At Phil's behest

Okay. I know. I go over a year without posting, then do the unforgivable, and post about kittens!
So, I'll go over a few salient points in a 'year in review' sorta thing, and maybe go off on a rant or two if one happens by while I'm swiping this tiny little screen.
I still have shoddy connectivity on the phone service, and web is almost non existent. So I don't got no computer, 'cept this phone. Broke screen on it too.  So if some of my typing gets a little skewed, it's the cracks running through the text, and in no way literary ineptitude.

Hmm.... Let's see, guess I'll start with January 2017, as that's about as far back as I can remember these days anyway...
Turned 53.
Yep. Guess that's about all that happened that month of any interest. And that pretty much only to me and the Missus.
February : I got nothing
March: nothing
April: not too much until around the end of the month. Started having some gut pain that got pretty intense, so I went to the emergency room. They admitted me to the Nazi experimental human testing facility to do some tests, put me on a saline IV and pretty much left me to marinate for 24 hours.
During this 24 hours, they told me:
1. It could be pancreatitis. A potentially fatal little nasty. They'd know more soon.
2. Congratulations! It's NOT pancreatitis! It looks like it may be a blockage TO the pancreas from gall stones. Testing in progress.
3. NOT gall stones. Okay. Possibly a problem with the gall bladder itself. Hey! Here's an idea! Let's gut this bugger and rip that sucker right on outta there! What'd'ya say, huh?!
(Couple of side notes here: during this time, I had not urinated at any time. Actually don't recall if I peed at all the 24 hours earlier either. Not something I generally spend much thought on, personally, and no one asked, so...

Fever spiked.
Started hallucinating.
Pain increased exponentially.
Asked for prune juice.
BEGGED for coffee. (I get EXTREME migraines when the blood levels get to high in my caffeine stream)
but was told NOTHING liquid or solid orally per admitting doctor. (personally, I think he was admitting incompetence....)  happened between Thursday evening through Friday. So, due to the increasing level of my discomfiture, and out of their natural concern, (not necessarily for ME, so much as the fact that as fast as I was going downhill, if they didn't do SOMETHING, and SOON, I'd never last long enough to get a bill) they scheduled agall bladder  bladder-ectomy for Saturday morning. No big deal; sleep, 4 tiny incisions here, here, here, and.... here, clip this thing here, that one there, quick tug, and....  Take this guy to post-op. NEXT.

Problem solved, right?

WRONG.
By Saturday afternoon, they decided to bring in a lung specialist, and a pee doctor. (Yes, I believe that IS the medical expression used to describe these two types of specialists.  Possible not, but at least you get an idea of their specialties this way, so if they have another, more clinical, sounding name, keep in mind: I really don't care.) Apparently I'd developed double pneumonia AND my kidneys had shut down.
Apparently, "someone" should have noted that they'd been pumping gallon after gallon of saline INTO me, and nothing had been coming OUT.
My hands and feet were so swollen with fluid that you could barely see my toes, and my hands looked like Popeye's right after he blows it up through his thumb, and just before he nails Brutus.
I was drowning in my own body. Literally. Couldn't expel liquid, lungs filling...
I spent the next seven days peeing, through the magic of modern diuretics. (Not to be confused with Dianetics. Doubt they'd have ANY affect on my urinatin') and on oxygen, fighting to get (just) well enough to walk out on my own two feet. (so of COURSE you have to leave in wheelchair)
Got home on Saturday, had a follow up with my regular doc on Thursday. When I went to my appointment, after four days at home, gasping like a fish out of water the entire time, I realized I had to go wee-wee. A situation I tended to give a great deal more consideration to these days... I made it to the toi-toi, went wee-wee, and collapsed halfway back to the waiting room. My blood-oxygen saturation was at 70%. It SHOULD NEVER go below 90. Man, was my doc 'pissed'!
She wouldn't let Rose take me to the hospital. She called an ambulance to transport me.
I remember getting to the hospital, placed in a bed in the emergency room, and...
(cut to June)
...waking up some time later.
I'd spent May in a coma. No fucking clue where the last month had gone. Time sure flies when you're not paying attention, huh?
Coming out of the comma was funny, painful sad, happy, and a bunch of other adjectives, but I digress...  That by itself will probably be a post on here sometime. If I get around to figuring it all out. Maybe.
Okay.... Where was I? Oh yeah,  June.
Nothing.
July through December: I got nothin'.
January 2018: both Bustednuckles and myself had birthdays. Unless his was early February. Which pretty much catches every one up to date on me. (Happy Belittled Birfday,  my OLD friend! And no, that ain't a spellchecker issue...)

There are a few other honorable mentions:
I was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's  lymphoma some time back. Don't remember when, don't care. By the time this slow acting cancer kills me, I'll probably be already dead at least 3 years from old age.
I broke my back. Not broke-broke,  just kinda middlin' broke. Was moving a big billy goat, who was acting kind of gruff, to new pasturage, and he took off down a ridge we were traversing. I held on to the rope lead, rolling down the ridge to give the goat something to keep him amused as he hopped and bounced along beside until I finally brought him to a shuddering halt by the expedient method of wrapping my own body around a small tree.
Guess I showed HIM!
However, when wrapping trees, one should always remember to go WITH the grain. Yours, not the tree's.
I broke one of those spur looking thingies from a vertebrae. I forget which one. They told me, but it didn't mean so much to me as where the spur thingie ended up... Which is under the vertebrae below, compressing and pinching my sciatic nerve.
I don't have medical insurance thanks to one of America's Afro-American presidents (hint: one of the more recent ones...) and am having the devil's own time getting Medicaid due to inept beaurocrats, so have been dealing with both of those issue's physical and emotional bullshit since 2016 or so.
Farm is still here. Pigs, chickens, rabbits, ducks, quail. Still struggling with a decent garden and feed corn field as well as wheat, (nothing happened much on that front last year, as in May, my garden and fields have usually just barely gotten started. Last year I was anaffordably (not a typo) deranged (again, not a typo). But each day I make progress. I KNOW this, because I purchased an electron microscope in order to chart my successes!

For those who care, I apologize for my long silence. I do get down every now and then, and have always had y'all's support to boost me up. I owe you some news once in awhile, good, bad, or indifferent. You have not been, and never while I breathe, will be, unappreciated.

And to all of you who have never really given a shit about me, but have followed my blog anyway:

Phhllllllllllltttt.