I could start at the very beginning. I've heard that it's a very good place to start. But that was all so long ago it would be a stupendously boring exercise, for both you and me, to try and fill you in on all that tedious historical bumf. Details may emerge over time but for now, let's jump straight in!
I'm having a tough time of things at the moment. "Whoop-de-fucking-do!" you might think - and with good reason. "What's so friggin' special about you? We all go through the shit." True again. That's the way life is. I tend to think that anyone who claims to be having a perfect life is lying through their arse, or needs some serious pills to make their delusions go away. "I'm fine. Just doing fine," is probably one of the most common lies that we'll ever hear.
So, here's the quick ha'penny tour of what's led me to the point of starting this blog and getting some things off my greying not-so-hairy chest.
Depression, Despair, Alcoholism, and Cancer. This is a pretty nasty combination of balls of shit to juggle, although I seem to be keeping most of them in the air, if somewhat inexpertly.
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," goes the old saw, but I can tell you from bitter experience that a bottle of whiskey a day is an emergency ambulance ride straight to a hospital or morgue just waiting to happen.
I made it to the hospital just in time, and narrowly escaped the further trip to the chilly hospital basement with a dangling toe-tag.
On the night of the 20th of January 2014, I collapsed here at home in a mess of my own making. The house stank of an unwashed human and his clothing covered in sweat and rotting cancer pus, empty whiskey bottles and putrefying leftover food on filthy plates covering the lounge-room floor, and an overflowing garbage bin in the kitchen. The bills were unpaid, the blinds were never opened, and the floors (what could be seen of them) hadn't been acquainted with a mop or vacuum-cleaner in months.
My daily routine had consisted of vaguely waking before noon, lazing in bed reading the web on my laptop for a few hours, staggering to the loo and getting some clothes on (with diminishing amounts of success and coverage), grabbing another bottle of whiskey from the recently home-delivered box, plonking myself into my favourite comfy-chair, turning on the TV to stare at some shite or other, and slowly (or not so slowly) pouring glass after glass of my favourite pungent poison. Sometime during the late evening I would pass out for a while, then after coming-to, stagger back to my smelly unmade bed, and sleep through to the daylight - when it was time to start my hopeless ritual all over again.
This went on for four wasted years.
On the night in question, however, it all came to a head. My body took over with a mighty grunt of "I'm sick o' this shit!" and whilst trying to get up for a piss, I lost balance, went crashing to the floor on my back, and found that I no longer had the strength to roll over or get back up. I was like a freshly sprayed roach - legs a-twitching in the air, but getting nowhere.
I may tell more of this tale later, but in summary, sometime the next day I managed to find the strength of will to inch myself across the lounge-room floor (taking 2 hours), getting to the telephone table, pulling down a handset, and dialling for an ambulance. I was rushed into the nearby Wollongong Hospital with liver, kidney and heart failure.
As if that trifecta wasn't bad enough, I also had Cancer - but I already knew that. My sense of utter and total neglect had known no bounds!
What had started as a small sore spot on the top of my right ear four years prior was now a stinking, oozing, hemorrhaging, massively infected clump of tumours covering the ear and surrounds. The ugly blossoming nodules had invaded my ear canal and cut off my hearing, making my snazzy surround sound system seem like a bloody great pointless joke. Every time I sneezed or coughed I bled everywhere, and when I wasn't bleeding, filthy brown pus was leaching out and dripping over my clothing, and anything else really. Everywhere you went in the house there were towels lying about covered in blood and crusty dried exudate. I had given up on attempts at bandaging a long time back.
I suppose that the fall at home may have been the best thing to have ever happened to me.
Whether I personally wanted it or not, I was now in the hands of the medical professionals, and too weak and ill to protest. I couldn't walk, could barely talk, had a tube stuck up my dick and others into my arms, the hallucinations came and went, but I was where I needed to be - wrapped in the arms of the Australian public hospital system.
This blog is about not-so-mighty ogbo's crawl back from the edge of the grave, the last nails not quite pounded into my coffin. In some ways I'm sicker than I've ever been in my life, but perversely I think I've never been healthier.
The news on my cancer is not as good as it could be, and I'll be writing about that shit-fight as it happens, and what's already transpired. There are also other battles deeper within which I'm facing - and I'll be having a bit of a natter about those as well. As well as anything else which seems to come to mind.
It's early in the morning now, and my crappy body is closing down and nudging me off to bed. More later my fellow masochists.
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