It's hard to be a friend

5/8/06 Monday
Good morning. Hope y’all doing fine. Just got off the phone with my brother. I called him regarding a letter we got from the Federal Employee’s life insurance about an insurance policy on Lee. They request death certificates and a bunch of other stuff to determine if Larry and I are the beneficiaries. He wasn’t very conversational which doesn’t surprise me. If he would bother to talk things would have been figured out much quicker on the estate I think. Still doesn’t have a regular job and does contract work when he can find it.

I called Virginia just before that. She was busy doing payroll at her job so couldn’t visit much. There were three tornadoes out her way along with some pretty big hail. Virginia said that some of it went through the roofs of some trailer houses. That is a strong incentive for us to put in a cellar and carport.

Cherie’s new hours start today. She goes in at 9:00 instead of 8:00 which she loves as she was always pushing to get to work on time. She won’t be home till 6:00 but that’s fine. I cook dinner tonight. Got some chicken that needs to be cooked. Fred needs to go to the bank this morning and I will be taking Wayne to see his doctor at 2:00. There is something I need the doctor to do but I can’t remember what. Hopefully it will come to mind before then. This morning my brain is working at a 7 on the Bob scale but I have the ears ringing dizzy thing going on at the moment. Not a good sign but sometimes it just goes away. Other times it is a precursor to a slow down.

Yesterday I went and visited Allen. It can be hard to be a friend. He was flying and hard to talk with. I asked if he had taken some “medicine” (pain pills) and he said no. If he wasn’t he has some mental health issues. All I know is he would fixate on whatever he talked about and would wring it out till there was nothing left and still go. I had to tell him he was overloading me with information with little effect. Allen has a degree in marine biology and has a collection of shark teeth fossils that is impressive. He would hand me a tooth explaining what kind of extinct species it came from and then hand me another, each time giving me a dissertation. My hand would fill up so I would hand them back only to end up with another handful. He did this nonstop despite my telling him it was enough.

I helped him clean some things up but even that was hard. Allen is obsessive compulsive and everything has to be perfect. I took my camera with me to take pictures of his collection of knives and stuff. When I went to take pictures of some woodworking I had helped him do in the woodshop I had six years ago he tried to tell me how to do it.
Trying to get the camera from me to show me how to use it I told him “No”. With out blinking he kept on saying “Just let me show you how to do it? Use your Zoom”. I let him know I had taken hundreds of pictures with this camera and knew how to use it. He kept on. On the fifth NO I got pissed. “Allen, I’ve told you NO five times now. When I say NO I mean No so back off” he heard from me in no uncertain terms. This slowed him down though he expressed that he was just trying to help and couldn’t understand why I was getting so upset.


Here are just a few pictures of his stuff. He likes his dragons and the knives are all numbered collectors items. I made the two maple wall mounts with the antlers on them back in the days I was healthy.

Allen is a fascinating person who worked hard all his life and learned to be self sufficient long ago. Here is the wood he has stocked up for next winter. He heats entirely with wood in a wood burner he made from two 55 gallon drums. I want to make it clear that his problems with pain medication are as justified as they can get. His pain is severe and constant from many injuries as well as hard labor. He never sought medical help because of pride and no insurance. I am in the process of getting that fixed.

Just got back from taking Fred to the bank. He reminded me I was to take Barb to a church in Sylvania. I had not put that in my calendar and had forgotten as I do so it was good he brought it up. Called Barb to confirm things and it will be a squeeze because I just scheduled Wayne for his three days of infusions he is getting for the MS.

It is 12:00 now so I suppose I should fix breakfast.
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It is 12:00 now so I suppose I should fix breakfast.

Never fixed breakfast. Forgot as I often do. When you seldom feel the sensation of hunger it is important to make sure you eat. Add short term memory loss to that and it is a wonder I am overweight.

It’s 2:00 now and I am at Dr. Rowan’s with Wayne. Wayne is fixating on whatever could possibly go wrong. It was the Aid’s test the doctor at MUO ordered and he worried that to death till I jumped down his throat “Wayne you have to control this. All your talking about is how scared you are you might have Aids”. “I can’t help it” he said so I told him he could, just had to force his mind to think about something else. I asked him “Who have you been with the last ten years?” and helped him understand he was being unrealistic because his lifestyle really didn’t put him at risk. Now Wayne is worrying himself over possible complications with the three day steroid infusion he will be taking this week. The doc said it could affect his diabetes so he would have to check his sugar four times a week. Wayne was talking about going into a diabetic coma so I reassured him the best I can. Wayne did thank me for getting tough over the Aids thing last week. He said it helped him wake up.

Now it is 4:00. I am not doing so well. Getting confused easily, tired, and have no patience. The cats incessant meows for attention are eliciting “Shut up” responses from me. Just got back from driving Wayne around. He gabbed and gabbed to the nurses at the doctors office. I could hear him from the waiting room. At first I put my hat on thinking he would be coming out any second. Not going to happen. I resisted going up to the window and telling him “Let’s go” because I know he doesn’t get to talk to people much. Took him to the grocery store where I rushed him to make a decision on what kind of baloney to buy. I felt bad about this impatience but that didn’t change things. Got Wayne’s food, took him home, and came straight home myself. My typing speed tells me I am running a 5 now on the Bob scale. Headache is moving up now. Think I’ll take some aspirin and a Tramadol and go to bed. The ears are ringing more. So much it is hard to hear out of the right one.

I am supposed to cook dinner tonight. Better get that figured out while I am still good enough to do so. Might be a rough evening. Never did eat.
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This is a rough one. I remembered Cherie had asked me to pick up a few things at the store. Of course that is after I took Wayne shopping. I just got back from Kroger where I picked up what was on the small list. It was hard to do. I am pretty dizzy and had to hang on to the shopping cart. Times like this are when I handle lots of sound and activity poorly. Glad the list was short. I went through the self check out line so I won’t have to deal with people. Forgot to take the aspirin and Tramadol so just did. Got the chicken in the oven and set the timer because I know I won’t remember I have something in the oven. It is hard to write because my thoughts get mixed up. Went ahead and took my second seizure pill a little early.

I think I will lay down and watch the Toledo news. City councilman Bob McCloskey just got convicted of bribery so will go to prison. The Father Robinson trial continues. For those of you not up on this he is a Catholic priest on trial for the ritualistic murder of a nun. She was stabbed some thirty two times with some of the wounds in the shape of an upside down cross. Texas promises to be much more sedate. That will be good for me as stress amplifies the effects of my brain injury.

7:19 We had dinner. It was pretty good. The headache has reached migraine level and I am running at a 4 on the Bob scale. Glad this happened at the end of the day or I should say when I got done helping Fred and Wayne. Cherie understands how this gets and that is a big help. We both depend on each other and would be lost without our companionship. Typing is real slow now. I’ll call it a night now.