Sunday Movies at the Upper Moreland Library - Poem: The Last Movie

Here's our Movie Man - Maurizio Giammarco, PhD

He selects terrific foreign films for us to watch and always brings in cookies from an Italian bakery.

Sunday was the last movie for this season. I always attend the films unless I'm in the hospital for complications of my kidney transplant.

What makes these Sunday movies so compelling? Like most complex questions, there's not a single answer.

We watched Lorna's Silence by the Belgian filmmakers, the Dardenne brothers. Few Americans have heard of them.

I also checked out another Dardenne film, The Son, which was an amazing film, that like Lorna, was intensely suspenseful.

The Son was made specifically for the actor Olivier Gourmet.



Here's Olivier with the man that murdered his son. What a film! Sparse dialogue, as in all the Dardenne films, according to Maurizio. One Z please.



THE LAST MOVIE

Two o’clock on Sundays
a time I reserve for you
o Maurizio of the difficult pronunciation
Maurizio Maurizio
not one of your popular baby names like
Ethan, Jason or Jaidan.

You have survived the difficult name your parents gave you
and grown to look the way Maurizio ought
debonair, if they use that word anymore,
turtlenecked and jacketed with wisps of red hair
that, when young, made you the beloved of your family
and to your library audience
men and women past their prime
avoiding dotage with supplements and puzzles

You, a maker of films we’ve never seen,
are a keen observer as you teach at the front of the room
"Ah, there’s Christ imagery!"
"Ah, erotic imagery!"
I must look harder next time,
and the music, “if you will,” your favorite phrase, a simple
Beethoven sonata at the end of “Lorna’s Silence”
by the Brothers Dardenne

Your thick stapled handouts bring tears to my eyes
as I toss them, half-read, in my junk mail carton.
“Take two,” you say, “as you pass out cookies from your favorite bakery”
I confess that during Lorna’s Silence, where we are trapped in narrow spaces,
with ruthless people who make us squirm
I wish to comfort myself with more chocolate cannoli and that fat crumbly cookie
with morsels of goodness inside

The Sunday movies will be gone until January.
How can I live in these darkest months without you?
A chocolate cannoli perhaps on the third Sunday at two?

Hello again Larry DiBello! Med review

Larry DiBello was our guest speaker at New Directions. A retired pharmacist who worked in clinical trials for Eli Lilly, he keeps up with the latest drugs for everything, including mood disorders. Frankly, he told the group, there's not much new.

Larry and I met for dinner before the meeting. We ate at the KitchenBar where we each had salmon on a cedar plank. Scrumptious, plus as Larry pointed out at the meeting, salmon is full of fish oil, very healthy for folks with mood disorders.

Larry spends much of his time volunteering for the Family Resource Center at Friends Hospital. Call him with any med questions at 215-514-5110. Guaranteed to return your call.

Today, he and his wife Anna are heading out to spend T'giving with their daughter and her family in Fredericksberg, MD. I always remember the time I went to their home - very far away - I went with Denis and Fran Hazem for a meeting of DBSA groups - and Anna made delicious pound cake. A food-lover and diabetic like moi never forgets delicious food.

At KitchenBar, Larry and I discussed my kidney transplant and the damage done by lithium. I told him I contacted a woman to see if she'd publish my fabulous novel - her small press only publishes mysteries and sci-fi - and she told me she's waiting for a kidney. Yes, lithium. She's avoided dialysis by staying on a strict diet but has a fistula in place.

Before meeting Larry, I stopped at Kremp's for his gift. I got him two medium-sized poinsettias. They just got them in from their greenhouse.

The above photo is their fish pond with coi.



Then we headed for Abington Prez.

We had a good turnout. Larry is candid, honest and funny. Always a great speaker. In fact, I'm gonna call a woman in our group with IBS and tell her to call Larry for questions.

Before the meeting, "Jay" came up to me. He had taken Ambien for sleep and went into a horrific depression, as did another member of our group, who is still severely suicidal.

Jay said he heard on the news that the Mayo Clinic will stop prescribing Ambien b/c hospitalized patients often slip and fall when on the drug.

Highlights:

Use a mood chart - rate your moods between 0 (fine)  and 3 (severely depressed) -  and give it to your doctor.

Titrate (wean) all medications. Psychiatrists say: Start low, go slow, until desired effects are achieved OR intolerable side effects occur. Decide whether you can tolerate the side effects b/c of the benefits of the drug.

New drugs include:

- Viibryd, a serotonin increaser

- Savella - dual-acting, increases both serotonin and epinephrine. Indicated for fibromyalgia. "Indicated" means that drug tests have been done. Not indicated as yet for depression. These tests cost a fortune.

It's an effective antidepressant, said Larry, and doesn't cause mania, as many antidepressants do.

- Abilify has been out since 2002. My former psychiatrist gave me an Abilify tissue box which I kept in my upstairs office for many years until cobwebs started growing on it. Did you know humans have an innate fear of spiders and snakes? Just learned that on my audio book The Social Animal by David Brooks.

Abilify is now used as an add-on, or enhancer. Use from 2 mg to 15 mg. Indicated for both bipolar and schizophrenia. You use less in schizophrenia than for bipolar.

- Seroquel is also used as an add-on...use 300 to 500 mg. I love the generic name for Seroquel - quetiapine. Look at the suffixes of these drugs. That's how you find their derivation.

People take a lo-dose of Seroquel to sleep - maybe 25 mg - and a higher dose as a mood stabilizer, up to 800 mg.

Somnolence - or sleepiness - is a side effect. 

What's a milligram?



A teaspoon of sugar contains 5,000 milligrams. Thanks, Larry. Great point!

- Saphris. Not used a lot. Dosage: 5 to 10 mg. Asenipine is the generic name. Same 'pine' as quetiapine. Taken sublingually, under the tongue so it doesn't upset the stomach. All the above meds are used for both schizophrenia and bipolar.

- Latuda is only indicated for schizophrenia. But as we know off-label drugs often work for folks with bipolar when nothing else has worked.

- Clozaril is the first of the so-called atypical antipsychotics. Like most great drugs, it was discovered by accident. The Germans used it as an anesthetic and it was found to be a calming agent for schizophrenics. After that came Risperdal and Zyprexa. (I used to take Risperdal when I got psychotic and was very happy with it. However, I ended my manic-depressive career on thiothixene or Navane.)



And, yes, I did have the bottle. It was a great comfort to me.

Larry DiBello believes the best antidepressant is PROZAC. It's got a seven-day half-life, he said, so if you forget a dose it stays in your body. Many people in our group who forget to take a med feel the effect immediately!

Prozac is also indicated for OCD at 80 mg.

Many antidepressants are also indicated for pain. Cymbalta is a popular pain medication. It has numerous applications - including generalized anxiety disorder. It's also used for diabetic neuropathy.

- Some of the generic Wellbutrins are no good. "It's tricky to make a time-release capsule," said Larry.

Larry fought depression by running.

"I ran in 24 marathons," he said. "I'm not depressed anymore, I'm a cripple."

He has a metal knee and will get the other knee fixed in the near future.

Larry goes on his elliptical machine for half hour every morning. He might listen to music or simply run with his eyes closed and think.


Ah, that life has come to this. Machines.

Drugs for pain either work in your brain or in the affected area. Opiates do nothing to help with the problem, but anti-inflammatory drugs do, by reducing inflammation in swollen joints or wherever: Advil, Alleve, Naproxyn, and good old willow bark (aspirin).

- An extract of pineapple - Bromelain - has several uses - anti-inflammatory and also to reduce growth of tumors.

Larry suggests taking 800 mg of SAM-E. In Europe, you need a prescription for this, where it was studied. For some people it works as an antidepressant.

Be sure to ask your doctor if you can take any supplement. They may be contraindicated with your other meds.

- Sleep. Try Benedryl - 25 mg or Melatonin 1 to 3 mg, sublingual. Takes a week to work. Gee thanks.

- Omega 3 fatty acids. Larry suggests OmegaBrite. It was developed at Harvard. It was wrin up in the Archives of General Psychiatry for prevention of psychotic disorders!



Thanks Larry! Great talk.

Coffeeshop Writers' Group Seminar - whopping good time!

Our seminar was from 10 am until 4 pm. We met at Beatriz's lovely condo, filled with many of her own artworks. Carly thoughtfully presents Beatriz with a colorful bird print from all of us. She got it at Harvest House on Commerce Drive, Ft Washington, PA.

Sounds like the old Atlantic Bookstore on 309, which has vanished, even down at the shore.

The Jenkintown B&N will be gone at the end of the year.

So many losses!

Met self-published author Christian Barth at the Ocean City Atlantic Warehouse. He wrote a terrific novel about serial killer Ted Bundy.

Here's the bird print of a male and female....cowbird?

Beatriz, a biologist, read a surprising essay about Pennypack Trust on Edgehill Road in Huntingdon Valley.

They employ four-legged helpers to get rid of invasive plants.



Hello furry bearded billy goat. Thanks for enjoying your job as you graze on destructive vegetation. But, don't eat the bark off the trees like the deer do. Otherwise, it's goat soup!

Strong delicious coffee was plentiful. Not just any coffee, mind you. This is Shade-Grown Coffee. 

"Shade-grown" coffee is grown under a canopy of diverse species of shade trees, often on small farms using traditional techniques. Among the many benefits of using shade-grown coffee production methods, in contrast to sun-grown coffee, are that it provides food and shelter for songbirds, as well as habitat for numerous other species of animals and plants.

"Birders," said Beatriz, "drink shade-grown coffee."

We broke for lunch. Food was plentiful. I noshed on some healthy veggie chips Bea got from Whole Foods.

Martha, on the left, read her superb essay called The Good Samaritan. I only wish she weren't so self-effacing. Stop it, Marf, stop it! You write well. Have no doubt!

New to our group was Fran in the purple. Here's her blog, which is going out of business! Mon dieu, what would happen to all my posts if Goggle Blogspot would fold like a circus tent.

Fran thrilled all of us by reading a stunning poem about her seven granddaughters tellingly called Granddaughters are Poetry.

When she read the title, I thought, this is gonna be something!

Fran commented on Carly's laugh.

"I love your laugh," said Fran. What a good observer. I take her laff for granted and never think twice about it. But it's true. You can't be unhappy around Carly cuz she's always jolly.

Carly read a wonderful poem about listening to her husband watch the TV show Taxi. She imparted two unusual anecdotes that were on that popular TV show that some of us had never heard of.  Yours truly, of course, who still thinks the Mousketeers are on Channel 3 in Cleveland, OH.



Carly, who could've been a Mouseketeer, told of a woman who witnessed the "Twin Towers crumpling down" and swore never to return to Manhattan.

She also told the tale of a prostitute who felt she was called by God to minister to men. "Let Momma love you," she wrote.

The element of surprise is very important in poetry.

Linda Barrett, center, ate sushi with chopsticks, and mentioned a family member teaches school in Japan. Her offerings included one of her terrific poems "A Walk Under the Autumn Sky" which had some wonderful lines in it.

Toward the end of the afternoon, she read a short story, one of her best, about the death of Linda's father through the eyes of their dog Queenie. Amazing that she could get into the head of her dog. Takes great skill.

Virginia Woolf wrote the book "Flush: A Biography" about a cocker spaniel's view of his mistress poetess Elizabeth Barrett, an invalid, when she falls in love with poet Robert Browning and elopes with him.



Donna, above right, wrote a marvelous poem of the healing properties of swimming. Widowed in May, her fellow swimmers - who she calls "mermaids" - buoy her up and won't allow her to feel sorry for herself.

Back in the comfortable living room, Fran and Kym share Fran's granddaughter poem.



Kym read some of her Haiku, which she does via Twitter. I mentioned how difficult it is to write short poetry and Kym couldn't agree more.

Here's one of many I snatched off her FB page:

Snuggling to the Heart

They realized it now,
the walls of their hearts melting
No denying it!

I shared a short story I'm working on called The Door of Justice.

Justice, 96, is a man I never met but I was friends with his younger brother Carroll Beame. Here's one of many blog posts I wrote about the late Carroll.

Carly shared this great quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Success is to laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affections of children, to appreciate beauty and to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Grace in wonderland.

Hiking at Pennypack Trust / Poem: Bactrim Mania

Scott and I hike every weekend. My sister Donna joined us, adding a bit of raucous hysterical fun.

Oh amber waves of grain.

Gazillions of these furry black and orange caterpillars were underfoot. Just spoke to Dr David Robertson, head of the Trust,



who said they are Wooly Bears, who grow up to become the
Isabella Tiger Moth. Lovely silk gown, right Gracie?

Donna liked this lawn chair stuck on the tree.

Part of the hurricane Sandy damage. David R said he was very upset by all the huge old trees that had fallen.

Yes, it's like a grand old person come tumbling down.

Milkweed, or what remains of this very valuable plant.

Carl Linnaeus named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, because of the many folk-medicinal uses for the milkweed plants. It's the prime food of monarchs before they fly south.

What the heck?

Betty Crocker in the kitchen.

Here's a delicious bean dish I made with kidney beans and chick peas. I took it over to Donna's where she added the final touches....half cup of Israeli spices including cous-cous, orzo, and red quinoa and seasoning including TURMERIC, which gives it the golden color.

The doctor prescribed Bactrim for my UTI. Per my recent post, the moment I took it I began having hallucinations. I wanted to honor this extraordinary experience with a poem.


BACTRIM MANIA

You’ve probably never heard of me
unless you have AIDS or
a tricky little UTI that oozes in
like an adder.

Killing is my calling card.
With gusto, I spread a wide net that has
winged the four-lobed liver,
killed the innocent,
made feet itch unstoppable
and brought a turn of psychedelia to an aging hippie who
has given up her pipe.

The delight I took in playing with her brain!
She saw swirls of color at bedtime
Her shower curtain became a twirling Picasso
a throbbing  Jackson Pollock followed her into bed
where she slept with Cy Twombly on the shores of Ilium.

“I am not myself!” I heard her cry.
“I cannot think. I cannot speak. For the world is too
beautiful.”

Like Dorothy banishing the wicked witch
she tossed me aside
I lost my grip,
fell helplessly through her waterfalls
and heard her whoop and sing when she
flushed me through the long stinking
corridors of sewer pipes of enemies.

Bridget Yanni has climbed many mountains

Bridget Yanni, owner of Amma Center in Glenside, was our outstanding Guest Speaker at one of our Free Saturday Programs at the Willow Grove Giant Supermarket, on Nov. 10.

Topic was "How Yoga and Massage Therapy can help people with Mood Disorders." 

We wanna thank Robin Franklin, Giant Community Coordinator, and Elyse Bonner with all their help.

Our biggest problem about our superb Giant programs is the poor attendance, even though we send out notices to all the right people. One such poorly attended program was on substance abuse.

So when I left for the program, I said, Well, if there's only five people, I'll be grateful.

The room was filled! This is one side of the room.

Bridget began the program by telling us a little bit about her life.


"I always felt different inside," she said.

Over the years, Bridget has had a lot of visions, "divinely inspired visions" which have deeply inspired her to move forward in her life. These are manifestations of The Law of Love...from Creation.

"Each person," she notes, "must learn to inspire themselves." It's not gonna come from outside. You must do it yourself.

She began to study healing techniques with various teachers who became her mentors. She became a massage therapist. While working on a client, she, herself, may experience removal of various blockages in her mind or body.

She talks about various chakras, or points in the body where one can collect or send energy.



In yoga and in massage therapy, many psychological problems come to the fore and can be successfully dealt with, says Bridget.

In several group "OMs" - where we exhaled on the phrase OM - many people have inward shifts. "It did something to me," said Bridget, helping her again to move forward in her journey to love herself and connect with others.

She studied "energy work" including the Japanese Reiki, another form of transferring universal energy.

Through energy work and meditation your mind ascends and descends, upward and downward from the sun, and you reach that cobalt blue space of your essence, a place of peace.

We did the Mountain pose, above.


And another asana (pose) designed to release various burdens we are carrying, using the energy of our thighs.

Lastly, we did a backbend. These asanas stimulate our serotonin or feel-good transmitters, often blunted during depression. Read this report from the Yoga Journal. 


Ah, how the tired ole bodies creaked and cracked and awakened!

I asked Bridget to describe her yoga studio.

"It's red - for compassion and energy," she said, "and yellow for energy."

Like the Tibetan flag, I said,



A woman in the audience said she was a Tibetan Buddhist.

Yanni Studio was the first yoga studio in Glenside.

"I like to watch people transform their lives," said Bridget,  She says her Center has become its own little family.

"It's not just asanas, but it's about connecting to people."

Picasso and Bactrim / Poem: Robert, the Diabetes Man

So I'm taking the pills as directed. Bactrim, it's called. Time for bed. In the bathroom I  remove my contact lenses and the room is suddenly ablaze with hallucinations. My shower curtain, which has various travel-themed designs on it, becomes a canvas of odd things flashing across it.

What the hell is going on? Carl Yeager's photo of a pink tulip has become a live Picasso.

In bed, I see words rolling across the dark room. It matters not if my eyes are open or shut. The hallucinations won't stop.

I had already told myself it must be from the Bactrim and had goggled its side effex. Vision-change was not among  them.

At the pharmacy today, I asked Bobby.

It's the Bactrim, he said.


ROBERT, THE DIABETES MAN

Robert, I knew the moment I entered your darkened hospital room
diabetes had his way with you.
And always has, his death grip starting when you were four.

The madman, diabetes, wrapped his fangs around your kidney,
and bit.

He choked your pancreas and heart,
licks his lips as
he slowly blinds your other eye.

Swooping low, he made your feet numb
I saw them wrapped in hospital socks in the television-loud room.

The tracheotomy lies like a whistle in your neck.
The python tried his death grip but surgeons saved you.

It is best, I think, your parents who adopted you when they were
sixty – cannot see the further damage to their bonny young son

Would I be wrong to compare you, at 54, to a mallard skimming across
a frozen lake, while hundreds of rifles aim to bring down
your feathers green.

What’s next? The madman hadn’t counted on corrections:
two new kidneys, a pancreas, and surgeons at Einstein who
foil the offender again and again.

You enjoy the ride down on Route 73 from the family home in
Boyertown.

Don’t go back to work, the surgeons said, after your first kidney came in.

You worked seven years. In food. Restaurateur, you could not keep away
from your cream cakes and gingerbread.

Which jab will bring you down and force you to quit?
The python pounced. He got you in your legs,
pain so bad you could not stand.

You have not changed, my fun-loving Robert. See you again at Tower
Building, on the transplant floor, Room 8018.

I learn of Obama's victory in the ER of Einstein Med Center

Here are the Obamas as they return to the White House after his victory - 50 percent to 48 percent. Photo from NY Times.

I would not allow myself to think about rollbacks of important services had Romney gotten in, including healthcare for all, repeal of Roe v Wade and banning gay marriage.

Clearly, the Republicans are living in the past. The gay/lesbian life is not a choice. This is the way they are born.

Americans have begun to accept this, but not our Republican ticket who believe everyone is like them: rich and caucasian.

In his concession speech, Romney said the best partner he ever had, other than wife Ann, is Paul Ryan, who lost his home state of  Wisconsin, while Romney lost his in Michigan.

Reminds me of a question they keep asking me here in Room 8004 of the Tower Bldg at Einstein: Are you nauseous?

Only when I think of Paul Ryan and the damage he would do to women's rights. It took so long for abortion to be legalized in the US. Remember the case of Sherri Finkbine? She was carrying a Thalidomide baby and had to fly to Sweden to get it aborted.

* * *

So, on Tuesday, I finally saw my new family doctor, Richard Eisenstaedt. I'd waited two months as a new patient.



Dr E was recommended by my podiatrist Ron Renzi. His offices are at Abington Memorial Hospital, Price Building, where I used to see my former psychiatrist Larry Schwartz.

Naturally I couldn't find my way around the hospital and had to ask for help. The resident in orthopedic surgery (yes, I told him about my back operation) walked me to the Price elevators which were filled with unsightly commercials for the hospital.

I do love decorations but these look grotesque.

Walking down the carpet on the third floor, I remembered a line from one of my Compass mag Odyssey short stories: These halls give me hope.

And that's how I felt.

Eisenstaedt was good, asked me excellent questions and I was happy about my choice of new doctor. The reason I left Foxhall, my alltime fave, is b/c I have such a hard time reaching his practice - North Willow Grove Family Med - by phone.

Look, I wanna make one phone call, not spend the morning dialing and redialing.

Eisenstaedt ordered urine tests for me, which showed "positive" for infection.  Hence my stay at Einstein.

When I was rolled into the Einstein ER I saw a man with diabetic feet. I was in the room opposite him. This is why I said, after my diagnosis of diabetes from my antirejection meds, "This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

But not if you take c/o yourself.

Ever seen a pic of a Chinese woman with bound feet? Her feet grow into one thick stump. Who would ever think up something like that? The enormity of cruelties toward women. You can just see Paul Ryan in a former life approving it and Romney hedging his bets.

Plus this man's feet had blisters on it. His A1C was 12.

I discussed all this feet stuff with an Einstein resident Dr Keith Grimes. He's a podiatrist and is rotating in the Infectious Diseases unit.

But what do the feet have to do with infectious diseases, I asked.

Feet get infected, he said.

Aha.

We discussed the man I saw in the ER and Keith said he'd seen far worse.

From diabetes? I asked.

From diabetes, he said.

Dr Grimes thot I'd do well with the disease b/c I take good c/o mythelf.

 I eat no Halloween candy.

 I eat no Mint Bark from Stutz Candy Kitchen. Ah! the aroma of that place is unparalled.



Hello again, Dr Radi Zaki, chief tplant surgeon. So, he and his team are strolling thru the corridors.

What can I do about these frequent UTIs, I ask.

We'll make you an appt., he said, and talk about it then.

You mean there's hope? I say.

Sure, Ruthie, he says.

The problem is that when you get a kidney tplant, they create a new ureter from the kidney which empties into the bladder. Something goes awry in the taken-for-granted operation of peeing.

I had suggested to one of the kidney team members that perhaps a better ureter might be constructed. They didn't think this was possible.

We'll see what Zaki has to say about it.

The care I get at Einstein could not be better. Nurses and aides are FANTASTIC!!!

Ada and Rich drove me here after our New Directions meeting. Sitting in the backseat, I was fiddling with my seatbelt and finally got it on just as we were pulling into big well-lit Einstein driveway at 11 pm.




They helped me carry my parcels inside and then I stoically awaited the long nite ahead. Five hours until I got my room.

I knew what to expect. For reading, I brot a Jack Reacher novel "The Enemy" (I'm now on p 52), brot my laptop and some DVDs to watch. My blogroll features TV shows you can watch online. I brought healthy snack food and packets of tunafish and salmon - the food is TRULY TERRIBLE.

Brot my cellphone and charger and finally figgered out how to answer it - my son was really surprised! - you just open it up and say Hello!

I was wheeled downstairs the Ultrasound Room by a nice black guy named Zeke (short for Ezekiel) who joked that when he and his GF have a baby, they'll name her Zali (my middle name).

I told him that Jews name their kids after deceased ancestors. Zali (pronounced zolly) was my Hungarian great-grandmother's name. 

Zeke and I said goodbye and I'm now in a huge room where I'd get a kidney ultrasound.

Guess what! There was no there.

Finally I called HELLOOO?

Fortunately, a woman who said her name was Shelfi Redy, answered and said she'd be with me soon.

I hopped outa bed and walked around the vast area.



This place is really well-equipped I thot. They had six or seven ultrasound rooms and two huge restrooms.

The ultrasound takes about 20 minutes.



Shelfi compares the results with my last test. Everything looks Great, she said.

Whew! I hadn't lost any function due to my obduracy about coming in.

I was in my room at 4 am, utterly exhausted and hungry. The nurse brot me a snack pack  - tunafish on white bread, graham crackers, and cranberry juice.

EDITORIAL OPINION: White bread should be forbidden in all hospitals.

The most important thing I did today was WASH MY HAIR. The nurse, Princes (pronounced princess) found me some shampoo - and a comb - and I finally look presentable. I was so disoriented when I first came in, my looks didn't matter.

The last time I was here they had a different policy of injecting me with insulin. They only gave me between 2 and 6 units....barely anything.

Now they give me reasonable amounts.

One nurse gave me 18 units, which is more than I've ever had. (My own tops is 12)

She cautioned that I had to eat every bit of my dinner so I wouldn't go low.



This actually looks like the chicken and rice with gravy I had. I also gobbled up the dessert and ate my whole grain pretzels I'd brot with.



I just discovered a quicker way to upload images from the Net. Instead of clicking "Save image as" you click "Copy image."

So that's one good thing that came out of being at Einstein and wasting three whole days of my life.

They always ask you if you're in pain. I am not. But I fantasized asking them for a Percodan, which I took occasionally when I had sciatica, but couldn't enjoy the euphoric effects.

I would like to feel euphoria! I loathed my euphorias when I had bipolar d/o - what? did I really have bipolar? - loathed em b/c you can get way out of control.

But now, it might be fun to feel euphoria thru a pill.

What a b'ful word, feminine.

"Euphoria! Time to come in for dinner!"