Just in case you were wondering...

If you're friends with me on Facebook (my chosen alternative to reality! LOL), then you've seen my posts the past few days about Ashley. She's my buddy Dolo's niece and a sweet kid...who happens to have a particularly nasty form of cancer.

Yes, it's a sad fact that many kids out there have cancer. So just why, you may be wondering, am I so enamored with posting about Ashley and trying to help? It's simple...

Some of you may know this, some may not: I'm a two time cancer survivor. Basal cell carcinoma and prostate cancer. The basal cell was, at least to me, pretty much a non-issue. A few out patient surgeries and a few series of pills that made me want to puke. 60 days later I was cancer free.  A couple of years ago, I went to my doc for a check up and as I'm "comfortably in my 40s", he suggested a prostate exam. As my doc is a big fat man, I did NOT relish the thought of his sausage finger going into my nether regions...but I was glad to find out that the initial test would be a blood test.

My PSA (prostate specific antigen) levels were a LOT higher than they should've been. This meant....the finger. I dropped trou, heard the snap of the glove and WHOOSH!!!!! A truly uncomfortable feeling...let me tell ya. Then the bad news. A very definite mass. Hell of a way to start/end the day (I was working nights at the time and my appointment was at 8am). 

Of course, I had lots of questions. "What do we do now?" "Will I have to wear diapers?" "Can I still have sex?" "Is this going to kill me?" Luckily, the doc told me the standard procedure was what's called 'watchful waiting'. This meant lots of blood work and lots more 'finger in the nether regions'.

I went home and told my girlfriend, who was still in her 20s at the time. I told her that I would understand and respect her if she didn't want to be tied down to an older guy with cancer. This may be the one and only time she's ever become cross with me. She told me, in  no uncertain terms, that she wasn't going ANYWHERE...cancer or no cancer. (I'm the luckiest SOB on the planet!)

I never changed my diet or daily routine. I figured "I have it" and trying to change things now would be akin to guzzling ketchup AFTER eating the hamburger. Sure, I could...but why?

I named my tumor Bert. I figured that nothing named Bert could ever harm me. I was right. Within 6 months, Bert just flat out disappeared. My PSAs went back to normal and all has been well and good. A miracle, some would say. Just my usual goofy luck, I would say.

So yes...I'm a survivor. Survivors have a knack for recognizing each other. We've been there. We've gone through it. And we can recognize our own. I see this in Ashley. Something tells me...maybe it's God (I have faith...it's OK if you do or do not..but I DO!)...telling me that Ashley is meant to be a survivor.

I wish I could do so much more for her than I can. I've had others show me great acts of kindness on my behalf...so the very least I can do is do the same for Ashley.

So please bear with me when I ask you, my friends, for help. I'm not asking for your money. I know that most of you don't have it. But...right now, she could use your blood...IF you happen to be male and have A+ blood. If you do...or happen to know someone who does, and happen to be within reasonable distance of the Bay Area, allow me to ask you now: PLEASE DONATE!!!!!!!!! You can go to the SF Blood Bank or to Children's Hospital in Oakland and let them know the blood is for Ashley Bilbao. Such a small sacrifice on your part will do wonders for her! She has been fighting some nasty infections and the white blood cells from male A+ blood is helping her beat them! Her dad and uncle have been donating so much of it that they're both literally tapped out for now. The docs say they can't donate for a week. But Ashley still needs those white blood cells...so PLEASE! Help her out!

Put your pocketbook away. Like I said, money won't do a damned thing here. Email your friends and family...pick up the phone...post a plea on Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or wherever. Talk to your friends. A+ blood isn't particularly rare. We should be able to get a few good donors for Ashley.

This can help save this little girl's life. And...not only will she and her family be grateful...I will. I plan to play guitar at Ashley's wedding when she grows up. I'll play at yours too!

Thanks y'all!

M

Corporate Logic Eludes Me

Everyone keeps asking me how the new job is. Well, the best I can honestly say is that it is truly a unique learning experience for me.

Having spent 25 years in the MH/MR field, I saw the corporate model imitated (poorly, I can thankfully say) but never really had to deal much with the corporate mindset. We were all too busy doing our jobs and helping out the individuals we served.

Today, at the new job, a group of us newbies were informed, by management, that 12 of the 30 new employees had been laid off (already?!). The reasoning? Corporate HQ had performed a code push (in short, screwing up our computer network) over the weekend in an effort to deal with some order timing issues. As Monday was a holiday, and there was no mail service, it appeared that our workload had slowed...hence these 12 fellow humans being given the axe...after working diligently and at the best of their ability, to learn their new jobs.

Needless to say, many of my fellow newbies were a bit taken aback. Low man on the totem pole is always the first to go. We all know this. But here's where it gets weird...

A few hours after being given this news, we were asked if we would like to volunteer for overtime! It seems that our workload hasn't slowed as first thought. Apparently, 800 hours of OT are needed to fill the projected workload for the week. Of course, we all volunteered for some OT...I mean really, who doesn't like MORE money?

Can someone explain to me, please, how 800 hours of time and half is cheaper and makes more sense than just paying the already existing employees? As ours is a continually growing corporation, it's not like we're ever likely to not have ANY work to do. Sure, there may be very short periods of downtime...but not enough to cripple the company financially...in reality, the likelihood is that the coffers wouldn't be effected at all by a few minutes here and there of stagnation.

This whacky way of (corporate) thinking is going to take a LOT of getting used to for me.

Allow me to pose some pure conjecture here...and let me know if I'm on track, please. It seems like these events were some sort of power play. By dropping the excess workers (who may or may not have been learning the job so well...but more about that later), we were, in essence, reminded of just how little we mean to the corporation. We can all be replaced and easily so. We were, in essence, prodded to believe that we should be grateful to our corporate masters for the opportunity to help them make more money. We were thrown the proverbial bone by being offered to volunteer to do more work for a wee bit more money.

Personally, I AM thankful for having a job. I was without one for 13 months. That's a long time to do nothing but look for work.

I feel bad for these co-workers who were let go. Maybe they weren't catching on. I've seen some of my fellow newbies who are doing well and others who are/were having some difficulties. But...it's only been a short time since they started the job. I have questions myself at times. Mind you, I'm smart and a quick study...and it usually takes 2 people to answer the questions I ask because it appears that I've come across some unique work problems. I enjoy the the problem-solving aspect of my job.  It's really the only part I DO enjoy! But I digress...

All of this said, if these fellow newbies weren't catching on and were proving to be more of a hindrance than a help, wouldn't it have just been better...more honest...to say "Hey...sorry...this isn't going to work out. Thanks for your help but we have to let you go..." 

I don't know...maybe the world has changed even more than I thought. I guess I was somewhat sheltered in my little feel good helping others world. All I know is...I miss it. I miss it a lot.

Sometimes the past is right where you left it...

I haven't written anything lately...and that's probably because I've been busy with my new job. I am extremely thankful to be working again after 13 months of unemployment. The new job is far from exciting...but it's steady...alas, it's not very inspiring. So I guess that leaves me looking for inspiration everywhere else.

I cleaned out the medicine cabinet the other day. I threw out a large supply of antidepressants. Seriously....probably about $500 worth. Before anyone gives me grief about it...they were well past their expiration date.

You may be wondering why I had them in the first place. Well, if you know me well, you know I've lived with depression my entire life. Most of you would never guess it...probably because you don't understand what depression really is. I don't mope around and recite bad poetry or anything like that. My serotonin gets out of whack and I get depressed. Sometimes it only last minutes, sometimes it lasts months. I've learned how to live with it and control it. The pills, though...they were from a period when I couldn't.

About 6 and a half years ago, I had a nervous breakdown. I went through a 6 week period where I slept, at best, 20 (nonconsecutive) minutes per day. OK, I wasn't exactly living a good life at the time. I was partying a lot and still trying to be 20. I guess it was my own midlife crisis. Little did I know, one of the long term effects of the coma I was in (result of the Great Nashville Beef Incident of 2002) was reduced serotonin levels. My insomnia was worse than ever and kept getting worse and worse (over the course of 4 years) to where I only slept the wee bit I mentioned.

Long story short...I put my head through a door (trying to knock myself unconscious) and a friend finally called an ambulance and the cops to have me taken to "the hospital".

The hospital in question was Western Psych. Over the years, I've sent many of my clients there. It was my turn. I really wasn't thrilled at the prospect but the last shreds of clear thinking I had left, told me this was where I needed to be. My intake took hours. I vacillated between goofy, angry, and delusional (serious sleep deprivation'll do that to a fella).

Finally, the doc gave me a shot of something...to this day I couldn't say what...and I was taken to the 8th floor (a locked ward) and shown to my room. I passed out and slept for 26 hours straight.

Waking up locked in the nut house is a truly eye-opening experience. Luckily, I had a good roomie (a junkie with a heart of gold) who talked a lot of sense to me. During the 3 times a day we were allowed to smoke, I got to see my fellow nutters. There was the lady who tried to remove her own head with an axe, the madly giggling little black guy with the crazy teeth, a lady who killed her boyfriend because she was SURE he was fucking the dog (turns out they didn't even have a dog), a few run of the mill depressives and addicts, and my buddy the junkie.

If you've never been locked up ("hospitalized" is a kind misnomer...you're locked up. Period.) I can tell you...it sucks. You're told when and what you can eat or drink. You're told when you can and can't sleep. Your entire day is regimented. At medication time, we were allowed 2 cigarettes. We'd be locked together in the smoking room...a disgusting hole if there ever was one. No air circulated through there...just all of us smoking. It was disgusting...but it was also, I believe, the only time any of us were truly honest and open. The others would jokingly call me "Blockhead" for having tried to knock myself unconscious in the manner that I did. We joked and teased with each other about our diagnoses. Again, I hadn't been "diagnosed" yet. All they had to go on was the police report and my psych records from when I was a teen.

Group therapy sessions were a joke. From both sides of the coin I can tell you...group sessions are not a good start. One should need to work their way up to them. One needs to become comfortable with the label one becomes branded with. "Psychotic", "Depressive", "Suicidal", "Bipolar"...they're all just labels. Disgusting labels at that. Anyhoo...group therapy...where we would all sit and try not to stare at each other while none of us talked. Some young therapist would try to get us to "open up"...but not a one of us trusted him. He was in over his head. We knew it and he knew it.

My 2nd day, a friend brought me some spare clothes and thankfully...cigarettes!!!! My roomie (the junkie with the heart of gold) had been supporting my habit. He truly was a good guy. He'd been in my spot and he was paying forward a kindness he'd received. I learned a lot from him in the 4 short days I spent at the Ha Ha Hacienda. We'd spend a lot of our time just talking between the two of us. He told me about his addictions...heroin, opium, morphine, and his latest...Oxycontin (aka hillbilly heroin).  He told me about the Hell he lived in. I won't spill his tea...suffice to say, he went through a lot and came out the other side a better man. 6 months after I got out...I heard he finally ODed. Some demons are just too strong.

My 4th and final day, I experienced one of the most mortifying situations of my life. I knew that my best friend's mom worked at Western Psych. Just my luck...she worked on my floor. I'd just come from the bathroom (after having to practically beg one of the nurses to unlock it for me) and there she was...standing in the hall waiting for me. I was so embarrassed. She knew me as not only her son's best friend, but also as a colleague and fellow MH worker. We'd talked shop so many times in the past...and here I was...I'd become a "client".  She asked what I was doing there...and I told her. While this was probably against regulations, she gave me a big hug and assured me it would all be OK.

She pulled a string or two and got me to see the shrink the minute he got on the ward. I wanted OUT of there. I agreed to outpatient therapy to try to fix my serotonin/sleep disorder. The shrink didn't like the idea but agreed to me signing myself out "AMA" (against medical advice). He wanted to keep me there for at least 6 weeks! I really would've gone crazy!

The second they unlocked that door and let me out, I bolted! I called a friend and got a ride home. I never even picked up my clothes at the nurse's station. I did, however, make sure that the nurses gave my cigarettes to my roomie.  I had a call from him some time later, thanking me for that.

I started into my therapy...was misdiagnosed a few times...and was put on antidepressants. Miraculously...they worked! Within 2 days, I was sleeping better than I ever had. No grogginess the next morning. Just a good night's sleep! Alas...my body doesn't like most chemicals and I developed tremors in my arm from them. I called Dad (a well-known physician and healer in his own right) and he told me to stop taking them immediately. Seems my body was gearing up for a seizure....NOT something I wanted to experience.

I kept up with the therapy for a few months until the shrink told me he was pretty sure I'd be OK. He reminded me that he was always there if I needed him. To this day, I haven't.

Having spent my adult life working in the mental health field, I studied all of the usual remedies and therapies. Cognitive therapy worked best with me. It didn't cure my insomnia or my depression...I still deal with both...but nowhere near as bad as either used to be.

So for the past 6 and a half years, I kept those pills in the medicine cabinet. I'm sure that those of you who have been to my house have seen them (yes...I know when y'all go peeping through the medicine cabinet! Especially when ya knock something over and I hear it clank in the sink! HAHAHAHA). They were a daily reminder of what I went through.

I decided the other day that I don't need them there to remember anymore. My life if pretty good...all things considered. I'm a happy guy. Sure...I could be happier...but not much.

Your past is part of who you are. You can't escape it. It's what has made you the person you are today...for better or worse. If you don't like something in your life...change it. Sure, it's the common norm to blame everything on our past. We weren't loved enough...or cuddled enough...or given enough time to toilet train. Hogwash. If there's a part of our life we don't like...it's up to the individual to fix it. A person might need help...but they have to know to ask for it.

If you think this blog has been long....just wait until I clean out the basement!

OK...I'm done rambling. For now.