best Buy will drain me of energy, having me stop to catch my breath. I know with age comes difficulties, but I’m only turning twenty-five. So I decided, after finding out it was just my muscles turning against me rather than my heart, that I was going to stay healthy. I was going to eat smaller portions of better foods. I am going to divide my plate into three sections, on third will be my meat and side dish portion (fish, chicken, pork, beef, etc. on a bed of rice, noodles, etc.) and the other two thirds will be made up of veggies, both raw and boil.

Wish me luck as I now make my way into the world of better living. And if you have any tips for me, recipes, websites, healthy meal planning, workouts, etc. please tell me, link me websites, give me your confessionals. I’m working at square one here.

Insomnia

Sleep has discarded me like an old lover, leaving me without a bed to rest my tired body upon. I suppose it’s all for the best. My brain is slowing down and I should be asleep soon, but it’s hitting 8:00am and I’m due to wake up 30 minutes later.

I suffered, suffer, am suffering, from insomnia for quite some time now. Ever since 2001 and I know it’s cliche, but shortly after 9/11. I don’t know what happened, but I think it had a lot to do with the relationship I was in at the time. The emotional drainage she was put my brain in a mess that I haven’t yet recovered from. I know that sounded corny and stupid, but I have no other history of sleeplessness until her.

Anyway, insomnia leads me to the internet surfing, and unlike most men my age, I don’t go looking for porn, or porn related things. Instead, I go looking for the literature aspects of the internet, finding old and public domain books to read. However, this night was different. This night I came across this: Safe For Work Porn. Now forgive me if I’m a little late on this. My pulse is nowhere near the wrist of the blogging world, but SFW Porn is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. If you haven’t seen it, then I urge you to look it up.

I’d like to continue writing this for you, and telling you everything I found that was hilarious, but I think an old lover is calling me to my bed. I doubt she’ll be gentle. The day has just begun.

I got a good heart, he says

Thank you for the advice, bossingjonathan. I think exercise is what I’m going to aim for now. Walking always made me feel good. I got the pain after posting a message to bossingjonathan so I went to the hospital, opting for the night clinic which checked my heart and told me it was probably still a muscle thing, but nothing strained or pulled. I don’t have to the take the medication anymore, so that’s great.

They did an EKG on me and all was well with my heart. I still need to call in for my blood work to see how that came through. Anyway, thank you people who worried with me and passed over your wisdom for my situation–well, bossingjonathan was the only one.

Assurance

I’ve fallen sick. The tightness in my arm was too much for me to take. I went to the doctor and he gave me pills. So forgive me if I sound like I’m under the influence of something, but I am.

I have a few drafts of blogs saved here. “Reading in South Texas,” and “Holiday Catholics.” Apparently, I also have on entitled “In Response to Russ,” who made a comment on my first post here. It’s unlikely that one will make it to be posted.

I’m not sure what’s going to on with me. I took the pills and I’m drowsy. The doctor said it might be a muscle thing, so he prescribed me these muscle relaxers, but for all I know they’re placebos. However, they knocked me out of for an hour and I think I’m going back to bed soon. I have a blood test scheduled tomorrow, though I’m not really scheduled as it is strictly walk in and it’s only $25 to get. This just means, I’m getting a $275 discount.

I need to know if this is a serious thing or if I can let it go already and find something else to complain about. Every time I get the tightness, I begin to panic, which makes it worse. I’m not sure if it’s part of the symptoms of whatever I have, or if it’s my anxiety of something could be seriously wrong with me. Without insurance, I’m pretty much screwed with today’s bill and the follow up’s bill. I need a job and some cheap insurance.

Sorry, but that’s all I have for you guys.

Worried

Again, I experienced a tightness in my left shoulder, armpit. It’s not like a heart attack–I’ve read the descriptions–but more like a stroke. A small stroke. I didn’t feel weird other than the tightening around the area and the scared feeling I get–the sudden rush of heat throughout my body when I begin to panic. After more research, it can also be caused by stress and anxiety. Cholesterol comes to mind, but last year, when I got my blood work done, I came out way below the average level. Doctor told me that I might be able to get it up, but I should at least try–apparently not only does high cholesterol cause–ahem–”man problems,” but so does low cholesterol. I guess I must suck up pride and call my father to see if he can spot me money for a doctor’s appointment. I need to check my blood and see if I’m dying.

After December’s Micturition syncope episode I’ve been a litte worried. It only happened once, but upon telling Abby and Jenn about it, they told me it can be linked to seizures (Abby, whose sister experienced it–I think) or a stroke (which Jenn linked me to a Mayo Clinic post). This just brings back those bad memories of thinking something was seriously wrong with me.

Back in October, or November, when Monica, Jyg and I went to Books ‘n’ Things, I got a tight feeling in my left arm after eating some bad soup. Last year was filled with papers, organizational duties (I was president of Sigma Tau Delta, Alpha Lambda Psi chapter) and I ignored it. I felt sick for a while, but books cure all for me. I’ve even been known to wander the bookstore with a fever.

But I didn’t experienced anything until I fainted. I walked over to the bathroom after being scared by Jyg, who managed to enter my room without sound and jumping on the bed. After our lovers’ conversation, I went to the bathroom to piss. While standing there, a sudden heat filled my body. I’ve felt it before when my body becomes shocked at my getting up too fast, so I passed it off as that. But then I started feeling really light, and my head moved back (actually, I think I did that on my own) feeling the warmth mix around my body. Next thing I know, I hear a crash and I wake up to see the piss-filled bowl before my eyes. The crash I heard was me falling onto the trash can. I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed it, but upon looking, I realized that it wasn’t at all.

I felt weak in the legs. I called out Jyg’s name and she didn’t bothered coming, or didn’t hear me. I shouted once more after managing to get up, my voice panicked and strained. She opened the bedroom door and saw me clutching the wall. I told her I had fainted. Before the incident, I had never once fainted in my life.

After that incident, in January, while walking in Kohls, I sudden felt this weird feeling. A heat wave rolling over my body and then a cold one. I recognized the changing sensation, coupled with my sudden realization of the my whereabouts, as feelings of a panic attack. Jyg and I quickly left the store and got in the car. The whole day, I had been feeling that something was awfully wrong. I couldn’t tell what.

And now today, the worse of what I felt all week, has hit me. Jyg felt bad, but I didn’t feel right telling her because I didn’t want her to worry about more things. I just need to go see a doctor’s. And while I’m not all that great with the money (as I have no job and no one seems to think I can do their work, or am over qualified for it), I also don’t have any insurance. I’m fucked, as far as I can tell.

Father came through to me when I was in the hospital after the car accident, and then for Jyg’s car part, so perhaps contacting him for money for a nice little trip to Dr. Let-met-tell-you-how-stupid-you-are. Man, I hate that fucker.

In other news, I’m reading Wonder Boys again.  It’s the first book I read by Michael Chabon–the second, and last, being The Mysteries of Pittsburgh–after I watched the movie and found out it was a book. And while I don’t like Michael Douglas, I think he did a great job as Grady Tripp.  I also own The Final Solution, but it didn’t do anything for me as those first two did.

After this book, I’m jumping into Lolita again.  I haven’t read that book in a while. I’ve got to keep my old brain ticking away before it loses all memory. I’m also dabbing into my ideas for the program I want to set up. With El Senor away, I’m afraid that it’ll be awhile before the wheels start turning.

For the moment, I’m learning how to write grants (the right way!) and getting some ideas for my next article so I can get some sort of monetary issues done with.

If any of you know of a gig I can write for, please sent it my way. We have to stick together, you know.