That Time I Almost Died Part VII

December 2008 (I think this string of blogs was titled “The Apotheosis of Payne”)

My body and psyche have capitulated, so when I return to the U.S. for Christmas, I will be remaining there for at least a few months while I seek First World care. The hope is that a diagnosis and treatment plan will be reached quickly, and that I’ll be back to reasonable health and London town by the spring. 

Back to business: Dec. 11th return trip to the hematologist: Not only was PMR ruled out, but another theory, B-12 deficiency, was checked off the list. In fact, my B-12 reading was one of the only indicators that was slightly high.

The hematologist showed me a computer screen clustered with bloodwork jargon that was supposed to illuminate us both. Evidently, nothing kooky dared show itself, which brought the doc to a new theory: hepatitis c. I felt like saying, "I’m flattered you think I’m happening enough for hepatitis C (the C stands for cool), but let’s face it, I’m not that outgoing.”

Instead I said something about how square my life had been, making hep C astronomically unlikely. I could see by the doubting smirk on her face she didn’t believe me. I protested, citing all the important stats of my boring life. With each word, her face became ever more scrunched and skeptical. This is the only time I’ve ever had trouble convincing a woman I don’t get laid much.

We went back and forth on this point, then she began to speculate wildly about tapeworms and rare liver diseases. Once I half-convinced the hematologist that hep c was a long shot, she offered a very unappealing Plan B; a bone marrow biopsy. My reaction must have said a lot, because she tried to backpedal a bit by saying: “I don’t think you’re as sick as you look."

The word biopsy is a downer at 89. When you’re 29, it leaves you vegetative. Maybe I'm just accustomed to the diagnosis roller coaster, because some of the initial shock value was lost on me. What replaced it was a very specific kind of resentment. Age 30 is just around the bend for me, and I couldn't help but think of how I spent my 20s: loitering in comedy clubs with comedians I mostly disliked. Comedians are a twisted and often very unamusing bunch. If you like people who take a Type A approach to annoying everyone around them, hang around comedians. If you want to be around a bunch of wannabe peacocks who think saying they have a fancy tail and actually having a fancy tail are the same thing, find your way to a comedy green room. If you like people with more tics than a woman who has been sexually trafficked, visit an open-mic.

The comics I started with also became great friends. Unfortunately, they were a small minority of...oh...let's just say single digits. The majority of comedians I’ve met do nothing but put several exclamation marks on a business that can only be described as heinous.  Don’t get me started on the bookers.

I spent my 20s in such company, all because of a delusion about “making it" in comedy (I can't even write it without cringing!). A poor choice on my part. But hey, any chump who bunny hops toward a mirage deserves what he gets.

I guess I should say a few words about the idea of public, socialized healthcare. Go to any scandalous online newsstory about healthcare, and you’ll find a spate of comments like, “Yeah, what do you expect from for-profit healthcare?” This statement states nothing whatsoever, but by blending vague cynicism with what sounds like industry jargon, it lets its author play the role of informed commentator. All that’s lacking is a misused Latin phrase. Referring to “empirical evidence” while providing no actual evidence or even demonstrating that you know what empirical means is another winsome tactic.

Hard not to laugh at Americans cheering on government conscripted medicine. Given how abominably government performs in all its other functions, why would anyone trust, let alone insist, that we turn over healthcare to government officials? A giant government system is a giant government system. It doesn’t matter if it’s the military or medicine, stealth bombers or stethoscopes, the results from plus-sized government are the same; lethal and inept. The same process (and underlying assumptions) that strands you in Iraq enables medical bureaucrats to hit the snooze button on your cancer treatment. Government healthcare is the collateral damage do-gooders have deemed acceptable. Health redistribution doesn’t work any better than wealth redistribution.

Yes, I’ve had wacky healthcare experiences in America. At age 12, during a family vacation in North Carolina, we stopped somewhere to eat BBQ ribs. I managed to get a splinter of rib caught in my throat. I wasn’t choking; it was just a scratchy obstruction. We were near Cherokee, North Carolina, an area which comes complete with live Cherokees. We pulled up to the first hospital we saw. Turns out, it was for Cherokees only, and I was turned away (had it been an emergency, I believe they would have been compelled to treat me).

Don't know where my comedy goes from here. Do know I need to get funny again. Hope I'm haven't become permanently pretentious. If I have, hopefully I'll recognize it and quit jokes forever. I'm not cut out for confessional folk comedy, and neither are crowds.

That Time I Almost Died Part VI

Late November-Early December 2008...


Tuesday I had an appointment with a new physical therapist. The one I’d been seeing for 2 ½ months informed me at the end of my last session she’d be out of the country through January. The notes she’d made during my mostly ineffectual treatment were lobbed to another therapist, and my first appointment with him was primarily a questionnaire. 

For the second session, he put me through a wide range of tests, focusing mainly on my reflexes. Using the old reflex hammer, he made four consecutive unsuccessful attempts to get a reaction from my right leg. On the fifth, my kicked up with Rockette flair. Attempt six? Leg did nothing. Even the therapist had to chuckle. 

He told me I shouldn’t come back, as this was beyond the scope of standard physical therapy. Can't argue. When your reflexes don’t work, doing push-ups against a wall doesn’t help.

Thursday I received a call from a private (out of pocket $$$) hematologist offering me an appointment that afternoon. It was an initial consult, priced at 170 pounds. Appropriately, the doctor was located near Baker Street, the old solving grounds of detective/part time coke sniffer Sherlock Holmes (read “The Yellow Face” for cokeheaded goodness).

The hematologist and I labored through many of the same questions I’d been through with other docs. At least she stayed wake while I gave my answers.

She had me remove my shirt and handed me a gown to preserve my much cherished modesty. The gown did nothing to cover me up. It was as transparent as a white person namedropping MLK.

While looking me over, she kept reiterating: “You really are pale.” As I’ve mentioned, since coming to London, multiple strangers have approached me and asked, "Are you all right?" One even strongly encouraged me to sit down, (though she probably didn’t want it to be next to her). That happens when you look like Casper the Friendly Corpse.

When all was said and done, the hematologist’s best guess was something called polymyalgia rheumatica, though she admitted what should have been one of the key indicators in my earlier bloodwork had come up normal. She ordered another round of tests and told me not to leave the hospital without getting my blood drawn.

I said adios to several more tubes of blood and went to pay. The bill I was given contained nothing but a few hieroglyphics, and I am not an Egyptologist. I was told I had to go to another building to pay the unreadable bill. Two buildings, one bill. Two buildings, one bill. I know I said that already, but I didn't have time at the hospital to take a deep breath and count to ten. I am doing that now...

Once inside the second building, I handed King Tut's Lost Medical Diary to the cashier. I was delighted to discover it translated into a charge of £462. And that was just for the bloodwork. I am to be invoiced later for the £170 consult fee.

I should know the results this week. If the hematologist is correct, the condition should be treatable with steroids (not the Barry Bonds kind, though those would come in handy right now), and I will begin the program within days. Individual results may vary, but my research says the process could last up to two years. Although this diagnosis wouldn't exactly be good news, I am in the strange position of half rooting for it, so that at least I'll know what I'm up against.

And no, what does not kill me isn’t going to make me stronger. But seeing that this is one of the pet phrases of middlebrow optimists, I am bound to hear it soon. That this line is linked with Nietzsche has even given it currency among people who should know better.

Grave setbacks don't make you stronger. They make you weaker. Do you see marathon winners purposely rolling their ankles during training to help them win the big race? Know many ballerinas who don a neck brace along with their leotard to give them that all important edge? People looking to excel take protein shakes, not chemo. But much like its cousin, the broken window fallacy in economics, the myth of rising from the ashes as some sort of superphoenix never seems to fade away. By the way, here's something else Nietzsche said: If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Speaking of weakness, I’m now having constant biting spasms all over my body. It feels like I’m being pinched by an invisible lobster. The worst spasms are those now making guest appearances on the bottom of my feet.

The spells of immobilizing fatigue are coming more often. I keep finding it necessary to rest on stairwells, to lean against walls, and to scout for places to sit, even after the mildest activity. My train station is 10 minutes from my flat. Sunday night I barely made it home, and fell through the door winded and without an ounce of strength left in my body.

I feel stronger already!

That Time I Almost Died Part V

We take you back to 2008...


It was a rough, teeter-totter week leading up to Monday’s neurology appointment. My mind has been teetering between regret about things not done and tottering toward vows to do things differently if my health ever improves. Luckily I’ve had some new symptoms to keep me company; painful spasming in my legs, feet, and toes, along with episodes of slurred speech. One day at lunch I reached for some pepper packets, and realized I couldn't seem to grip them. I watched in awed terror as they slipped through my suddenly useless fingers.

The neurologist’s facility was in Whitechapel; home of Jack the Ripper. I don’t want to say Whitechapel has changed since the murders, but let’s just say if Saucy Jack were around today, he wouldn’t be slicing up any pork.

Once inside the building, I was batted around like a loitering fly until I was eventually routed to neurology. The first thing I learned was that the person doing the examination wasn't the person I'd been told I was supposed to see. The second thing I learned was that their computer system had been down for several days, so the neurologist wasn't sure if he even had my charts. The third thing I learned was that there wasn’t going to be an MRI that day.

The neuro guy and I went through a Q&A similar to the one I’d been through with the hospital doctors. He seemed mostly unworried about my complaints, and didn’t seem to grasp (at least not openly) how weak and generally diminished I’ve become. This seems odd to me now, since his first observation was that I had limped my way into his office.

He indicated I had a few “borderline” results in my bloodwork, but nothing that really stood out. My blood platelets, iron, and calcium were “borderline,” but not exactly abnormal and nothing to be alarmed about. He kept alluding to hematologists, and seemed convinced almost from the get-go that my decline was more of a blood issue. The only time an MRI came up was when I brought it up.

He wondered aloud if I had caught some sort of exotic viral infection that had ravaged my immune system. I can’t even recall a stiff bout of sniffles over the last 5 months, so to me this sounds unlikely.

Dr. Feelnothing all but rolled his eyes when I repeated the MS theory, which is obviously a good thing. The last thing you want to h ear when you mention a hopeless diagnosis is, “MS, thank you! That’s the disease I was thinking of! Couldn’t remember the name.”

While I’m very happy he didn’t detect anything MS-like, given his overall demeanor, part of me worries that has as much to do with lazy investigation as it has with the chance that MS is the culprit.

Before sending me off to get milked for several more tubes of blood, the neurologist said in 2-3 weeks I would receive letters updating me on when I could see the necessary specialists. In other words, I have to wait 2-3 weeks to find out how long I’ll have to wait to see someone again. If the tortoise and the hare had raced in the UK, the tortoise also would have stopped off for a nap.

I haven’t even mentioned yet what an ordeal it was just to get this fruitless appointment. If you remember, my NHS (“universal healthcare”) GP let me go last week with the assurance I’d get a call from the neurologist. That call never came. I had to leave five increasingly frantic messages with multiple people over the course of the week before finally hearing back last Friday afternoon. And remember, this was after the GP felt it necessary to explicitly consider MS; so presumably, the MS theory was forwarded to the neurology folks. I gather then that possibly having a condition debilitating enough to headline its own telethon still doesn’t make you a priority. with NHS ("not for profit healthcare").

I booked another emergency appt. with my NHS GP for this afternoon. My plan was to bellow until her ears rang with a plan for getting me faster treatment. Her response: “There’s nothing I can do to speed up the process. I am sympathetic to their not considering it urgent. Your systems are very vague. First it was the shoulder, then orthopedic, now the dizziness and the weight loss…”

So I because I have a lot of symptoms that continue to grow in number and severity, this actually makes me less of a candidate for priority treatment. Wouldn’t you think it’d be the opposite? Wouldn’t you think a patient whose condition keeps deteriorating in unconventional ways would be sent to specialists faster in hopes of preventing the appearance of yet more symptoms? “There’s nothing I can do,” says my GP. Had I just walked in from the beginning and attributed everything to Planter’s Wart, perhaps I would have glided through the system.

I am really afraid of dying in London. Not just because of the whole death part, but because I’m afraid not even death will work properly in this soggy and unknowingly backward dystopia. I’m afraid I’ll die and instead of heading towards the light I’ll hear an announcement saying, “Due to improvement works, there are severe delays on the River Styx."

That Time I Almost Died Part IV

"Has anyone in your family ever dropped dead?"

These were the sympathetic words of the hospital attendant when I reached Royal London Hospital. "No," I replied, "probably because they were never asked such a terrifying question."

Before boarding the ambulance (I had collapsed in the office), I had been told Royal London is one of the city's better, newer hospitals.

The morbid question and answer I had with the hospital attendant about my symptoms did little to allay my fears, though the talking helped ease my disorientation. I was wheeled into a wing and left sitting in the wheelchair. After maybe an hour, they repoed my wheelchair and left me to lounge on the chilly, awkwardly bent metal benches. With all the waiting people do in hospitals, you'd think it would occur to someone to install therapeutic chairs, rather than furniture that's likely to extend your stay.

I eventually got up to find the restroom. I had to wait a while to use it - it was occupied by some dude smoking a cigarette.

I think it was around three hours before a doctor came and lead me to an examination room. The examination table looked fine, but the plastic chair beside it contained a brown puddle of indeterminate origin. I wasted no time pointing this out to the doctor. It's not that I'm a snob. I like greasy spoon diners. I do not like greasy spoon hospitals. The doctor grabbed some plastic for the floor and advised me to leave my belongings there.

The doctor was quite thorough, and for the first time in my diseased voyage through the British medical regime, I was treated to an examination that featured follow-up questions! They must have thought I was a celebrity or something.

This doc's hypothesis was that I was suffering from an underactive thyroid, a condition I believe is fairly manageable. He extracted several tubes of blood (he even used a tourniquet!) and told me he was going to consult with another doctor before discharging me.

I can't remember exactly how long he was away, but when he returned with the other doctor, it was immediately evident from her body language that she was a lot more concerned than he. One of the first things she said was, "Are you always this thin?" She poked all around my body and kept saying I had muscle waste everywhere, not just in my back and shoulders. She was even more systematic and detailed in her approach, and had a follow-up query for everything I said.

She then changed gears from laser precision to stammering vagueness, and somehow I just knew she was going to mention an HIV test. Sure enough, the long, anxious monologue about why she was broaching the yet to be identified subject began. She probably thought she was being clever, but to me it was like hearing your grandfather tell a bad book joke where you already know the punchline.

It's not her fault, of course. Thanks to the PC lynch mob, doctors now have to watch their step when their examinations take them into territory that might offend the PC Theocracy (which is even more farcical in the UK)...hence the dog and pony show about HIV. In fact, the explanation doctors have to provide as to why they're testing you for HIV actually exceeds the total amount of literature on the disease itself.

Curiously, those same PC theocrats are the ones who bleat the loudest about religious groups stunting science with their actions against stem cells and the like. But just watch what happens to a doctor/researcher who relies on established stats about disease susceptibility.  

The doctor finally concluded her tortured waltz with the question of whether my sexual history was female exclusive. I confirmed that it was, and recounted the extremely ordinary stats of my extremely ordinary hetero antics.

She said she was leaning towards discharging me, but wanted to consult an outside doctor. When she returned from the consult, I was told they felt I needed to be admitted to the hospital. The good news was, NHS ("not for profit healthcare") was finally taking my condition seriously and responding like real doctors. The bad news was: they thought the condition was serious enough for them to respond like real doctors. To illustrate what a turnaround this was, after my emergency Nov. 11th, 2008 GP appt. (the one following my first semi-collapse), I'd been granted an appointment with a specialist for Jan. 5th, 2009.

I was given a bed and a heart scan, which came back normal. After stewing for several more hours, I was examined by a third doctor. She was even more hollistic than the others, There were more questions, more tests, and more obvious concern on her part. Eventually, she departed to phone a neurologist. When she came back, she said one theory the neurologist had was that I may have a rare form of migraine that appears in the limbs instead of the head. She then told me that all of the bloodwork that had come back so far had proved to be normal. I had another emergency appt. that Monday (Nov. 17th.) with my GP, so the doctor wrote a letter for me to hand to that quack. I was discharged around midnight.

Monday morning (Nov. 17th) I went to see the NHS ("not for profit healthcare") GP. First thing she noticed was, "You're limping." She was right, I was, and had been on and off for a few days, despite no obvious leg injuries. She then opened the letter from the third hospital doctor (which I hadn't read) and suddenly adopted a much more serious demeanor than she'd ever taken with me. According to her, the bloodwork that had come back over the weekend had revealed nothing unusual. She then said she’d have a neurologist call me to book a slot for the following Monday (Nov. 24th) for a scan of my head and back. As I was putting my coat on to leave, using the same tone you’d expect from someone telling you to remember your umbrella, she said, “It may be MS.”

How’s that for bedside manner? Here I am with seven days to wait before I see the neurologist, I still haven’t had a single brain scan, and as a parting shot she decides to namedrop an incurable illness. She may as well have said: “I know we haven’t done any tests or anything. I just thought you could use a sleepless week."

That Time I Almost Died Part III

In 2008...


When your general wellbeing is in freefall, it's amazing how quickly you just adapt to the latest symptoms. Ailments you shouldn't be adapting to you shrug off simply because you've forgotten what it's like to feel normal. For instance, I never used to mind cold weather. In fact, I was hot all the time and was the type who wore gloves maybe twice a year. But since October, I've been unable to keep warm. 55 degrees and I'm bundled up in a winter coat, gloves, scarf...and I'm still frozen.

People are like, "Mike, what's with the outfit? Going on a ski trip?" 

"Nope, just picking up my dry-cleaning."

It's quite dangerous, because you cease recognizing the gravity of symptoms you should be taking seriously. Instead of sprinting to the doctor, now when some new and sinister wrinkle materializes, I react the way you do when you find out someone's cousin is  from your hometown. "Really? Hmmm. How 'bout that? [Cue nondescript nodding]."

Probably the worst example of this is my recent weight loss. When I moved to London, I weighed about 130 lbs., a weight I've maintained since I was 18. I'm now down to about 114; a level I haven't seen since I was 14 and 4' 10". Strangely, this wasting away of my body didn't really alarm me that way it should have. Again, I just adjusted. Belts that droop to my crotch, suits that look more filled out on the hanger than on me...no problemo. Who made the rule that says undershirts have to be tight?

I mentioned I'd been having dizzy spells. Well, things came to a head the weekend of Nov. 7th;
I'd booked a weekend trip to Budapest. I was supposed to leave on a Friday, but on the train ride home the night before, I was having a hard keeping my balance. Immediately, I began picturing how this would fly in an unfamiliar city with an unfamiliar tongue. I opted to can the vacation, eat the losses, and do some touristy stuff around London instead.

On my day off I decided to hit the National Gallery. While there I suddenly felt faint and wobbly and had to flop onto to one of the Gallery's couches to get my bearings. I tried to make it look like I was just overwhelmed by the unfinished Michelangelo I'd been viewing.

The Monday following my museum episode, I had a bloodtest appointment with NHS ("universal healthcare"). It had taken weeks to secure, and fortunately, happened to be scheduled for when I needed it most. My appt. was at 10:52 Monday morning, so as per my GP's counsel, I consumed no food or water after 12:00 the night before.

I had the blood drawn, and was told the results would take 7-10 days and that I would either have to drop by the clinic or make an appt. to get them. Inconvenient yes, but thanks to my weekend wipeout, I was at least able to secure an emergency GP appt. for the next day.

The next day--Tuesday--I went to the GP's office determined to make it clear my health was in real jeopardy, and that I needed speedier care. I recounted the semi-collapse and everything leading up to it with as much animation and pantomime as my creaky physique would allow. The last time I had tried this all my GP had in the way of a response was, "Slow down." 

I begged her not to take her own advice.

Miraculously, my "7-10 day" blood results were already in. They seemed to rule out anemia, which was the leading initial theory for the dizziness sector of my maladies. Everything else they for tested for also came up negative; kidney/liver disease, diabetes, etc. In fact, the only thing my GP noted was that my blood showed I was a little dehydrated. I reminded her that the reason I was dehydrated was because she had specifically ordered me not to hydrate myself after midnight the night before. Had I not been given medical instruction to avoid hydration, I would have generously hydrated myself. This revelation failed to resonate. She repeated: "You were slightly dehydrated." I replied again that it had been HER IDEA that I that avoid fluids ahead of the test, and that it wasn't a habit of mine to arbitrarily deprive myself of precious fluids. We agreed to disagree.

She felt the next step was to test my thyroid function, so she wanted to draw some more blood. She said she didn't have a tourniquet, so she would just use a rubber glove to tie me off. Mind you, the room we were in was JUST ACROSS THE LOBBY FROM THE ROOM WHERE I'D HAD MY BLOOD DRAWN NOT 24 HOURS EARLY. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT AN EPIC WALK OF ABOUT 20 METERS WITHIN THE SAME BUILDING. THERE WERE NO DRAWBRIDGES OR FIREBREATHING DRAGONS TO WORRY ABOUT. Follow me on this: which sounds like the more sensible route for a doctor to take; a 20 meter walk and a precise blood draw, or staying put and playing it fast and loose with the old needle and vein? As it turned out, my GP was a risk taker. Apparently GP can also mean Gambling Practitioner.

She tied off my right arm with a common rubber glove (not a joke). Given my emaciated state, my veins were feeling a bit shy. Rather than recognize the error of her ways, she stayed the course and began swatting at my arm piñata-style. As you might have guessed, she failed to draw to any blood, though she did succeed in making my right arm look like a gopher-sacked golf course. Then, and only then, did it dawn on her to make that 20 meter walk across the clinic to fetch the proper supplies. The same nurse who drew my blood the day before wound up doing the honors. My GP said if I didn't hear from her, I was to assume the thyroid tests hadn't revealed anything.

I then requested the results of my first round of tests so I could take them to a private specialist. She told me I would have to make an appointment.

"Can't I just get a printout now?"

"You can, but I'm really behind today, so you'll have to wait in the lobby for 30 minutes."

What could I do? I waited in the lobby for half an hour before a receptionist, not the GP herself, performed the arduous duty of moving her mouse slightly, clicking File, moving the cursor down to print, left clicking, and letting those sweet documents rip.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday passed without incident. I even did a comedy show Wednesday night, my first in a while. I was slightly out of it and blanked a bit on some lines, but managed to have a respectable set. It's really too bad I've been too unable to hit the circuit hard. Given my hideous (read: memorable) new look and obvious frailty, I would now have the all-important POINT OF VIEW.

"Come see Mikey Malaise. You'd be bitter too if the only movement you could count on was falling flat on your face!"

I guarantee if I performed under that banner with the exact same act I've always done, rather than being deemed too dark, bookers would trumpet my act as a "brave learning experience."

Thursday afternoon and evening were kind of ugly, with a recurrence of right arm numbness and dizziness/disorientation. Friday morning I woke up with some light tingling, dizziness, and the occasional star shower in my field of vision. All were short lived.

Then lunchtime hit, and the dizziness came out swinging. I walked out of the office for a brisk stroll in the sunlight, hoping it would restore my equilibrium. No luck. I returned to the office, and now noticed that the ceiling lights were starting to get very dim. I changed floors to make sure it was me and not the lighting. It was me. I went back to my desk and attempted to will away the fuzziness.

Everything faded and I felt myself falling--

That Time I Almost Died Part II

Written sometime in 2008...


Anyone remember when I was funny? Neither do I.

I finally managed to see my NHS ("universal healthcare") GP. After hearing my boxset of symptoms, she nonchalantly told me it would still take 46 days to see a specialist. That her referral was riddled with spelling errors didn't make me feel any rosier about my prospects of fast, adequate treatment through NHS.

By this time I was beginning to get desperate. I was becoming less and less mobile, to the point where I had to start weighing the pros and cons of every single daily task; carrying groceries, tying my shoes, taking things out of the oven, reaching for my shower head, you name it. One false move in any of these tasks would often keep me frozen for hours if not days on end.

Given the bureaucracy and delays I was facing with NHS (“universal healthcare”) and my private insurer, I decided I would try to rehab myself by swimming. I hadn't been in a pool in 16 years, and it showed. I used the Slow Lane at my gym's pool, which still turned out to be too speedy for me. It is never inspiring when decrepit grannies with the Reaper's reflection in their eyes are outshining you in a physical activity. I guess the lane I really needed was the one for amputees. Or maybe I should have looked for the lane marked Hearse Speed.

Unfortunately, even swimming soon became a tightrope walk for me, with random pain and weakness sometimes appearing after just a few laps. How do you injure yourself swimming? Swimming is what they prescribe for people who’ve injured themselves playing OTHER SPORTS. No one ever says, “Oh, you hurt yourself with the breaststroke? Yeah, just go play rugby for a few weeks.” Somehow, I’d managed to become too fragile for a default sport.

So we come to the end of August, or about the two month mark. Still haven't been cleared for treatment by my private insurer and NHS is moving slower than Mike Payne in the 400 meter butterfly. The early healing novelty of swimming also started wearing off, and my decline picked up steam. By the end of August, I could no longer sit at my kitchen table. Within 30 seconds of plopping down on one of my kitchen chairs, back pain would force me to my feet. Since then, I've had to eat all of my meals standing at my kitchen counter.

This was the time when I really began what I call "bargaining with my body." Every physical activity required I make a sacrifice somewhere else. My thought process devolved to this: If I mop the floor, I won’t be able to carry groceries back from the store. If I clean the fridge, I won't be able to take my clothes out of the dryer. If I do __, I can't __. Eventually, you just quit doing most things altogether. By now the floors of my flat no longer need a mop. They need a Zamboni.

Anyway, “summer” ends and the temperature starts to drop. I didn't bring much warm clothing to London, so I tried to do some shopping. As it is with everything when you're in a state of total decline, you start planning around your deficiency. For example, I went to buy a pullover, but then found that "pull" was an unfortunate verb for someone with my shoulder and back problems. What I needed was more of a drape-over. Actually, the ideal solution would have been for me to just grow a layer of fur, which at the very least would have secured me a spot on the catwalk (told you I wasn't funny anymore).

I gave up trying to hang up my clothes. I couldn't lift them to the hangers anymore, so I just started piling them up on the kitchen table.

I also had to stop working on my laptop for more than a few minutes at a time, as I couldn't find a comfortable position to sit with it, and could hardly risk moving its whopping 8 lb. mass. This and the fact that typing itself sparked pain and tingling canceled most of my writing plans.

My weekends became marked by panic as I spent them in constant fear of calamity. Remember, I live alone, and don't know anyone in London. I don't have a wife, girlfriend, or a roommate. No one is around to offer assistance, and the London medical system isn't one you would accuse of being overresponsive. When you're dependent entirely on yourself and functioning below 50%, successfully eating and showering each day become the foremost things on your to-do list.

One Sunday in mid-September, I awoke and was more or less unable to move. No seriously, I kept sending signals to my limbs, and they kept giving me the old line item veto. I wound up wasting a sunny weekend afternoon staring at the ceiling. When I did finally convince my body to move (and inch by inch process), I basically had to get up and eat what was on the counter. Luckily, I had some tuna cans and bananas within reach (bourgeois, I know). Even lifting a plastic cup of water to my mouth required two hands.

That little flirtation with paralysis triggered me to give up on insurance and NHS and begin going to a private physiotherapist outside of the system. Initially, it was marginally beneficial for pain relief, although I didn’t really feel stronger. Such mixed signals made the mindgames and bargaining even worse, because I’d have a few days of progress and would start saying to myself, "Ahh, the road back!" Then one morning I’d be taking the lid off the mouthwash and the pain would be so swift and brutal I’d see stars and go flying backward like a man tossed off a treadmill.

Soon after I asked a neighbor to pull down my Murphy bed for me. He eyed me with more than a degree of bewilderment, probably thinking he was about to land a starring role in a snuff film. Fortunately, he agreed to help, and once he brought the bed down, I had to leave it down, which meant the doorway to my bathroom was blocked (my flat is a studio), which forced me to crawl/roll over the bed each time I needed to get in. This caused its own kind of pain, but it was better than the pain of slumbering on the sofa. Another piece of bargaining.

The sheer randomness of the pain in my back and shoulders was the worst part. It made planning close to impossible. I never knew when or where the anguish was going to land, only that at some point it would hit...kind of like a V2 rocket. By late Sept. I became hesitant to leave my flat except when absolutely necessary, because like I said, if/when something went wrong, I had no one to call, and no immediate remedies. On the plus side, this has caused me to drink less coffee, since I have very little reason to be awake.

Comedy was a big reason for my move here, but as you might have guessed, I'm not doing many shows. I don't know anyone and can't exactly network from home. It's just as well, as I haven't been doing much writing. I'm not really thinking of jokes anymore. What bounces through my brain these days are heavy quotes from literature ("The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground"). Melodramatic? OH YEAH!

That Time I Almost Died Part I

No decent man talks of his maladies.

--Turgenev, The Diary of a Superfluous Man

I'm dying, and at the point of death I really think one may be excused a desire to find out what sort of a queer fish one really was after all.

--Turgenev, The Diary of a Superfluous Man


I posted two old blogs on here about my June 2008 move to London. While there, I wrote some MySpace blogs about all the nonsense that was slapping me upside the head. During my time in Blighty (funny, when I moved away I expected it to be permanent) I became mysteriously and seriously ill, so the blog switched from wacky ranting to a kind of deathwatch. I have been going through the bits of it I could find, and have decided to post what I didn't delete. Some of it is mawkish, but whatever, it was a reflection of my frame of mind, and anyway, the majority of it still strikes me as entertaining. I have done some slight editing, and have clipped some parts that couldn't possibly be of interest. I hope you will also find it entertaining (clears throat)... 

Sometime in 2008...

There’s no doubt I came to London with reluctance. But still, there was an undercurrent of excitement to the move. New surroundings, new start; all the trappings of a soft rock hit without the synthesized sax solo. Quite soon however, I came crashing down like a dropped crowd surfer.

Just before journeying to the land of drizzle and drunks, I was diagnosed with a disc bulge in my lower back. It was painful, but the pain wasn’t constant and wasn’t interfering with my life. I was still going to the gym and doing most of the things I normally do. But immediately after arriving in my new digs, the pain began to escalate.

For the first few days, it was just random attacks of pain; just enough to freeze me in my tracks, but not enough to keep me there for any length of time. Within a week, the pain had not only gone into overdrive; it had oozed to my right shoulder. As with my back, in the early goings, the right shoulder suffered intermittent blips of pain, sometimes acute, but not crippling. Had it remained at that level, you would be reading the thoughts of a much different man.

By about week three in London, I could no longer lift my right arm about the shoulder, and my left arm was getting in on the action. The left was stiff and weak, but because it was still fairly fluid, it became my default limb (I doubt the left arm problems were helped by my favoring it so much). As month one concluded, my right arm was frozen to the point where I could barely use it to shave or brush my teeth.

Sometime in July, I put up my pulldown bed, only to discover I couldn’t lower it again. I simply couldn’t get either arm to perform the task. This left me with two options; hard floor or hard leather loveseat. Picky thing that I am, I went with the loveseat. As it wasn’t even long enough for a dainty sapling like me, you can imagine the kind of contortion act I was doing in my sleep each night. Perfect for someone with hellish aches and pains!

Coinciding with my back/shoulder agonies was another ticklish matter; the unpredictable dizzy spells that accompanied my relocation to London. Initially, I figured it was due to the change in climate, timezone, and food (eating eggs that taste like Satan’s earwax has been known to cause all kinds of problems. Whoever decided the English were going to be known for their breakfasts was either a sadist or the world’s first prop comic). I decided to up my fruit-veggie intake to seven servings a day. No effect. The dizziness continued.

Let’s make sure we're on the same page. Monstrous back pain, a right arm mostly immobile above shoulder level, and a left arm that was rapidly weakening and donating plenty of its own pain to the cause. Obviously, an upper body weak in all the wrong places wasn’t exactly well equipped to deal with the literal fall out of a dizzy, swimming head. Steps, or rather not falling down them, soon became an issue. For those who don’t follow the latest medical developments, using barely functioning shoulders to catch yourself on cement steps is so 1773!

What about treatment? Well, it took about six weeks to establish my NHS ("universal healthcare") GP. My London colleagues were surprised by the expediency. In the meantime, a coworker recommended I hit a private GP she knew who worked with my firm’s private insurance company and supposedly knew how to get things done. "They just refer you to this physio place, backdate it, and the insurance company eventually pays it." Multiple people I consulted seemed to be using this private GP for that reason, so I figured, WHEN IN ROME...

I went to see him and was mostly just told, "Hopefully, you don't have to have surgery." There were no tests and not much advice, but he did refer me to a physical therapist. I visited the clinic he recommended. Turns out, they don't participate with my insurance or anyone else’s, and it's about $116 per session. I was already there, so I figured "Who knows when I'll be able to see someone again, so let me at least get this guy's thoughts."

He didn't seem to have any. He had me touch my toes and gave me a stretch or two to try. That was it. His general advice was along the lines of "Try not to lift any safes for a few months." I went to the suggestion box and suggested they rename the clinic The Apathy and the Atrophy.

13 Slogans You'd See if Tourism Boards were Honest

State and city tourism boards concoct catchy slogans to bait people into visiting; "Virginia is for lovers" (ironic, considering Virginia had anti-sodomy laws until 2003), or "I love New York." National governments spend big bucks promoting themselves around the world: "Incredible India." Most of the time, these slogans either provide no incentive for one to visit--how does commanding me to love New York encourage me to show up?--or they present caricatures of the destination that the government of said destination (the one that financed the caricature) will later complain it doesn't deserve.

Anyway, here are some more accurate slogans to give you an honest picture of some of the places you might think of visiting:

Quebec: A sanctuary for Francophones who have discovered deodorant.

Paris: A place that guilt trips you for not loving your significant other as much as you claim to.

India: An "anti-materialistic" place that materialistic Americans visit so that they can feel better about being materialistic.

London: The only city improved by constant, obscuring fog.

Florida: The one state where being a resident can equally be a sign of big success or complete failure.

Delaware: A territory so desolate it feels the need to catch up to Maryland.

Virginia: West Virginia gentrified.

Pennsylvania: The only state where you can be Amish and not miss anything.

New Jersey: A bogeyman that exists to scare New Yorkers into working harder so they can afford to keep living in New York.

Massachusetts: Thanks to all the brains being turned on at MIT and Harvard, everyone else in the state feels comfortable turning theirs off.

New Hampshire: Live free of relevance and still die.

New York City: Because no one is from there, everyone who lives there wastes all their time obsessing about what it is to be a real New Yorker.

Atlantic City: A place to go when you've seen all the other rest stops in New Jersey.




My Twitter feed; a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there: https://twitter.com/greatMikePayne

The Horrors of Moving to London Part II

If you're interested, I just found part of another blog I put up on MySpace while living in London. I'm guessing this one probably went up around late August 2008:

London Fog: A Blessing in Disguise
 

I’ve been here just over two months, and I simply can’t adjust to how ugly everyone is. And I don’t mean the people have bad haircuts or that they could stand to lose 5 pounds.  Those would be major upgrades.

 

Someone asked me if there was a way to sum up the look of the average Londoner. It isn’t easy, but try to envision how Pinocchio would look if Geppetto had developed a crippling loss of confidence halfway through the carving. I’ll give you a hint; lopsided eyesockets. There are enough misaligned eyes in this town to make the periscope obsolete. Given my experience with UK handiwork, maybe these errant eyeballs actually meet the UK standard for “level.” Or perhaps each person is doing a cheekbone tribute to the scales of justice. Don’t ask me, I’m not from here.

London is also filled to the rim with bent genders. Notice I didn’t say gender bending. I’m not talking about drag queens. I’m talking about the fearsome bridge between male and female. You can’t cross the street in Mary Poppins’ hood without passing some pitiably hideous blob of androgyny. There’s one monstrosity in particular that keeps surfacing in my neighborhood. She/he is a hulking, crimson faced, blondish being with a thick, yogurty torso and a mammoth lower jaw. I call it Jabba the Question Mark. I’ve given up asking people like this their name. Now I just open with, “Plant, animal, or mineral?”

Picture every memorable freak you’ve ever seen, every shard of human wreckage that set your teeth on edge. Well, London is an assembly-line of those ghastly outliers. Put it this way, I am used to seeing varicose veins on legs. I am not used to seeing them on faces.

 

Living in London is ruining my masturbation routine. Typically, I don’t masturbate to celebrities or chicks I know. My standard MO is to jerk off to random women I see on the street. Trouble is, the women in London are so ugly I can’t find any strangers to wank it to. My self-pollution routine has been totally paralyzed. Now I find myself mentally backtracking to random broads I used to jerk off to when I was in New York. “Shit, who was that chick I passed in the elevator that one time at Macy’s?” And for some reason, I’m drawing a blank. I picked a hell of a time to contract Pervert Alzheimer’s.

The Horrors of Moving to London

I just found this on my computer. It was a post I put on MySpace in 2008, just after moving to London's East End. I had forgotten all about it, and I think it is damn charming. I'm not sure what the original title was. If I can find the other installments I will post them. By the way, as painful as this was, I had forgotten much of it, which shows why everyone should keep a journal. Unless you're angsty and prone to revenge fantasies, in which case it is best to forget...


What happens when you play a Mike Payne blog backwards? You get your wife and kids back.

Despite a plague of last minute complications, I managed to move to London. After a sleepless overnight flight, I hopped off the plane early on the morning of June 21^st, smelling like American teen spirit. I had to grapple with a strange case of mistaken identity when picking up the keys (too hard to explain), but eventually made my way to the front door.

I walk in, and notice my “furnished” apartment has no mattress. Also, the refrigerator doesn’t work. The light inside the fridge is on, but the cold wind ain’t a blowin’. And to complete the disrepair trifecta, the shower has no hot water. Cheerio, mate!

I moved in on a Saturday, so I couldn’t get a hold of the landlady until Monday. Fine. Two days of indoor camping. I can survive this. I used to be a Cub Scout.

So Monday rears its ugly mug. I get the landlady on the phone, and she seems somewhat sympathetic. “Oooo, surry!” she exclaims. She promises to stop by that evening and check the hot water and fridge. She apologizes about the water, but implies that I just don’t know how to turn the fridge on. I admit I’m not handy, but “on” and “off” buttons don’t usually require intense electrical training.   

She shows up that night. After examining the apartment, she acknowledges that indeed, the fridge is not producing cold air, and in sharp contrast to its intended function, the shower is not producing hot water. I explain to her that in America, we have hot showers and cold fridges, and prefer them to hot fridges and cold showers. She shakes off the culture shock and assures me that a tradesman will swing by the next day to mend all my troubles.

We’ve now reached Tuesday. While at work, I get a call from the landlady telling me the refrigerator is now fixed, but unfortunately, the shower needs a whole new tap, and the repair guy arrived so late that by the time he realized what was needed, the supply store was closed. I will have to take another cold shower Wednesday morning; my fifth in a row. “Oooo, surry!”

I’m fuming but controlled. I tell myself that at least now I have a fridge, so progress is being made. I rush home that night eager to throw some groceries in Ye Olde Icebox. I yank open the fridge door and wait for the Arctic rush. To my dismay, I discover that just as before, the fridge light is on, but there is no cold air. None whatsoever. I begin to wonder if the tradesman actually came by.

I walk in the bathroom, and it becomes clear that a tradesman had shown up. How could I tell?  Because he had managed to track mud all over my bathroom, including all over my new bathmat.

 

I call the landlady.  “Oooo, surry!”

She assures me again that a team of professional repairmen will be by tomorrow, and this time, they’ll have all the right moves. I’ll have a fridge and a hot shower by Thursday evening. Early 20^th Century, here I come!

Thursday morning I take my sixth cold shower in a row. The thing with cold showers is that they don’t get easier. Once you’ve had two or three in a row, you start developing Battered Bather’s Syndrome. You begin to fear the dawn, knowing you’re just a few hours away from more abuse.  By day six, before I could bring myself to turn the water on, I had to stand in the tub and give myself a pep talk about the hardships my forefathers faced in the untamed swamps of Virginia. Then again, at least with malaria, every shower feels like a hot shower.

If you read the second paragraph carefully, you’ll know that during all this time, I didn’t have a mattress either. Yes, the mattress in my “furnished” flat was as absent as the hot water and fridge. In the interim, I had a half sofa-half chair-all uncomfortable furniture abortion to sleep on. It was so skimpy that even at 5’ 5,” I couldn’t find a position where my legs didn’t flop over the side. Ever tried sleeping in a plus sized barber’s chair? No, you haven’t. There’s a reason.

Thursday afternoon the landlady rings. She’s SURRY again. Turns out the tradesmen couldn’t fix the water, because the tap they ordered won’t arrive until Friday. As for the fridge, it’s a “special” model. Not special as in the Olympics--though it’s defective enough to compete in those games and inspire us all--but special as in hard to find. She gives me another “Oooo, surry” before informing me that when she had a problem with her own special fridge, it took four months to replace. She then tells me in her best problem-solving voice that not having a fridge shouldn’t be a problem, because I can always “eat fresh.” 

I waited for the laughtrack to start rolling. Nothing happened. Once I realized she wasn’t playing to the back of the room, I replied that yes, I could eat fresh. I could also grow my own food. Anorexia would be another option. But all of those alternatives would defeat the purpose of paying extra for a furnished flat with a refrigerator.

On a more serious note, as I’m stepping in all these booby-traps, I’m doing it alone. And without diversion.  In addition to having no friends in London, I was without the Internet. Or a TV. Or a stereo. I won’t bore you with the details, but a conspiracy of mini-crises befell me as I was getting ready to move, so I didn’t have adequate time to settle my affairs before skipping town. So with the clock ticking and the cost of international shipping so punitive, I wound up dumping most of my possessions on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. And contrary to what you may have heard from your friendly neighborhood blues singer, leaving it all behind isn’t as liberating as it’s cracked up to be. I left behind all of my comforts for an unfamiliar and so far, inhospitable place. Having a few more of my possessions around might have made things a little less dislocating.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

Have I mentioned that my heaters weren’t working? Well, they weren’t. And even in summer, London can get cold in the morning and at night, especially when it rains. This is doubly uncomfortable when you’ve just stepped out of a cold shower. 

Appropriately, on July 4^th, my new fridge shows up. I have to let the gas settle, so I’m not allowed to turn it on until the following day. When I do, it actually works. So on the two week anniversary of moving into my “furnished flat,” I can finally store food.

 
Around the same time, my mattress also shows up. Only it’s too small for the bedframe. Of course it is. My landlady also has a new couch delivered (admittedly, a very nice one), and hires someone to remove the sofa thing I’d been sleeping on (which you’ll recall was uncomfortable enough to fund the coke habit of a thousand chiropractors). However, when Delivery Guy removes the thing, he takes my blanket with it. So I come home that night to a cold apartment, and find that I don’t have even have a blanket to warm up with. I wound up sleeping on my new undersized mattress while wearing my winter coat for warmth. So there I was with no blanket no CDs to play, and no one to talk to, and all I could think was…I uprooted myself for this?