My last words

As I've said, I think my hands will outlast my voice, in terms of communication. I've previously imagined having last words -- but speaking them. My voice is so mushed now, that if the malady ever kills me, it's not likely that I'll get to say anything. So I want you to know what my last words are. If I die, at some point, you all will please tell everyone that my last words were:

It was ... fun!

That's a quote from a movie, and yes, I do want and intend to be this cheesy.

As I write this, on Mothers Day, I am very tired from a probable self-poisoning incident.

We went to the park, I in my wheelchair that my hardworking wife disassembled and put into the car. I used some alcohol-based hand sanitizer after using the port-a-john with the graffiti on it.

We got home about half an hour later, and I idly tried to pick some food out of my teeth with a finger. The finger tasted bitter, from the bittering agents in the hand sanitizer. They want your body to reject the stuff. That was about 1:30. By 1:45 I had a stomach ache. I lay on the floor. It hurt bad. Not sharp, but dull. My dedicated wife called the poison control center. They asked if I were a drinker who was on one of these medications that make you hurt if you drink booze. The last alcohol I had was a genuine local Czech Pilsner in 1996 in Prague. But I am on minocycline, and they tell you not to drink alcohol when taking that. My loving wife agreed to my request for privacy. Plus, she had to put two kids to rest time.

I thought I might defecate suddenly, and prepared a shirt to catch the mess. Then I struggled down the stairs to the bunker john. I had sweats and felt hot. I was drooling everywhere. That's a normal part of my regular malady, but normally I control it by swallowing or wiping. But this time I didn't care. I lay down on the cold, dusty concrete. It was a very slow, controlled fall. I thought: This is what 'abject' means.

I thought I might throw up. Ordinarily I dread throwing up and will do anything possible to avoid it. But now with the pain in my stomach so bad, I welcomed it. I got to my knees and pillowed my head on the toilet seat rim. I didn't hurl.

Then the pain receded. I checked my watch: 3:12 PM. Only an hour and a half of misery!

My hypothesis is that the bittering agent passed through my stomach, where there are sensory nerve endings, and into my intestine, where (presumably) there aren't. Or maybe the bittering agent just reached a dilution threshold. I don't know. I bet ShutteredEye would know.

It might have been a gallstone attack from the constant use of ceftriaxone, but Wikipedia says those are worse than the pain of childbirth, and almost always happen at night while lying down. This happened at mid-day while sitting up. And though Wikipedia didn't say anything about suddenness, I gather that a gallstone "attack" is sudden. My pain grew gradually.

Anyway, while going trough this agony, I thought about crawling to the computer and blogging that my last words are: It was ... fun!

Those are my last words. It's official. I won't have a grave since I am donating my corpse to science. But if I did have a grave, the tombstone would say:

It was ... fun!

Those are my last words. Trust me, if I know I'm dying, I'll be thinking them when I die.