RIP Style "Mr." Sillykittenz

Style passed away a few days ago, on Tuesday, April 16th, 2019. He was nearly 17 years old. One of two earthly beings keeping me alive has now gone. To say that I am crushed by this simply does not come close. It's because of the unconditional love and comfort that Style gave. He was one of a kind. He has left a huge mark, and a tremendous hole in my life. Style was suffering from transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder. He also had heart problems, kidney problems, and a recently discovered mass in his lungs which was causing him to cough. I was medicating him daily with anti-nausea medication and pepsid-AC. Every other day I was injecting him with 25mL of lactated ringer's solution. I'd been doing all this since he was diagnosed last October. This bought him an extra seven months on this planet and in my world. Sunday, almost suddenly, Style lost it. It became dreadfully apparent that he'd lost considerable weight. He was terribly weak and moved around slowly. He struggled to stand up, falling down frequently. This was all of a sudden. Just the day before he had been fine. And also, his purr had left him. He still had an appetite for food and water. He still struggled to climb into the litter box. And he fought hard to climb onto the bed to sleep next to me. I took everything out of him. I figured that maybe he had a bug or something, and he'd get over it in a day or so. That didn't pan out. He got worse. I made probably the toughest decision I've ever had to make in my life. It was painful, sad, and heartbreaking that I had to take him to the animal hospital to be euthanized. The vet also agreed that we had done all we could, and should not try to avoid the inevitable. They took Style into the back and fixed him with a catheter in one of his hind legs. Then they brought him to a private room so I could spend his last moments with him. He crawled into my lap one last time, and I held him and spoke softly to him. I apologized to him. And I thanked him for being a part of my life. I am so grateful that Style came into my life.

As I try to move onward, I see even more how much of my life is not really my own. My choices are not really mine. I spin my wheels for no good reason and to no outcome that I'd be interested in.

Finesse, Style's adopted sister is now alone, as am I. We have each other for comfort. Finesse is 19 now. She is amazing, having survived both her real brother and her adopted brother. Finesse is keeping me alive. The reality of allowing for Style's passing opens up new doors of responsibilities which I have for settling my affairs. I still have not made up a will. And I'm not sure if I care to. I really don't care about a whole lot anymore these past few days. My choices are not my own. My life is not my own. I am tired.

Disability

The latter part of 2018 was totally fucked. I have been disabled since August after sustaining a "non work-related injury" at home. Initially I was on a disability leave of absence for three months. I returned to work at the start of November thinking I was getting better. But another accident at home led me to go back on leave for another few weeks. Tonight will be my return to work after what I hope is enough time to recover. I have gotten used to a routine of life at home without working. I am used to it enough to know that there are never enough hours in the day to do what I want or need to do. It doesn't matter whether 8 or 16 of those hours are spent at work; when I am home, the time just seems to slip away. I am also being regularly blind-sided by my wife with unexpected bills that become due. This causes immeasurable stress that even the strongest elixirs can't soothe.

I have learned that I have maybe 10 to 13 years left of full time work in me. As I have gotten older, the aches and pains accumulate, rather than diminish. I have been thinking a lot about how I will survive after I retire. Thankfully, I own a house which steadily increases in value. That's one possible source of income. I have several retirement accounts including a pension, which I hope UC doesn't fuck with too much before I can collect. And then there's a glimmer of hope that social security will still be around as it is today. After running through some numbers I may have enough. Time will tell.

Anyway, it sucks to be disabled. I'm still in some pain. My doctor says I have a torn meniscus in my knee. The pain may go away on it's own. Or I may require a steroid injection directly into the knee. I don't look forward to that. But it may become necessary soon. So then I think about how much time I left on this planet: 5 years? 10? 15? Days? If I start in with the injections and get them couple times a year, then my knee will ultimately be destroyed. But will I be around and will any of that make a difference? It's really hard to say. I'm just dealing mentally with yet one more part of the body succumbing to chronic pain. Sucks to get old.

Style

 My cat, Style, is very sick.  Over the last several weeks, he has lost about 25% of his bodyweight. I’ve taken him to the vet and they’ve done bloodwork which shows that he has kidney disease, I’m not sure which stage he is in. He also has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which means that his heart is under a lot of stress. And he also seems to have some kind of a small issue visible on an ultrasound in his abdomen.  I will need to have a more thorough ultrasound performed by an internist in the next few days. Style is 16 years old. I’ve had him since he was just a tiny kitten; I fed him milk from a bottle  because his mother had abandoned him. He means the world to me.  We have a very strong and powerful connection. I find myself in a really deep depression. I curse the world that pets are mortal.  I’m going to take care of him as best as I can.  A long time ago I made a choice that I would not live much longer after my pets were gone.  But I still want both of them to have the best life has to offer, even if I don’t deserve the same for myself.  The world has been inexplicably cruel to me throughout my entire life except for Style and his sister, Finesse. They are the shining lights that give me a reason to live.  And when they’re gone, I will have nothing left to lose and no reason to live.

Kim

My neighbor, and good friend, Kim Elizabeth Pollock  passed away suddenly today. Kim and her husband Ryan became close friends of ours when we moved into our new home in Woodland Hills a couple years ago. Out of all our neighbors, they were the ones we hung out with the most. We went to many dinners together and spent a lot of time in each others homes and company. I will certainly miss Kim. And my heart goes out to Ryan, who has just lost his best friend for the last 48 years. They'd been together since they were 16 years old. Their lives had diverged a bit when they graduated high school. But they've been married for well over 25 years and have two wonderful children together. 

Kim was very easy to laugh, and was the kindest, dearest woman. She would bring us food she had cooked. She and my wife, Pam, were kind of competing back and forth in the food department. Pam was always bringing food up the hill to their house. Even preparing complete meals in their kitchen. 

Kim and Pam would go shopping together frequently. Their favorite stores were Ross, Home Goods, and even Home Depot, where they bought forests of plants and flowers together.

Pam is absolutely crushed by this. I cannot bear to hear the howling and moaning. But I must. Kim was our friend. Kim was Pam's closest friend and meant the world to her. Her passing came as a complete shock to us. We had just had Ryan and Kim over two nights ago for some coffee and nice conversation. There was no sign at all that there was anything wrong. Kim was her normal cheerful self. Ryan and Kim were the perfect couple. I am in shock.

For the last several months, Kim had been having digestive problems. She'd had a procedure at UCLA a few months ago to fix her digestive issues. Mainly, the issue was irregularity in the bowel. She had trouble pooping. She’d go for a couple days without pooping as her abdomen became distended and hardened. That problem was supposedly fixed at UCLA. But it recurred a couple months ago, and it turned out she had a growth in her colon which was creating a blockage which had to be removed. She had it taken care of at Providence Tarzana Medical Center, and was allowed to go home after nearly two weeks in the hospital. That was the end of the problem, or so we thought. I'd even asked Kim last week when we prepared dinner at their house, and she said it was all fine. Kim had some ongoing issues afterward with oozing at the wound site for her surgery. But she had a nurse coming to the house to check and change the dressing regularly.

According to Ryan today, Kim had not pooped for a couple days again, and her gut was hard, and she was in distress. The nurse did not seem to catch on that there was something dreadfully serious happening to Kim. Yesterday afternoon, Kim finally went to use the bathroom, but she was weak and passed out. Ryan called 911. The ambulance whisked her to the ER at Providence....where they waited from 7PM until 5AM before a room became available in the ICU. By that time, Kim had been intubated and was on machines. She never regained consciousness. Pam and I got word from Ryan late this morning and went to the hospital to see Kim. She was not looking very healthy at all. She was all full of lines and fluids and tubes. The RN who was attending to her was kept very busy changing fluid bags and plasma infusion bags. Her organs were already in shutdown. Her liver enzymes were critically high. She only had one kidney because she had donated the other one to her husband Ryan, who needed it after his first kidney transplant went south. I knew after hearing her ABG results that things were not looking good at all. That she was dying. But I couldn't bring myself to tell Ryan. There always has to be hope. Even when science says otherwise. But I knew this was going to be it, even though I was praying for a miracle, along with everyone else.

Kim passed away this afternoon at about 3:30PM. And we all miss her terribly. It was too sudden. We're in a quandary now of second-guessing and 20/20 hindsight, and blaming the stars for taking away such a nice, kind hearted, beautiful soul. I am writing this to help deal with my own grief and confusion. It is even more difficult for Pam, who I told to get some sleep. We are both a mess.We are there for Ryan because he's our friend. Kim and Ryan and their family are like family to us. And now we will take care of each other. It doesn't seem real at all. I need to get some rest now.

Committing Suicide

I will most likely be dead before the end of 2121. I have a tentative plan in place already. I have a few loose ends to tie up on the Homefront. I need to make an ironclad will so that the government gets nothing, and my family gets all. I need to be sure that my pets live out their full lives in comfort. Once I have those assurances, then I am free to kill myself.
I am not on any kind of psychoactive meds. I am not nutso. I am not acting on an impulse. This is something that I have thought through and through, down to the exact method of my own suicide; that, too, is foolproof, and does not involve blood, severe injury or paralysis, loud noises, or alligators. In this life, I have done most everything that I have ever wanted, and achieved most everything I have set myself to.
But there comes a time when there is really nothing more, and life has become a boring drek. Even the sunrises and sunsets all seem to blend together into a meaningless haze. I would like to have full control over how I end it. And I shall.
This isn't so much a fuck everyone else kind of thing anymore. It's more of a fulfillment of going out on top, with all my faculties intact, at a time of my own choosing. The fuck everybody else part has more to do with people's knee-jerk reactions to this kind of talk. Most always its along the lines of someone needing mental health realignment. Trust me, I have no need for that. I can think quite clearly from day to day. And this is the right path for me to take.

Losing It

I find I lose my patience a lot more easily than I used to. Which is not saying too much because I have always been impatient. I have a low tolerance for stupidity and ignorance. I have zero tolerance for stubbornness. And I have difficulty dealing with people and friends who are ignorant to the truth. A recent incident involved a missed band rehearsal by the lead singer, who made up a dumb excuse and projected his own arrogance on the rest of the band. At the last minute, while he was lounging poolside, he decided to change up the rehearsal location to one that was more convenient to him, mainly his house. His argument was simple: come rehearse at my house today or I'm not rehearsing today. So he instigated a shitstorm of text messages and ultimately totally blew us off.

It is fortunate that this rehearsal is for what will be our final gig, one which I never wanted to participate in, but am stuck because, like a fool, I committed to it.

I should mention that this band member was also the best man at my wedding. We've come a long way in just a few years from being close friends to being casual associates who no longer speak to each other. I said some rather nasty things to him in textmessage-land. Some of which were merely pointing out reality, others which were downright mean. I really need to stop that. But all the same, this is a person who more often these days refuses to acquiesce to reason. People like this no longer have a place in my life. I have decided to move on.

It is true that our kids take after us. Kids pick up on pretty much everything we do, even if we think we're keeping it secret from them. They take promises seriously and however we handle ourselves when we keep or break our promises has a tremendous lasting effect on their psyches. For example, smoking. When you promise your kid that you're going to quit smoking, you'd better keep the promise. When you want your kid to grow up drug-free, then you'd better not be sneaking around behind your kid's back smoking pot, or worse. These are classical betrayals of the parent-child bond, the parent-child trust. And when someone points out to you that you have done just that, and that your kid is now a reflection of yourself, you should say, "Thank you."

This is just my side of the story, which is the only side that matters in this blog. I am losing it when it comes to dealing with people who claim to be my friends. I am moving exponentially towards an asocial existence. I abhor people anymore. I have my wife, whom I love, and who supports me 100%. She agrees that the kid is a reflection of his father's failures and is the only one who has expressed gratitude at my stating that fact directly to the father in this story. I have reduced my "friend baggage" by three in the process. And after next weekend, it will be reduced by two more. The only band member that I care to associate with anymore is the bass player who resigned 8 years ago to start a family. He's the only one I can see myself working on music with. To the other guys I offer a closing salutation and best wishes in the future.

Sleep Deprivation

It's a kind of magical, between universe kind of feeling, when I go without the necessary sleep. It feels like a rock is hitting me in the side of the head, but in slow motion. I put myself through a couple double-shifts, on consecutive days. I really shouldn't because I am so fucking tired right now. But I need to keep working in order to stay in this nice house with the beautiful wife and wonderful garden, etc. But there is a part of me that would be relieved if it all ended in a fiery head-on collision as I drive home this morning. No big loss, of course. No one gives a shit anyway.