Douglas E. Berry

Not the classic Ray Milland movie, which is fantastic, and if you have a classic movie house near you, request it. Ray Milland, Jayne Wyman, and one of the first movies to address the issue of alcoholism head-on. It won Best Picture, Best Director (Billy Wilder, who was a genius), Best Actor (Ray Milland), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett). As a big fan of classic cinema, this is a gut punch.

No, this is more about the song Talk To You Later by San Francisco's own The Tubes. I was lucky enough to see them when their stage shows were spectacles.

But anyway.

I planned to finish some writing this weekend, but deferred apartment maintenance overwhelmed me. Our recycling bags were overflowing. The dishes still need to be done, and I'm still not entirely over my pneumonia, and of course, Kirsten is battling cancer and COVID at the same fucking time. We may schedule me for a nose tickle, even though this all feels like it is in the fever swamp that is the lower quarter of my lungs.

Did you know you have something in your lungs called the pulmonary toilet? It's a drain in your lower lungs that clears mucus you can't normally expel. Sucks to be me; my lower lungs are such shit (seriously, I love it when new doctors list to the Rice Krispies I call my lower alveoli, alveolar ducts, and bronchioles...).

So I can't muster enough force to clear this unless I am lying down, which means I've gone to bed every night for most of the summer and spent fifteen minutes coughing. Joy.

We did get a grocery order in (Kirsten still can't go out, and I am not allowed alone in stores with beer), so we have plenty of soup. I'm a bit upset that after seeing it on the website as available, we got told this was not in stock. But it appears to be at my local liquor store! Don't worry; this is a beer I will only drink with a big meal after a day of filling my belly.

I have a good outline and a start on the next K'kree article, and I will probably spend some time dredging up my notes on making the Third Imperium more like 4th Century Rome than a Western Federal Republic.

The Giants won today, and the 49ers looked terrible, but it's the preseason, and I'm drinking Budweiser.

Don't judge me.

I'm sick again. Kirsten and I are both dealing with intestinal viral infections.

Being a survivor of cancer and so many other things, I have to laugh at the idea that we were intelligently designed. We are an accident of evolution, still not fully adapted to walking upright. I could build a much better human body, starting with more error-checking in our DNA.

Bah. I hate being sick. Plus, our teeth and bones should regrow naturally.

I've been working with a great counselor, and today we discussed my current difficulties in taking care of myself. These means things like eating, changing clothes, doing the basic chores around the apartment...and writing.

This simple fact is I've been so invested in making sure Kirsten is doing okay that I've ignored my needs, and that's not healthy. One of my needs is creating and sharing, and since that's what y'all are here for, I really need to get back on that horse.

So tomorrow, after I load the dishwasher, I shall write either the next part of the Hârn breakdown, or my revamp of the K'kree in Traveller. I may also post all the videos and pictures from our ride on the Niles Canyon Railroad.

Thank you for your patience.

It never ends. Last spring I had a procedure to biopsy some nodules in my lungs. We cleared it with the insurance. Paid co-pays. Moved on.

Now we're being told the insurance never paid. Kirsten is drafting an appeal letter, we've been making phone calls, but yet another blade has been added to Damocles' Sword Emporium.

Anything helps. Spreading the word is possibly the best thing you can do if you're tapped out. A lot of little donations can make a mountain.

Anything helps, a hundred small donations can work wonders. Sharing this brings more hands to the effort. Thank you all so much.

My name is Douglas Edward Berry. Not at all exotic. In the Army, I got used to just being known by my last name, as my first name was my rank, "PFC Berry" was how people knew me.

Most people call me Doug, which I'm fine with. There is one variation of my name that one person on the planet is allowed to use. I've had various nicknames, user names, and of course Uncle Bullhorn, my name at Burning Man.

But Douglas E. Bery is what I go by. It's how I sign my name, it's the name I use when I publish things. It is a simple, uncomplicated name with a great family history.

So the the fuck are medical offices utterly incapable of getting my name right? I just got a call confirming an appointment for tomorrow. They asked for Edward. I have never gone by my middle name. I did contemplate it as a nom de plume for a while, something like Edward Karasu (the surname is Turkish for dark water, which is what Douglas means in Scottish Gaelic.)

The usual thing is reversing my name, and asking for Mr. Douglas. That has happened so many times over the past three decades I have to wonder if they bother reading the form where I filled out my name correctly. I know it seems like a minor thing, but it's bloody annoying and potentially dangerous as these places are handling my health care!

I will admit that I let my frustrations out today when the office asked for Edward. I didn't shout, and I wasn't profane, but I did let the office person know that they need to read the name correctly.

Because I have a name.

Y'know, usually the hard part of getting a blood draw done is finding a working vein. Today, it was finding a damn lab. This order comes from the Stanford Eye Clinic, and they tell me to use an SHC facility. I look, cool, one relatively nearby.

They only handle blood donations. No one has bothered to update the website. But they send me to one I've been to before, down by Good Samaritan. It's a nice day, the radio is providing good music, let's do this thing!

SHC labs don't have a contract with my insurance, and of course, nobody thought to send in an authorization. But the good news is my usual lab, Quest, will do the test, and they are just in the next building over!

With high hopes, I walk over. . . and that building has been without power for over a day. Fuck. Now, I do have my usual Quest location, I check, they are open until 1600. Great!

I show up there, and a tech is pissed that I don't have an appointment but doesn't bother to tell me that they are closing early until I try to log in for a walk-in.

Done.

I did pick up all my meds, went shopping for a clicking torque wrench (one of the ones where you can set the torque required, and it clicks when you reach it. I have been converted to properly changing tires by a guy named Rainman Ray on YouTube.)

They don't carry them, I'll check at Home Depot and Habor Freight.

I also finally found gallon-sized Gatorade in stock.

But damn, what an annoying day!

Hey kids, it's an eye update!

After a long day sitting around at the Eye Institute (several doctors were dealing with emergencies which left them way behind) I finally got to see Dr. M. He was very happy that I don't have cancer, but as he pointed out, this still leaves us in the dark about the cause of the eye inflammation.

So we may be subjecting my poor eyeballs to a cyberpunk-ish horror called Electroretinography. Which actually, sounds pretty interesting, if a bit horrifying for someone as paranoid about their eyes as I am. But for now, we're stepping down the steroid eye drops over an eight-week period. If the inflammation is still under control at that time, we can start scheduling the removal of the cataract from my right eye.

The funny thing is they were so far behind that when I left the front office folks had all gone home. I'll have to call Monday to set up my follow-up.

In other news, I'm rather disappointed in our latest Giants store purchase. I take blood thinners, which means I do not react well to cold weather. So. as you can imagine, night games at Oracle Park are a challenge. What do you think of when you hear the word "anorak"?

As the child of a Brit, and having been raised on British TV, I think of a warm, hooded, bit of rain kit, usually with a half-zipper. So I was thrilled to see one for sale on the Giants' site. Folks, I have T-shirts that are heavier than this. I wore it out today, on a very mild day, and it provided no warmth nor protection from even the slightest wind.

sigh At least it looks good. I'll just wear it as the outer layer as part of my San Francisco Summer Evening arctic survival kit.

This weekend is the annual city-wide clean-up for our area, also known as "dump everything in the street weekend." Our pile will be small but interesting. I may take pictures of the more interesting piles of junk. After the visit from the plumber, and the need to clean out under the sinks, we are also heading over to the Household Hazardous Waste drop off. Busy times.

Next week we'll mark 31 years of marriage with a dinner at the one surviving Black Angus in the South Bay. Then next weekend we're seeing Dance with the Dead with Magic Sword opening. An evening of trippy instrumental music.

This has been your Eyes and More^TM update.

More insurance fuckery is afoot. Last week, as I mentioned before, I got hit with some big bills for what I had been told were covered visits. Well, today I called my provider.

The really big-ticket whammy was approved, but for some reason was not going through. This provider contacted me by mail asking for a copy of my insurance card, which I emailed them. So now I have the insurer working on the other end.

The other bill, which is about to become two bills, is for the interventional pulmonologist. Nobody told me, but that provider is no Bueno with my insurers. So I may be on the hook for about 850 bucks there. I can and will appeal.

The big problem is that this is the guy who is supposed to be doing my biopsy this Friday! So despite having been told that it had been approved by his office, I stayed on the phone until the CareMore (ha) rep confirmed that this was in fact covered.

Of course, this means I have to tell my surgeon I cannot do a follow-up because even a video appointment with him is over $300. California needs to pass its single-payer plan yesterday.

We bought a lottery ticket Saturday. Can we please win so I can worry about having too much money for a change?

Goddamnit. I cannot, literally cannot take much more. Yesterday morning at work, I found out it was a minimum day from a student. When I went into the school office at the end of that shift to confirm this, the secretary said that she had meant to "drive around and hand you all this" "This" being a little yellow notice that was sent home yesterday. "But I got busy."

Halford wept. On a normal day, I arrive at 1345 and am on station until 1515. The school releases kids in two sets, one at 1425, the second at 1437. On a minimum day, I arrive at 1300 and stay for one hour. The entire school releases at 1325. If a very cool 10-year-old hadn't told me about the change, I would have shown up after everyone had gone home. My school has four guard positions because it is one of the most dangerous in the district in terms of traffic. I gave the secretary my boss' phone number and suggested that if another scheduling change came up, the best bet was to call him and he would alert the guards as well as have it on his radar should a relief guard be needed.

Speaking of which. . . I got home, sat down at the computer, and started feeling miserable. Full-body shaking, I could feel the fever climbing, I could barely work my phone to call in for the afternoon shift. I eventually managed to get into the bedroom without falling over. Long story short? One ruined t-shirt and pair of shorts, I continue to be an expert at puking into containers and spent nearly 14 hours in some form of sleep.

Ah, sleep, perchance to dream. This brings me to the Nightmare. Getting bugs like this is second nature to me now, and I know what to treat them. Acetaminophen, fluids, and rest. But when I go to sleep, I get the same damn dream every time. The details change, but the basic plot is I am involved in a land dispute, usually in England, that is wrapped in Byzantine layers of old deeds and surveyors' maps. I have no idea why I want this land, and it's one of those dreams where I know I'm dreaming, and keep thinking "If I just stop looking at the broken marble column, it will end." This one at least featured a duel. Turns out I'm a pretty good fencer!

But I finally woke up this morning and began to process what Kirsten had told me the night before. Our new trailer arrived, and not only did the dimshit delivery driver manage to cause significant damage, HE HAD BEEN SLEEPING IN OUR TRAILER AND LEFT HIS DIRTY CLOTHES BEHIND! The bracket that holds the front wheel is bent, the wires that link the trailer lights to the truck's lights had been cut clear through, and worst of all, he did enough damage to the brand new floor that it goes through the floorboards. We are livid. We are talking about getting a lawyer. This is the same idiot who "forgot" to get the envelope with the trailer keys out of his truck when he had what he said was an engine problem and had to transfer our trailer to a different carrier.

I'm serious, world, I can not handle anything else going wrong.

I love it when, after multiple examinations by medical equipment that seems like science fiction, a dozen tubes of my blood analyzed by labs, and being poked and prodded by people with advanced degrees and years of experience, the answer boils down to. . .

"Damned if I know."

The issue is systematic inflammation that's being seen in various places. But as Dr. Sundaramurthy said today, "I'd rather treat the person than the symptom." Which is a plan I agree with.

So, next up is a lumbar puncture, a PET scan, and the potential of having a biopsy done on one of the inflamed lymph nodes. The problem is this chain is in my chest, behind my sternum, so this might be a more involved surgery.