Tag Archives: mental health

July 30, 2025 · 12:34 am

Paranoia, part two

As I get older, I am entering the territory of having Parkinson’s Disease and possibly dementia related to that. Of course, that assessment is not from a doctor; it is my own conclusion based on evidence that may or may not be simple paranoia. Of course, paranoia is a symptom of both Parkinson’s and Parkinson s-related dementia.

Lately, I have made some paranoia-inspired decisions that negatively impacted my life. In February, I thought I was going to die from sepsis caused by a kidney infection I had after passing two small kidney stones and getting a urinary tract infection from the lovely experience. A few hours in the ER revealed that my urologist had completely healed the infection the week prior, and I was simply reacting to the burning sensation as I emptied my bladder, which was later cured by the urologist giving me pills that turned my pee blue and made the burning go away. Overreaction to a symptom that didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

In May, I had been routinely monitoring my blood pressure and got a reading of 40 for a heart rate. 40 beats a minute is possibly going to be fatal, according to my experience of listening to my mother, a registered nurse of 40-plus years, telling about her ER nurse experiences. I also didn’t feel very well. So, knowing I was probably overreacting again, I went to the ER again. Five days later, I was home from the hospital having had surgery to install a pacemaker. That time I got turned into a cyborg and discovered that I was right about something due to my paranoia. It probably saved my life.

But then, two weeks later I was back in the ER because of lightheadedness. a thing clearly listed on my doctor’s orders as a thing to go back to the ER for. This time is was only dehydration. So, again, not as bad as I thought it was.

Then, a week ago, I had a charge on my checking account that I couldn’t account for. It was supposedly Microsoft billing me for something. So, I called the number provided to ask them what it was for. Well, the number was not in service, and it was recently canceled. So, I called the bank’s online security number. My debit card was stopped, and a replacement was put in the mail. And he asked about lost checks. I told him about one of those that disappeared from the mailbox, and my checking account was closed and transferred to a new account number too. Perfect for end-of-the-month bill paying. I finally have access to money again since yesterday’s mail.

Having paranoia is a bad thing concerning things yet to come. Like dementia. But it isn’t all bad. It made me potentially head off worse things. There really are bad things that can happen from online scammers and identity thieves, though it turns out the charge was legitimate, the Microsoft folks just refuse to identify it through my Google Chrome email. And certain concerning symptoms often lead to worse outcomes than I managed to have, though the low heart rate really could have stopped my heart.

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July 22, 2025 · 12:27 am

Seeing Things Differently

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Where do I begin?  There are just too many ideas in this one topic to enumerate them all here.   I just got scammed again in my bank account.  A fake Microsoft account tried to rob me through my debit card number, and I have no idea how they got the number.  I had to close both my debit card and checking account, with direct bill payments about to go out.  I have to pray that the account changes go smoothly enough to make all the payments I owe.  I am suffering from how the world sees me.   Scammers must see me as the easiest possible mark.  

I don’t know what the doctor thinks anymore.  I seem to be going to the ER every two weeks.  That and a week in the hospital mean that even with Medicare, I owe a lot of money.  And who knows what President  Pumpkinhead will do to the world economy in the meantime?  This world seems to see me as a potential homeless person in a short amount of time.  No chance that any of those folks will let me define myself.

But suffering builds character.  And, damn!  I have a lot of character.  Want some of the extra?

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Life for me has always been pretty much a long march into the darkness.  I try to bring power and light and goodness with me as I march, but I know there is a final end to the journey, and it will not go smoothly.  It will not end well.  But I don’t see things the way other men do.  I continue to fight the good fight, even though I will ultimately lose the war.  “Rage! Rage against the dying of the light!” says the poet Dylan Thomas.  The fight is everything.  And I simply can’t be troubled with thinking about what lies over the last hill in this march toward the final battle.

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I think, ultimately, that the important thing isn’t winning or losing.  It is about who or what we have become on the inside.  I find solace in being able to laugh at life.  A lot of depressing things have been happening lately.  It can make the laughing harder to manage.  But if life is not joy at its heart, then what is it?  And what makes it worth living?

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu

Thus it is…  Lao Tzu is wise.  The Tzu part of his name means “teacher”.  So maybe I need to learn from him.  There has to be a way forward, at least until the path ends.

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June 22, 2025 · 12:37 am

Sad Times Down in Toonerville

I have to come to terms with not having much longer on this Earth. And things go wrong more than they go right because I am old, have had arthritis for fifty years, and am losing my eyesight. I dropped my meal in the bowl I was using to make it this evening. I had to settle for a toasted cheese sandwich. I have to give up my library and a lot of my doll collection to move to Iowa, a move that was delayed at least two months by my heamrt problem. There is war with Iran to ponder, which may kill us before the climate-change weather does. WWIII? I am feeling doomed in any case.

On the good side, I got my novella done and published… finally. But Amazon has changed rules again on the paperback. I can’t publish in paperback until it reaches 72 pages. I still have to figure that out.

However, the essential fact is that I have achieved my life’s purpose. 25 books published. The authorities worry about male teachers hugging students. Republicans holler about “groomers.” I never offered a hug or asked for a hug in 31 years as a teacher. But they hugged me well over a hundred times. Both boys and girls. Because they wanted to, or needed to. That is proof you made a difference in the classroom.

I do still feel like crying anytime I remember the kids who hugged me that are now dead by their own hands, dead by alcohol or drugs, or institutionalized for poor life choices. There is more than one in each category. But they are the exceptions, not the rule.

My family is all still alive and healthy, no simple task that. My wife is still teaching. My three kids are now all functioning adults.

So, there are sad times now in Toonerville, the place Mickey lives in his own stupid head. But that’s okay. The universe is unfolding as it should.

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May 21, 2025 · 4:01 pm

I am STILL HERE

I went to the emergency room on Friday.

Heart rate repeatedly 37 beats per minute. Heart failure is imminent at that low rate.

I was wheeled directly to the intensive care unit. A temporary pacemaker was immediately shoved through a vein in my hip directly to my heart.

Of course, they don’t settle for that. Once my heart stabilized, they switched the pacemaker off again, thinking it was a side-effect of my blood pressure medicine that caused the problem. It was. My heart beat normally for eight hours. Then my heart rate got bad again in the night. The pacemaker was switched back on, stabilizing me until morning. Sunday morning, they turned it back off again. I stayed stable for another few hours, and they told me they would take the temporary pacemaker out again and send me home on Monday. My body had recovered from the side effects.

But my heart had other ideas… at the same time of night as the previous bad night started.

They left the thing off for the rest of the night, and without telling me ahead of time, they scheduled me for a permanent pacemaker.

I actually spent a lot of that night thinking I was going to die. I saw the number 37 again, and I knew they weren’t being honest with me about what was going to happen.

But Monday morning brought a serious surgery. And they control the pain, but you have to be conscious for that implant surgery. That was a wonderful experience I hope never to have to go through again. But I probably will.

Life is simply poetry.

So, why do I live my life in prose?

Because I am intensely didactic,

Is the reason, as I suppose.

And that’s the ordinary level

At which I drink from Life’s firehose.

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May 14, 2025 · 12:44 am

Possibly Goodbye

I am going to die. And I am okay with that. My life has a good beginning, a challenging middle, and a satisfying end. I don’t have to lie about anything. I don’t fear going to hell. There is no hell. But there may well be something beyond. It is possible that I have lived before, and that I will possibly live again.

I know you may now be worried that I am talking from a position of depression and suicidal ideation. But I am not. If I am going to wake up dead in the morning, it will be from heart failure in my sleep. I have awakened in the wee hours of the past two days, shortly after 2 am. My chest was hurting on the left side, a thing it regularly does because of arthritis and muscle spasms in my rib cage due to my affinity for being a side-sleeper, sleeping on my left side. I also felt funny in the head, though I was not laughing. My arms both tingled. I had a pounding pain in my neck and in my left temple. I took my blood pressure monitor on Tuesday and found normal blood pressure, but a heartbeat of only 40 beats per minute. That, of course, is emergency-room territory. So, as advised during an early incident, I waited for the monitor to reset and took my blood pressure again. 40 a second time! My blood pressure was rising as I zoomed into panic mode. I took it twice more, one 70 beats per minute, but another 42 beats after that.

Before waking my wife, who had to get up for her school-teacher job by 6:30, I woke up my sensible 23-year-old daughter and repeated the monitor test. The first test was 42. My daughter pointed out that the monitor sleeve was so tight that my left arm turned purple. Readjusted it yielded 78. Still lower than normal for me, but much better than the tight-sleeve readings. By that time, my heart was thumping along real well and I felt much better overall. So, I went back to bed and lived a normal day after that. Exercising during the day helped a lot.

But at 2:30 am this morning, the whole thing was repeating itself. I was almost certain it was emergency-room time. I was reluctant to test my blood pressure. I exercised my arms and legs as vigorously as possible before carefully applying the monitor sleeve. 77 beats per minute. I was in the emergency room for reasons only in my imagination in early April, so that was a relief. I did not go back to sleep for fear of waking up dead. I ended up living another normal day today, though kinda groggy from lack of sleep.

The possibility remains that I may wake up in the morning to find that I have died in my sleep. Lady Death may be waiting to take me away. But I have this chance to say goodbye now before finding out if there is indeed an afterlife or not. For all who actually know me in person, I love you. Even those of you who will celebrate my passing. And for those of you who only know me by this blog and in my books, my writing will still be around for a bit. You can really get to know me better than most. No regrets. A good life in spite of the hard parts… or maybe because of overcoming the hard parts.

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May 1, 2025 · 12:53 am

The Reaper Knocks Softly

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had small reminders that I am not immortal. My neck is plagued by arthritis pain near enough to my spinal cord that it put me in the hospital once by messing up an EKG and making the ER doctor think I was having a heart attack. (Multiple EKGs were messed up; it took a week to sort out the real cause.) This week, my neck has been cracking as if it were a knuckle that I would never intentionally crack for long-term arthritis sufferers’ reasons. I keep thinking my head might separate from the rest of my body after an egregious, unwanted cracking. Or, more realistically, it might pop and leave me paralyzed. a

My chest has also been hurting in an area on the left side, right above my heart. This, too, has sent me to the doctor’s office thinking of a possible heart attack. It is arthritis attacking my ribcage. It causes rapid muscle spasms that feel like my heart fibrillating and beating far faster than a living heart should. So, I have vast experience with false myocardial infarctions.

But this week, on top of the same old false symptoms, I have been getting heart rate readings on my blood pressure monitor that are far below normal. Even more concerning, I have passed out several times, followed by snapping awake again, possibly my body reacting to dangerously low heart rates. I haven’t been to the doctor yet about that, a thing that may put me in the hospital again for something that is not really a heart problem again. But it could also presage a death by heart failure.

One day, coming up, I may wake up dead already from heart failure as I slept.

I am not worried about dying. I don’t believe in life after death. But I do believe the entire universe is alive, aware, and actively ready to reabsorb me and repurpose that which makes me up. The problems I worry about associated with death are the effects I leave behind me, economic, emotional, and generational. And I have left behind me lots of writing that will tell my loved ones all the things they don’t really want to know about me.

The time for proof of mortality is near. But even if it does not occur this week, I am not afraid of facing it. I feel fully connected to the universe and fulfilled in my little patch of existence. It is good to know there are some things I can choose and can control about how I face it. I will try to get back home to the farm in Iowa to choose the place where it happens, the place where both of my parents died, and all four of my grandparents have died, and four of my uncles and aunts have died. Heck, there are more finished lives in my family than continuing lives. Of course, that’s true for everyone who ever lived.

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April 25, 2025 · 12:18 am

Facing Forward

I honestly feel that death could take me at any moment. Arthritis constantly gives me symptoms and pains that could easily be the start of a heart attack . I felt like I was having a racing heart and tingling thing down my left arm when I woke up this morning. I could have called an ambulance and they would have put me in the hospital because my neck arthritis screws up every EKG reading I get.

And how am I to tell when the arthritis pains and neck problem with my spinal cord turns out to be a REAL heart attack? I would rather die than go bankrupt again.

So, I feel the need to tell stories to my family and share the many wisdoms life has taught me with them. It is something I need to take on soon and finish before I die.

First of all, I need to spread the word that the universe is alive and constantly thinking and self-aware. So, dying is okay. You simply return to the oversoul and merge back into everything as you were before you were born. The universe is alive because we are alive. The universe is aware because we are a part of its collective intelligence. It will go on even though we individually die… even collectively die as a planet. Death does not rule us at any point in the story.

And at 68 and a half, I know quite a bit about making my way in this world, and being happy, even though a lot of hard times and difficult events have passed over me in that time.

And if you are wondering what this essay is for… have you stopped to think what you should be sharing before the end comes? We all have a story. And it needs to be told and retold to make it real.

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April 18, 2025 · 12:26 am

Things I Know For Certain

I think a lot of thoroughly thoughtful thuggish thoughts that build and build and build up an idea, and then turn around and knock it all down.  Let me demonstrate by knocking down that title right off the bat.  Rene DesCartes in the early 1600’s said, “Cogito Ergo Sum”, and he thereby totally disrupted the world as we knew it.  Didn’t get that?  Let me translate.  He said, “Je pense, donc je suis.”  Still didn’t help?  Okay, here’s the English, “I think, therefore I am.”  In other words, the one thing that I know for sure is that I am thinking this particular thought at this particular time.  If I am thinking, and I know I am, I must be here and I must be real.  So there is one thing I know for certain.  But do I know anything else for certain?  Uh-oh.  How do I know anything?  I have to rely on my senses.  And my senses lie to me all the time.  I am partially color blind, so I don’t see the world the same way you do.  I don’t see things in black and white, like Great Grandma Hinckley did in her 90’s, but the colors look different to my eyes than they do to yours and I will never know what things look like to you.  Forget politicians and all other people who tell lies, my own eyes lie to me constantly.  So can I know anything for sure?  Of course not.  All I have are firm beliefs based on imperfect senses and best guesses at what is true.  So what I am actually talking about is a list of potential essay ideas that I am merely asserting as true based on my imperfect goofy thinking of thoughtful thuggish thoughts.

Idea #1 that I think is certainly possibly maybe true; My brain was taught and I was raised to adulthood by the movies I saw when I was young.  I want to talk about this at length in another post.  The video is by a guy who was a kid in the 80’s, and he has some really awesome movies to offer as a way to delineate his rise to adulthood.

My list includes the movies of my boyhood seen in the Belmond Theater and on our old black and white Motorola TV.  My list of movies that raised me includes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and The Wizard of Oz.

Idea #2; Animals are people too.

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I mean, as a writer for young adults, I know for a fact that animals are relevant as characters.  They have a point of view, feelings, reactions, and complex lives that people rarely pay attention to.  I have to write about this some time in the future too.

Idea #3; The worst things that happen to us in our lives, are also the best things that happen.  Wow!  What a difficult essay topic.  But I not only think it, I can prove it… at least to myself.  But can I write about it?  Time will tell.

Idea #4; Silly thoughts and serious thoughts are two sides of the same coin.  And this will be particularly difficult to think about if thoughts are literally coins.  That would mean that my head is full of metal, and I know several people who would read that sentence and shout, “I knew it all along!”  Fortunately they are all too sensible to read this far in one of my blog posts.

So, at 600 words I still have lots more to say.  But people with metal in their heads often talk way too much, so my concluding sentence will be simply; “I promise to shut up for now.”

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March 20, 2025 · 12:56 am

Playing with the Butterflies of Good News

Well, our house will have to have some major repairs to retain insurance because we live in the southern part of Tornado Alley. Climate change has greatly increased our ability to have all our possessions wiped out overnight. And having to pay for the replacement of the entire house is bad for the insurance company’s ongoing ability to make huge profits off of our large monthly premiums. I am so sad for them. Especially since they are putting this pressure on to gain an excuse for canceling our insurance while retaining all previously paid premiums.

I didn’t die last night, however. And the high winds warning is set to expire in two more hours from writing this particular sentence. Big Bad Wolf hasn’t yet huffed and puffed hard enough to blow our house down. So, maybe I am good and things are generally good.

I have overcome my health problems too for the moment. The urinary tract infection I thought I had is not there anymore. I am not following the Jim Henson Road to Death… for now at least. The doctor did give me a final medication to stop the burning sensation that fooled me into thinking I was going to die. Humorously, it turns my pee blue.

I do have to pay taxes as soon as Spring Break is over. And the probability that the Trump Tax Cut, the gift that keeps on taking things away, will increase the amount of taxes the parasites known as retired teachers have to pay. I am almost at the point once again where I can’t afford to pay what more I will owe and will have to beg the government for monthly payments.

And when this week is over, my family, who left me behind on the Spring Break Trip to see Number Two Son at his Air Force base, will return so that I am no longer the only living thing left in the house (besides a handful of Norway rats and roof rats as well as at least two ghost dogs.) They didn’t leave me behind because they don’t like me very much, but because I had at least one doctor’s appointment to attend, partial dentures being made for me to chew tough foods with (like tapioca pudding,) and the fact that my arthritis prevents me from doing a car trip from Texas to Washington DC with any degree of comfort and an ability walk once we get there.

Everything is good news now. Times are at least better than they were.

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February 4, 2025 · 2:31 am

Doomscroll for no Gain

I had a terrible month in January. The dentist, in love with causing pain, yanked an infected and broken molar out of my head. The procedure lasted more than an hour beyond the usual time. That by itself put me out of business for January. But, two weeks into the month, my wife brought home a strain of regular flu from her teaching job and gave it to me. And as the flu was ending two weeks later, I passed at least two, and maybe four, kidney stones. Which immediately led to a severe urinary tract infection that had me taking the strongest antibiotic I have ever taken in my life. A fly tried to land on the top of my head. It immediately fell to the floor dead. The antibiotic was that strong. Now, tomorrow, it starts again. The dentist will yank out another broken molar on the other side of my stupid head.

So, I have been laid up and unable to do anything but draw, watch tv, and doomscroll.

The butterfly picture is loosely based on a photo of a spicebush swallowtail butterfly, turning brown into yellow for a very bumblebee vibe. the other two drawings were straight-up doodles drawn from a picture in my stupid brain. All three were enhanced by AI Mirror before publication. Arthritis in the fingers, you know.

But the doom-scrolling thing is an exercise in horror and crushing pains from liberal levels of empathy. Canadians are shocked and horrified that the Pumpkinhead President has declared economic warfare on them with 25% tariffs on everything imported from Canada. He also has the Danish President and the Mexican President preparing for war and trying desperate negotiations to turn away Pumpkin’s wrath.

I got to see a panicky little Hispanic girl crying and pleading because she came home from school to find that ICE had taken both her parents as undocumented immigrants. She was homeless and defenseless. And cruel white people who consider themselves superior to this little girl talked about how her parents got what they deserved for being criminals.

Make no mistake about it. Immigrants are NOT criminals. Being in this country without documents is a civil misdemeanor. The immigration system throws huge roadblocks in the way of immigrants who have the bad sense to choose to live in the wrong colored skin. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. After we were married, she lived in this country via green card for more than 25 years. That’s how hard it is unless you are from someplace white like Norway or England or Russia. At any point along the way she could have lost the green card for some technicality, and then she would’ve been in the same situation as the Hispanic girl’s parents. My kids have birthright citizenship like the Bozo in Chief has promised to de-citizenize.

He plans to do away with the Department of Education completely.

I find myself, as an atheist, praying to God after every doom-scrolling session that Pumpkinheads can have fatal strokes or heart attacks. And that a magic couch that can take revenge will eat the VP whole. And that the Speaker of the House sees a porn site on his son’s computer, which makes his flattop head explode. (That, of course, won’t kill him. Cockroaches can live without a head for weeks until they starve to death because they no longer have a mouth.)

I need to stop doom-scrolling.

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