On Tuesday night, I ordered stuff I needed. I've been a little out of it lately and it was time to re-enter the land of the living. So I ordered seven items. I could have had Thursday delivery for half of them, but since one package could only arrive on Friday, I accepted Friday for both. By that time, I would need what I ordered and it gave me a couple more days to get sorted out health-wise.
Two of the products, chiefly a new bath mat for the one I tore up in the aftermath of my bathtub misadventure, were not Amazon.ca products. The others were. Including another product I needed (and had needed for about ten days). But those two-non Amazon products were in different packages.
Why couldn't Amazon put everything in one box? Ask them. I dunno. This is a company that routinely fires warehouse and driver personnel for not working at the pace of robots. But putting everything in one box was asking too much. Oh by the way, I'm still a Prime customer against my will (see other posts) AND I live less than three miles from an Amazon distribution centre AND I requested everything arrive the same day.
You can see where this is going.
I got a box on Friday. Delivered before noon and with a smile and some patience by THE AMAZON DRIVER!!! Yeah!!!!
The other box? With the needed stuff?
Not so much. (insert whatever 13-word curse-laden phrase you think I said out loud. You're probably right. And if not so, then it's milder than the language I used)
The ... let's call them zombies, again, I use stronger words, but Mom might read this ... delivered my package to the post office in the next town over. Not to the post office a block from the end of my street. The NEXT BLINKETY-BLANK TOWN AWAY. Not the post office Amazon and I share. THE NEXT TOWN OVER!
And we don't have Saturday delivery in our area from the Post Office.
So, NOW, the track parcel page for my order from Amazon now PROUDLY PROCLAIMS, "Your parcel can still arrive 27 April-30 April." And oh ya, "Was expected Friday 26 April."
Further curse words, blah, blah, blah.
THIS is what having Prime gets you. The same Prime Amazon has recently said will change to One-Day delivery for all Prime customers, down from the Two-Day GUARANTEE.
More curse words, more blah, more blah, and I almost typed the big one to finish it off.
Amazon. Another word for ... well ... cursing. Amazoning. Just try it. Use Amazon in place of every naughty word you know. It'll make you feel good and nobody who might be offended will even notice.
'Cept Jeff Bezos. But I'm the last thing THAT adulterer is thinking about.
By the way, why did I order IMPORTANT stuff from Amazon? I needed it and I needed it quickly, which being house-bound makes difficult. I also thought it was such a small order (although 130-plus dollars after taxes and shipping) that they could simply NOT Amazon it up.
I was wrong.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Saturday, April 20, 2019
The End
I took a bath a little less than three hours ago. It will be my last.
No, I'm not dying.
At least in the next few minutes, hours, days or hopefully even months. Dying is a constant. But nobody, including me, is hurrying that along any faster than yesterday. But I've had my last bath and will now only be able to take showers from this point forward. Well, unassisted. And I haven't seen hide nor hair of a nurse in almost three years at this point. And I'd like to extend that streak some. Eventually, a nurse and sponge baths will not be within my purview to decline. But I can now, and I do.
No, the reason the bathtub, my prison of the last almost three hours, is finally never to be used for it's designed purpose is that I faced my mortality tonight and it was ugly.
I needed a bath. Not a shower. I needed to work out some muscle kinks and the best way for that to happen traditionally was to fire up the bathtub, get it as hot as allowed and dump in two fingers of Radox Muscle Relaxant Bath Soak. Grab my reading glasses and Kindle and luxuriate away those things that have contrived to tense me up. I have loved hot baths for all of the life that I can remember. No cold baths, not even in the hottest of summers. No, I liked it hot. 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 112 if I could get away with it.
But then Doc V doused me with cold water. My medical problems ... COMPLETELY self-created, were not conducive to hot baths. First I was downgraded to 108 but managed to scald myself Easter of seven years ago. Because I have Diabetes Type 2 (Darwin's proof of Natural Selection) and the resulting Diabetic Neuropathy. I didn't realize I was scalding myself. My nerve endings below the shin are dead, shut down in permanently on mode ... as in permanently indicating pain. You learn to ignore it as best you can. Man is not meant to do that. Pain is nature's way of saying STOP DOING THAT!
And of course, the dying nerve ends just didn't get to the shin and declare the campaign of war on my body finished. No, the campaign continues. I haven't been able to crawl on my hands and knees for more than a body length in two decades. For the last decade, the pain of merely kneeling is indescribably painful. If a baby spotted me two body lengths and I was more than ten feet away from the child's mother, the race wouldn't be close. The kid would leave me in the dust.
I'll throw in one more gotcha. My left shoulder, the one nearest escape from the bathtub, is shot. I fractured it a couple of decades ago, surfing down the stairs (involuntarily). Drove the forearm up into my shoulder socket and made a mess of it. Developed bursitis, which the odd horse-sized needle of cortisone would alleviate. Finally managed to fray my rotator cuff enough to give me several options, NONE of which was cortisone, the boogey man of diabetics. Does something awful to your blood sugar levels. I could pay (and yes, even here in Canada, non-essential surgery is not free) and have various things done to my shoulder. I could even get the Diabetic's Version of Cortisone, again at a price I couldn't afford (and eat ... for a year). Or I could suffer. You can guess which I chose. So, a bum shoulder for the big fat guy sitting in the drained bathtub wondering how he was going to get out of the damned thing.
It was only last Hallowe'en that I'd found myself stuck in the reclined chair I spend most evenings in. I was tipped back 30 degrees and bounded on both sides by tables stacked with unhelpful things. And the power was off. In the dark. For more than a half-hour, I was calm and considering ways to doze off again. Then nature's call arrived and I was faced with a need to escape the chair. I thought that fifteen minutes was as bad as it could get. I was wrong. Although I did protect myself against its re-occurrence with an uninterruptible power supply the next day.
You have to learn to make concessions to your own frailties. They are not going away. It's stupid to be stupidly optimistic.
Which leads me to my decision to get into the bathtub. I knew it was wrong. A shower was indicated. In fact, as Doc V left me with cooler and cooler baths ... and the reminder that five minutes after a soak starts, you are sitting in dirty water ... I could take refuge in the hot shower. I had no way to know what temperature the shower spray was. Not like with a bath where my little yellow ducky ... what, you thought you could take the boy out of the old boy??? ... couldn't tattle on me with the tell-tale colour-coded temperature indicator. But I WANTED a soak. I imagine some junkies felt the same way about THEIR last (too potent) fix.
My bath wasn't long. I think I read three short chapters in the book I was reading, Becky Chambers I think. Third book in the Wayfarers' series. Too lazy to look up the title. A decent book, not as good as her first, on a par with the second. I finished the chapter and turned off the Kindle. Tossed the glasses over on top of it. And then I sat.
And sat.
I was already aware of how much trouble I was in. The tub was too narrow, my bulk too enormous, to haul butt and get out. I couldn't turn without exerting pressure on my blistered feet (forgot to mention the other delightful side effect of Diabetes, blisters where you put pressure). Or more importantly, my knees. And the shoulder weakness made my left arm utterly useless.
So, I sat some more.
The tub slowly dried around me. Faster than I remembered, but this was the first winter I had not run the humidifier on central heating. I used a small manual one where I slept. The whole house was as dry as a wasp nest that had been abandoned. Parts of my anatomy were still soggy. All parts of me were ready to vacate the prison. But I couldn't figure a way out to do it.
So, I sat some more.
Some dirty clothes were within reach and I kept grabbing them to stick under my keister. I was thinking of building an off-ramp of sorts, one crumpled up piece of clothing at a time. Turns out, if you weigh closer to 240 pounds than you would like, you can pile a lot of clothes beneath you and not appreciable rise up very much. I didn't have enough dirty clothes handy, that a couple of fluffy towels helped enough. I was still below the lip of the bathtub.
So, I sat some more.
I tried to turn on my side, thinking, I might sleep a bit, stuck in the fetal position. Nope. I could twist a bit at the hips and climb the far wall with my feet. But the position wasn't comfortable for longer than about five seconds. I went back to my semi-sitting position, feet planted firmly against the far side of the tub, my backside on top of the clothes pyramid and no hope for immediate succor. Despair was starting to really set in. The bathroom phone was over on the far side of the bathroom. I couldn't even call for help. Not next door to my friends, the McDonalds. Not to 911. Not even to Mom, just to do some whimpering. It was the middle of the night for them ... and the reason I hadn't placed the phone within easy reach when I got into the tub.
So, I sat some more.
And finally, the disgust I was feeling for myself gave me enough strength to flip over onto my hands and knees. Slowly, I stood up. Slower still, I placed my right foot outside the tub and then lugged over the left (my weaker side). I was out. I brushed off pebbles of the old rubber mat from my knees. The mat inhabited the floor of the tub and most of it now lay bunched down towards the drain. I was trembling and it wasn't from the cold. The house is kept at 72 all year round. But I trembled because of what might have been.
I plopped down on the cushioned toilet seat and thought about the last 150 minutes of my life and realized a time had passed. The bathtub was now just a shower stall. The shower seat I had bought weeks ago and left in the box it came in downstairs, was now going to have to be setup and used. I thought many other things, none of them printable here. But I didn't think much about moving.
So, I sat some more.
I could feel the tenseness in my shoulders that I'd sought to eradicate had come back. Bile raised in my gorge, anger at coming full circle. But only long enough to realize that whatever had happened, I had survived it. That I had learned a new truth to my existence. That I wouldn't ever place myself in this position again.
So, I stopped sitting, left the bathroom and came here to mourn the passing of something I loved. A reminder to all who read this: a bathtub can be a dangerous place.
No, I'm not dying.
At least in the next few minutes, hours, days or hopefully even months. Dying is a constant. But nobody, including me, is hurrying that along any faster than yesterday. But I've had my last bath and will now only be able to take showers from this point forward. Well, unassisted. And I haven't seen hide nor hair of a nurse in almost three years at this point. And I'd like to extend that streak some. Eventually, a nurse and sponge baths will not be within my purview to decline. But I can now, and I do.
No, the reason the bathtub, my prison of the last almost three hours, is finally never to be used for it's designed purpose is that I faced my mortality tonight and it was ugly.
I needed a bath. Not a shower. I needed to work out some muscle kinks and the best way for that to happen traditionally was to fire up the bathtub, get it as hot as allowed and dump in two fingers of Radox Muscle Relaxant Bath Soak. Grab my reading glasses and Kindle and luxuriate away those things that have contrived to tense me up. I have loved hot baths for all of the life that I can remember. No cold baths, not even in the hottest of summers. No, I liked it hot. 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 112 if I could get away with it.
But then Doc V doused me with cold water. My medical problems ... COMPLETELY self-created, were not conducive to hot baths. First I was downgraded to 108 but managed to scald myself Easter of seven years ago. Because I have Diabetes Type 2 (Darwin's proof of Natural Selection) and the resulting Diabetic Neuropathy. I didn't realize I was scalding myself. My nerve endings below the shin are dead, shut down in permanently on mode ... as in permanently indicating pain. You learn to ignore it as best you can. Man is not meant to do that. Pain is nature's way of saying STOP DOING THAT!
And of course, the dying nerve ends just didn't get to the shin and declare the campaign of war on my body finished. No, the campaign continues. I haven't been able to crawl on my hands and knees for more than a body length in two decades. For the last decade, the pain of merely kneeling is indescribably painful. If a baby spotted me two body lengths and I was more than ten feet away from the child's mother, the race wouldn't be close. The kid would leave me in the dust.
I'll throw in one more gotcha. My left shoulder, the one nearest escape from the bathtub, is shot. I fractured it a couple of decades ago, surfing down the stairs (involuntarily). Drove the forearm up into my shoulder socket and made a mess of it. Developed bursitis, which the odd horse-sized needle of cortisone would alleviate. Finally managed to fray my rotator cuff enough to give me several options, NONE of which was cortisone, the boogey man of diabetics. Does something awful to your blood sugar levels. I could pay (and yes, even here in Canada, non-essential surgery is not free) and have various things done to my shoulder. I could even get the Diabetic's Version of Cortisone, again at a price I couldn't afford (and eat ... for a year). Or I could suffer. You can guess which I chose. So, a bum shoulder for the big fat guy sitting in the drained bathtub wondering how he was going to get out of the damned thing.
It was only last Hallowe'en that I'd found myself stuck in the reclined chair I spend most evenings in. I was tipped back 30 degrees and bounded on both sides by tables stacked with unhelpful things. And the power was off. In the dark. For more than a half-hour, I was calm and considering ways to doze off again. Then nature's call arrived and I was faced with a need to escape the chair. I thought that fifteen minutes was as bad as it could get. I was wrong. Although I did protect myself against its re-occurrence with an uninterruptible power supply the next day.
You have to learn to make concessions to your own frailties. They are not going away. It's stupid to be stupidly optimistic.
Which leads me to my decision to get into the bathtub. I knew it was wrong. A shower was indicated. In fact, as Doc V left me with cooler and cooler baths ... and the reminder that five minutes after a soak starts, you are sitting in dirty water ... I could take refuge in the hot shower. I had no way to know what temperature the shower spray was. Not like with a bath where my little yellow ducky ... what, you thought you could take the boy out of the old boy??? ... couldn't tattle on me with the tell-tale colour-coded temperature indicator. But I WANTED a soak. I imagine some junkies felt the same way about THEIR last (too potent) fix.
My bath wasn't long. I think I read three short chapters in the book I was reading, Becky Chambers I think. Third book in the Wayfarers' series. Too lazy to look up the title. A decent book, not as good as her first, on a par with the second. I finished the chapter and turned off the Kindle. Tossed the glasses over on top of it. And then I sat.
And sat.
I was already aware of how much trouble I was in. The tub was too narrow, my bulk too enormous, to haul butt and get out. I couldn't turn without exerting pressure on my blistered feet (forgot to mention the other delightful side effect of Diabetes, blisters where you put pressure). Or more importantly, my knees. And the shoulder weakness made my left arm utterly useless.
So, I sat some more.
The tub slowly dried around me. Faster than I remembered, but this was the first winter I had not run the humidifier on central heating. I used a small manual one where I slept. The whole house was as dry as a wasp nest that had been abandoned. Parts of my anatomy were still soggy. All parts of me were ready to vacate the prison. But I couldn't figure a way out to do it.
So, I sat some more.
Some dirty clothes were within reach and I kept grabbing them to stick under my keister. I was thinking of building an off-ramp of sorts, one crumpled up piece of clothing at a time. Turns out, if you weigh closer to 240 pounds than you would like, you can pile a lot of clothes beneath you and not appreciable rise up very much. I didn't have enough dirty clothes handy, that a couple of fluffy towels helped enough. I was still below the lip of the bathtub.
So, I sat some more.
I tried to turn on my side, thinking, I might sleep a bit, stuck in the fetal position. Nope. I could twist a bit at the hips and climb the far wall with my feet. But the position wasn't comfortable for longer than about five seconds. I went back to my semi-sitting position, feet planted firmly against the far side of the tub, my backside on top of the clothes pyramid and no hope for immediate succor. Despair was starting to really set in. The bathroom phone was over on the far side of the bathroom. I couldn't even call for help. Not next door to my friends, the McDonalds. Not to 911. Not even to Mom, just to do some whimpering. It was the middle of the night for them ... and the reason I hadn't placed the phone within easy reach when I got into the tub.
So, I sat some more.
And finally, the disgust I was feeling for myself gave me enough strength to flip over onto my hands and knees. Slowly, I stood up. Slower still, I placed my right foot outside the tub and then lugged over the left (my weaker side). I was out. I brushed off pebbles of the old rubber mat from my knees. The mat inhabited the floor of the tub and most of it now lay bunched down towards the drain. I was trembling and it wasn't from the cold. The house is kept at 72 all year round. But I trembled because of what might have been.
I plopped down on the cushioned toilet seat and thought about the last 150 minutes of my life and realized a time had passed. The bathtub was now just a shower stall. The shower seat I had bought weeks ago and left in the box it came in downstairs, was now going to have to be setup and used. I thought many other things, none of them printable here. But I didn't think much about moving.
So, I sat some more.
I could feel the tenseness in my shoulders that I'd sought to eradicate had come back. Bile raised in my gorge, anger at coming full circle. But only long enough to realize that whatever had happened, I had survived it. That I had learned a new truth to my existence. That I wouldn't ever place myself in this position again.
So, I stopped sitting, left the bathroom and came here to mourn the passing of something I loved. A reminder to all who read this: a bathtub can be a dangerous place.
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