It’s been a few months since I last posted. Updates are in order. I spent my winter at home trying to regain my strength and mobility. I can easily transfer from the bed to the recliner and back.
I have been feeling kind of depressed. My health progress is going slow. I’m still losing weight, but my mobility is coming along slowly. My knee and ankle pains are more manageable. I still have to take Tylenol a couple times a day.
I sleep a great deal. Most nights I’m asleep by 11:30 pm and don’t wake until 8 am. And I will usually sleep two hours in the afternoon. I just feel my happiest when I sleep. I can still easily walk in my dreams.
My dreams aren’t very scary anymore. Most of my dreams are about my childhood hometown and I have the same looks and build I had in my early 20s. I guess I dream about my physical prime. Most of my dreams aren’t scary, but they don’t make much sense. And I can affect the outcome of these dreams and the dialog sometimes. Most of my dreams I play the role of the hero rather than the victim anymore. Far cry from 20 years ago.
I still have my investment and collecting hobby. I buy mostly old silver coins and bitcoin. Bitcoin is volatile enough that I don’t want to add to it, but I don’t want to cash out either.
My blood is under control. Some days it’s quite low. So the doctor is talking about reducing some of the doses. I recently took a cheek swab test to see how I was metabolizing my medications and to see which types of other meds would work well in the future. It’ll be weeks before I get the results of that test back.
My caseworker and my parents are trying to get me into a long-term care facility. I really don’t want to go back to one of those. I despise the idea of losing my freedom and finances. I just as well be sent to prison as far as I’m concerned.
I live in a house with no stairs. But the doors aren’t wide enough for a wheelchair. Any suggestions I make to widen the doors fall on deaf ears. It burns me that I still have all of my intelligence but might still have to go to a long-term care facility because of lack of handicap access.
I would like to get a home health aide that comes in once a day to help with things. I had to fire my cleaning lady a few months because she wanted me to sign off on her billing her company for time she didn’t work. Can you say disability fraud? Glad I got rid of her.
I watch a lot of videos and news programs talking about the possibility of humanoid robot assistants becoming available to the public within a few years. Yet about the only people who don’t think I’m totally full of crap when I talk about this are some friends online and my older brother.
My thinking is that I hold on for a few more years and get a home health robot to help around the house since none seem to be available for me. Hell, it took a miracle for me to get onto a service where a doctor comes to see me in my house every six weeks. We found out about this, not through my case workers, but from a friend in my mom’s church.
I’m afraid that I will get sent off to a nursing home due to lack of mobility, lose my freedom, lose my money, and lose the family house just right before EVERYTHING changes with home robots, automation, AI, improved personalized healthcare, and possibly even Medicare for All.
One thing I despise about being on disability is that my earnings are limited before I’m totally thrown out of the system. And since the USA refuses to act like a civilized nation and institute Universal Healthcare, I’m stuck in poverty just so I can get my treatments. And I’m damn sick of it.
I lived in a long-term care facility once for eight months. Hated damn near every second of it. Had no freedom. Had no privacy. I was chastised for not socializing with the other residents even though most were senile and or nearly deaf. The only thing worse would have being in prison.
I don’t really tell my parents how much I despise the idea of going to a home. In the first damn place, I don’t think I would need one if the house was more wheelchair accessible. But they won’t entertain the thoughts of making the house more wheelchair accessible. All they would have to do is widen the doors to my bedroom, the bathroom, the front door, and the back door.
As far as transportation goes, that is being solved already in spite of the run around I get from social services. My brother bought a Tesla with self-driving capabilities back in the spring. Just the other day he and my niece had to go to Kansas City (which is about six hours from our town). During the trip up and trip back, the car did over 98 percent of the driving on autopilot. I was calling this almost ten years ago. Now it’s pretty well mainstream.
I had a car accident in late 2015 that really screwed up my back and knees. I was talking about how nice self-driving cars would be when they become available. I remember one of my Facebook “friends” said, and I quote, “It will be a cold day in Hell before self-driving becomes a thing.” That was less than 10 years ago. Bust out the parka and long johns, because it’s getting awful damn chilly these days.
I’m seeing the same attitude towards robotics that I saw against driverless cars about 7 to 9 years ago. I have given up on trying to convince people that humanoid robot assistants will be a bigger game changer than even smart phones, military drones, or even the internet itself. Most people don’t want to listen, let alone people of my parents’ generation.
Once during the pandemic, I joked in one of my futurists’ groups on Facebook about having a goal of riding in a self-driving electric car with a robot friend, smoking a marijuana cigar, while driving past a police station before June 14, 2030 (my 50th birthday). If I can hold out for long enough to get a home help robot and I don’t get sent to a home before then, I’m going to make that dream come true, so help me God.
Even if my parents go get too impatient and send me to a nursing home before I can make my dream of robot assisted independence come true, I’m going to do everything within my power to get well enough that I can leave. If my parents don’t want to make our house wheelchair accessible, well that’s their hangups. Sucks to be elderly and not see the possibilities that probably will come by the end of the decade.
Hell, I want them to fight me on this. I want people to tell me what can and can’t be done/ I want people to throw up roadblocks. I want to be told I’m a liar and I’m full of shit. I have made an entire life of coming back from setbacks and proving people wrong. Their hatred and nay saying will just make my story telling even more interesting than it already is.
After surviving 25 years of schizophrenia, 16 years of Section 8 Housing, 3 years of congestive heart failure and being wheelchair bound, I’ve lost most of my fears. I don’t want things to be fair or easy for me. Life isn’t fair. I figured that out when that I was six years old. I figured out that life isn’t fair before I figured out Santa Claus was fake. I’ve been fighting my entire life. Why should the next few years before some major breakthroughs be any different? I have nowhere to go but up. And I’ll be damned to let even family stand in the way of my freedom and independence.
I’m having a good Christmas season so far. Got to talk with some old friends over the phone for over an hour today. She found a new job a few weeks ago that pays more than any job she ever had. Her husband (also a friend of mine) is still working 60+ hours a week as a delivery driver. They think he will try to find something in academics soon now that they aren’t living paycheck to paycheck anymore.
Our conversation covered mostly history and geopolitics. I don’t have many friends I can talk about those things with anymore. Most of my friends are having tough times with mid life crisis kind of things. I miss those conversations about history and current events. It was like being back in college, if just for only one hour.
I sleep most of the daylight hours anymore. I think part of it is depression and part of it is anemia. I’m not looking forward to probably having to go back to a long term care facility. But my mobility isn’t coming back and my house isn’t handicap accessible. My parents aren’t in good health and probably have only a few years, at best, left. Part of me all three of us won’t make it to see 2030.
It really breaks my heart to be in decline just right as things are really changing science and tech wise. I am convinced that we as a society will make more scientific progress in the next 20 years than we made in the previous 300. That is, if the politicians and voters quit screwing up.
Saw my home health nurse today. My mobility isn’t coming back like I had hoped at all. I’m still angry about physical therapy giving up on me after only one month. I’m angry that no long term care facility had a place for me.
It’s pretty damn obvious at this point that I am wheelchair bound and need accommodations. My case worker sees it. My home health nurse sees it. My doctor sees it. My parents see it. Hell, I saw it long before anyone. About the only people who are still in denial are my friends about my age. People can be awful stupid about some things.
My friends are the type of people who believe anything is probable, not possible, through positive thought and hard work. Hell, the believe if I don’t achieve mobility and good health again, it’s all my doing. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I think my friends are in denial because it would force them to reflect on their own mortality and that they aren’t young anymore. It would also force them to reflect on the fact that one can do everything right and still lose big. Sometimes things just happen for no reason. My life is a prime example of this.
Even though I don’t go out or socialize in person much anymore, I still keep busy. I was recently demonetized on Medium. No explanation and no way to appeal. Really irritated me as I was making some decent money.
In some ways, they did me a favor forcing me back into Word Press on a regular basis. Even though I haven’t been posting much over the past year or so, I was still getting a decent amount of audience. Some days I would check, and I would have 40 or so views on a single day even though I hadn’t posted in weeks. Maybe the word is getting out there.
Sure, I made more money on Medium. But I got better audiences on Word Press. But I guess nothing lasts forever. There were also a lot of complainers and whiners on Medium. I don’t miss them. First World problems in most cases. I swear people like that never had to deal with bullies and setbacks as kids.
I was bullied a lot as a kid. Ended up in several fights, most of which I lost. But I’m glad I went through it. Made me confident in my ability to survive and adapt, especially as I got older. No I didn’t enjoy it at the time. But I thank God every day I dealt with some hardship as a kid during prosperous times.
I was born in 1980 and spent most of my formative years in the 1990s. We still had the latch key kind of things. I had my freedom, like most small-town kids. And the grownups usually let the kids solve their own problems unless we got too destructive or violent. Much of that behavior would be considered child abuse these days.
Personally, I think real abuse is sheltering kids from the consequences of their actions, not teaching them how to cook or do basic repairs to household items or never letting them solve their own problems. Hitting your kids isn’t the only form of child abuse out there. I think not preparing them for adulthood and its ups and downs is every bit as abusive as punching them in the face.
In some ways I’m glad I didn’t have kids or get married. But that is mostly because of the schizophrenia. While I don’t particularly enjoy living with my elderly parents, I know I would enjoy living in a nursing home (been there, done that) or being homeless would be even worse. It’s a blow to my pride that I live with my parents after being on my own for seventeen years. But I try not to complain, at least publicly, because I know it could a lot worse.
I’ve always taken mental health seriously. Even more so now with everything changing so rapidly. I’m under no delusion that I’ll ever make enough money to support myself off writing. Vast majority of even paid writers don’t make above poverty level wages off writing alone.
I’m kind of burned out on computer games. And almost every time I try to socialize with anyone outside of immediate family, these people are in awful moods all the time. Nothing can make most people happy.
These people are going to be really unhappy in a few years when AI and automation take more and more jobs, especially since we have almost nothing for social safety nets. Rest assured; it will happen. A lot of people will eventually lose their jobs to AI and automation. I’ve been trying to tell people this for over a dozen years. About the only people who listened are my retired elderly parents and my best friend. She’s always grumpy and grouchy now, it’ll only get worse when she loses her good paying job she’s complains about almost daily.
I know it sounds like I don’t sympathize with these people whose jobs are on the robot chopping block. But you would be wrong. I lost my career and everything I worked for many years ago due to my mental illness. I did everything right; worked hard in school, stayed away from drugs, stayed away from credit cards, stayed out of trouble, etc. And I still lost everything.
Millions of people will find themselves in the same boat within several years. Not their fault a machine can probably do their jobs better than they ever could. Soon they will be cheaper too. In my case I lost my career in my twenties rather than my forties when I would have had a mortgage, a couple kids to send to college, and a retirement to save for.
In spite being surrounded by grouches, I’m looking forward to Christmas. I didn’t ask for any special gifts. I think a large dinner of spiral ham, stuffing, green bean casserole, etc. is enough of a gift. Don’t know how many Christmases I have left, but I intend to really enjoy this one. It’s just too bad that it doesn’t snow much down here in Oklahoma City.
We’re in the middle of Christmas season. Even though most people I know and hear from are in pissed off moods, I still want to celebrate. About the only people I personally know who aren’t in constant foul moods are my mom, my brother, and my home health nurse who drops in on me once a week. But, most people choose to be pissy most of time anyway. Screw them if they want to live their lives angry all the time.
My best friend of over 30 years have been in a funk ever since the pandemic. She has some bitcoin and investments that are doing well. She makes more money than the average. She essentially complains about her job, her neighbors, the politicians, etc. I dare say she’s become a bitter old hag. She’s no longer any fun to hang out with anymore. I’m thankful I don’t live in the same city as her. She’s become a buzzkill and a whiner. I’ve had it with her. I’d tell her off except that she’s enough of a grinch she’d end the friendship over that.
My dad is so hard of hearing now he can’t understand a word I say. He has to use closed captioning on his tv because his hearing is so shot. He refuses to wear hearing aids. It’s tough living in the same house as my dad and not being able to even have a conversation with him.
I’m more in the Christmas spirit this year than normal. I guess after surviving 25 years with schizophrenia, 2 rounds of congestive heart failure that should have killed me and losing most of my friends to mid-life crisis and general all-around negativity, I lost most of my fear. Most people are weak, I think.
I was recently demonetized on Medium. They offered me no explanation or means to appeal the decision. As a result, I shut down my Medium account. It was too bad as I was making some decent money for several months.
How have I been mentally? Some would argue not too well as I have made my peace with the fact that I will someday die. Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal or self harming. I have just lost most of my fear of dying. I guess a couple near death experiences and long stays in the hospital will do that.
My mobility is still limited. I put in some applications for long term care. My parents are in declining health and can do only so much. I dread the thought of losing my freedom and most of my funding. Nursing homes take almost all of your social security and disability. I also hated how no one in those facilities cares about the patients.
Since I’m probably going to a long-term facility eventually, I signed a Do Not Resituate (DNR) order. I’ll be damned to be essentially brain dead and being kept alive by machines. I saw too much of that in the eight months I lived in a long-term care facility back in Nebraska.
My blood numbers are alright. My kidney function is still off. I sleep in the recliner every night as it’s easier on my back and knees. I’ve lost some weight since getting out of the hospital two months ago.
I don’t have much planned for Christmas this year. I bought some stuff for my nephews and niece. I guess as rough as this year has been I’m not in much of a mood to celebrate. I’d say that I’m glad 2024 is over but I fear that 2025 will be worse.
For the official record, I didn’t give up on my writing. I just took a much overdue vacation.
With that out of the way, I feel the need to update my appreciated readers on what I’ve been up to in the last several weeks since I last posted.
In early September, my parents had to call an ambulance on my behalf to take me to the hospital as I was having problems breathing. At first the doctors thought I had pneumonia, but even ten days of anti-biotics didn’t do anything other than screw up my stomach and bowel movements.
With the anti-biotics not working, one of the doctors had the gall to suggest that I might have early stages leukemia. This was in spite not having extremely elevated white blood cell counts or even so much as a fever.
In short, I spent ten days in the hospital on bedrest and the hospital didn’t even figure out what was wrong with me. I am now a believer in medical misdiagnoses being a very serious problem in modern medicine.
It turns out it was merely a virus infection in my lungs. I was also having problems with retaining water due to my congestive heart failure. My swelling took place mostly in my crotch and hips. The swelling was bad enough I couldn’t wear pants the whole time I was in the hospital.
I was put on diuretics, and I must have lost over one hundred pounds of fluids when I was in the hospital. Since I was on bedrest and having serious pain in my knees from my being forcefully taken off my three times a day Tylenol routine, I had to call a nurse every time I needed to urinate.
This annoyed some of the nurses. Sometimes they didn’t get to me in time, and I ended up peeing my hospital bed. Yeah, I’m a 44-year-old man talking about wetting the bed. Major blow to my pride and ego I tell you.
After my ten days in the hospital for my not pneumonia, I was sent to physical rehab for two weeks. My God in Heaven, that was an experience.
For starters, I wasn’t able to do much of rehab because my knees were hurting so bad I couldn’t even stand for more than ten seconds at a time. I was taken off my three times a day Tylenol regiment that had worked extremely well for almost two years while in the hospital.
Due to the forced bedrest, lack of a walker or a walking cane, I couldn’t walk the whole two weeks I was at physical rehab. After being back home for a couple of weeks, I can walk in my office with a walker. I still can’t walk well enough to get to the bathroom on my own. I feel so ashamed.
I feel like I spent three weeks in the hospital, most of it probably needlessly. I did get a new c-pap machine and got off a couple blood pressure meds.
I now take only two blood pressure meds and a couple meds for congestive heart failure. Half of the time my blood pressure is still too low, I’m talking like 110 over 55. But at least I’m not in the hospital anymore. September was a damn nightmare.
I gave up on Medium a few days ago. My revenues were going down to where I was actually losing money this month. It was getting to where it was no longer enjoyable. I feel for anyone who using blogging, vlogging, social media, etc. as their primary source of income. I bet for every Mr. Beast, there’s thousands of people no one will ever hear of.
A friend of mine has been really cold and distant for the last several months. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. This isn’t her normal. I once suggested she seek medical help. She became so angry I thought she was going to end the friendship. So I let it drop. But she just gets darker and more despondent with each passing month. She has plenty of time to post memes and videos to Facebook. But she almost never responds to anyone who writes to her, not just me. Getting her to return texts is damn near impossible. And she NEVER answers her phone. Something’s definitely wrong. When she does text, it’s to complain about her job, the homeless in her city, the state of the world, etc. It was discouraging for a long time. Now it’s just irritating.
I recently got some in home health help. Through the state, I have a lady come in a couple times a week to do some cleaning, laundry, help putting away groceries, etc. We also keep each other company. She and I are getting to be kind of friends. She’s almost 60 years old and widowed. She’s been encouraging me to socialize more online. She knows I like gaming and is encouraging me to get involved in online gaming chats and forums. I don’t usually do online gaming against other people.
I started doing some online gaming against other people in free games on my PS5 like Monopoly. I bought NCAA Football 25 a couple days ago. I’m thinking about getting involved in some online tournaments. Nebraska is my favorite team. My dad is a University of Nebraska alum, as are several of my cousins. My favorite PS5 games are still Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim. I beat Cyberpunk 2077 earlier this summer. I got a second game going trying out different things. Took me two years to beat it the first time. But I didn’t play the entire time I was in physical rehab.
My brother recently bought a Tesla with self-driving capabilities. It’s mainly his wife’s commuter car. She rented a Tesla while on a business trip. Fell in love with Tesla right on the spot. My brother made a couple road trips with the Tesla. Said of the four motels he stayed out on that trip, two of them offered free charging with a night’s stay. He’s almost giddy that something like this became a reality within our lifetime. I often joke to his 13-year-old son that he won’t need to get his drivers’ license if he really doesn’t want to.
When I was still quite active on Facebook, I joked to one of my futurist groups that I wanted to ride in a self-driving EV with my robot best friend, smoking a marijuana cigar while riding past a police station on my 60th birthday. That would be in 2040. Heck, now it’s looking like that fantasy will become possible by 2030. Especially since I read an article last week stating that Tesla wants to start selling it’s Optimus humanoid robots starting in 2026. We’ve come a long way when it was just You Tube videos of cats riding on Roomba machines.
Now that my experiment with putting most of my writings on Medium has failed, I’m concentrating on longer posts on Word Press. The money was nice while it lasted.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Hi there, thank you for checking out my blog page where I write about Bipolar, adhd,bpd and ptsd which I struggle with daily. This blog is to both educate and give others hope. I also write about my drug addiction in hopes of giving other people encouragment and hope for a brighter, annd better future.Thank you. sincerly, Emily Thorn.
A Life Of Mental Illness 