Stories - FD Thornton

 It’s a bright, sunny day outside. I’m finishing up taking my gummy vitamins, chewing very carefully in my damaged mouth . I’ve spent the last few days in a bloodbath with a leaking liver clot where my tooth once sat. My dentist wasn’t able to do anything about it , so she sent me to the ER to have them cauterize it. After an hour-long trip to the ER and a three-hour wait, they did nothing and sent me home with a pat on the back. They did tell me to make an appointment with my dentist and stop taking a blood thinner till then. To my dentist's credit, she did call me after hours on her personal phone to check on me. I told her the story of the ER, and she told me to be at her office at 8 AM Monday morning and to be careful till then. I’m trying not to be mad at anybody; I mean, I heard enough while I was in the ER. It’s just sad to see an understaffed ER get overwhelmed with cases that should be handled by a Family Doctor. But with our current pay-as-you-play, for-profit heal...

It’s 5:13 in the morning and I’ve been up since 4:40. I had a bad dream about trying to drive through the Italian Alps in an electric car with a limited charge and no cash. The roads were lined with toll booths that only took cash and not a charging station in sight. The discomfort of the dream awoke me. So with my ears ringing, and my heart and head pounding, I lay here now at 5:22 wide awake writing this pathetic shit. So I finished the first paragraph, and my mind began to wander. So I started doom scrolling around to apps I enjoy. One which feeds my head and the other that feeds my soul. Now it’s 6:25 and my day is coming into focus. The ice pack on my head is working, my thoughts aren’t as urgent, and my thoughts are relaxing. The old heart is working much more smoothly. Recently a young friend commented on a piece I wrote, that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I wish I could explain to them that the piece was just a moment, a photograph if you will. Where I have now purged mys...

  After three days, I finally get to start my day with my established routine. I find that as a retired person who’s also a caregiver, it’s important to establish routines. If for nothing else, it keeps your own ass sane. My son and my wife already have their established routines down pat, with my wife going to bed at 9:00 every evening and waking up at exactly 7 a.m. Since both of them can fix their own breakfasts, my main job is logistics, paying the bills, and getting them from one place to another. Sprinkle in reminders to bathe, clean your room, and get ready on time—and you pretty much have my day. Other than trying to keep my head on straight, I manage the pill dispensing, their doctor appointments, cooking most meals, taking them to get haircuts—you know, the usual stuff we take for granted. But after 39 years, it’s pretty much routine now. Of course, there are the setbacks, such as my time being in and out of the hospital or recuperating, and my own bouts with having a m...

  The shadows hang long over the apartment building across the way, but I slept well last night and woke up early, for me. I’m surprised by how little activity I see across the way, as far as people moving about. By now I’d see the frail old woman and her tiny dog walking the grounds. Or the young man in his hoodie in 80° weather waiting for his ride. But maybe I am a bit early for the day, with the sun just starting to climb. I finished my weekly responsibility of filling my bride’s pill caddies after fulfilling my own responsibility of taking my own meds. Life seems infinite in this long-winded cycle of rinse and repeat. Till you come across a child you haven’t seen in a while and realize how time passes so quickly and how much you have missed. But such as it is with cycles, they loop back into each other with such precision, that we don’t even pay attention anymore. So I do my best to shrink myself into a single space, kinda like I am doing right now. Focusing solely on this...

  Just completed my “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing” pre-appointment check-in for an upcoming cardiologist appointment next Monday. Funny how I have to add things that you would assume they already knew. Like new medications and recent surgeries. But such as it is, in this so called world of modern medicine and corporate mergers. You see, the two cardiologists I deal with work for the same corporation at two different hospitals. Yet as I stated, “the left hand don’t know what the right hand’s doing”. When it comes to the health of us older Americans we walk through a maze of specialist. Long gone are the days of the family doctor, who coordinated your extended medical care. Now you are sent to specialist who never talk to each other, let alone sent notes to each other. Right now I deal with eight different specialist for my various conditions. None of which has had a word with the other, even though two of them share a building and five of them work for the ...

  Through the shadows on the curtains, I can hear the roar of a CSX horn blow from across the road—a long line of tracks that run north from Atlanta, south to Brunswick’s Ports. It’s been an exhausting few weeks, first with relentless rain and then the humid heat, complicated by the fact we’ve had to suffer two weeks without a refrigerator. ​ But beyond all that bullshit we put up with, presented to us by the faceless shareholders of a corporation, we now live in a country determined to bring back nostalgia, like it’s some comfortable chain to wear around our necks. ​ I remember when the country turned 200 years old. It was 1976 and I was in the ninth grade. Our former Governor Jimmy Carter was running for President against President Gerald R. Ford. We had just lived through our uncles and our big brothers fighting in Vietnam, then witnessing every day as soaps and game shows were interrupted by the Watergate Hearings. The grownups were mad and I was mad, because I had to liste...