((Tom)) it's nice to meet you and see that you are still here with this wonderful group. I'm not around here much but wanted you to know I've read what everyone has said and I wish only the best for you. Don't give up yet, fasten your seatbelt, and hang on dear man.

By the way, I loved reading Melody's posts about the sprouts! That's been around for a very long time. I was an avid sprouter in the 60s and 70s and somewhere along the line stopped doing that. Seeing what Melody said has brought back to me how wonderful those sprouts are and I'm heading to the local food coop tomorrow! Give it a try.

not to digress... but I went out and bought sprouting trays today!!!! thanks Melody!!!

Tom... I'm very glad to read that you, too, are receiving pleasure from all your interactions on this site!

Addy

Hello, Melody: Thanks for yours. Biotene? Never heard of it. I'll definitely give it a look over.

This would have been my 3rd day with only one 75mg pill of Lyrica -- would of been, because last night I had severe pains in my calves and right Achilles' heel, just like before. Also in the palms of my hands... strange. Anyway, I'm back on two per day and feeling washed out. I'm looking for alternatives, such as Doxie proposes. This is no way to live...

Doody, thanks for your encouragement. It's the only positive words I hear in my environment. Of course I'm to blame for 90% of it Exhausted ... exhausted ... I'm no fun to be around. I'd like to say otherwise, but I cannot.

Hi Doody and Addy:

ANY TIME you want to learn more about sprouting just pm me.

Take care
Melody

Hello All-

Our visit with Mom and Dad draws to an end. This morning, I sat up before everyone else and put together a poem describing our visit. Showed it to Mom. We both cried. She is now in the kitchen making waffles.

Here you go:

Alzheimers Lament
MRidder 20100919

Here I am this early morn
had come with fear, but not forlorn
for Dad did know and name me right.
We talked and talked ‘til it was night.
His strength ebbs fast,
to bed at last
until the morrow gives him more.
This visit has brought memories fore
and we have talked and tested lore.
So glad we came
though there was pain
in travelling far so see again.
My Dad is home, just sometimes gone
of course he asked “who are those men?”
referring thus to twins we have.
known them long since babes he has.
Our time draws near to return home
And glad we came for parents lone.
God grant Mom strength as care she does
for Dad as fading comes with disease
Strong glimmers of the man gone by
he showed me well, and just last night.
My Dad is here and near enough
we can return before times too tough.
God bless these two, my Mom and Dad
And bring them memories, of times when glad.

May God Bless your Day,
Mark56 PJ

Oh Mark

Very moving poem. I know an 84 year old man (from our PN support group meetings), who writes poems and reads them to us every week.

Very inspiring. Makes one think.

Makes a person go out of their own comfort zone to realize that the universe DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND THEM.

We are all part of a circle of life. We all impact each other.

Today, your writings impacted and inspired me.

Thanks very much

Good job.

Melody

Mark, that you so much for sharing your poem and your experience.

My mother didn't have Alzheimer's, but her mind went downhill quickly after she entered a nursing home. She only knew she wanted to die, but could not. The "glimmers" you mention -- such mad, mad things in that they are what they are, giving us hope, probably false. Just when you say, what's the use?, a glimmer appears. In the end, who knows what people such as your dad see?; who knows what they know? Maybe some day we can put on a cap (as in a movie) and see the world as they do; until then, we are left to ponder, guess, wonder.

Best wishes to you and your family in this VERY difficult period.

Tom

Part 1: The Long Way Home.

Well, Melody, since you mentioned moving outside of one's comfort zone...

It is time to make amends, apologies. Express regrets. Maybe trash a few falsehoods and a superstition or two.

Tommy Rettig, child star and Lassie's first owner in the 1950s TV series, when he was much older said that there wasn't a single day he didn't think about suicide. The All American Boy, the guy who took Marilyn Monroe to the Oscars, the guy every kid my age envied and wanted to have as an older brother … that guy thought about killing himself every day. He died young, in his 50s, but of natural causes.

Not a single day… Tommy, if you're out there, I want to tell you something: me too. Who knows why? Habit? Maybe. Self-loathing? Perhaps. Why? I still don't have the answer. The thought of taking my own life has constantly reappeared, intensified; it has been there since my pre-teenager years. I can't remember the first time I thought it; the idea -- impulse (in Alffe's terms) -- is a part of me. It may even go back to my birth. Who knows?

I keep thinking about Petr's idea that the suicide tendency is actually a drive for life that has been misdirected. I had never thought of it that way before. Not once. Intuitively, I sense that Petr was onto something basic. In fact, it's time to rethink almost everything about suicide.

Petr's idea makes me ask a question: can the body be committing suicide and the mind follows? But how and why would the body kill itself? One possible answer: mistaken identity: I have always had severe allergies to trees and weeds. What causes allergies? Well, the body produces histamines to counter outside elements that bother it. When the body produces too much histamine, an allergy results. And so, the body's attempt to defend itself is counterproductive. I wonder: can suicidal thoughts represent in consciousness what the body is doing to itself, i.e., harming, if not killing, itself accidentally, if you will? Today, I think about anti-MAG antibodies that were produced to fight a disease but which for some unknown reason become misdirected and attack nerve fibers. Something physical is out of balance; something "good" is used for something "bad." Why can't the body "make mistakes"? Is that what Petr was aiming at?

When I was 13 or so, I read a book I'll never forget. It consisted of actual suicide notes. The book had two parts: notes written by people who had failed to kill themselves and by people who had succeeded. The former tended to be emotional, often blaming; the latter were very matter of fact, dry, telling in what drawer a will was located and so forth. Matter of fact; emotionally flat: it's hard to describe. Maybe, it's a collection of emotions interacting, producing an emotion unto itself, posing as non-emotion. It is experienced as somethiing akin to the opposite of stage fright. Disillusionment can be an illusion too.

O.K., do I put my attitude in Part I or Part II of the book?

Last year at this time, I was busy making preparations to end my life. A convergence of terrible outer events was taking place; on top of that, and more importantly, my health was rapidly going downhill. Three times per week, I walked my usual 60-minute walk in the woods, but with increasing difficulty, pain. What was going on? Old age? No, I have friends my age who don't have what I have. I reasoned, after looking at the symptoms, that it was Post Polio Syndrome. Incurable. The only reason I could walk was that I was in superb physical shape, having worked out three times per week in a gym from 1988-2003. So, I was at an extraordinarily high level to start with.

As for my emotions last year, I would definitely put myself in Part I of the book of suicide notes. Enough. I simply had had enough. As a character says in a Sartre work, "Too much existence." EVERYTHING was going against me, it wouldn't change – period. Zero faith: zero. To put it coarsely, the market had no interest in what I was selling, what I had to say. So be it. I looked around, and concluded that the world I had grown up in was gone. Well, it was still there, but instead of being 40 layers out of 50, it was maybe 2 out of 100. I told myself: at 65, I've lived a long life. Not a bad one, either. No point in letting it go on; it will only turn more and more troublesome, like a car. Time to say good-bye. I'd call it a "fait accompli" mentality. And so, I started making a detour in the woods. Which meant, as the song says, I took the long way home.

A small tent, flashlight, matches, bottles of water: I had started a list back in 2003, when I noticed strange pains and started thinking I had Post Polio Syndrome. I took one item at a time to a secret place off the beaten track in the woods; fewer than 10 people pass near it every day. I didn't want a totally isolated place; they would need to find my body; I couldn't just disappear -- that fate would be even more agonizing for my friends and family than killing myself. At the same time, I didn't want somebody to engage in heroic behavior and try to "rescue" me. There was no cry for help in what I was doing, let me tell you.

Before I stepped off the path onto my secret place; I always made sure that nobody was watching. They weren't.

End of Part I

Tom

I eagerly await chapters 2 to 74

I admire your ability to question, and debate this awful process of thought..
or even body as you have recorded in Part one.

My first memory of suicidal ideology was at the age of thirteen. Childishly constructing a gallows...........a chair....a rope.........and then patiently waiting for someone to enter my room ................open the door.............and knock me off the chair.

Why at thirteen did I feel this way.........
'"Too much existence." EVERYTHING was going against me, it wouldn't change – period'
The youngest of nine children..............the whipping boy for every other siblings misdoings and failures............the quiet boy who recognised my parents pain.......yet I was not sufficient enough to convince them..........I would be a better child/son/offspring.........[well I failed that as well]


I stood on that chair patiently waiting for over 7 hours....................no one came to my room...............night fell............and no one came to my room...................my thoughts compounded.......everything was against me..........I failed at even that

My life in recent years was a bit like the film 'leaving Las Vegas'................I thought I have to be less obvious .................maybe the mind sowed the seed and then the body took over [addiction can do this]

Now I just try to get through each day a little less unscathed than the day before.

Maybe it’s inappropriate to say to you.........I’m comforted to understand.........that your thoughts are not just recent thoughts....[recent years].............AGHHHHHHHHHHHH I HEAR PEOPLE GASP

I say this Tom sincerely because........now I can truly identify with you............
I see the fibre behind the substance..........and discolour amidst the clarity...............the fallible buried among the infallible.................the human with frailties.


And I hear now..........a deafening doubt...........an inconclusive question to mortality...................WHY CARRY ON......................

'" Too much existence." EVERYTHING was going against me, it wouldn't change – period'

SO MUCH TO SAY................AND SO LITTLE TIME TO SAY IT ALL.
Thank you for your openness Tom

David

Petr's words were true to me at the age of thirteen, i wanted to live.........live a life of me .................and not in the shadows of eight sibblings and two parents..........my thought then was to be free..................i wanted to be seen for me.......an not an extension to what had been before...........AN INDIVIDUAL