For some reason I can't get my crap together to do anything at the time I like to normally write this, at 0300 or earlier. Lately I just can't do that. I can get up at 0245, but by the time I get done diddling around, it's time to take a kid to school or go to therapy. Part of that is that I can't get enough sleep. I'll bet over the weekend I slept fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Including a lot of day time sleeping. Not napping, I mean like two or three hours of that sleep stuff. I fell asleep writing the blog more times in the last couple weeks than I can count. While that keeps my legs warm from the battery, it doesn't do much for keeping up properly with the blog. I plan on asking if all this sleeping is something normal, well as normal as cancer can get. I know it's odd.
At first I thought it was lack of oxygen. So I hooked myself up to the oxygen generator, and started breathing away. No change. I fell asleep right away, but with the extra oxygen I woke up three hours later very refreshed. Two hours later I was back asleep for another 2 hours, then awake, then asleep then awake, then sleep. I slept so much I got a letter from Rip Van Winkle telling me to cease and desist. That's a lot of sleep if Rip thinks I'm horning in on his territory.
I'm fairly certain that the overabundance of sleep is caused by my cancer. I have no scientific proof that's the reason, but I feel it way down to my bones. I've said before that the cancer is a sneaky bitch. I mean, really, without something happening, what other than my cancer brought on that infections. I wash properly. I try not to dig at the sore or itchy spots. The chicken shit stuff, by forcing me to use a trach tube, has left my skin paper thin in spots. I'm half afraid to even wash the paper thin area to keep an infection from occurring but if I don't watch it it's bound to get an me again. So washing the paper thin spot is very good ideas, just to be safe. At this point I'd rather be overly cautious than to have a spot that's not quite clean, and have the damn infection pop up somewhere else that might do serious damage. If all that I'd gone through to have some damn infection take me out would just piss me off. I've got more invested in Baxter than to let some Johnny Come Lately steal his thunder from me reaching Critical Mass. Besides, the infection I did have blew a hole in the side of my neck big enough if I had a nice bolt I'd put in it and walk away like Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Creation. The spooky thing about that particular spot is that's in the area I had surgery to take a tumor from around my carotid artery. There is some other stuff going on I'm going to have to talk to Hospice about as well.
My jaw that is left, you know, the right side, feels terrible. It won't open much anymore without pain. The spot it ties into is tender and sore, with I get that stabbing pain in my jaw it's immediately followed by the same stabbing pain in my right ear. Almost like an ear ache. But after nearly 14 days of antibiotic and it's not cleared up, I'm voting for something other than an ear infection. Mostly because it's fine until that side of my job begins to act badly. Last night something in that side of my jaw snapped hard and I didn't even have Chance here to make funny faces at. Well, since it was around 0100 I didn't have anyone up to tell me it wasn't a real pain in the neck (rim shot). After one of those big, really heavy pains, I was up the rest of the day any way. By the time I got to therapy this morning the jaw had laid down just a touch. Now after three hours since I had a dose of morphine, I'm getting to the point it's acting up again. If I'm going to go with Liz to the movie this afternoon, I'm gonna have to load up on some morphine so I can enjoy the movie, and hopefully not pass right out. Yes, the jaw pain is frustrating, as well as just plain painful. But the redeeming quality is that is at least I know I'm not alone in the severe head pain arena. I'll ask more from Hospice tomorrow, maybe they will have some insight.
We're having a little cold spell here, and it kind of reminded me of working on the rig with Dad. In particular one winter in 1984. God, it had gotten cold. Not over 25 for a high in a couple of weeks. It had snowed, and unlike some of the previous snows this one stuck like it had no intention of leaving anytime soon. We were up on the Lowe Pasture north of Rolla out on the National Grasslands. Cold oh baby it was cold. Then the wind decided to get up and it got miserable. I was working floors again because the old derrick hand came back to work. We had to run in a packer and and be ready to acidize the next day. We got our shit tied in and ready to run, and were rigging up the tubing tester so we could test the work string going in the hole. All the time he's rigging up the guy is bitching about the cold, and asking if we were certain we were gonna run in the hole. Yes and Yes. He tell us he's put salt in the water and it should be 13# brine. Fair enough, that won't freeze. The derrick man gets up in the air, and it's not so bad because we had the weather sides on the derrick hooked up. The floor, however, is a cold Son of a Bitch. Nothing to break the wind, and there's plenty of it. I knew from experience that I was gonna get soaked, so I put on my rain suit and got ready. One more time. "Damn Chuck! It's cold and windy! Can't we do this tomorrow.?' No.
The first two tests went fine and yes he had some extra salty water. He went to test another, nothing, pulled it out, turned it so I wouldn't get drenched, told him to let it rip. He did. nothing. We took about his handle and all from the hose. No, it didn't freeze, but it slushed. I'd never seen any shit like that in my life. We didn't test in the hole, we ran in, dropped the tool to test the packer. Every thing is drown. It all tested fine, and we were all set for an acid job and clean out the next day. It turned out 50, with no breeze and a lovely snow melt that lasted 2 weeks
Have fun and dance a little
