In General, You May Assume about Me ...

I am, as an old friend used to say about himself (in his case, partly tongue in cheek) "a sick weak tired old man." But, I am a certain kind of sick weak tired old man. I'm one who always as a child preferred the company of adults to the company of children my own age, but with one prominent exception. I have never had any use for people who only find one topic of conversation interesting: organ failure. I made a promise to myself a long time ago that no matter how long I lived or no matter what went wrong with me, I would not, not ever become one of those people who goes on and on and on about what parts of his body are out of order at the moment, in what order they've failed, what's being done about it, who else I know who's undergone organ failure, how sick they are or aren't, and what they're doing about it. I've reached the age where I understand how easy it is to be surprised by it when your body begins to disintegrate, and never in the order you expected, and once organ failures begin to set in, I've come to understand the "tech support" angle on wanting to know what resources are available and who's had what work for them in similar circumstances.

I also understand that the topic is deadly, deadly dull.

So if I disappear from this blog for a while, at my age (and, more importantly, after all of the bouts of grinding poverty I've lived through, and with no more health care than I've traditionally had access to, and weighing what I weigh) you should assume that it's because something has gone wrong. When I'm in enough pain that I can't concentrate when awake and can't sleep well when I'm trying to sleep, I don't have much to say, because the topic of what's gone wrong with me is the only thing I can concentrate on (if even that). And that's a boring topic. So you should assume that rather than natter on and on about it, I've shut up.

You may also assume that it's not serious. If it were terribly serious, I'd say something about it. If it were so sudden and serious that I couldn't do anything to let you know about it, alienne has the access codes to jump in here and let you all know. Yes, I have made arrangements for you to find out if something unforeseen but plausible renders me too dead or too (temporarily or permanently) crippled to update you myself. So if you haven't been notified that something like that has happened, and the news is still reporting that all or most of the Greater St. Louis Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area is still here, then nothing's seriously wrong except that I'm temporarily in no condition to write or think. No big deal.

(It probably also means that enough snarl has crept into my voice that I'm unintentionally doing a surprisingly credible impersonation of Saul frakking Tigh. Frak me, but it's true. *eye roll*)