31 August »
I have posted all chapters of League of Mortals; you can read the whole thing, if you want to. Not that I can tell you why you would want to read it – have you hit rock bottom? – but it’s there in any case.
I also updated the chapter bar on the main page, so that you can get to any chapter from there. It probably helps to begin with Chapter 1, but I will tell you that 41, 61, and 63 are where the really naughty bits are.
Speaking of bits, I got to the end and realized that I had a couple of jokes I hadn’t been able to incorporate into the main text. So here now, on this website only, are exclusive outtakes from the shit novel, League of Mortals:
I crept to her desk, clutching my stapled papers. “Ah—Mrs. Strunkel? I have a couple of questions about my grade.”
“Yes, Wesley?” she put down her pen and looked at me over the rims of her glasses.
“Well, you took off a point here for this question mark: ‘Is there any mystery to the subtext of “Penistone Crags”?’”
“The punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, Wesley. You know that.”
I moved the marks and read the sentence again: “‘Is there any mystery to the subtext of “Penistone Crags?”‘” It was not improved. “The question mark isn’t part of the phrase. I’d be attributing a question to Bronte that she didn’t ask.”
“The reader will understand your meaning. What is your other question?”
“This?” I pointed to a word that she had crossed out.
“‘Unreversed’ is not a word, Wesley,” she said. “You may write instead: ‘un hyphen reversed.’”
“Is it unclear without the hyphen?” I asked.
“Whether it’s clear or not is irrelevant,” said Strunkel. “It isn’t a word.”
“It looks like a word,” I said. “All the parts are word parts.”
“You can’t simply make up words, Mr. Peary.”
“Shakespeare did,” I pointed out.
“When you have demonstrated mastery of the language, you may appeal the rules of the language. But not in this class.”
I took my paper back to my desk.
The Bronte in question is whichever sister wrote Wuthering Heights, I think. Penistone Crags is a place that comes up (ha!) in the novel, and my AP Lit class had a great deal of fun with those two words of Great English Literature. (Strunkel, by the way, is most definitely not modeled on my AP Lit teacher, who was a wonderful teacher and helped me learn to write comprehensible paragraphs. She would be so saddened….)
You might also note that nowhere in Great English Literature does anyone go to the effort of making an unfunny joke out of quotation marks. I am, I believe, the first. Of course, I am not Great English Literature, just a simple guy on the Internet who wants to someday get paid to make poo jokes.
Next up: the whole document in a single file, for downloading, printing, etc. PDF is my main goal, but let me know if there’s something else that works better.
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24 August »
Chapters 66 through 70 of League of Mortals are now available. New readers should start at the beginning.
Most of the book was written based on my own experiences – meaning I did almost zero research. Chapter 66, however, required a bit of work, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I knew that I wanted to address the paucity of literature on the subject of illness, and started looking for books that I could incorporate into the story. Little Women was a blessing: a classic book with a pretty complex attitude towards illness. If you’ve read Little Women, even if you read nothing else of this story, you should read Chapter 66. Here’s a taste:
“And you don’t like that,” said Wallace.
“No, sir,” I said. “Destiny is a cop-out.”
“What did you call it? The ‘second worst diagnosis in the history of literary medicine’?” Wallace said.
“Right,” I said. “I mean, it’s one thing in a book, but if books matter to how we live our lives, then we can’t go around assuming people get sick and die because of destiny. That’s basically giving up, when we owe it to each other to at least try to understand their experience.”
If you’re at all enjoying this, tell your friends. I intend this book to be something that sick people can relate to, but also something that helps non-sick people understand what it means (at least, what I think it means) to be chronically and terminally ill.
One more thing: I am getting pretty close to the end – maybe 20 chapters or so – and when it’s all up, I want to make it available as single document. I will definitely have a PDF format, but if there are other e-book formats I should look into, let me know.
Tags: biog, LOM
2 Comments
11 August »
Oh, yes – I have uploaded more chapters from League of Mortals. The new material starts with Chapter 51. Big Fish. Folks who have no idea what I’m talking about should start here. The new material goes through Chapter 60; Chapters 61 through 65 should be available next Tuesday, the 17th.
When we last left Wesley, he was getting ready to go fishing with Travis and Uncle Bill. Chapter 51 starts with him fishing; in the next chapter, he goes to church and gets a talk about s-e-x at Sunday School. Chapter 57 is one of my favorites; a fiction writer with a pseudonym gets to say a lot of things that real people think but don’t admit. I won’t spoil it, but will offer an excerpt:
I could see his point. “And if all these diseases do is make you a better person, then why don’t more people have them? It’s not like all these other people couldn’t stand some betterment. It’s not fair to deprive them of the improvement a good chronic or terminal illness would bring.”
“But they think they already know the lessons you’re supposed to learn, just because they read about how somebody learned to be a better person after his heart attack, or a better mother after breast cancer.”
“Or because Rod Everhard won another Tour de France,” I said.
“Right,” said Travis. “Does anyone realize how lucky the cancer patients of America are that he got nut cancer? If he’d gotten lung cancer it would be all about ‘Support Lung Cancer Research’, but nobody would have ever bought those bracelets if they were for ‘Support Nut Cancer Research’….
Of course, “Rod Everhard” is a hedge to protect me from lawsuits, and I’ve taken some liberty with chronology; the bracelet thing didn’t start until several years after the setting of League of Mortals. That’s the power of fiction, folks – ain’t it great?
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3 August »
Before I left for the place I will be when you read this, I scheduled five more chapters of League of Mortals to be uploaded, for your reading displeasure. The new chapters start with Chapter 46. EUA; new readers should start from the beginning. Also, I updated the chapter bar on the start page, so that you can access all the available chapters from there.
One of the problems with trying to write a funny book is that after reading them a million times, all your jokes seems tired and stale. I have probably cut dozens of jokes that you would find hilarious, just because I didn’t like them anymore. Even the jokes I do like, I don’t really react to.
But In Chapter 46, we have one of the few jokes that still gets me:
The doctor clicked his pen again, and flipped the pages back onto his clipboard. “I’ll see what we can do. Meanwhile I’m going to order a CT scan and probably have the surgeons do an EUA.”
“EUA?”
“Examination Under Anaesthesia.”
“Why do I need ‘Anaesthesia’?” I asked.
“Because they’re Examining your rectum from the inside,” he said. He made an airtight case.
Ha! Still makes me giggle every time. “EUA” has always struck me as the most benign of euphemisms for what is, in fact, a troubling procedure. But you’re anaesthetized, so it doesn’t matter.
I should mention that the story also wanders into some explicit sexual content in Chapter 47 – definitely NSFW, though not much in this book is SFW. If you get offended by that sort of thing, try to trust me that it’s not entirely gratuitous, and will have a point sooner or later. If you’re not offended by that sort of thing – well, you’ve probably already skipped over to read it by now.
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30 July »
It’s like they know when I need to take a trip. And then try to screw it up.
I am going out of town the country for a week, starting tomorrow. On Wednesday, my doctor prescribed a lower dosage of paroxetine, to help me wean off it. Cutting the pills I have in half was apparently too ambitious. The doc promised to phone in the prescription to my pharmacy, so all I had to do was pick it up.
Except she forgot to include her DEA number – which meant the ‘scrip couldn’t be filled. I don’t know if that was insurance rules, or the pharmacy rules, but it meant the medicine wasn’t ready when I showed up yesterday. And it wasn’t ready when I showed up today. I can only hope it will be ready when I show up later this evening. At least I have some of the medicine still, this time – just a lot more than I want to be taking. Oh – and my new pharmacy is a lot nicer than the CVS was. They act like my business actually matters to them, which is a refreshing change.
Meanwhile, in all this hubbub I forgot – until now – to post a link to the latest edition of Patients for a Moment, hosted by the Queen of Optimism. She did a great job, and Leslie is doing a great job of coordinating all this. If you want to host, you should let Leslie know through the PFAM site she created, or check out her blog, Getting Closer to Myself.
I’m going to set up a few more chapters of League of Mortals to publish while I’m away, but don’t expect much else for the next week.
Tags: biog, meds, pfam
1 Comment
25 July »
The Queen of Optimism asks: “Who has made a positive difference in your life and what did they do?”
In May of 2006 I’d just been released from the hospital, when my doctor asked me to come in for a follow-up. “We think you might have cancer,” he said. “You need to go see a surgeon.” I was unfazed – there are a lot of things worse than cancer, e.g. my life at that point. Still, I made an appointment with the surgeon for the following month. “You almost certainly have cancer,” he insisted. ‘Overbearing’ doesn’t begin to describe this doctor: “We just need to do a test to confirm, and then we’ll take out your colon, give you an ostomy, and start you on chemotherapy. You need to tell your loved ones right now: you could die.”
Like the man said…. when? I hoped soon, but I knew I didn’t have cancer.
Telling the parents was easy: this guy wants my colon for his trophy case, but he’s wrong. Telling the bright spot in my life was harder: so, ah, you know I was in the hospital? Well, one of the doctors is worried I might have cancer, and that would mean some operations, and things could get pretty rough. I didn’t tell her that there was no way I was going to take fucking chemo; I’ve seen that show, and have no desire to star in it.
I had known her for only a few months, and we’d been dating seriously maybe six weeks. No way anybody would sign up for this willingly. I expected her to bolt. I wanted her to bolt. I had to clear the decks so that I was ready for whatever happened, so I would hurt or inconvenience as few people as possible. No tears for me, please: I was ready to go.
She stayed on, though – which was a wrench in my plans. Are you sure you want to do this? “I’ll just see how long I can take it” – which was fair, I suppose. Why are you at all attracted to me; can’t you see I’m a sinking ship? She mumbled something about my Byronic charm; I can only hope that one day medical science recognizes the tremendous damage done by the steady diet of 19th century novels we feed young women in this country, after which you won’t be able to buy Austen, Chopin, or any Bronte sister without paperwork from the FDA.
I was totally serious about dying. I was doing a dismal job at living, and thought maybe it was time to try my hand at something else. Her decision to stick around was a major hassle; I remember thinking that stupid, obstinate woman had no idea what she was doing.
But she stayed through it all: shuttled me to examination room, shared the unsurprising relief that I did not have cancer after all, visited me in the hospital for my next bout, when the doctor insisted I get surgery anyway. She went with me to my hometown, met my parents, and then came back to visit me after the operation. She spent a weekend with my family, while I was back in the hospital with a minor complication.
Three years after that, she made the best decision compromise of her life by actually marrying me. In a church. With legal documents. You know that saying about saving a life in China – how it makes you responsible for the person for the rest of his life? Welcome to the rest of my life, Mrs. Cross.
And on the days when I remember I am a hideous monster, I also remember that she married me, and she could have done better. I find the thought redeeming.
That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. She kept me from giving up. She kept me here. And I hope someday that she will do the second-nicest thing anyone can do for me: let me go.
Tags: bio, ills, pfam
1 Comment
24 July »
Act III of the 4/02/2010 episode of This American Life will be interesting to anyone who has heard of helminth therapy to treat autoimmune diseases. It focuses on a man named Jasper Lawrence, who decided to treat his severe asthma with hookworms acquired the, um, natural way. He sounds like a reasonable guy on the program, but his blog makes him seem like a crank. I suppose I’d be just as angry if the FDA had chased me out of the country.
Tags: ills, meds
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23 July »
So last week, I was trying to get my Paxil prescription refilled before I left for vacation – despite virtually no cooperation from my pharmacy.
On Tuesday morning, I called my doctor for a refill. “Sure, we’ll send that in.” A few hours later, I called the pharmacy. “Your doctor just called it in; it will be ready in twenty minutes.”
I gave them forty minutes, then drove to the pharmacy. It was around 2pm. I had a five hour drive ahead of me, and really wanted to get out of town before 3pm so I wouldn’t still be on the road when it started getting dark.
But wouldn’t you know: “Your doctor never called us.” You just told me they called it in. “Nobody here ever spoke to you.” I hit redial on my phone – and the phone at the desk started ringing. “Well, we still don’t have the ‘scrip from your doctor.”
So I called the doctor. In fact, they had not called in the prescription. Fuck me. The pharmacist glowered at me like I was a crazy person, which I sort of was, but I certainly didn’t imagine that goddamned phone call – and why had they never gotten in touch with my doctor in the three days since I called in the refill? Jerks.
I drove to my doctor’s clinic and marched past the reception desk. The tech in the back asked me what I wanted, and I explained that I needed my prescription, and would not trust the usual channels. She told me to wait outside the exam area while the doctor finished with her patient, but I was 60% sure the tech was going to call the cops.
I positioned myself next to the fire alarm pull, just in case the cops did show up and tried to drag me off. Obviously, I wasn’t in a particularly good frame of mind. As I waited, I watched the clock tick off five, ten, then fifteen minutes. In all the time I’d been going to that doctor, I’d never had an appointment last longer than 15 minutes. I decided to give her another ten minutes, and then I was going to raise hell – maybe pull the fire alarm just for the hell of it.
If this was my cholestyramine, I probably wouldn’t have been upset. But it wasn’t – I was trying to get my anti-depressant refilled. And since it’s pretty well known that going cold turkey off these drugs has nasty consequences, I just don’t see why getting that scrip filled was not an urgent issue for all concerned. It occurred to me that I could just start shooting people (not that I had a gun) and plead temporary insanity; I had an airtight case.
But at last, five minutes before my deadline, the doctor appeared. She was very sweet and patient and understanding, even though my homicidal fantasies were probably immediately visible to trained eyes. “We’ll call that in”. Actually, I’d rather leave with paper in my hand. “We can do that.”
I got the scrip filled in the downstairs pharmacy, and headed out: 3:30pm, just barely not so late that I missed yet another day of vacation. Even without taking any pills, I was very much relieved and pacified for having them with me.
Incidentally, I’m never going back to that pharmacy again. It was a CVS: I’ve heard horror stories from friends about the chain, but never had any problems myself. Until now. It’s not just the sheer incompetence of that particular pharmacy, but the bullshit attitude of the pharmacist that I found so off-putting. One of the things that I just hate about my illness is that it so often puts me at the mercy of such cretins. One day, those five minutes will run out – and then I’ll be free.
Tags: bio, ills, meds
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13 July »
I am supposed to be on vacation this morning, headed down to Florida for a week. Instead, I am sitting at my computer, waiting for my pharmacy and my doctor to get their shit together, so I don’t have to go cold turkey on my Paxil, and end up a homicidal maniac burying his victims in the sugar-fine sand of the Florida beaches. Not that I’d be the first to do so.
My massive inconvenience is apparently your gain, insofar as reading my soul-crushing bildungsroman counts as a gain. Anyone actually following the adventures of young Wesley Peary will wonder: why so long since last time? The problem was that I discovered the chapters were appearing in my search results, which made search useless for anyone looking for actual information. So I decided not to put up any more chapters until I could get that problem resolved, and it took me until today to do so: thank you, Jonathan Dingman.
In the meantime, I meant to flag this story from the NY Times, which asks whether patient memoirs are worth reading. Obviously, I have concluded that a straight-up memoir isn’t worth writing, and for good reason: the events of my life have not happened in the right order to be compelling reading. Instead, I’ve condensed more than ten years of my life into a single year of narrative, which ends up being entirely true to my experience, even if not strictly factual. (I even get to be more candid, since I can always deny anything that’s too embarrassing.)
And indeed, the only reason I can justify writing the horrible things I write is that they are, at some level, absolutely true. Too often memoirists try to tie their lives together, to package them and wrap them in meaning, so as to justify themselves and their work to the audience – with the result being too pat, too easy, too comforting. Fiction requires no such defense; my only obligation is to be as true to my experience as I can.
So I now have through Chapter 40 available: if you are just getting started, start here. Otherwise, Chapter 32 was the last chapter I posted.
I’ve also uploaded Chapters 41 through 45, and scheduled them for publication next Tuesday. I should be still on vacation, or fleeing from authorities, depending on whether I get that prescription filled. In any case, that should put me ahead of the ball, and with the technical problem fixed, I should be able to upload the rest of the chapters fairly regularly through the rest of the summer. Thanks for reading.
Tags: LOM
1 Comment
12 July »
For this week’s PFAM, Leslie asks… “What have you done (or what do you aspire to do) in spite of illness?”
When I was first diagnosed, my doctor told me I had to take it easy: too much stress would make me sicker. That meant no sports, no hard classes, etc. So I stopped going to crew practice, and dropped all but a couple of my honors/AP classes in high school. Big mistake – I was miserable.
The class thing was done, but later that year I started going back to crew practice. Guess what? It didn’t make me worse. And the next year, I started college off with a courseload full of honors classes. It didn’t make me worse. And after two years of that, I transferred to one of the best schools in the world, and was still on the crew team – and it didn’t make me worse.
Point being that a lot what I thought was illness keeping me from doing things was in fact other people keeping me from doing those things. The only thing I really wanted to do before I got sick that I haven’t been able to do is join the Air Force, but to hell with that. I’m so near-sighted, it’s not like they’d ever let me fly, and I discovered that I have a serious allergy to authority figures anyway.
Otherwise, I’ve had a life that’s more full than many healthy people I know. I graduated from that tough college, participated in and witnessed some historic events, got a Master’s overseas, spent some time in countries with no health care system whatsoever, got married, et cetera. I can’t think of anything I haven’t or can’t accomplish that’s due to my illness, that’s anything I really want to do. Maybe thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, but my life is so full right now that I don’t have the eight months to spare.
A lot of my accomplishments are due to what I think is the right attitude: I’m not afraid to fail. After I graduated from college, and was thinking about making some pretty big changes, I had a doctor who was intense and aggressive in his treatment. I was planning a trip to Latin America, and worried about my health, and wanted his blessing; he said, “Look, this isn’t for me to say. I think you can do it, but it’s more important whether you think you can do it. And if you’re not sure, you can always bail. But don’t not do it just because you’re worried you might have to bail at some point.” I went, I had a good time, and didn’t get sick at all.
So when it comes to stuff I want to do, I take the same approach: I try it until I discover I can’t do it. And I have been surprised at the things I can do, even when I thought I couldn’t. Granted, my illness is a factor, and something I often have to work against or around, and there have been a couple minor things that were just too difficult, but I’ve had a pretty amazing life, nonetheless.
What I have done is rather a lot, and what I aspire to is just about everything else.
Tags: biog, ills, pfam
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I have posted all chapters of League of Mortals; you can read the whole thing, if you want to. Not that I can tell you why you would want to read it – have you hit rock bottom? – but it’s there in any case.
