Aug 9 Daylight

 1.40pm

I am awake. You can probably do the math on sleeping hours. It's a lot.

The demons have retreated.

Everything has improved a smidge. A little energy. Less pain. Less ill. Less sick. Less misery. Less sad.

And so it goes. The up and down of the rising and falling tide. Cycles within cycles. The short one that cycles within a given day. The longer ones that cycle in a week. And the longer still that cycle over a few months. Like biorythms. Each of them going up and down. And you have to be wary when like a spring tide, they all line up, and you get a very bad dip.

Those dips will kill you.

It is my strong belief that this is what ends up killing many people. Even though one thing or another maybe put down as the cause. It's not that. It's a number of things. All rising and falling. And when they align. It's bad.

I've seen this happnening in old people that are struggling with their health. I absolutely saw it in my mom. Watched her go up and down those rises and falls. And in the last few years of her life, each of those falls... the cycle went underwater. And it was not clear she would ever come out again. Each one was a call from the nursing home that this was your last chance. She would be gone. Only for 2 weeks later her to rise out of the water again. Sitting up right. Talking.

Awful. Really. When you think about it. I think my sister took that journey hardest of all. The repeated scramble for last moment started to fray her at the edges. 

But anyway.

I see it in others too.

I see it in the way that pneumonia is often the thing that kills people. It is, the shitty icing on the shitty cake. It is the final herald of all the other failing bits, and this is another major failing. And when they all align. You are gone.

Andys mom has been ill for many years with parkinsons. But. A few other subtle degenerative things I think. She reminds me in many ways of my mom. That same decline. The same peaks and troughs. You can see it. Unfolding. In exactly the same ways. I feel for Andy and his family. His dad. His dad is a good guy. Soft spoken, loving, supportive. They are all coping extremely well with it. But. It's difficult.

And I know. Pneumonia is often the stalking horse for the end in the elderly. It's the last domino. Not that I say that. I keep my mouth shut. If someone doesnt know that. They're not better off knowing it.

I broke off writing this.

It's now early evening.

I have played some games in the afternoon and felt ok enough.

My head is spinning and dizzy now. I feel exhausted. Not quite as deeply exhausted as the last few days. It would seem I am slowly crawling out of the absolute wipe out horror. Into a state of merely very shit and capable of a few hours at a time being lucid.

Eh. Meh. Fucking. Bullshit.