Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Stork LOVE!


I hope you can see this magnificent Shoebill Crane.
I'm in love.

I'm a Drama Queen

This is official and must not be forgotten: I am a fucking drama queen.
I am an emotional wreck and telling an emotional wreck that he might have Parkinson’s is not a good idea. I’m putting all thoughts of that disease behind me. I will go to see the neurologist if requested to do so, of course, but I am certain he will say my speech problem is not caused by a pathogen.
As for my heart: Dr. Pimstone confirms that I have some kind of arrhythmia (I’ve already forgotten the impossibly complex name) but he has ruled out weak blood flow to my brain as a cause of my speech problem. He says a pacemaker is possible in my future but I don’t need it now.
So Drama Queen is going back to living life.
I have to stay home today to wait for a delivery but tonight I am having drinks and dinner with Dianne. Tomorrow I see Dr. Shoja. Thursday night I have drinks and dinner with Robin and Friday I am going to the Museum of Vancouver with Cathy. It’s going to be a good week. I’m glad to have social events with friends who accept my condition. They are to-die-for precious.
And here comes the sports dress. I have to get white tissue paper to make the baseballs I need for the sports dress. I’ll get that either today or tomorrow. I have to wait here at home today for the flocking to arrive that I’ll use to make the tennis balls. (If I miss the delivery I have to go to Richmond to get it. Fucking UPS.) The Ping Pong balls are taking forever to get here.
I have to make the papier maché soccer, footballs and basketballs. That is going to be really messy. This is dress number eight. I only have four more and the script to go to finish my project.


















Monday, January 30, 2017

Dr. Pimstone Day

I went to a Sunday matinée of La La Land. I’d been ambivalent about it until Dwight surprised me with mild approval. And I liked it. I loved its feel and it was wonderful to forget about my problems for a while.
I thought the songs were particularly good. The lyrics were fabulous.
Then home for my favourite night of TV—my only night of TV—each week: Endeavour, Victoria and Wallander were on last night. Oh my God, I have such a crush on Sean Evans who plays Endeavour. I love the whole ensemble on the show.
I really like the lushness of Victoria and you never lose with the BBC. And Wallander is Scandinavian. Need I say more? I love their cinema; it is as austere as their climate.
Today’s big thing is my appointment with Dr. Pimstone. This is the follow-up appointment to the tests he ordered. I may be being a drama queen, but it seems to me that you don’t call people in to tell them nothing is going to be done. I suspect I am going to start heart medications or get the pacemaker that was tentatively prescribed back in September.
Now, as far as cardiology is concerned, I get on with my life.
Next up: The neurologist promised by Dr. Montaner. I am going to be drug dependent through this next stage—the “neurologist” stage. Last night I had a monster sense of dread; the only way out was medicinal. I have three levels of drugs. I tool level three last night.
If seeing the neurologist is going to be like seeing the cardiologist it will take a long time to get in. Then there will be tests I imagine and then more waiting to hear the results.
At least I know it’s neither a tumour nor a bleed. The focus of the neurologist will be neurological disease I guess. It will feel very good to rule that kind of problem out. And if that happens, it’s back to Dr. Montaner for a three-month experiment with my medications to rule them out.
It took two months to see the cardiologist. If it takes the same to see the neurologist, and his process takes months and then the drug experiment with Dr. Montaner takes more months, it’s pretty clear I may not have any answers to my questions until October. Meanwhile, my speech is getting worse and my mobility—at least in my upper body—has become a huge issue when I try to talk. Whatever is wrong with me is getting progressively worse.
Tick tock. Tick tock.




















Sunday, January 29, 2017

Cuisine et Confessions / Diving Bell and the Butterfly

As soon as it started I was in tears. I have not had as much fun and been as moved in the theatre in a decade.  Cuisine et Confessions by Montreal’s theatre company, Sept droit de la main was one of the best theatre experiences of my life. I will never forget it or the company.
It’s dance, it’s heavily acrobatic, its funny, its theatrical and you will never have ever seen anything like it—ever. It’s Cirque du Soleil but with soul. It’s about food, about love and about life and it’s in English, French, Spanish and Swedish. It’s heaven. Heaven!
I dated a lovely man who was deaf and mute once. It was when I lived in Nice. And although we could barely communicate—he could only lip read French and I could barely speak it—it didn’t matter and we both knew it because we knew it was a fling.
I have never met someone mute who wasn’t deaf so I understand why so many wonderfully kind people I encounter assume I am also deaf.
I find myself thinking of Dr. Soothe in the past tense. With all the medical drama in my life I seem to have no energy whatsoever for him.
I am now opting out of most social engagements. Talking is getting really difficult. I am mostly speaking in single words or a very short phrase. It’s kind of Morse code speech and a lot of gesturing. As I might say to Dwight: “Seem. Maybe. Mute. Future. What. You. Think?”
Dr. Guilemmi actually said the phrase, “progressive aphasia,” out loud in front of me when Dr. Montaner called her in to see me. I know what that means but she probably thinks I didn’t. Ironically, I read a lot of books about aphasia when I was working at Emily Carr because Julian Schnabel made a beautiful film that stunned me. It was called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and it was about an aphasic person.
I'm confident that I don't have some awful disease. I think everything wrong with me is emotional. Still, its tough but not fatal.












So many gay haters turn out to be gay it makes me worry
that I am going to turn into a spider.