Howie Update After Long Absence

Yes, I have been quite remiss in posting. I do have a few events to recount, although for the most part, things have remained the same with Howie.

First news is that in November, Howie got into so much back pain that he wanted to be taken to the hospital. Considering his phobia for doctors, this was remarkable. I told the emergency room doctors that Howie did not have any insurance, but they graciously accommodated  him anyway. The entire visit took five  hours (once again making the term "emergency room" quite an oxymoron), but in the process, Howie did get a good examination.

His pain was the result of a spur on his spinal vertebrae. The doctors offered him a pain pill and he took it without hesitation. You'll recall that I can't get him to take even an aspirin at home. Anyway, he was given an X-ray, a CAT scan, a bunch of blood work, and the usual physical. His blood pressure was slightly high, and one or two blood results were slightly out of range, but considering his general chronic poor health, he was in better shape than I suspected.

What I thought was Howie's testicular tumor turned out to be a hernia. The doctors told Howie that there was a hospital that would surgically repair it without charge, but Howie said he didn't want any surgery. The doctors wrote two prescriptions for antibiotics and one for pain med. I filled them on the way home. To this day, Howie has not taken a single pill of any kind. His back pain eased, though, so now he is back to feeling pretty good.

After perhaps 30 straight weeks eating at Coco's, Howie finally agreed to branch out again, and we have eaten at the buffet and at Del Taco, and a pizza place. We almost got to Wendy's, but once we got inside it was the old line, "They don't want us here," so we had to leave.

Howie's microwave oven burned up, quite literally, so I got him a new one for Christmas. The previous oven lasted at least ten years, so I guess it had lived its life. I did ask Howie what he was cooking before it caught on fire, and he said a chicken pot pie. So it evidently wasn't a case of putting a metal item inside. Microwave ovens have gotten really inexpensive, and I found Howie one that has a stainless stell exterior. When I asked Howie how it worked, he said it was really nice. (Asking him was to make sure he had figured out how to use it, since the controls are just a bit different from those on the old oven.)

Howie still hears voices. I once asked him how he knew that a store didn't want him to shop there, and he said, "The man whose voice comes from the refrigerator told me." Another time, when I asked Howie what was on his shopping list (something I do every week), he read off these items: Candles, incense, headline cards, combo pens, a move around button, powder, a $20 radio. (Combo pens are the ones that have a highlighter on one end and a ball point pen on the other. The move around button is on his list every week. It would let him transport himself from place to place and level to level instantly.) Now, as for the clock radio,  I had gotten him one just a few months before. When I looked, I noticed that it was gone, so I asked where the other one was. He said, "They insulted me so badly that I threw it away." He bought some Christmas lights that fairly soon ended up in the trash, because they flashed wrong.

I've mentioned in other posts that Howie throws away many items I get for him--pants, radios, food, and so on. The reasons vary: those weren't paid for, not my group's product, they told me not to wear or use them, those weren't mine, those are for girls, etc. He won't buy a certain kind of bath powder because the brand name suggested to him that it was for cats.

I've Made a Few Notes

I've been quite remiss in updating the life of Howie. However, his life is so regular that you haven't missed all that much. I have made a few notes, so here is the update.

Howie is still pouring ammonia and bleach on the floor, leaving a white haze that is difficult to  mop off. He adds body powder in some places, making the situation even more of a challenge.

After perhaps 20 trips to Coco's in a row, Howie has occasionally wanted a pizza instead, and last week he took me up on my suggestion of Chinese food.

I bought him 10 pairs of white athletic socks because his others had holes at the heel. He looked at the package and said, "Hanes won't sell to us." I told him they sold to me and I gave him the gift. So after a few  minutes of indecision, he put on a pair.

He continues to cut up thin carboard (such as that packaging soft drinks, cigarettes, and grocery items) into one inch pieces. They litter the floor in the kitchen and in the workshop as the drawer and baskets are full to overflowing.

The workshop door is covered with tags such as "Corn Dogs 11562" or "Buy Old Golds."

He continues to want to buy a new radio that "gets our stations." The radios he owns don't play his music and don't play any stations that haven't been taken over by adversaries. For awhile he said that the current stations wanted him to pay a fee to listen.

In addition to the socks, I got him two pair of pants. He looked at them and said, "They switched them." So I don't know if he will wear them or not.

A "move around button" is still on his shopping list.

He won't drink Dasani water because it comes in a blue tinted bottle. "I don't want to turn blue" he told me.

At the dollar store he wanted to get some body powder. I found some, with the label Purity After Bath Powder. I showed it to Howie and he wouldn't have it. "That's for cats," he said, referring, as I learned after asking a few questions, to the name Purity, which suggested Purr and hence cats to Howie.

He rejects so many things that it's becoming harder to shop for him.

Looking for Brie

Howie was already up and dressed this week when I arrived about 12:15 from the grocery store. He was wearing a ripped yellow shirt (his favorite color). I asked him if he still had the shirts I got him recently and he said yes, he was wearing them and they were in the laundry. I made a note to get him some more yellow ones, if I could find a brand he likes.

I asked him where he wanted to go to lunch, and he said, "I can't decide between a hamburger and pizza. I mentioned the usual suspects, In-N-Out, Wendy's, and so on, and then looked up pizza places in the two-year-old yellow pages he had. I offered to call Round Table to see if they were still in business, but Howie didn't say anything. Then he suggested (shudder) Coco's again and added, "Maybe they can help me go home through the gate." I told him that they hadn't helped him do that the last ten times we were there and he seemed to remember that.

So, we ended up at Wendy's where we had a hamburger and some chili and French fries. I told Howie not to over eat so he wouldn't throw up, and he said okay. Fortunately (or blessedly)  he didn't.

Then we went to the "big dollar store," as he calls it, taking the non-freeway route so Howie could look for another lot that he had bought (in his imagination) to build houses and stores on. He also said that his group was going to move into a large area one level down from us and asked me to take him there. Once again, I told him I didn't know how to go down a level.

Howie bought his usual supply of candles and ammonia and incense. Then he wanted to stop by the Fresh n Easy store to get some Brie cheese. So we did. He got some Brie and some artichoke hearts and some Muenster cheese too. We also stopped by a smoke shop so he could get "some extra smokes."

Last time, Howie had filled the memory card on the camera, so I took it and printed about 90 photos for him and gave them to him. He liked them. He also gave me the new memory card (I have two that I can alternate) which has twice the capacity. He said it was full, so there must be about 180 photos on it. That's a lot for a week's shooting.

In addition to my usual mopping, I took a few minutes to look through Howie's canned goods and refrigerator supplies, and tossed out the expired stuff. There were a few cans of soup dated June 2008 and some applesauce dated September 2009, so I tossed them out, together with some dehydrated cheese that had been left out of the wrapper.

Howie's complaint this week was that he had "stickers all over." It was more of a comment than a complaint of current pain. He did say at one point, "I need medical attention," so I took the opportunity to ask him if I could take him to a doctor. He said, "No, I'm all right." He appears to think that when he can move to the other town or go down a level or through the gate or into a new house, that he will meet up with his group (and his relatives?) who will help him with whatever ails him. As much as he thanks me for helping him each week, Howie doesn't seem to think I'm much more than a butler.

At any rate, Howie was cheerful enough when I left and as usual thanked me for helping him.

He May Be Crazy, But He's Not Stupid

My helper and I arrived a little after nine o'clock this week, so that we could continue to make progress cutting up that huge branch that fell from the pine tree. I inadvertently woke Howie up when I unloaded his groceries, but I told him he could sleep till noon if he wanted. He got up about 10:30, I think.

I decided to give Howie my old digital camera, thinking that it would ultimately save money over the purchase of disposable cameras and the processing charges. I showed him how to use it briefly, and he started taking pictures. I told him the current card would hold 83 pictures, so he had plenty. He very alertly asked, "So this camera doesn't use film?" and I told him it was electronic. Later on, while I was cutting up wood, I saw Howie roaming happily all over the property taking pictures. When we were getting ready to leave, Howie asked me, "Do you have the book on the camera?" He wanted to know how to use all the features.

So, just because he is mentally ill, and just because his brain is awash in way too many neurotransmitters, don't think he's dumb. He can't think straight half the time, and he is extremely confused, delusional, and hallucinatory, but the Howie who has to live with that dysfunctional brain is still there and fighting to think and learn. I've argued in the past for mind-brain dualism, that the "I" in us, our thinking mind and being, is separate from our brain, and we have to deal with the limitations of our brain to a greater or lesser degree. I might have mentioned that irritating occurrence when we can't think of the right word. Our mind knows what we mean, but our brain is letting us down.

Speaking of delusions, Howie wanted to eat at Coco's again (how many times is that, now?), so we headed on over. Howie had a prime rib sandwich and a "Corona Cerveza," as he calls it (instead of a Corona beer). This time he didn't overeat and didn't throw up.

At the end of lunch I went to the necessarium, and when I came out, Howie was talking to the cashier about going through the gate. The conversation was just focusing on the issue of whether the other Coco's in town had a gate. The poor cashier did not understand, of course, so just as Howie asked, "Does it have a gate I can go through?" I looked at her and said, "We'll see." And we left for the dollar stores.

Howie got his usual supply of items at the dollar store, including four half-gallon jugs of ammonia. I got him some extra batteries for the camera, since he forgot. (And I noticed that he was forgetting to turn the camera off when he was finished with it, so he will be needing batteries.)

Next week I will swap memory cards with him and print off the pictures he has been taking. We'll see what he has shot.

Feeling Better?

When I arrived on Saturday, I asked Howie, as I always do, how he was feeling. He said he was feeling better. (Later in the car I learned that he had been up all night earlier in the week fighting off ghosts, so that his feeling better meant he was being persecuted less in the middle of the night.)

When I asked Howie where he wanted to eat lunch,  he said, "Let's go get an enchilada." So I suggested the take out fast food places and a regular Mexican restaurant. He chose the latter. At least being interested in Mexican cooking took his mind off of Coco's, so that we didn't have to eat there for the tenth or fifteenth time. So off we went.

As usual, Howie doesn't have a sense of prices until after the fact. I don't want to challenge his ordering in advance since he has so little enjoyment in life as it is, but I sometimes point out the cost of what he orders so cavalierly. This time he ordered a Margarita ($6) along with his food. I suppose that's not exorbitant, but I'm rather, um, thrifty when it comes to restaurant beverages.

The food was really good. Howie had an enchilada and chile relleno with rice and beans. -->caution, grossness ahead--> Just after he finished his food and the waiter took his plate away, Howie threw up. I pushed my plate over for him to catch the barf. I asked how he was and he said OK. He went to the restroom to clean his beard and wash up.

This is the second or third time he has barfed right after lunch. He did that after a big meal at Marie Calendar's a couple of weeks ago. My guess now, which I told Howie, is that he doesn't realize that he is overfilling his stomach. When we eat at restaurants with smaller portions, he seems to do fine.

I could look back in the blog and see when it was, but for awhile he threw up regularly after lunch. Just before he did, he would say something about feeling like throwing up. Afterwards he always responded to my question by saying that he felt okay.

At the house, I checked the new fluorescent lights in the workshop, and they are working fine. But before we go there, I should say we visited two of the dollar stores, where Howie got more candles, some home decorations, more ammonia and bleach, and foot powder. He still has "move around button" on his shopping list each week, but can never seem to find one. (I mentioned earlier that such a button permits instant travel from one place to the next.)

I spent part of the time at the house cutting up dead trees (some smaller ones than the huge branch I have told you about). Then I mopped the floor of the kitchen. The dried ammonia or bleach makes mopping quite a bit more involved than would starting with a regular floor surface.

For Christmas I got a new digital camera, a Canon PowerShot SX120, so it is my intention to start taking some pictures around Howie's place to let you see how he lives, while maintaining his privacy. If I may take a moment to plug the camera, it is vastly superior to my old digital. I did a lot of research before settling on this model.

Howie didn't seem to  have any angina this week, which made me feel less anxious about him. What makes me the most frustrated are two things. One, as I've mentioned many times, is that I can't get him to see a doctor, dentist, psychiatrist, optician, barber, etc. Second, he keeps asking me to do impossible things (go half a level down, take him to the other town of the same name "down south," take him to Gordon's or Jumpy's, help him go through the gate, buy a radio that gets 210 on the dial, find his supply house) or do things I know will not be good for him (take him to the airport and get him a ticked to Hawaii), or do things that are both impossible and would not be good for him (buy him a $300 Lexus so he can go driving again). The upshot is that I feel bad that I keep denying him what he wants. Perhaps we are all victims of our own imaginations to some extent, but the sane among us, upon reflection, can realize that, while Howie cannot.

The only other thing I can think of this time is that I continue without success to get Howie to close the back door when the heat is on. I will come back from cutting up some wood and see the back door wide open. I close it. Five minutes later, I come back and it's open again. I tell Howie that he should keep it closed or turn the heat off, and he sometimes says okay. But a few minutes later, it's open again. Good thing we don't live in North Dakota.

Case in point: When I left, I closed the back door, said goodbye to Howie, got in the car and drove around the shop, where the back door came into view--wide open again.

At any rate, except for the lunch episode, Howie seemed in reasonable spirits and seemed to feel physically no worse than usual. He as always thanked me for coming and for helping.

Howie's Still Howie

Once again I apologize for such a delay in my posts. The fact is, there is not really much new in Howie's life. I continue to visit him weekly with his groceries and take him to one or more of the dollar stores. He continues to look for a "move around button," and in both restaurants and dollar stores he asks if they can take him home or to the other city of the same name. He has recently begun to offer the other person $20 if they will oblige.

Once and still again we ate at Coco's last week and when he asked to be taken to "the main Cocos" or "home," the cashier told him where there was another restaurant down the freeway. Who knows--we might end up there this weekend.

Howie's life of futility continued by his looking for more things that don't exist: a string of laser lights, Gordon's dollar store, a radio that gets 210 on the dial, Jumpy's, the city "down half a level," and so on.

At the house, I have been cutting up an enormous branch (20 inches in diameter) that broke off a big pine tree there.

A week ago, I installed two new fluorescent light fixtures in the workshop. I happened to notice the light switch was on but only one bulb in one fixture was lit. I asked Howie about it and he said that was the way the lights were. I told him he should tell me when things don't work and he said okay (as he always does). At any rate, the new lights really light up the shop.

I got Howie a new wristwatch and an auto-setting clock radio with a huge digital clock on it for his Christmas presents. He likes both of them (gave them to him early).

Howie is still pouring ammonia and bleach on the family room floor and sometimes the kitchen floor, creating a white film that takes awhile to mop up.

So, things as usual. I'll attempt to be more diligent in posting.

Deferred Maintenance

Howie has been much the same since my last posting. We have still been going to Coco's for lunch almost every week. Except for twice in the last 10 or so weeks, lunch has been at Coco's. Yesterday, after lunch as we stood outside the restaurant, Howie asked me earnestly if he could go through the gate and leave. I told him again that I didn't know how that could be done. He must feel disappointed and frustrated trying to leave for the other town where his nice house and family lives with all his kids and so forth. It's really sad that they exist only in his imagination.

He showed me pictures of a vacant lot a few blocks from his house and said that it was where he was supposed to build a house to live in. I think I've mentioned before that he often points out a house, business, or church and says that "I was supposed to live there, " or "That's one of our houses."

Yesterday when I was getting ready leave, Howie asked me, "Do you know how I can get registered, so that I can leave?" I asked him what he meant by getting registered, and he said, "So that they know that I exist and can go home." He also asked me how he could get some money. I think he feels constrained with the little allowance he gets. (However, it prevents him from buying airline tickets to distant destinations, as he has done in the past.)

The last several weeks I've had a helper--let's call him Mike to protect his privacy--come out and work on the landscaping and housecleaning with me. We've also been working on the very weathered and partly termite eaten woodwork around the living room windows. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a gallon of Kilz 2 to prime the scraped off woodwork. Last week it was gone. I immediately thought that Howie had seen it and, because it said "Kilz," he had thrown it away. He is phobic of anything that suggests poison. So Mike and I turned over a couple of trash cans and found the gallon can in the bottom of one of them. Needless to say, we have hidden the can and turned it around so the label doesn't show.

We have now primed the three window areas and are ready to paint. This week we also installed a fireproof desktop for Howie's workbench out in the workshop. We primed and painted the surface to make it more pleasant.

At the dollar store, Howie was looking for "two way pens," by which he means pens that are a combination ball point and highlighter. I haven't seen him highlight much, but then I haven't looked at his headline cards recently, either. He also had on his list again a "move around button." I've mentioned in the past that this handy device would allow one to move instantly from one place to another and even go up and down levels, if I understand Howie's explanation correctly. We all could use one of those, and if they are ever available at the dollar store, the price couldn't be beat. Occasionally Howie asks if the dollar store sells cigarettes, and one time (as I've mentioned), he said that one of the stores has them "three packs for a dollar." When I ask him who told him that, just as when I ask him who said he can't eat at a particular restaurant or shop at a particular store, he doesn't answer clearly.

On this trip, Howie bought more ammonia, dishwasher detergen, candles, incense, headline cards, facial tissue, some colored foam squares. He asked me about antacid again, but the dollar stores carry only the kinds he doesn't want.

Howie walks around quite a bit, evidently. He seems to have walked down to the shopping center near his house and gone into one of the stores, perhaps Best Buy. At any rate, he told me last week that he wanted to buy a "looker screen," by which I guessed he had seen a netbook or notebook computer. He said he could communicate with his group with it.

This week Howie complained of a queasy stomach before we left for lunch, but he managed to eat a French dip sandwich and fries without any problem. He did complain about some angina for a bit, but was feeling good by the time I left. I got him a supply of Gatorade to help keep him hydrated along with his bottled water.

As usual, Howie thanked me for the help and waved goodbye as I rolled down the driveway.