Close Encounters of the Dsyphagic Kikng

Parkinson ’s disease presents but two challenges –

Moving

&

Standing still…

So, it’s been awhile between posts …. Not much to say, after a while. But it’s definitely gotten to be a harder slog, what between the constant tremor, distonia of the foot, some wicked swallowing problems (dysphagia, for you terminology hounds) - almost done in by inhaling a milky shard of shredded wheat on Monday, only to face the challenge of disgorging a malevolent tortalinni from my airpipe – prevailed both times only to go through a hellish failed attempt to hack out a small morsel of yummy watermelon before it took up residence in my left lung. Need now to be onguard for signs of aspirationial –‘fucking pnumonia, or at least, the boogie woogie flu…..man. This is not the guy I planned to be, strictly old man in nursing home stuff – and for a spry bastard still several months ahead a fifty second birthday. Anyway, hope the offending melon did not contain any fertile seeds, otherwise I may need to appropriate Herbie Hancock’s ‘Watermelon Man’ as my new theme song….

Swimming Upstream

Bucking a shitload of inertia I have finally begun to drag my sorry behind on a regular basis back to the gym – having now passed the half-century mark it’s finally dawned on me that I’m no longer a teenager and will need to keep as many of the original parts in servicable condition for a good while longer. So, decked out in sweatpants and muckalucks I sidle up to a well-worn elipitical training machene, punch up a 30 minute workout and start a-stepping.

Parkinson’s, being the full body futhermucker that it is, has taken the glide out of my stride, the pep out of my step, if the glove don’t fit you must aquit….(sorry, channeling Johnny Cochran there for a moment)…anyway, it’s done a number on my left side and doing the aerobics and weights has gotten tougher.

Inevitably, after 5 or 10 minutes on an aerobic machene I’ll hit a wall where my leg does not want to move, assymettrical large muscle fatigue – and yet, that is the precise moment that I must transcend and push beyond – I know that I can’t but I know that I must and today, as in most days, claim the small victory of making it to 30 minutes or more. I’m reminded of earlier martial arts training where the instructor would mercilessly push us to do endless repetative punches, kicks and blocks. Asked what was the point of pushing so far beyond the threshold of ability he said wisely “exactly the point…..once you go beyond the point where you can do it and can no longer ….yet you insist on continuing you access your goal which is: transcending the limitations of your strength and physical body to strengthen and access the unlimited potential of your will and intention.”

Clearly, in approaching my larger goals of maintaining the best possible functionality and level of health in the face of a systemic challenge, pushing beyond the normative level of my physical abilities is called for – and work and right action towards engaging my will and intention must be engaged. Swimming upstream, but still swimming ….good as it gets, for now.

HOPELESS ROMANTIC

Entry from the “Modern Translation Guide To Singles Pages Language”

HOPELESS ROMANTIC – has both herpes and aids.

No, no – its not that for me, and, no, ModemDavid remains a faithful married guy, not out there amongst the mingling singles who stare blankly from Ray Bans, thin rays of mingled hope & desire eminating from tired eyes foggy with cheap wine and cheese breath, still seeking that first miraculous locking of eyes with‘the one’ who at any moment may sashay through the doorway if I can only continue to look cool and detatched for maybe one drink more (yeah…right) And, no thank you, I have not gotten any social diseases, unless that mildly inflamed hickey I got from Holly Weiner at 17 counts.

Yet how now at the relatively not ancient age of 50 do I euphemistically describe myself as anthing better, more elevated than simply the cumulative sum of my diseases? Another round of medical visits, more probing, imaging studies (endoscopy, to be precise – which as Los Angeles is a union town involves lowering not only a camera but, apparently, a 3 man IATSE film crew down your neck – or so it felt in recovery) – all of this to reveal the happy arrival of a brand new baby diagnosis – little Moderate to Severe Reflux Disease to add to the list that have truly made 50 the new 70.

So whats on my list now:

Idiopathic Parkinsons

Peridontal Disease,

Myopia

Frozen Sholder,\

Mild to Moderate Spinal Stenosis

Chronic Inflammation of Juvinile Hickey Syndrome ( CIJHS)

I’m one fucked up dude, dude…….and yet

If I am not my name, what am I? If the essential ‘I’ remains more than the sum of my diagnosis, than how do I operate, how do I access the premordial ‘ I’ that animates me from the motionless steady state deeper reality in which the slow but insistant ravages of my multiplicity of disease processes are neutered, rendered harmless, baying perhaps like wolves or hyenas locked safely outside, but firmly enjoined to back off, not interfere or do anthing more than minamaly disrupt the trajectory of my days across the span of a lifetime. Answer me this, o wise one, and I will gladly buy you a beer.

So, like the ‘hopeless romatic’ I still seek retain a link to something optomistic, planning and hopeful looking across the Great Plains of my 50s and beyond hoping to lock eyes with a future that holds something more bearable, duralble and fulfilling than the cold and clear trajectory of multiple diagnosis.

Go figure,

Modemdavid

Dumpster Satori

Power sander hums

Perplexing flies in dumpster

“Hey… what’s this buzz?”

Well, after the final indignation with my sweetie of having a valet from a fancy restaurant outright refuse to park my monkeyshit brown Mitsubishi on purely aesthetic grounds, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands – literally – and, armed only with a small power sander, a bit of moxie and elbow grease, head out into the ally behind our l.A. townhome with a facemask, sanding pads and a little A.M. radio tuned to the local Cumbia station. This is what Labor day is all about, I think to myself as I settle into the rhythmic grind of stripping the defective withering clearcoat.

Though I’ve lived here for almost a decade, till today my relation with the ally has been only a transient, passing thing – pass through to drop off a big bag of poo and diapers from the little ones, an occasional quick stroll to the main street to save a few steps….this and nothing more.

Yet, spend a full day in the ally and it reveals a life of its own, patterns repeating yet always theme and variations. Bottle People living on a recycled economy, the occasional cholo wandering through his turf, wondering, ‘so, is this all there is?’ Unlike when passing through as a homeowner, where eye contact is rarely made here, a quick look, an acknowledging glance

Indicating either peaceful coexistence or mutually assured destruction

(‘hey—you fuck with me and I’ll kill you’ and

“hey-you fuck with ME and I’ll kill YOU! Ok good…we’re friends!!!) –

imagine, a working microcosm of cold war US/Soviet relations just outside your doorstep.

Most surprising, though, was my interaction with the natural world. The prolonged low buzzing drone of the power sander was enough to draw many curious onlookers, the type with compound eyes – flies, disturbed from their reveries and bacchanalian refuse orgies, disturbed and – I know, I flatter myself – just maybe attracted by the powerful manly drone of my black and decker ‘MiniMouse’ sander – flies come by to check me out and do the hang where the action is. Not to be outdone, a mammoth bumble bee or two join. Everyone is having a blast as I cut deeper into the evaporating color of the Mitsubishi only to find that -- hey, waddyaknow -- the base metal you would expect to see at the end of the road was only masonite with a thin veneer of aluminum foil…..now I know why it was cheaper than the camry!

So, its now quite a scene, the sander sings sweetly while the flies and bumblebees sway gently to the distorted Cumbias and Cha-Cha-Chas blaring from my radio. All good until LAPD show up, no doubt summoned by some pesky neighbor no doubt wondering why an unlicenced Auto repainting shop was operating within earshot.

And so the day ends, an order to appear in court to answer charges of illegal operation of an environmentally impacting business and disturbing the piece my only souvenier - and, just before I sink into the enuie of legal worries to add to the myriad of others that have found me in my 5oth year a trio of dumpster flies, having followed my back from the ally no doubt, zip by me, back and again in perfect time to the last cumbia of the day still blaring from the radio.

Go figure......

Freaky Teethy Things....

The Tooth, The Whole Tooth & Nothing but the Tooth….

So, I achieved a long-term life goal – made it to the ripe age of 50 with every one of my teeth still in my head. It’s no secret that Modem is a man with deep pockets…..deep pockets not of the sought-after financial type but rather of the periodontal persuasion. So, here I am, ripe with deep pockets…..sheesh.

And, after many years of near-heroic effort to save one of my more affected teeth, the day of reckoning came and the hour came near when molar number 29 had to go.

The thought of losing a tooth was disturbing to me – to see a fixed and seemingly permanent part of your physical self as impermanent, transient and fleeting thing gives a good elbow to the gut of that largely sleeping part of yourself that, despite all it sees in the world without and the world within – in spite of it all – persists in the dream of personal exceptionality to mortality. If you ever really want to bug that bastard, go ahead, pull a few teeth –

The tooth itself was quite a piece of work – according to the good doctor it was a dental freak of nature, a molar-on-the-edge with a rarely seen extra root shaped roughly in the shape of a male phallus (you can call me ‘dick-head’), a genetic freak apparently at this moment winging its way to a hallowed acrylic display case in the Museum of Dental Oddities. I wish it only the best of happiness in its new life. Apparently, its doing quite well without me, haven taken up with some busty dental hygienist with a thing for freaky teethy things, or so I read on its twitter posting. ‘That’s my boy…J

So its almost a week after losing the little bastard….and, frankly, good riddance. According to the doctor, the permanent state of infection was starting to impact the jaw bone and left untreated could have been much, much worse, more loss of bone, etc. The only available option might then have been the much ballyhooed but untested full “mouth transplant” – and that I’m not ready for, unless maybe I can get myself the strong lower jaw of a CharlesBronson, a George C. Scott, or a Tosiro Mifune. On my budget lucky if I could afford a used Alfred E. Newman, fucked up gapped teeth and all.

Well, that’ll be about all for now. Damn, I’m hungry….’gotta go and gum a donut.

Go figure,

ModemDavid

El NeuroMigre

Back after another followup at the neurologist.    Interesting conversation – apparently, the problem is all in my head.

 

But, there too, may lay the solution.

 

How convenient. 

 

Research points to the presence of dormant stem cells already there in your own brain – already there – no need to conduct some surreptitious cell harvesting from the unformed brain of a preborn spawn of some frantic juvenile coupling –

Though I do remember those being ‘kinda fun – the stem cells, the are ALREADY THERE  - inside your own head, an unused bench of new hitters for your cognitive world series, the one that really matters – the one that is you.

 

Imagine – there they are, all lined up on the bench in crisp outfits, telling off color jokes, their witty urban banter punctuated only by the occasion emission of a spent chaw of chewing tobacco,   All set !  So what the is the problem???

 

They’re asleepL

Dormant…

Unconscious, unknowing.

Totally and blissfully unaware

 

So, my neurologist tells me, the engineering task from the pharmacological perspective is to first wake up all the little bastards and then direct them to migrate to precisely the right location in your ‘wittle head, link dendrites and fill the gap of their dead and dying Brothers of the Dopamine order, to stand in the breech singing kumbaya and  forever  cure that what ‘ails ye, afflicted readers of this blog. 

 

Piece of cake, no? Take two aspirins, eye of newt and call me in the morning….

 

Clearly not an easy task – but I felt momentarily positive thinking that maybe a solutions does lurk near.   Migrating stem cells – why didn’t I think of that?

 

Then I did think of that and here is what I think I thought:

 

If it were me, if I were one of those neuromigrants, and you woke me up – well, first of all, then I’d be pissed….no-one likes being woken up, right?   And then, after waking me (remember, I’m pissed) – now what do you do?  Hand me marching orders to assemble somewhere  within the Substancia Nigra, not the best neighborhood by far, hell, I’ve never been there, and while the march for racial equality may have indeed transcended its challenge with the election of Obama in macro-world, whose to say that my sleepy Grey – matter brothers would ever willingly move to a place characterized by all the Dark Matter of the substancia nigra –never underestimate the predjudice of of pigmentation.

 

No – as a young, recently awoken plurapotent stemcell no way in hell that I’m about to willingly hitch my wagon to a dying brain.   Hell no, I don’t want to be an enable of some near-50 mid career frustrated- high school band director- who left New York to find fame and fortune in Hollywood as a wanna-be film composer, who went from wanna be to has been with out having been there.

Just because he HAD potential and squandered it, now you ‘tellin me that me, with my infinite stem cell superpowers I have to go and shoot my wad on some bum like that?   You talking to me?  You TALKING TO ME?  

 

Great…. now you’ve gone and radicalized the little bastards…

 

 

Desperate times call for desperative measures.    Woken and ordered to do the

“Man’s” work – with no say in the matter – its entirely reasonable to assume that a critical mass of the newly politicized neuroMigre would look for ways out….hop on the bus, Gus,..make a new plan, stan…..Hitch a ride on the gust of a sneeze, sling down a thread of mucus hanging from your nose, swinging like a little Tarzan in hopes of  somehow finding the way into the head of an up and coming basketball star, supermodel or at least that of a musician who knows better than to do clubdates as a sideman……    

 

Migrating Stem Cells – wake ‘em up, tell em where to go, what to do, and don’ talk back or ask too many question.    So what do you make of the odds?

 

Go figure,

Modemdavid

Sparring with the Muse....

Before being hit with the reality of PD, as a keyboard musician I would from time to time amuse myself with the morose projection "what would happen if I somehow lost use of my hands" - one of the most terribilest thoughts there is to a working musician - and for the bulk of my teens through early 40's this is what I was -
now, confronting the reality of the gradual but insistent loss of the fine motor control integral to piano technique I find myself having to deal with this experience, not in a traumatic way, i.e. losing your hands in an unfortunate accident, but rather with a torturously slow attrition of those abilities which I've taken for granted for so long.

So it was this week that I approached two music events - the first, a rehearsal session with some top L.A. veteren musicians - these are the guys that play behind all the big name artists when passing through town, the musicals at the Pantages, the Hollywood Award Shows, all the way up to major film dates and all the way down to the monkeysuit jobs at Bar Mitzvahs, Weddings and corporate events of every ilk.

Walking into the session with my gimply left hand was a little disconcerting, and I started out without the quiet assumed conidence in my competence that always till recently accompanied me to the stage - I may not be able to dribble a basketball for shit, but I can always kick musical butt on the keys - and it was a bit of a hard start, but as we got into the second number and on, it was good to start to feel the left hand join in the dance, running on fumes maybe, but still running. From a playing perspective, I've always been more of an 'architectural' player than a virtuoso - i.e., more inclined, attuned to 'surgically' playing the right note, harmony or punctuation at the right time to support the music rather than playing rapid-fire improvisations - and, for where I am now and may be going, this approach serves me well.

I am always impressed playing with senior musicians - guys in their 60s to even into the 90s' - by how undiminished and strong their music making can be - and, looked forward to maybe one day joining the club of back-slapping wizened old geezers trading stories between numbers - I dunno, hard to say where I'll be in 10,20 years even without the PD issues - still, it felt good to get out there and swim with the fishes again for a bit.

Played a second, paying job, solo piano - this started out easier and ended harder.....by the third hour the control and manual dexterity in my left hand had almost completely departed - walking bass lines out of the question, barely able to drop my fingers on the keys save for dropping the entire arm .....got through it but with a considerable degree of difficultly at the end.

No great cathartic thought this time around.....just observing the dance.

Haiku for Waterbugs

Wise old Waterbug!
Cowers from hot yellow river
Of first morning piss...




Authors note: a true haiku, a transient relationship captured in literary amber....and for the
Stalevo users among you, you know from bright yellow piss, though you shouldn't ought to know from....
anyway, was captivated by the mini-drama played out in the rim of the toilet between my 6 legged friend and his artful dodging of a toxic niagra falls.....

The Secret Life of Modem Mitty...the Applesause Files

“Come with me, sit” said the lithe young woman as she guided me into the small sunlit private room.

Smiling wryly, she sat directly in front of me and encouraged me to relax and prepare for what was to come. “Now look at me…I want to really see your face” Our eyes lock as the sunlit grey perfectly shaped orbs of her pupils peered deeply into my tired brown peepers. “Good, yes, that's very good, now – here’s where it can get a little strange, ready?”

“Ready” I say, still tense and apprehensive but calmed some by her warm hand pressed on my knee.

“Okay – now do just what I tell you – open your mouth”

I obey and present the impressive collection of porcelain crowns that helped my old friend the dentist put his third child through private college without a second mortgage.

“Good...very good....… now, watch me.” My heart races as she leans forward and extends her tongue towards me and slowly licks the perimeter of her full well shaped mouth…..”Now you…let me see you use your tongue”

To the inner soundtrack of Gene Krupa hopped up on goofballs going ape on jungle toms I extend my tongue towards her and, with great sensuality circle the perimeter of my mustachioed pie-hole. I know she can feel my hotness...

“Mmmhhh…yes, very good” “Ok, now I will touch you, ok? I will touch your cheek”

A her delicate hand comes close to my face I detect the faint smell of almonds and insecticide – Prince Matchibelly ‘or a good generic I posit…

“Now, you can feel my finger on your cheek, yes? Good then, now use your tongue and press hard against it....yes, do it now, hard!”


With a manly grunt I thrust my tongue hard to starboard, and despite the insistent pressure of her manicured finger manage to hold my own. As she retracts her hand, clearly impressed by my masterful command of Tounge Fu, her white overcoat pulls back to reveal the outline of a young, tight yet ample bosom…..

“Hmmmm……ok….very good then…..now this part can get a little "freaky" for some….we’re going to use food…”

Images of whipped cream body sculpture, immoral acts of epic debauchery using cucumbers and organic arugala in ways never imagined by nature, topped off, naturally, by a fine Cuban cigar dance shamelessly through my mind when my wild reverie is shattered by the utterance of a single word…

“Crackers!”

Ouch…..no erotic potential I can see in them…lets get back to the whipped cream….

“Crackers!...... let me see what happens when you eat one…go ahead”

My fantasie irreparably broken, I return to earth and begin to munch on the dry hardtack as the swallowing specialist with almond eyes and ample bosom stares intently at my throat and makes notes as I struggle to get my Parkinson’s addled throat musculature to move the masticated cracker down the gullet.
This is not how the fantasy was to end…

And in reality, this is not the end, but rather it seems to me the beginning of another phase, where I who maintained an inner self image of an immortal and timeless 25 year old must really begin to reconcile with the truth that the hot medical babe featured in earlier really has z-e-r-o interest in my world-class studliness, but rather sees me as an early geriatric case, an object for study, assessment and statistic, as fodder for the medical file.

So, after noticing a definite decline in swallowing ability I find myself the object of a swallowing study – to be followed in a week or so with a real-time imaging study where you get to drink fou-fou fluorescent and slightly radioactive Mai Tai's while wearing an offwhite hospital gown last worn by who-knows-who who,as everyone knows, has an awful problem with their who-knows-what.

So, knocked down to size, I manage to wrestle the cracker into submission with the help of a few gulps of water….the secret, she says, not to succumb to the potential pneumonias or choking episodes that Parkinson’s can enable, is to chew r-e-a-l-l-y carefully and always have something handy to help slog a stuck morsel down your unresponsive gullet….like applesause, or babyfood.

So I finish the appointment, listen to the minilecture on mindful eating and schedule the next event. On the way out, she thrusts a phamplet with the obligatory smiling grey-haired couple (“Swallowing and You”) into my hands….and, checking to first see that no-ones looking, she says ‘wait…something special for you…take it!’ (ah, so she is hot for me) – and before I can thank her or find the words to say on parting she is gone, leaving only the persistent fog of her perfume to remind me that she was even ever her.

Out in the sunlight, by my newly ticketed car I open the brown paper bag with excitedly and with great anticipation…….a three pack, Motts Individual Servings, Easy Chew Applesause with tear away lids.

"Smile when you say that" :( A Coffee Saga......)

SHIT!
Roll out of bed late last Thursday .... well, 'roll' is too slick of a word here....more like 'struggle' to work two numb arms with radiating pain in the left shoulder (is it the PD? spinal stenosis? or just a likely torn rotator cuff?) ......as the Stones chestnut 'what a drag it is....getting old" plays on a repeating loop in my fuzzy head. Coffee...

Rushing to get organized I whack my toe but good into a 25 pound freeweight.....more pain, but not enough to do the trick... still not awake.....need coffee.....need coffee.....

Loop through the kitchen on a mad dash to the door and .....SHIT!SHIT!.....out of coffee!!! Ok, it's gonna be ok....will stop on the way to work for a good cup, something strong enough to defend itself....

Make it over to my Mitsubishi, the one with the skin condition ..... notice the air in one tire is low...no time....key in trunk and.....SHIT! SHIT!SHIT!..... the trunk doesn't open...another 'freakin repair ahead...

Cut off by a methed-out tow truck on a short but perilous drive to the local coffee spot. At least its a non-Starbucks place where they don't comment on the cleverness of your order in faux British accent ( "As, yes a fair-trade double whipped moca yaya deep fried unleaded moccafreakin'chinno in a environmentally friendly recyclable tall cup....e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t choice, sir!)

Definitely not in the mood for that.

Just coffee....Java, java, java its very near now.....things 'gonna get better......as my wheels scrapes the curb I know I've made it - slam the door shut, noting the weak thud as my last plastic hubcap falls to the pavement.....make it quick 17 steps into the shop....
hmmmm, maybe I'll order a nice piece of rugalah while I'm here....its gonna get better

I was in no way prepared for what happened next:

'Coffee' I mutter

'Sorry, sir...no coffee for you ' says she.

My blank but clearly pre-murderous look from me prompts her to elaborate...

'Ok....I can serve you....but only if you smile!!!' she beams.

'Just the coffee, please' I say.

'No.....I'm serious sir!.....no smile, no coffee!'

Now while I'm not a depresive, truth be know I'm just not a smily type --- especially ear-lie in the morning on demand.....still Modem's a good sport, and I tell my dopamine and caffene starved brain to wire a message to my hairy cheeks (...not those ones! the face, the face!...) to mobilize and pull skywards.....stand there for about 15 seconds in the effort .....nope, can't get it up...(hey! watch it! not that! the cheeks! the hairy cheeks! hey! watch it not those...)

My hands slam down on the counter in....
"JUST GIMME THE DAGNABBED COFFEE!!!!"

I note the calculating look on the pale young face of the counter girl as she wisely steps back to the hot urn of bubblin' joe and pours a measured cup , all the while keeping one eye pegged on the crazy man seething at the register. As she places it calmly on the counter and now looks sykward , raising her arms akimbo and launches into a sermon for the witnesses in heaven " very well sir....it is your life and if you really want to spend it bereft of the joy that a smile can bring I suppose that there really is nothing anyone can really do to make you ..."

..... I tune her out as a spiral column of caffeinated bliss wafts towards my waiting nostrils. I venture a sip, and the haze starts to clear, ahh to be human again, human again....her voice fades back up .....'just here to help and a smile helps all of us ....you really should smile sir" she says with a smile.

I take another sip staring contentently past her towards the pastry case.
Hmmmmm, maybe I will have that rugalah after all.....

"Rugalah" I say blankly...

"Of course, sir ...but only if you smile!"

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Postscript:

Made it out with only my coffee....tire now fully flat...SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!..late for work and spilled all the 'freaking coffee fixing the tire.......telling the story later in the day I found I couldn't help but .... smile.

Bastard!.....she won......

go figure....

:)

What 500 Channel Cable can Teach Us 'bout PD

Thanks to 500 channel cable I recently caught a few late night 'Kojak' episodes - 'still have more hair than that grizzled SOB but I actually used to drive the same Kojak car - a monkey-shit brown Buick Century V8 around the Bronx back in the early '80s.

So, they get a bad guy, but they ain't got the evidence and next thing you know they've got him hanging out a 12th story window held only by the greasy hands of a coupla'thugs - you know how these shows go - and either they drop him (rarely) or pull the broken and repentant bastard
back in and get whatever info they came for...then they wack him ......

At first, the diagnosis of PD is - if you'll permit a wide metaphor - much like being thrust out a window held only by an ankle - your entire perception, your innerscript of how your life would play out is scrambled and spinning -- but then

then...its different.

No one pulls you back in. No one drops you. Nothing happens....yet you're still looking decidedly at the pavement as if the goons who got you into this decided to go for lunch and cuffed your inverted feet to a pipe - and then forgot to ever return after 3 boilermakers too many....

I can accept complete change
I can deal with a brush with peril.
I don't know how to deal with this 'dangling'......and this is the crux of the existential challenge by the longterm progressive degenerative reality of P.D.

Part of me secretly envys the quick exit enjoyed by some. Take Omar, from the 'Wire' shot in the back of the head by young thug...never saw it coming...
As in all things, the anticipation of the thing itself is the most difficult to bear - all of us come and go....'suppose we all get a different view of the process depending upon our karmic need, tikkun, luck of the draw?
....go figure.... :)

Macintosh Assasin....

Tasty Assasin

apple hides fatal intent

Now that swallowing has flown

Dang-neared choked on a bite of apple - out of nowhere, just drivin' my monkey-shit brown
Mitsubishi Galant de-lux through the late afternoon haze en-route to pickup my 6 year old
terrorist/daughter when - shazAMMM! 'Freakin bit of apple gets caught in a place at the back of my throat where, till that moment, I never even knew had a place! Nothing was obstructed in my breathing, thankfully, but try as I might, hacking aways like an allycat trying dislodge a wad of steel wool from its feline gullet couldn't get the offending piece of fruit to budge.

This went on for several hours before resolving, and caused me no small amount of stress....sort of like hiccuping uncorrected, or a hangnail but in your throat. More disturbing is what this relatively minor even could presage - when your automatic processes are no longer dependably automatic all bets are off. And even as a driver I 'sucked driving a manual.....

So, I now eye my every meal, each minor snack, with a new sense of respect and trepidation as
my eyes have been opened to see that within that rosy come-hither sheen of an organic Macintosh may lie my ticket to the next world, on, that an innocent-seeming bite of steak may come from a Holy Cow on assignment from the holy one, blessed be he, to be a bovine messenger of doom - no matter how you slice it, the future's just not what it used to be around here.

Stupid Brain Tricks:

Hmmmm.....maybe the Flushmeister 2000 is closer to my immediate present than I'd like to think. Experienced a new disturbing symptom....smelling things that aren't there.

Getting ready for bed, checking email, was suddenly aware of a series of distinct, pungent and unpleasant odors --- completely un-namable, and not eminating from anything physical (including me.... I checked!)......came and went quickly, 4 or 5 times....not one odor, but a series of them / I found the experience very disturbing...

PD is known to interfere with your olfactory sense....early warning sign can be obliviousness to odors that everyone notices but you. But this....seems to be an internally generated sensation....a hallucination of the nose....misfiring neurons up to shenanigans....

Hallucinations....definately not good :( Is it only a matter of time till visual ones emerge ....'expect any moment Jessica Rabbit to emerge and assume a come-hither pose.....why....well, there she is!...oh, just kidding (....or am I?)

Anyway, this was disturbing...and made it that much harder to catch some shuteye, what with the gimpy arm, tremors, hard swallowing and normal end-of-the-days stresses....
go figure,
Modemdavid

Flushmeister 2000

Went to see an orthopedist today, the goodly Dr. G...spousal unit was hoping he'd write a 'script for Vicodin...me, only trying to get some relief from an increasingly problematic left shoulder. So, off I go, gimpy arm and all....
After a half hour wait in the examining room deftly completing a crossword in he comes...quick discussion of my orthopedic woes...and then to my utter surprise,

"So, have you given much thought to intellegent toilets? They've really come a long way, technology and all"

say whut?

"You know, the day may come when reaching back to wipe...'not gonna happen. Never too soon to prepare the plumbing...."

say whut?

"Yup....down the road without one of these babies your only hope is to go for the shower..."

say whut?

"Here, look this over" as he hands me a glossy tri-fold brochure on the Flushmeister 2000, with a rent-to-fucking-own option.....and off he lumbers to get the big needle....

Now, I got some problems here, yes. I'm not in 'freaking denial, but I do believe that living as fully in the moment is what's called for to cope...and in THIS moment I am, thankfully, fully capable of wiping my own behind, thank-you.

Seeing my reaction, the good Dr. takes a different tone, and says "look, I'm only trying to get out information that you might find useful, if not today, well, maybe next Thursday"....
"Patients don't always like to hear the truth. Like last week....I got a 500pound whale of man in here 'needs an MRI....but he'll never fit in the machene...so I write him a special admission to the LA Zoo Large Animal Medical Unit....now, no one likes to hear this stuff but....well look me up if you ever need more info on the options"

Which one, the auto-asswipe or large animal MRIs? Sheesh...

So, to cut to the chase...I get a cortisone shot the size of a yardstick in the back of my left shoulder....a new script for physical therapy....and a glossy trifold brochure on the wondrous Flushmeister 2000, with a rent-to-'fucking own option....

And, failure of a spousal unit that I am, 'failed to get a 'script for Vicodin.....
there's still hope...next week I go to the perio-freakin-dontist.....

say 'ahhhhh!
ModemDavid

Up the Down Staircase

Watching a child grow is like watching a flower ever-so-slowly unfurl and grow - and I'm blessed and fortunate to see this process in the growth of my two daughters, a toddler and part-time terrorist and a first grader. As an adult, and as a parent, you watch your kids knowing that much as they love you they cannot possibly know you in a pers0n-to-person way at this stage.....whatever they see you as is to irrevocably clouded by your role as parent, and especially with those of us who put off parenting till we 'found ourselves' -whatever that now means - with 40 or more years difference in age, the temporal distance is very real and extensive - room for a whole 'nuther generation in that gap.
So, its later in life for me to watch the early life of my girls unfold - I'm reminded of the old wooden escalators at Macy's 34th street, which provided endeless hours of cheap thrills and near-death-experiences when we were kids, trying to evade holiday shoppers and store security for the thrill of running up the down escalator.... or just watching the people move up as you are automatically moved down the down side....
On the down side is where I is....not to be morose, but this is chronic, decline sort of stuff -
and as I watch my kids move smiling up the up side I cannot but wish that I could somehow
make it stop....to meet them at the middle, and just stay there, here, with all their grace, beauty,
potential ...(just not the whining...:) and enough of my facilities to be here fully, to have that longed for time when you are young enough and your kids are old enough to really fully encounter each other as fully human beings, not just as a parent or a child.

Still, mercessly, efficiently the escalator moves and snatches me from my reverie....kids moving up, I'm on my way on my way. The words of Frank Zappa, that iconoclast from the last century, come to mind though, a quote from his Studio Tan album, subtitled "The Adventures of Gregory Peccory".........where he brilliantly defines chronologic time as

"eternity and fractional divisions thereof"

What is a fraction of the eternal? Equally eternal, no? So, maybe there's hope - that in that one moment, that fractional division of eternity, where I meet my children, my wife, and all who I encounter on the metaphorical escalators, that in that moment, secreted, are all moments, timeless, wholly, present, now.....

go figure....:)

Parkinsons Patients: A Logical Choice for the Advant Garde in Virtual Reality!

So, where are you? I mean it….literally. Just where does your consciousness reside? To what dimensions does it expand itself, and to how small of a non material ball can it become? Like a hermit crab, can it move into any vessel that comes its way?

I’ve been pondering these questions more of late, as I’ve noted with growing concern the gradual seepage of PD symptoms into, what till now, has been the safe harbor of my right side….so long as I could do the hang over there, I’ve been able to compensate fairly well for the interminable tremor and rigidity which Increasingly characterizes my left hand, arm and now leg.

I’m starting feel like I’m being leveraged the ‘hell out of here….here being the body I’ve generally regarded as something ‘I’ fully own. Not the case, as is increasingly more obvious, and clearly a new tenant has taken up occupancy and shows the same singlemindness of purpose that drove our forefathers across the plains in fulfillment of their vision of manifest destiny.

So, I think and I ask: if not here, where do ‘I’ go? And where have ‘I’ gone before…and I think, first about driving.

My dad’s classic ’68 Plymouth Belvedere that I learned to drive…and how difficult it all was to manage up until that magic point where ‘I’ became one with the car….my consciousness expanded to reach to the rusty bumper and back to the tailpipe hung with a hanger which in a previous incarnation held a newly dry-cleaned tweed coat with a cigarette burn on the lapel. That’s when you can drive – when your essential awareness of whatever your driving expands to the full contour of what you’re piloting. Till then – better have some good insurance and a hard head – I remember a few good run-ins with the immovable train trestles of the uptown number 6 train on Westchester Avenue, indeed I do.

Over the years my driving consciousness has contoured itself to operate other memorable vehicles, including a 1973 monkey-shit brown Buick Century (yes, the ‘Kojak’ car), a Chevy Nova, my old favorite ’86 Celica and my current family man sedan, a 2001 Mitsubishi Galant with a skin condition….don’t get me started ‘bout the Mitsubishi. To move on….

I’ve had some fascinating recent experiences futzing around with 3D virtual reality community….second life…...and the beginnings of the strange realization that, yes, it is possible to conceive of – and, even now to actually experience – the beginnings of the porting of your consciousness into an online avatar – and just as the compentent driver is ‘aware’ of his car body, so to does the online avatar become the fringe, and as technology improves no doubt, the focus of consciousness.

So, in recent weeks I’ve experimented with letting my consciousness seep (…hmm…sounds messy) into a variety of avitars including bodies of a winged animal, a Blue Tuxeoed Elvis, a provocatively attired female avatar, and George Bush’s worst fear – a human animal hybrid! What these characters seem to do best, thanks to some amazingly clever programming efforts – is

Dance, dance, dance, with ease and grace and, at times, depraved abandon.

You try that with PD sometimes…..

I remember some time back, maybe around 2000, trying an early 2D chat program and, after a brief interest ( ~ 10 minutes) found the paucity of movement so completely inferior to ‘real’ reality that it held no lasting interest.

But now, two trajectories seem to have crossed – the technology has gotten to a point where it has impact and the movement through the 3D terrain and interaction with ‘others’ has the beginning of depth.

Any my ‘technology’ – i.e my failing wetware which increasingly has difficulty in processing signals in the necessary ways to allow for ease of moment – is on a decline. So as these two trajectories cross the prospect of critical mass – ie. Where an improved virtual reality becomes more enjoyable and compelling than the real thing – a tipping point appears, where, if not just yet, soon we could all be living in a radically transformed reality, with the most disabled here the most ardent adventurers there. Dancing, dreaming, and moving with ease……when this stuff is fully merged with the new field of teledildonics, all bets are off....

Ray Kurzweil, a major figure in modern computer science ( voice recognition software, music synthesis, and futurist extraordinaire) in his provocative “The Age of Spiritual Mmachines' posits that soon…sooner than most think,we will bear witness to the full porting of human consciousness into software.It’s a fascinating premise which, the more I experience the things I’m experiencing, start to seem plausible, possible inevitable.

So, what does the future hold? Stem cell cure? Or maybe a relatively painless decline, drooling and shaking on the outside, while inside, deep with dancing …dancing…dancing with myself…

so till then or something better in day to day reality, on with my virtual blue tuxedo jacket and back to the dance, already in progress…….

Blue Elvis :)

….

.

…

Banzaii!!!

Dancing in kitchen

Look! An Angel masquerades

As my sweet daughter!

Yesterday pm had one of those moments…..when, when the delicious, mindnumbing and tunnel-vision inducing busyness of being busy with being busy…

It all faded to black me exposed to my feelings and fully confronted by an awareness of what has changed, what is changing and likely will change in the time-arrow of my life.

And it hurt….

.it was/is/ more likely than not will be more difficult, burdensome and burdening that anything that I experience now, which, while problematic at times, in the larger schema of things still ain’t but a pimple on the behind of a giant wooly mammoth.

Its said in the Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a book of distilled communal wisdom of Talmudic sages, that there are 3 ‘stances’ between the Buber-esque ‘I and Thou’ one can adopt:

“whats mine is mine and whats yours is yours’

The hallmark of the average man

“whats mine is mine and whats yours is mine”

The credo of an evil man, most 2 year olds, and the IRS.

“whats mine is yours and whats yours is yours”

The operating stance of a Tsadik

AND, curiously, the ultimate ‘stance’ we must all take when, as ever it comes and for the mortal among us come it will, IS the last …i.e. between oneself and the Power-that-be /ribbono shel olum (master of the universe) an ultimate acknowledgment is inevitable that everything that I have that I can lose….everything- from the most tangible to the most ethereal, each and every ability that within a normative healthy phase we fully is assumed as granted….all of it….is/was only on loan.

So, stupid!, why cry over the loss of what you never really had?

BANZAI!!!!!

One little word, how can it mean so many things? "Graceful acceptance of ones destiny"…..still easier said than done.(thanks, Amparo!)

So there I was, momentarily hit/hurt/by the suck-i-ness of this all when, serendipitously, I remembered to put on a new CD with a wonderful Klezmatic version of Shalom Alechem I planned to sing with the family for Shabbat…hit the wrong track and played a hot Eddie Palmieri salsa number----the kind of Bronx Puerto-Riceno soundtrack of my youth sort of thing….

and just then a little angel impersonating my youngest daughter took my hand and led me to the white-tile dancefloor that is our kitchen and there we were, back in Orchard Beach, on a sunny day with Salsa blaring from competing boom boxes to the smell of roasting g-d knows what in the warm setting sun. I was summoned back to earth only by the pungent smell of yellow rice burning to black...

Banzaii!!!

The Patience of Parkinson's.....scary!

Chronic, progressive,

As water saps strength from stone

Cliff breaks as I tremble

I like my politics progressive, thank-you - not my ailments if’n I had my druthers.

But my druthers are handled by others, largely at least in regard to PD..….and this time around I’ve taken on a partner who’s calmly steering the ship to a rocky shore . One of the things you can learn by experiencing the slow creep of Parkinson’s is the power of patience and persistence – at least from the disease process itself. It's in no rush, hakuna matata, and while you don’t have all the time in the world, it does. So things change, slowly, subtly and seriously…

Still doing better than not in all regards, but I note some disturbing new symptoms – occasional involvement of my right arm, till recently not at all involved and – equally if not more troubling, some difficulty swallowing. Swallowing is not the type of thing you think about very much, till it becomes less than fully automatic. And, believe me, you start thinking a lot then. So, tell me, how do you swallow?

Peristalsis….(add short segment here)

So, while the disease won’t officially off you itself, it sets up a myriad of ways to deliver your
demise (we deliver!)….falling without reflexes to recover is a popular one, choking growing out of swallowing difficulties, also a perennial, or complications from pneumonias becoming more common with progression of disease all among the top ten ways to check out growing out of this withering away of motor control we call Parkinson’s.

As the process commands and deserves great respect for its patience and persistence, so too must I gird myself to be strong enough not to yield my center, my power to resist that which I might and accept unavoidable changes as they occur, the strength to open a tremorous hand and release with the appreciation for having had them the powers the precious capabilities that collectively form the dowry of health which the more fortunate among us bring to each earthly incarnation.

Prius Envy....

So, I gets the Mitsubishi back from the shop with the shiny new tranni and within a days it's stalling, and jerking 'n huffing and generally not behaving the way a satisfied car with a new transmision ought to act....so I hoof it over the a local car rental place at 7pm just in time to snag the sorriest and very last rental on the lot...a shiny red DaeWOOO! mini....hot damn.

Drove this clunker for two days while the garage celebrated their good fortune at finding a new donor for thier slush fund...people treat you, well, different, yes....thats the word, different in a daewoo! (there's the marketing pitch .....daewoo......different!)... heres how...

othewise courteous little-biddy old lady drivers feel suddenly free and empowed to drive by you and give you the finger.....not a single, but a triple-thrust fuck-you gesture....for no apparent reason

little children know its ok to toss old soda, or diapers at you as their leer down from towering hummers and suvs, while the dad looks on, winks as if to say, 'thattaboy!"...

people will cut you off without compunction in this thing.....
looking forward to getting the mitsubishi with a skin condition back soon!