The Howdygram 2: Will I have to bludgeon my nurse to death with a plastic soup mug?

This has been a day of behind-the-scenes suffering here at Howdygram headquarters. Sam is miserable tonight with a sprained neck, a migraine and miscellaneous body aches after a particularly physical demonstration for the hospice chaplain yesterday morning. He’s in a great deal of pain and just fell asleep on 10mg of Hydrocodone.

As for me, I’m still trying to endure those horrible, relentless burning spasms — four or five times every hour! — from a urinary tract infection that still hasn’t been properly diagnosed or treated with an appropriate antibiotic. I’M MISERABLE HERE, PEOPLE. I’ll never understand why it’s taking so goddamn long for my hospice medical team to take the lead on this. The longer it takes, the more dangerous this gets. I’ve already been hospitalized twice this year with septic shock, both due to untreated UTIs, and for a bedridden senior citizen with diabetes such as yours truly, an untreated UTI can ultimately lead to kidney failure.

Sam spoke to the hospice administrator yesterday and she promised that my R.N. will take a sterile urine sample on Wednesday next week during her regular visit to Howdygram headquarters. She’ll deliver it directly to the lab for the “culture and sensitivity” test I’ve been waiting for. Stay tuned … but please do your best to remain calm in the meantime, okay?

THIS WOULD BE A FINE TIME TO MENTION that the general rule of hospice care is a strange “new reality” for me. Primarily, while a hospice is NOT in the business of curing its patients — because we’re mostly incurably ill and facing the end of our lives — a hospice IS responsible for comfort and pain management, and in that regard mine really hasn’t done a very good job for me. By neglecting to diagnose the bacteria that’s responsible for my months-long urinary tract infection, they haven’t been able to target the correct antibiotic and relieve the severe pain I’ve been experiencing multiple times every hour. Curing the infection is the only way to relieve my pain. DO SOMETHING ALREADY OR I’LL HAVE TO BLUDGEON MY NURSE TO DEATH WITH A PLASTIC SOUP MUG!

My hospice also hasn’t been very reliable with regular refills of my essential Hydrocodone prescription. Actually, it’s been a genuine battle.

Thank you for putting up with me.

It’s 9:15 Saturday night and I just finished watching The Caine Mutiny (1954) starring Humphrey Bogart, Fred MacMurray and Van Johnson. Sam and I love this movie, but this time I’m the only one who managed to stay awake. The court martial near the end of the picture, with Jose Ferrer as the prosecuting attorney and Humphrey Bogart on trial as the whacked-out ship’s captain, was a breathtaking scene. And I especially love that The Caine Mutiny was based on a novel by Herman Wouk … one of my all-time favorite authors!

I want to reminisce for a couple of minutes. About books.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s Brandeis University sponsored an annual used book extravaganza in the parking lot at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie. This was a huge hoo-hah with gigantic circus tents and table after table of fabulous books organized by subject, author, and so on. Typically the paperbacks were about 25¢ each and the hardcover books were $1. Unbelievably cheap, even 40 years ago! I remember attending every summer with my girlfriend Susan, and we’d leave with armloads of bags stuffed with books. I’d buy thrillers by Frederick Forsythe, Tom Clancy, Ira Levin and Robert Ludlum, sweeping sagas by James Michener, Allen Drury, Arthur Hailey and Leon Uris, several hardcovers by Herman Wouk, Philip Roth, and so on.

I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish I could read some of those books all over again, devouring every line, every paragraph, every chapter, just like I did the first time around. Good reads kept me so spellbound I couldn’t put them down! I remember reading Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War — 1,056 breathtaking pages — in only four days while I was on jury duty back in 1971.

I actually wish a lot of things these days ...

Thank you for reading this. The Alamo is absolutely out of the question today, but please feel free to remember it if you must.