Tag: medical merry-go-round

Psilocybin Zwitterion or Breaking Bad – the T-shirt problem…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

————

I was so upset that I cried

All the way to the chip shop

When I came out there was Gordon

Standing at the bus stop

And guess who was with him?

Yeah, Julie

And they were both laughing at me

—

Oh, she is cruel and heartless

To pack me for Gordon

Just cos he’s better looking than me

Just cos he’s cool and trendy

–

But I know he’s a moron

Gordon is a moron

Gordon is a moron

Gordon is a moron

–

Jilted John

———

This morning I am wearing a black t-shirt with a rainbow coloured molecular structure of the psilocybin zwitterion. This is what it is mostly like at blood pH. In the past I was partial to a few shrooms. When you go to a pharmacy or hospital it attracts attention. I have had a prostate specific antigen {PSA} test done this morning which will advise as to yet another MRI and/or prostate biopsy. There was a black woman in the queue who looked at the molecule, caught my eye and smiled.

I have a series of t-shirts which can catch eyes in hospitals “trust me I am a doctor” , “Schrödinger’s cat is dead / alive” superposition, psilocybin zwitterion and a Breaking Bad Heisenberg t-shirt. In general I don’t wear the Schrödinger t-shirt to hospitals because people see the “dead” word. There is a bit of a sense of humour failure here in France. In the UK these t-shirts usually spark some kind of comment, a bit of banter.

Since I have been here I have been systematically treated as if I am a bit of an “anglais-moron” according to my interpretation of events. I have yet to find a solution to the problem of forewarning people about my background and what I am capable of. It was rarely a problem in the UK because medics ask your profession there. The Imperial word can have effect.

Problem:

“Is there a way to stop being treated a priori as a moron?”

As I was waiting in the phlebotomy vampire queue I heard the dulcet tones of Jilted John in my mind. It occurred to me that I need to get a white t-shirt  printed in large black {WHAM style} letters. On the front it would say, “My name is not Gordon” on the back it would say “I am not a fucking moron”.

In short I don’t think that there is a way especially since I am now a quasi-crippled semi-obese grey of a certain age.

I did think briefly that I should learn sign language. So that I could start signing instead of talking.

Hey ho…

I am pretty sure that it is unwise to wear a psilocybin zwitterion or Breaking Bad t-shirt when going through customs. Though a part of me wants to do the experiment…the results could be uncertain.

Another Spam SMS?

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I guess in modern parlance one could say that I was gaslit about having an appointment yesterday. I was certainly discombobulated when I got there as was the wife when I texted her about it. Perhaps we were having a shared hallucination.

Maybe it was just a spam text purporting to come from the medical centre. Maybe they never sent it. Perhaps it was Putin or Lukashenko.

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–

We have recently received another SMS purporting to be from the same outfit. A reminder for an “appointment”.

I do not know how to take this…nor what to do…

Alms Bowl Mentality – pārasaṃgate – nagal Woman dream 07-10-2025

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It is full moon.

Yesterday I was very upset close to the point of outrage that someone could cancel an appointment I made, without asking me. And that the imaging centre would accept someone else cancelling an appointment I made without checking first with me. The fact that I received an electronic confirmation of appointment on Friday afternoon and then to arrive on Monday morning to be told there is no appointment is beyond the pale. It is piss poor and shoddy. Outrageous even. Very un-impeccable. I struggled to park it before trying to sleep.

Last night I had an intuition about how to phrase my orientation to life and it was “alms bowl mentality”. In that I am generally happy with what life and the universe offers me. I am not acquisitional or greedy. I am not about self-advancement nor gaining apparent kudos from others in a socio-political sense. This means that I lack the social ambition for “success” in academia and the common world. I am not hard wired nor bought in to the metrics. I do not seek power or position.

I have a look to see what is in my alms bowl and that usually suffices. In a way it makes sense with my prior putative reincarnations.

I nodded off.

I awoke at around 3:15 AM and struggled to go back to sleep because my mind was filled with the ridiculousness of what happened during the day. I struggled to believe that it could actually happen. I realised that I am somehow having to try to transmute this before the next alleged appointment if indeed it is to take place. I know myself well enough to suspect that I might manifest at my most monosyllabic and ultra logical picky if I do not transmute. People will know something is off. I could easily turn into viva-prof questioning mode.

Because I was having trouble parking the notion I decide to practice a full “phowa” consciousness withdrawing and death meditation. To keep my hand in should it be needed if things continue to go wrong. This is a rehearsal for withdrawing the life thread from the physical vehicle. So I began with silent chanting:

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

This is the going beyond mantram. Pretty soon I was deep in meditation. I was able to construct the thought forms relatively easy and built the consciousness and images I associate with inter alia Amitabha and Ganesh. I know the Ganesh is the destination for me.

The meditation energised me.

After a while I noted the visual field beginning to fill with my dreaming colour. I relaxed into the dreaming colour to see what it might have to offer.

The dream starts in a mansion / training facility conference centre nearby a single track railway. It is in the country but proximal to civilisation. The course is winding up. I have been the key facilitator. The course has been held such that each break out room corresponded to one of the four directions in the rule of the four pronged nagal. Needless to say the personnel in each room are flavoured by the direction and dressed accordingly. I take a young man down to the station in a motor cycle with side car. He and I have known each other long and he must go off ahead.

Back in the centre the course is winding up. The East room is tidy. In the plenary are gathered several of the participants. I do not understand why I am seeing the rule of the four, it is a quirk. The general feel is upbeat.

In the corner of the plenary on a wooden easel is a framed portrait of a woman. The frame is wide and ornate and the picture is at an angle. The woman in the picture is slightly younger than me, corpulent and is painted as an ~18th century portrait. Her name is written on a plaque. I recall and remember the name.

Sat quietly in the corner of the room is a woman who matches the portrait. She is in an unremarkable pastel yellow dress with light brown hair and untanned complexion. I walk over to her and say that I suppose that we should talk. I hold out my right hand to take her left hand in mine. We are both a bit apprehensive. I can see that she has a wedding and engagement ring on her hand. She is married. Her hand is tiny and older than her face. The moment I take her hand in mine I can feel her heart and am aware that she can feel mine. She says that the feeling is nearly too much. I agree.

I can feel my heart opening very wide and ultra-vulnerable. It still feels like that now as I type. I know that she is nagal woman. In that instant I can no longer recall the features of the other attendees. All I can see is her. I know that were we to meet in real life the recognition would be strong.

I am a little blown away at the unexpected nature of this. In the dream I am reminded of something I said to the wife following her incurable Myeloma diagnosis, “It is the warrior’s path anything can happen!!”

It seems in the dream that there might now be an “after” following an operation.

I wake up and it is around 6 AM.

Real-Life Problems and Decisions

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Until around 10:20 this morning I felt that most of “my” real world things were in hand. The preparation had been going smoothly though I did wonder about using the word “awry” the other day.

As I lay in bed before the alarm was due to go off, I thought that the only real problem I had was to put my underpants on the right way round when getting dressed in darkness. Later in the day some young person would ask me to strip to my pants and take X-rays of my spastic hip. We did not want to have a “professor pants” moment. I did not want unknowingly to advertise M&S.

As it turned out I could have put them on inside out with full impunity. It is a missed pants opportunity.

Now because of the unilateral and unnotified cancellation of an appointment a few more decisions arise. There is another early appointment for a full day of hospital based fun later in the week.

Do we need to telephone to confirm if it is still going ahead?

Do we do this the night before or call a little after 8AM before we leave the house the morning of the alleged appointment?

An ancillary line of thought is do I need to start exploring other contingencies for a hip operation in case this one falls through?.

I understand only too well that the universe does not owe me anything, that I have no “right” to surgery. It is at the kindness of the French exchequer. I do not believe in “deserving”. When I tried to get this sorted earlier in the year I met with many problems. Perhaps some more are starting now.

Is this the universe saying that I simply need to suck it up? That it is my karma to suffer from arthritis?

Or is this about patience and forbearance?

It looks like the whole of France is going into a another self-induced psychiatric meltdown. So who knows what is going to happen…They can lose the plot and badly so…They have volatility…

To me it is important to remain grounded especially with all these fancy highfalutin dreams…

Life here is pretty mundane; some would find it boring. Ideas notions and dreams are not the same thing as getting measured for some anti-thrombosis stockings like I just did.

I have learned by experiment that as a whole French timekeeping is loose and that an appointment is often written in the lightest of 4H pencil. I tend to take appointments as possibilities and not reliable fact.

I have another data point, milord.

All in all not a very satisfactory start to the day or the week…

It is all going a bit Pete Tong…

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–

–

I mentioned earlier that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I really don’t like having to make contingency for other people’s poor organisation. Experience has suggested that it is often wise so to do.

On Friday we received an automated SMS reminder of my appointment for a pre-operative X-ray this morning. This is something I organised well in advance to limit the possibility of last minute dot com fuck ups. When I got there at 10:30 on a Monday morning they told me that I did not have an appointment and that it had been set for later in the week. Nobody had the decency to advise me before I got up early and did a 40 minute drive to the hospital.

The Aspie part of my nature says that I may as well go ahead and cancel the hip operation because if they can’t organise this it does not bode well. What else is going Pete Tong and otherwise off-piste?

I have not cancelled the op.

My confidence as to if the scheduled operation will go ahead on time has fallen to 50:50. It is no longer mentally a firm date in the diary. I am already planning and scoping how I might cope with months more hip pain and deteriorating functionality.

I don’t know…

It is all going a bit Pete Tong…

Medical Merry-go-round  etc.

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This morning I have had my pre-operative blood {oil level} check. As a part of this I will have a full blood group determination done. In case I need a transfusion. Despite having had a number of surgeries I do not know my blood group, aged 61. I could get a surprise tomorrow.

My mother was AB negative and my father was O type. Which means that I should come back A or B. AB negative is rare ~1%, my mum would have had to have shagged someone of a non O type of blood for me to come back AB too. If I come back O I have been swapped at birth. Something I have long suspected. 😉

This has the potential to alter my perception, a weird kind of lottery.

The amount of medical administration we have been doing is large. I have a preoperative X-ray and a day of appointments with physio, anaesthetist etc. next week. I’ll even get a tooth fitted to my titanium jaw implant. If I take bis-phosphonates for osteoporosis I can’t get any more tooth or hip implants. After the hip op I will have two bionic hips so the osteoporosis hip-fracture risk is low. Titanium does not break easily. The bis-phosphonates are likely to be delayed.

Hip op sounds a bit like hip hop.

I think I am mentally ready for the surgery. It will be around six months before they do the second joint. It might be strange being able to tie shoelaces and put socks on unaided. There will be a weird in-between. I can’t wait for the sexy anti-clot stockings and daily heparin jabs. They prescribe laxatives to go with the morphine.

Piss holes in the snow pin hole pupils are on the cards.

I should be out of the opium den by Christmas.

There are a few “must dos” left before the blade. But most is in hand.

Here there is a bit of last minute.com flurry mentality, there must be hectic dramas it seems. Place back of hand on forehead and swoon. We have tried to buck this trend and get things done in a more leisurely planned and timed manner. Of course there could always be that last minute spanner, but I hope we have built in time to flex and not rush about like a March hare on amphetamines.

But as we all know the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. There are only so many contingencies which make sense…

We will know what at-home adjustments need put in place after the appointment next week…This gives us time to execute.

I am curious to see what the outcome will be.  I have a good idea about the pain etc. because of the prior hip fracture repair. My guess is that the healing will be easier. I had to wait three days immobile to get the pin fitted in my hip which can’t have been good for prognosis.

We shall see…it will be what it will be…

Is Being Negative Clever?

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This topic was raised in a dream last night.

Some imagine that being highly sceptical and picking holes in everything is the hallmark of intellect and perhaps cleverness. Please understand that when I use the word clever I do not do so in a positive sense. Clever for me is a derogatory term implying an arrogant perhaps smug self-satisfaction, a know-it-all misplaced glee. It is very easy to pick holes, much harder to mend them. I’ll suggest that it is a flaw of human sociopolitical mindset to be negative. To always find fault and thereby prove just how bad and terrible things are. It is a prejudice. A crowd, perhaps baying, will get behind a negative sentiment easily.

Back when I used to do personal and team development courses my favourite piece of personal feedback was, “Alan’s ability to constantly find positives in every situation was tiresome and irritating!” This was from young Ph.D. students at a Complexity doctoral training centre in UCL. Young people full of negativity are hard to motivate. Can’t is a self fulfilling prophecy. Eeyore is alive and tolerably well, not too bad, getting by, moping.

One of the things which has surprised me about France is just how negative people collectively are. They are inert, they complain and find fault. They are actually more negative than cynical Brits. They have shit loads of great technology which nobody outside of France buys. This is because they seem too shy and embarrassed, perhaps arrogant and lazy, to meanigfully address non Francophone markets. There is a cloud of negativity and little encouragement. The medical profession here lacks warmth and is process driven. It is very good but mostly soul less. Few understand my post hip operation career at the Bolshoi. Graveyard humour is lacking and as a result things can be dour and sullen.

In the dream last night I was talking with a British GP doctor. She was posh upper class and old school, roughly my age. She was tweedy and clearly had an intimate relationship with gin and tonic. You could imagine her on a pheasant shoot equipped with cognac filled hip flask. She was looking at all my extensive medical tests. On the basis of these she wanted to know why I had come to see her. I explained that I was concerned about getting a post cold chest infection. She said that I should not be such an idiot. All my tests showed that aside from my arthritis I am in a very good state of health for my age and considering my past consumption. She said that we was considering telling me to fuck off out of her office. I do not have COPD and my ticker works just find. I said that the constant pain puts a down lens on things. She said that in a half a year or so things would look more rosy. Cheer up!

It kind of highlights how the medical profession may send one off to be a lab rat and then forget to give you perspective. If you have 70 medical appointments in a year you will assume yourself to be severely ill, when you may not be. It shows how the big grey heavy mental cloud of negativity can drag you down suck out your spirit like a Potteresque dementor.  On Monday I stood in the “happy” queue at the pharmacy in the local village. Shiny happy people it was not.

“Sitting here eating my heart out baby, I need some hot stuff baby…” It was a shame that the radio was not on…

The world right now lacks direction, positive direction. It is a heavy and very negative space. Hope is a very rare thing just now. Division and negativity are the prevalent toxins.

Being overly negative is a very big downer…man…

What is on the Dance Card?

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Next week returns us both to the medical merry-go-round. The wife is getting the results of her post breast cancer full genetic work up and I am having a preoperative stress echocardiogram because there was an anomaly with the ST section in my ECG trace. This could be due to ischemia or larger than usual size and ageing. When you look in Pandora’s box you never know what you will find. Our understanding of where we stand could change. The results for me might influence the go/no go for the hip replacement surgery. There may/may not be something wrong with my ticker.

In about a month’s time I have a full blood work up at which I will finally find out my blood group. I will get to meet the anaesthetist, the physio and a dietician. The latter no doubt will imply that I am a fat bastard. Explaining to French people that you do not eat vast amounts of charcuterie, cheese, fish and shellfish is not facile. They do not get it. The don’t do, vindaloo. They will want me to lose weight. I am currently a nice round 100kg. When I bust my hip I dropped below 85kg.

The notion of downscaling house is still on the cards and chronic. We need to do it. What we don’t know is how crippled I will be post operation(s). This feeds into the bungalow or single floor flat versus house decision. Currently single floor is favourite.

After watching the NF/BNP march in London yesterday I wonder why did Blair Peach die. Maybe it is time to reboot the anti nazi league.

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Come back to blighty.. really ….. hmmnnn…

So far I have written up 77 dreams this year. There are others I can’t be arsed with. The dream length of late is heading past 1000 words. Why I am dreaming about AI I do not know. I do not use it nor know anything about it. I hate prompts to use bloody copilot.

I also have had numerous pseudo-technical or pseudo-scientific dreams. I do not mix in the kind of circles where I might discuss these nor chase them up. I don’t have to write research grant proposals or come up with ideas. The only person outside medical and this house I speak with is the ex-farmer who helps out in the garden. He does not care about quantum.

There are also Tibetan and Toltec dreaming themes. Again I do not move in circles where these might be in any way applicable. There is a part of me which mildly dreads going to bed. It means an hour in the morning typing up dreams.

The basic notion is visit UK see how it feels. Get bionic hip fitted – recover over winter. Maybe put house on market. Decide UK or France. Move. Or wait, get second bionic hip fitted, recover, put house on market, move. I looked at property in Erice Sicily yesterday.

Our right to remain expires end of March 2026. Probably there is no problem with renewal. Depending on the vagaries of French politics we could be much less welcome. The decision for the second hip is timed for around spring 2026. We too could become unwelcome immigrants.

All this flag waving marching creates fear and uncertainty. Seig heil…

There are a lot of things in the garden that I am going to have to let slip. Maybe in January I might be able to turn my hand to them.

I have a couple more months of increasingly painful / useless right hip on the cards. I need to only stand for an hour or so a day which limits what is possible. I can still do brief DIY painting and cooking and using the strimmer.

We will have a little more info by next Saturday…

And the painted ponies go up and down…

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———————————-

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Joni Mitchell

——————————–

Today started with sorting through my now extensive medical records for the next phase of the upcoming medical-merry-go-round. By the end of the calendar year I will probably hit ~100 appointments. I am already past 60 RDVs. That is shed loads.

I have had more x-rays and MRI scans than your average person. I am due a few more. Next on the dance card are rheumatology, cardio stress test ultrasound and urology prostate specific antigen follow up. This to be followed by a pre-operative meeting with the anaesthesiologist, dietician and physiotherapist. They will probably say {politely} that I am a fat bastard. To which I might reply that I could start to smoke and drink heavily again so that I can get back to my former heroin chic. I could always knock up some crystal meth in the shed, that is an appetite suppressor.

It is difficult to know what difference a new hip might make. According to the hype it might be a game changer. They are not talking about the second one yet, which will be more complicated. It could offer a new lease of life. I doubt I will be down the mosh pit any time soon.

It is a kind of in between feeling. Something is impending, it is a couple of months away and there is a while away of time in the meantime. We have just received our “poll tax” bill for the year which might be the last or it might not. There are a number of jobs undone in the garden which I may be able to turn my hand to in January.

On the dreaming front there have been plenty. Recurring themes recur. None of which I am in a position to really do much about. There is no indication of an ongoing fate. Dreams of putative past lives might be interesting and jig saw puzzle pieces, to help synthesise a whole. But they do not show an ongoing fate, a path or direction left remaining for me to do.

I remain aware that “my” whole world is subject to sudden unexpected pivot. I am not however holding my breath for such a thing.

And the seasons they go round and round. Autumn is now here albeit a little early. It means leaves and fungi, rain and wind. Soon the pond will again fill and the bloody coypu will try to breach our defences to eat the lotuses on the pond.

And the painted ponies go up and down…

So what is the Plan?

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No specific dreams overnight. I have started painting the end of the room near the log burner. The winter wood situation is now ready and good to go until February. There are a few items left on the checklist.

It seems to me that as I enter my 62nd  year tonight around midnight there is not a lot of change foreseen.

There are a number of medical things upcoming. The wife may / may not stop the lenalidomide maintenance therapy for her multiple myeloma and will soon get back the post breast cancer genetic screening tests. The treatment of myeloma is evolving and the epidemiology complicated by diverse treatment protocols and disease presentation. It seems that the better the initial depth of success with first line treatment the greater the disease free longevity. Studies on stopping lenalidomide maintenance are sparse and of low number participation. Drawing reliable conclusions is tricky. In France they tend to stick to agreed {collective} protocols so we will soon find out if that has changed since the last visit to the haematologist.

It seems to me that a fair proportion of the tests that I have undergone will be let slip “laisser-tomber”. I have a repeat prostate specific antigen test upcoming. Any increase in  number will trigger another MRI and possible biopsy. I need a dental infection all clear before the scheduled hip operation. In the pipeline is a cardio ECG stress test. Assuming all is OK I should sliced and drilled in autumn with round two pencilled in for spring next year. After that I will complete my job application at the Bolshoi. I may start treatment for osteoporosis. The French budget deficit is big maybe they need to spend less on some aspects of healthcare. I will have to do physiotherapy.

We could get a nationalist anti-immigration government which will cast a cloud over our right to stay in Brittany. We could be booted out if they raise the financial threshold for residency.

Being positive we might hope for no recurrence of myeloma symptoms and some enhanced mobility for me for summer ’26. We do need to downsize house. The window of opportunity is before the second hip operation or after it. We have a short visit to blighty booked during which we wish to find out how the UK now feels. From the news here and on UK TV it looks to have gone somewhat down the shitter since we left. We need to see for ourselves. The expectation is that it will be cramped and expensive. The wife managed to grow cavolo nero so we sourced one of the things we missed.  At £4 a coffee for an Americano it could be painful.

Irrespective of the dream content which tends towards the highfalutin, life here will probably carry on much as normal. The lack of mobility will increase over the next few months. The circles I move in are very unlikely to change. I will not be at the fromagerie meeting with big cheeses any time soon. Some people my age are still pursuing high-octane careers and being all stressed out and busy. I have been “retired” for five years and am miles from the greasy pole hamster wheel. It was another world.

Unless anyone is reading the blog in a surreptitious manner, what I type here is read by only a small handful of individuals. If people are snooping and want to get in contact, how might they broach the subject? People do not often think things through.

Of late we have watched a number of Netflix series and in all of these smartphones and social media play a significant part in the plot, the so-called story line. It is another alien world to me. Weird to see text messages as part of a film plot!! We look at a ‘phone on a bigger screen. Seems a bit desperate. And they say Fentanyl is bad.

I guess I have reached the part of life when I have turned into my father, at odds with the current version of modern life. Maybe I’ll start harping after Bing Crosby next. I already think people need to shave and get a haircut…pull their trousers up.

The plan then is to increasingly turn to DIY as the autumn rains arrive. Our pampas grass has just grown fluffy bits, as usual in time for the Atlantic winds to blow in from the wet West. There are some more jobs in the garden but soon the bulk growing will slow.

We have to navigate the medical merry-go-round and that is about all on the dance card so to speak. Aside from the blighty trip it is unlikely we will leave our prefecture.

The plan is not overly complicated…