Real Life

Not Unscathed

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Good Morning Folks. The last time I wrote a blog post I was talking about the upcoming colonoscopy. I have survived but not entirely unscathed and I will explain why. First off as everyone said, the worst part was mostly the prep. I did a split two day prep so on top of not eating anything solid for a bit, I started my first round of prep around 3 pm on Tuesday, and that more or less lasted about three hours of hell. Then I got up pretty early and started my second round of prep around 5 am… and again it lasted around three hours of hell. My dad picked me up around noon and we made our way to the location… but google maps took us to the wrong place. It took us to apparently a health club run by the medical group, and the actual procedure was in fact in the hospital proper. Luckily we had about 45 minutes of lead time so were able to get over there and Dad chose to do the complimentary valet parking because the parking garage is pure butts for a full-sized pickup.

One of the first major challenge is that they did not have ANY of my medical history, so I had to speed run documenting all of that. Thankfully I have the habit of taking a photo of any medications that I take each time they change so I have names and dosage information readily available. The biggest concern for me was to make sure that they understood that I had a severe negative reaction to the specific anesthesia combination of Reglan and Robinul. Interesting tidbit of knowledge… I now understand what exactly happened back in high school with these two drugs. Apparently they triggered something called Tardive Dyskinesia specifically in my eyes and mouth. I had always just referred to it as seizure like symptoms, but the Anesthesiologist was able to fill in the details for me. I have no clue if I have a future ahead of me where I will not be able to control my facial expressions, but here is hoping it was a one time thing. Suffice to say I did not want to live through that again. The last thing I needed was another thing to worry about, but it is good to at least better understand what happened.

The worst lingering immediate issue of yesterday is the fact that the nurses beat the shit out of me trying to get an IV started. I was fairly dehydrated from the prep work, and I think specifically Tuesday I was not pushing fluids anywhere near as hard as I should have been, largely because I knew I would have a decent drive to the facility and did not want to have any potential accidents. I think it is a combination of one of the nurses had a shit technique… because the two times she attempted are bruised as fuck and very sore to the touch… so much so that I cannot really lay my arm comfortably on any surface. The second nurse made an attempt on the top of my hand and there is zero bruising from that, and finally they decided to go for the big vein in the center of my elbow pit, which I wish they would have done from the start. Essentially they would get it started just fine, but the vein would collapse on them due to the dehydration. So now I mostly just look like I was attacked by the chupacabra or something with two puncture marks and giant bruises that seem to keep spreading.

Once I got back to the procedure room, they directed me into a super awkward position… told me that they were starting the anesthesia and then next thing I know I am waking up. I remember briefly having a bit of a dream where “Erasure” and I were talking about the procedure, and if you had told me that they were not for some reason able to complete anything I would have believed you. I did wake up and hear one of the doctors in the room saying “… he claimed he did not have Sleep Apnea”. To which I asked the recover nurse about, and apparently I absolutely exhibited clear signs of Sleep Apnea during the procedure. So add that to the list of things I will need to get checked out. I have gotten used to sleeping on my belly because it stopped me from snoring, and it was the least I could do for my partner of thirty years to make her sleep life easier. I am wondering if that also mitigated the effects of Sleep Apnea, because she never reported me waking up and gasping for breath, and surely she would have noticed it at some point because she had just as fitful sleep as I do at times.

Now some of this information I pieced together from my brief conversation with the doctor in recover, and some of it from the conversations he had out in the staging area with my Dad who drove me. Positives… I had zero polyps that they needed to remove. I unfortunately inherited the Diverticulosis from my Father, but that none of the the areas seemed to have been inflamed and turning into Diverticulitis, so again not unexpected given how bad he has it… and generally good news that it has not progressed to a chronic situation. The very bad not good at all news… is that I have a cancerous tumor in my lower rectum. They took a biopsy and I should know within a few days if it was benign or malignant, but for my purposes it does not really matter because it has to come out regardless. It will cause more problems the larger it grows and I will have to have a surgery to remove a small chunk of my bowels, probably a three to five day in the hospital type scenario. The main question I asked is if this is a bad type scenario and he said no, that this is just something that they stitch back together and life goes on like normal, with the added unfortunate effect of needing yearly colonoscopies for awhile.

So yeah… I have cancer and the ramifications are the same no matter what. I have to get surgery and will be referred to a specialist. I was told that he believes we caught this early, and this is not a particularly aggressive scenario, so in theory if I was going to get cancer this is the best possible situation for it. I didn’t want to have cancer, but if I have to have it… I guess I will consider it Bel Luck triggering again that it seems to be as good of a stance as we could have. I have no clue what the time table for this looks like. I know it took me from early November to late January to get in for a colonoscopy, so getting referrals often takes seemingly forever. I am hoping this does not cut into my Easter plans to visit “Erasure” but if it does we will deal with it at that point. I of course let “Erasure”, my siblings, and “The Librarian” know yesterday… pretty much in that order, and then later in the evening messaged my boss to let him know what was up. I have no clue who he will tell. I am not exactly going to be secretive about it, because clearly I am using this blog post to let you all know.

I’ve always maintained a level of openness about my life for good or bad with you. I’ve said for awhile that these posts are largely me sitting down at the keyboard and talking to myself, and in many ways it does feel like that. However I do know that there are thousands of you out there that read this on the regular either through Aggronaut or the syndicated version that appears on AggroChat (which I still think I want to burn down that site entirely at some point). I’ve shared my life with you all for going on seventeen years, and while I left out some details for the protection of others that are not me… I shared the core of the reality that I was living. I will probably be talking more about my cancer journey here, but hopefully it will not dominate this blog. I still expect to mostly be talking about dumb video game shit, because it brings me joy. I do however appreciate all of you out there, and I know that regardless of what happens you will be pulling for me… because you always have.

Anyways… I made it through yesterday, just not entirely unscathed. However the only way out is through and I have to deal with this no matter what happens.

Reconciling Sins

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Good Afternoon Folks. This is going to be a bit of a trying week. Due to age and neglect… I have been dealing with a bunch of things all at once. When I made the radical decision around the start of the year to live my life, rather than simply waiting to die… that came with it a bunch of adult problems that I needed to deal with. Some of these were put in place well before now, for example last Friday I saw a Cardio doctor and while I will be doing a battery of tests in the coming weeks, was largely given a relatively clean bill of health other than high blood pressure. They made sweeping changes to my drug regimen and for the most part it seems to have wildly improved things. Today is the first day I am wearing some old man socks, aka compression socks in an attempt to combat one of the other residual effects that I had been dealing with. I would say not to get old… but the alternative is not great either. I think the better option is to not get old while fat and in relative disrepair.

Another thing that I have been dealing with this week is finally getting brave and going to the Dentist. It had been somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty years since I last went into the dentist for a routine cleaning. I’ve always been more than a little terrified of Dentists in general, and the longer I waited… the less opportune the end result was going to be. Bel luck prevailed however because apparently my teeth are still in pretty solid shape without yearly attention. However there are some problems that are going to have to be dealt with, like the fact that my lower front teeth have migrated all over the fucking place and should probably be aligned back up in some semblance of order. That will require some sort of dental appliance and time in order to get the desired results, and with that will come a heck of a lot of money I am sure.

The other big thing that I am dealing with this week… is another thing that was set in motion some time ago. I am going in for my first colonoscopy, and within a few hours I will be starting the prep work by consuming the first of two doses of what I have been told is truly vile liquid. After that I will become close personal friends with my toilet for a number of hours. Then I will have to get up in the morning and repeat the process. Once again… highly do not suggest this getting old thing. This is honestly what I am most terrified of, because I know they will be putting me under for it. In high school I had a sinus surgery and had some pretty negative effects of the anesthesia, so I guess I am sitting down to write this afternoon so that if something does happen you know what occurred. Since I keep my internet life and my real world life relatively separate, I have created some contacts for my folks to reach out to in the event of anything happening. They will I am sure get the broader word out.

I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but I also did not expect my spouse of thirty years to suddenly drop dead last year. That set me on this whole path of reconciling the sins of the past, and trying to take better care of myself. There is someone that I care about quite a bit, that is also part of the driving force of dealing with any lingering problems. I am hoping tomorrow goes quickly enough, and that nothing major is found. Given that my father has had a whole slew of digestive tract problems, I would not be shocked if I do as well. Hopefully they will all be things that can be mitigated, and nothing super serious. I am not the biggest fan of this whole aging thing, but I am trying to engage in better habits that will hopefully see me through for awhile. If I take after my Dad’s line, they seem to be pretty long lived… and with a bit of Bel Luck sprinkled in hopefully I will as well.

Basically I am writing today because I am not sure how much I will be able to write over the coming days. I have no clue how much of a toll this will take out of me. My dad was apparently loopy for over a day after getting out of his last colonoscopy. I know tomorrow morning I will be dealing with another round of prep, and then tomorrow night… I am probably going to be exhausted and hangry since I am on a liquid only diet currently. I sincerely doubt you will be hearing from me tomorrow, but I will attempt to make a post on social media when I am free and clear of it all. Thursday is a total crapshoot as of how I will be feeling. I am hoping I will bounce back quickly and will have things to talk about at that point. Regardless I feel the need to say that if anything happens to me, I have enjoyed our time together. It has been weird sharing my life with you all, at least in a limited fashion.

Hopefully I am remembered fondly, and hopefully all of this is viewed as being deeply dramatic. I would have rather said things and not needed to, than to have disappeared without a word. Yall have been a major part of my life for going on seventeen years at this point. Be kind to each other, because if nothing else I would like to be remembered as caring about so many of you.

On Strange Wings

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Good Morning Folks! This week you are getting a bit of a bonus post, because it is extremely rare that I talk about anything on Saturdays. Generally speaking I blog Monday through Friday and then only by happenstance on Sundays because that is when I post the new episode of AggroChat. Today is a bit of a unique situation because last night we had our semi-monthly pen and paper play group. We are playing an Indie RPG system called Public Access, which is effectively an urban horror/found footage type gameplay experience. If you are a junkie for SCPs, Cryptids, or even The Secret World MMORPG then this might be a system for you. What sets it apart from the traditional D&D style “Roll-play” systems is that most of the game is storytelling. We the players paint the scenes by adding in little details, and we the players narrated both our successes and failures… which allows for some interesting situations like having “do-overs”. For example my character has an ability called “Come With Me If You Want to Live” where if I fail a roll and am in Grave harm…. I can narrate my way out of the situation and turn a failure into explaining how I narrowly escaped certain death and also saved my entire party at the same time.

Trigger Warning, I played around with the Adobe Photoshop Generative filters a bit during this post so you will see some of my homegrown AI slop as a result.

This is a session being run by “The Librarian” and I am very new to this group of people, but have seemingly blended with the group pretty quickly. Two of us are entirely new, two are regulars from other RP outings… and collectively we have created this internet age Scooby Doo Gang in the process. I am playing a burned out punk that used to be a little skater kid and now has a band… but the band never quite took off. The thing we have in common is that we all once lived in the town of Deep Lake, New Mexico and all were latchkey kids during the 80s and 90s. There is a cable access channel that no on in the town seems to remember, but we all do… and met up on a message board devoted to it. Over the summer we all agreed to meet up and investigate the town from a rental house, and as a result a Corporate Lawyer type, a Professional Athlete, a Burned Out Punk, and a Cryptid/Conspiracy Theorist all combined powers to try and solve the deep mysteries in this town.

My character shocking to no one, drives a white panel van… which has become the focus of some of the adventures so far. One of the really interesting things about this setting is that splitting the party is not a bad thing. In fact it allows for some really interesting mechanics. Last night for example we had three different scenes taking place at the same time, and while there may only be one set of characters active at a time… it does not mean that the rest of the players out out of the action. There is this phase called “setting the scene” where each player sort of “yes ands” their way through adding details to flesh out the uncanny nature of a lot of the vistas that we come across. For example we were presented with a wood lot, and were asked to explain what makes it look more evil than it might be. The detail I threw in is that the wind had blown through the lot, overturning the root system of the trees and making it both hard to move across it and at the same time giving the appearance of intestinal shapes snaking around the ground. Each player adds a little flavor to the world so we are all effectively building the lore, because in truth there are zero right or wrong answers… and the story is not written, only a set of guidelines for the person running the adventure to follow.

The Athlete and I have sort of developed this weird buddy cop movie thing that we are doing, and we have tag teamed investigating the desert scene. Essentailly there are rumors of these creatures coming at night and carrying people and livestock away, and we are trying to investigate what is happening. I narrated that I remembered this little old lady at the crossroads selling tamales out of an igloo cooler, and wanting to go out there and check out if she was still selling them. When we got out there we instead were introduced to her relative who now has a proper food truck, and introduced us to a series of clues… one of which required us to come back the next day. We also found a key to a hotel room, and in the room was an igloo cooler with a huge bag of blood marked with the Zodiac Taurus symbol on it. That is the Zodiac sign of my character the Burned out Punk. Last night… was our second campaign in this setting so we returned to visit the food truck again and were treated to a surreal wedding photo album, which unlocked additional clues about the scene. However while looking at the photo album, time passed faster than it should have… which required us to make a decision. Shelter someone for the night at the crossroads… either in a sketchy museum, the hotel room we discovered previously… or hop in the van and make a break for town.

The Athelete and I opted to make a break back for town… which created our Night Move for the evening. There are Day Moves which have relatively minor consequences… but Night Moves can end up in the permanent loss of characters. Since I had an escape card in the form of my “Come With Me If You Want To Live” ability… I decided to make the roll which was my Composure of 1 + 2D6. One of the interesting things about this system is that it is the players that determine what MIGHT happen if they fail the roll. So I talked about envisioning scenes in Vampire movies where parties are trying to get away and they swoop down on the roof of the van, trying to rip into it. “The Librarian” said that it was worse than that… they would not only attack the Van, but if I failed they would wreck it forcing us to be stranded out their with them. In my head I was preparing a way to narrate our narrow escape, preferably without losing my beloved panel van, but rolled an 8 which modified by my Composure became a 9, which was enough to get us safely back to town. However the entire time we were driving we were being chased by an ever growing flock of shadows… and just before reaching town some of them painted a Taurus symbol… aka the symbol of my character on the roof of the van in blood.

So what is really interesting about the whole concept of solving these mysteries… is that you collect clues and the clues serve as bonuses to your rolls. However there is no fixed mystery to solve, no correct answer that you have to arrive at. Instead the players decided that 1) they are going to attempt to solve a mystery and then 2) the Guide leaves the room and the players brainstorm a story that could match all of the clues that they have gotten, each clue again giving you a slightly better chance at making the roll. The brainstorming session was great, and the story that we arrived at was that the Food Truck owners family was part of a cult, but we were not sure if they were willing participants or being mind controlled by something darker. The Deep Lake Devils, aka the shadows that were following us are the harbingers of something worse, and the cult collects the blood of each zodiac sign as part of a sacrifice designed to close certain locks or enchantments and keep something far worse from coming into our world. The scene at the hotel room was us interrupting one of those murders and we ended up getting the bag of blood… which they need to replace and my character just happens to be the correct Zodiac Sign. So we solved the first part of the mystery, that states that the Deep Lake Devils are not of terrestrial origin, but now we have to figure out how to either banish them or cut our own bargain with them in future play sessions.

If you are curious, there are a lot of actual plays posted on YouTube for this game setting. I purposefully have not watched any of them, because I really want this to be a fresh expeirence for me. It has been a very long time since I have done anything pen and paper realted, but this reminds me a bit to our high school days playing the storyteller/white wolf system and the way in which we ran it. We were playing with a bunch of folks who were not necessarily seasononed mechanical TTRPG players, so we largely ran it as a story that we were all weaving together. I love the freeform nature of Public Access and how it is a narrative expeirence that we are all partaking in, instead of something that we are having done to us. I also really love this group of folks that I am playing with, and look forward to doing other games and other systems with them in the future. We are all technically local but to make it easier on the constraits of lives and families and such, we are playing over Discord. At some point thought I think we should all get together for dinner or something.

Anyways. It was a really fun night, and I find myself looking forward to these semi-monthly sessions quite a bit. Have you played Public Access? Have you played any systems like this that are way more storytelling driven? Drop me a line below.

Hearts Filthy Lesson

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Good Morning Folks. One of the unwritten promises of this blog is that I will be open with you all about my life and what is going on in it. I might not give you the totality of a story, with all of the names, dates, and places… but you can be sure that I will give you the general flow of the tale and all of the important bits of information. On the 4th I wrote a post called I Resolve to Live, and the crux of that is reaching some decisions about my life as I rebuild it after the death of my spouse. Most of it is making some decisions about who I am going to be going forward, but there was a small bit of it… where I admitted to you all that I had been in a fledgling chat-based relationship for a few weeks at that point, and things were starting to get a bit more serious.

im sorry i’m doing this early, i don’t think i can do this right now, it just feels a lot i’m sorry id love to stay friends bc we still know so so so much for each other i’m just so overwhelmed

Monday morning around 3 am I woke up as often happens because my bladder forced me to. As I was rolling over to go back to sleep… I had the misfortune of checking my phone and seeing the above message. Suffice to say I did not in fact go back to sleep as planned. In fact I was pretty much up from that moment on, and struggled through all of Monday in a sleep deprived and quite emotional stupor. I both apologize and praise everyone that talked to me on Mastodon and Bluesky that day, because I was certainly in my feels about what was happening. I’ve talked with “Ren” a few times after that statement and I think we maybe just got caught up in the whirlwind that a chat-based relationship can be.

So it is important to know that this is not new ground for me. I was a certified IRC Junkie during the mid 90s and that is ultimately how I met my first wife because we both were. Chat-based relationships can be so fast, because you end up furiously talking for as many moments as you can squeeze out of the day… staying up way too late just to see one more message from this other person. We used to say that a day on chat felt like a month in real-time anywhere else, and that is true… but it is a false sense of intimacy. You don’t really know that other person until you start trying to put motions in order to maybe begin to take it into the real world. As a result… chat-based relationships often implode like this at a moments notice and without much good reason. At least on some level… so much of it was intoxicating for me personally because it was caught up in the nostalgia of days gone by and a different version of myself.

Sometimes it is really important to have someone in your life that knows you from before the person you are now. “The Librarian” is that for me. We went to High School together, managed to somehow stay in contact throughout the years, and represents one of the few “men” in my life that I have ever been able to achieve a deep meaningful emotional bond with. They reminded me at length of all of the horrible and tragic relationships that I had prior to finding my spouse, and that it was a fools errand to even begin to contemplate that this first attempt out the gate was ever going to succeed. I also unburdened my soul with all of the specific details of this one in particular and they wanted to whack me upside the head. Taking all of the data into account… it was never going to work, not even close to ever working.

i’m sorry i just can’t handle it all at once and so much happened at once, and like i said i am uncomfortable with things that are good for me and you are

i just need a small break away honestly.. figure out exactly where i am and what i’m doing.. i can’t lie, a lot happened last night that made me really think about how i’m just not really ready for something long term right now.. and i know you’re wanting that eventually

So at the end of the day, I think I was just in a different place than she was. We’ve talked a few times off and on and I am genuine about attempting to be friend at some point in the future. It’s likely best that we do not talk for awhile, given the rapid growth and rapid disassembly of all of this. At first I got a version of “It’s Not You, It’s Me” that was thoroughly dissatisfying as that always ever is, but later I got the above more nuanced take. They know that at some point I want someone in my life that is going to be there for me, for the long haul, and they are not really sure they do. We had two different starting points, and two different endpoints… and since I was starting to develop feelings, I am not sure I could handle things moving forward on a purely casual basis. Like I said the other day, the fact that I felt anything is more of a gift than “Ren” will ever known, because I legitimately thought my heart was dead. I had not felt anything but pain in over six months. The fact that I realize I am capable of any sort of feeling is practically a miracle and going to be the thing that I really take away from this. The circumstances were wrong, and the person was wrong… but the plumbing and mechanical aptitude for feeling still exists.

So in all of the flailing around I did on social media… I made a move that is quite possibly the most egotistical thing that I have ever done. I posted the above message on both Bsky and Mastodon, because I have no clue who is into me… and this is a recurring theme in my life. As “The Librarian” reminded me… I spent plenty of time chasing folks who were of zero good for me… while ignoring people who genuinely cared for me. So with this hamfisted effort, I was just throwing it out there that if someone has secretly had designs on me for years… but never moved on it because of my marriage, that maybe right now was the time to tell me about it. I had all sorts of people boosting this… which is wild to me, but thank you very much for supporting my nonsense.

this could only happen to you

The above quote is verbatim from my sibling Ace when I told them that a Soft Kinky Nerd Girl did in fact come out of the woodwork. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and in the middle of a bunch of awkward discussion about the things I had been going through… she threw out that she almost responded to the message on Bsky that I posted on Monday, but didn’t have the bravery to do so. That she had a massive crush on me at various points through our chat history, but never moved on it because I was taken. We’ve been friends for around twenty years at this point, and talked off and on the entire time with various degrees of frequency. I know some of her past, she knows some of mine, because we were close enough friends to be open and honest with each other about the things that we were going through in our life. Like I have said before, I have very rarely bonded with men, but I often bond pretty strongly with the women friends in my life.

From this point forward I am going to use the code word “Erasure” for her, because I don’t want the added pressure of having prying eyes on our actions. This is someone that I interact with publicly from time to time and I want to do whatever I can to keep the pressure off us. She offhandedly said how much she liked the band Erasure, and normally I would use a profession based moniker… but she refers to herself as a “Babysitter” and that gives the wrong impression. We talked for a bit last night and it was shockingly comfortable, even though I was asking some awkward questions. Mostly I wanted to hear in her voice that the feelings she professed were genuine, or at least once were in this case. She lives a state away from me, within reasonable but not convenient driving distance. So at some point I am sure we will meet up and try and figure out if we feel anything for each other in person.

In the meantime I am going to be moving very slowly at getting to know her better. We’ve always been the sort of people that would talk very regularly for a few months, then life would get in the way and we would fade apart… and then one of us would get the nerve to ping the other and apologize for not talking more… and we would be back to normal like no time had ever passed. There is a very easy back and forth between our conversations, and I have always appreciated it. I know some of the struggles that she has gone through in the past, and I had a much easier lot in life. However we are both stable and functional adults, and neither of us needs saving. Things could start in a far worse place than having someone you already trust a heck of a lot, and have shared countless details of your life with over the years. My wife was someone that I knew for about a year before we got together, and I think it is probably more important that someone is my friend than any other trait when it comes to a long term relationship.

I know I am still really broken, and in truth…. in many ways they are too about various things. This is going to be a slow climb that we take together, and the most important thing to me is that we remain friends no matter what happens here. That is always the scary thing of taking something like this to the next level… is that you don’t want to damage this comfortable stable foundation that you have built up. The thing with “Ren” was that it was so new and fleeting, that I felt like I had to hold onto it with both hands for fear the wind would blow it away. “Erasure” is stable, and someone who has been a constant in my life for literal decades… I can walk away and take time for myself and know that she is not going anywhere. We’ve survived countless gaps in our communication just fine, and always… came back and started talking like zero time had passed. I don’t need to mind the ship to keep it from steering off into oblivion because the course is pretty straight and stable… we just have to decide if we really want to go down it.

No drastic changes… no fast movements. I just felt like I owed it to my readers who are not avid followers of social media to catch you up on what had transpired. The whole “one soft kinky nerd girl found” portion will be news to the social media folks as well. Ace curses me for once again “Bel Luck” playing a role here, because my dumb ass plea into the void should not have worked, but it seemingly did. We will see where things go from here with “Erasure” but I have always liked that band as well… so it might just work. I stole the title of the post from The Hearts Filthy Lesson by David Bowie, which comes off the concept album Outside… which I think I might be one of the only fans of. It just seemed fitting.