Stories - FD Thornton

  It is bright as hell outside as I draw the curtains apart in my room; it was nearly 9:30 before I swallowed my first pill. I got up this morning at around 5:30, but I didn’t move from the bed till just a few minutes ago. My coffee has been sitting on my desk since 7 o’clock, but drinking it cold is nothing new to me. After playing phone tag with two different doctors in the same medical building, I’m sitting here watching the apartment maintenance man manhandle a dryer up the stairs. So it’s just another day in my neighborhood. Now it’s after 10 o’clock and I’ve barely got a paragraph written. Usually, by now, I’ve already posted something. But as I am learning already, this doesn’t look like an ordinary day. With more lab work needing to be done this afternoon, my mind is already on the clock. So I’m having a bit of a time focusing on a subject for this story. Still, earlier this morning I took the time to lay in bed and catch up on some of my social media replies. One in ...

Getty Images   It is a bright sunny summer morning out here in the badlands of Telfair County. I just got my morning pills swallowed and my vitamins chewed. Staring at this blinking cursor, the first thing I thought of was the bright sun reflecting off the pale green paint of the #100 apartment building next to us. Kinda wondering in my mind – was anybody from over there staring back? Who’s to say. I’m just sitting here pecking at the keys, just letting words casually float out of my brain. And if the words make any sense, well all the more better. I woke up to a friend who was on a certain social media app doing her normal live thing, rambling on about something and pulling tarot cards for hearts. Not that I’m much into Voodoo cards or anything, but she did pull one for me. I don’t remember which card it was, but she said I was anxious about a project. Which is kinda funny because I am mulling about with a project for an eBook later this year. Then I had a decent conversation ...

  Just sitting here killing time until I have to leave for yet another lab appointment this morning . This is one I do every quarter to mostly check my iron levels and my WBC, which are both low…duh . My General Practitioner informed me yesterday that I was also due for another sleep study this year . And that it’s that time of the year my wife goes for her annual trip for a mammogram . So my near empty calendar is now slowly filling up till Christmas Time . God knows why I’m telling any of you this shit . I mean each and every one of you have the same damn schedule with either your children or an elderly parent . So I know I am nothing special, just the average person juggling the ways of life in a capitalist society, between work and living . But isn’t it funny, how we live in a society where everything is supposed to be simpler, yet the whole thing seems so much more complicated ? It is now the next morning, and the lab work is already done . My wife’s in the bathroom throwi...

Image By: Sandra Saxon Burnsed   It’s almost cliché the way I get up every morning. As I get older the tasks are more predictable and routine. Unlike my younger years where there was no responsibility, or as a father and adult when I had a family to take care of. Today everything’s more routine and, shall I say, predictable? Still, I spend every first of the month paying bills and making sure money's moved around. Then I fill the Kia with fuel and hope it lasts for the month, as well as groceries and other things. I have to keep up with prescription refills and the ever-present doctor appointments, of which I have at least one or two every week. But such as it is for an office manager, secretary, accountant, chef, housekeeper, crisis manager, husband, father, grandfather, and friend (AKA…Caregiver). But in-between all that work, I do find time to feel sorry for myself I suppose. In-between all the other decisions I have to make during any given day. It’s really not a big deal a...

  Some questions simply shouldn’t be asked, especially when it comes to your health. I have six different specialists spread out over five different counties across an area that runs from Dublin to Mount Vernon, Vidalia, and Savannah, Georgia. And if that wasn’t bad enough, each prescribes different medications for my many different ailments—from chronic heart failure to kidney failure to IBS and type-2 diabetes. And that’s not counting diabetic retinopathy, chronic sinus issues, tooth decay, and various mental health issues. I’m sure you have read about each of these different ailments in my writing. But I’m not sure I’ve listed them all on one sheet of paper before. It’s a lot to keep up with, and frankly, it’s exhausting to even look at. All this comes along with being the caregiver to two other adults. But I compartmentalize things; that’s what I trained to do in college. So, to a point, my whole supposed career path was laid just so I could keep up with my own failing health...

 It’s a bright, sunny 80°F outside this morning with a few thinly veiled clouds high in the sky. I woke up late to a shout from the new ice maker we had installed in our fridge. Last night was not my best work when it came to sleep. I woke up several times to all kinds of haunts going on inside my head. Many of you who read my words see me as stoic and even-headed when it comes to life. But what many of you may not realize is that deep in my memory, I am still haunted by a past filled with fear and mental torment. I understand the overuse of psychological terms today. Concepts like trauma and PTSD are thrown around way more than they should be. I’m one of the last generation that was told to “suck it up, buttercup” during a crisis. But living for decades under the “physician, heal thyself” mentality, the skills I often use sometimes just don’t work. So right now, I’m going through a moment of anxiety and clinical depression, masking it all with that same old stoic face I’ve use...

  I slept rough last night , I dreamed I was on a van being stuffed with people to go on a fun adventure. But we all knew by the way we were being stuffed into that van, that it was going to be anything but fun. Still I had trouble waking up from the dream, I knew I wanted to get out but I couldn’t, till I finally woke up and sat here. It’s a bright hazy day in the neighborhood, a total lack of kids outside playing still weirds me out. But I guess parents today are much different than we were, where we knew the neighbors and the kids could run free. Other than that, I suppose I’m feeling that entrapment again of being stuck in the apartment myself. With no money to go anywhere, not even to drive to the park because of the distance. There’s no place to sit outside around here, where parents look at you like some weirdo for sitting alone. Thankfully my wife doesn’t have to carry that burden, cause everybody loves her and kids approach her like a grandmother. I guess I just give o...

  Well we got supper simmering in the pan, a simple combination of gold potatoes, celery, bell pepper, onions, and mushrooms with ground turkey and mushroom soup. with a pot of sticky rice warming next to it. It may not sound like much of a summertime meal. But with meat hovering at around $8 a pound, you do what you can do with the cheapest cuts. After a day and a weekend deciding between what groceries to buy, how much gas to put in the car, and buying medicine, this land of plenty is starting to look like a land of the privileged few. While the rest of “us” blame everybody but ourselves for the mess we are in. And before any of you get on your high horses and complain away, let’s all be grateful we still live in a land where we politely tolerate each other for now. But don’t worry your “revolution” is coming soon enough. But what it is that none of you realize is that it was never about white, black, tan, or yellow. It’s about rich and poor, and we already know who’s running...

 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...

  Some days are diamonds and some days are stone—that’s what I’ve heard my whole life. My parents were often too busy building for tomorrow or for themselves to really shape who I was. That job ended up being finished by my Grandma, my friends, and even my supposed enemies. The last few weeks have been a trial for me, between the stress of the surgery, the adventure with the fridge, and the malfunctioning of the fire alarm. Life seems to have handed me one stressor after another. My oldest child and I often just recognize it as our run of luck, where a few good things come our way only to be snatched up by an even longer run of bad luck. But inside, I still try to keep in mind that despite how much life mistreats you, you should never mistreat it. For years now, I’ve kept online relationships with a randomly chosen few people. It’s not like we have anything in common; it usually started with me or them admiring the work of the other. Recently, one of those friends was strugglin...

  To understand love, first you must learn to understand yourself. Looking back at my earliest memories I remember the emotions of joy and laughter. As I dig deeper though, I find emotions of being tolerated and ignored. Most of us I’m sure were given a little bit of both, much like a blended cotton shirt. A sturdy 80/20 blend with strong roots in faith and a little mental neglect sprinkled in for stretch. I suppose the main thing is, what parts stand out the most in your mind? Now I’m not making light of mental health struggles, cause Lord knows I’ve had my share. For nearly 30 years I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, GAD, PD, and a host of other letters. I’ve spent nearly half my life focused on the causes and trying to get better. Funny thing is even with all that planning; I only made baby steps in my recovery. The one thing I now realize through all my searching is that, without taking a compassionate look at yourself, I never found peace. When understanding love, we first hav...

  After about three weeks in on my “Ignorance Is Bliss Tour”, which involved no national news and very little TV and Social media time. I was giving my mind a break from the amount of dopamine it was receiving. Till last night when I fell asleep just after dinner. Even as I spent the evening listening to the latest political novel, it didn’t seem to bother my rest at all. And do you want to know why?   ​ Because this clown show we call politics hasn’t changed a lick since I started voting in the early 1980s. What has changed is our insatiable need for hits of dopamine, that natural little drug (for lack of a better word) that fires up our pleasure sensors. I’ve been doing my damnest to pull myself away from that little booger. Allowing my mind instead to focus on silence and interesting conversation. I started going to the local Senior Center, if for nothing else but to soak up the atmosphere of community.   ​ For far too long for those of us on the left and the right...

  Right now my head is a jumbled mess of “what if’s” and “when’s it going to be over”. I mean I look perfectly together this morning after a shower and a shave. But last night and this morning my head is a jumble of insane messages my fractured mind wants to scream at me. In days past, I would simply sweep all that noise under a rug and go about my day working on some new half-finished project. Now that I have pretty much learned to embrace the silence, I allow those voices of panic to have their say. to most that might sound totally unproductive, but hear me out. I’ve learned by giving those parts of me (the panic, the fear) their say. I can then through mindfulness practice of living in the here and now, embrace those voices and acknowledge them and let them go. Now you might say to yourself, “All that kumbaya shit sounds great, if I was able to sit around and smell daisies all day. But hell! I got work to do and still have to stare at the damn problem all day”. Hey. I tota...

  I dreamed of a beautiful piece of poetry this morning about five o’clock. But I didn’t get up to jot it down for my wife was asleep on my arm. Sometimes words just don’t need to be said, when the flames of passion hover so close to the surface. I was a man brought up around a strong foundation of strong women. I mean there was my father and a whole pile of uncles around me. But even they seemed to be in awe of the women in their lives. While my father was a good provider, it was my mother that I was most comfortable around. I suppose it was because we were so close in age, and my mother having been raised in a house full of boys, it just came natural to her. Me and my dad struggled to find our way, till we finally did when I became a father. For those few years he had left, he was a doting grandpa. But it still makes me sad that now those clear images in my head are nothing but faded memories to my children. But the dawn woke up on this cloudy and humid morning, where I see t...

 So I guess the current frat boys and future corporate CEOs got their wish last night and turned the People’s House into a fraternity house. I’m sure that’s been the wish of every wanna-be proud boy in the country. To take that nearly holy beacon “freedom for all” and paint it up like a cheap whore. But such as it is, as the country melts down to its lowest denominator. But what can I say, Happy Independence Day! Life around here is crawling back to normal; I’m still finding new aches and pains while others go down. My head has definitely cleared up from its weeks’ worth of fog, so maybe I can make sense now when I talk. But just as my doctors more than warned me, it’s the internal work that really needs healing. It’s funny how fragmented one can feel when diced and sliced from the inside. But despite the lack of external sutures, there's a great many on the inside. So while I wait for the hole in my heart to heal, and the plug to fit snug into place, and the entry point on m...

The Road Home   Once again another sleepless night confounds me; tensions of the day haunt my dreams. Leaving me restless and out-of-sorts, anxious and ready for change. Usually before and after a major event, such as this surgery, I find myself searching for meaning, while at the same time putting up old habits that are my survival mode. I wear a nearly impenetrable mask of this happy-go-lucky man who doesn’t have a care in the world. But just as in the distant past, the building of that wall eventually cracks and crumbles. So I sit here with this weight once again, listening to wise words of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh about healing myself through a life in the present moment. Listening this evening to a friend nearly coming to tears about a past pain nearly brought me to tears myself. I wanted to say words of comfort, but instead I sat there and gave them some compassionate listening. But through my own suffering, I found myself falling to old habits of self-defense and w...

This is from last years surgery.   It’s creeping close to noon-time, and for the last few hours I’ve been scrolling through messages and social media posts. Some of the posts are funny, some sad, or enlightening; but all sent to stir up attention. Believe me I’m just as guilty as anyone else, if I weren’t I’d just keep my posts to myself. But I don’t, I share them. Last night was a little rough, I woke up cramping on the right side of my rib cage. With my life as a professional pill taker, my world is a crazy balance of making sure the medication I take to live, also doesn’t kill me. In other words, one medication I take to strengthen my heart can also lower my blood sugar dangerously low. So we have to adjust one other medicine, so I don’t lose too much fluid and dehydrate. All the while still taking that medicine to control excess fluid from building around my weakened heart. I know, it sounds crazy as shit. But I do what I got to do to keep the machine running. Kinda like an...

  At 10:30 in the morning, I finally got a taste of sweet tea and lemon on my lips. Already this morning I’ve taken myself and our special needs son for a haircut, at the old barber shop next to the Piggly Wiggly. Mr. Bob the owner isn’t as old as me, but he religiously keeps the TV turned on to Fox News. I’d much rather watch Peppy the Pig or Bubble Guppies, but each to their own form of fiction. But my son is used to Mr. Bob and will even speak to him about how he wants his hair or a sports team. So I’ll take my dose of propaganda with a grain of salt, as long as it gets the job done. It’s funny how people in a barber shop keep tight-lipped to themselves. Old men staring down at their phones like a pack of teenagers. But even teenagers today seem to be bored with all the technology. Collecting vinyl records and reading actual books, more or less like we did as young people. But responsibility keeps us moving like the second hand on a clock. Counting every second, trying to mana...

  It’s 3:33 in the afternoon. Usually, I’m just waking from a nap, but today I had an eleven o’clock confab with my hematologist. Every eight weeks I get checked to see how tired my blood is. Turns out it remains stable at the same shitty numbers it’s been running. So, I guess I’ll see them in eight weeks! ​ Not to be confused with the blood work for my kidney doctor, cardiologist, urologist, or GP. My oil gets changed regularly. For me, if my blood’s tired, it’s from driving to all these specialists in three different cities—not including the eye exams, hearing tests, and begging a dentist to see my nine or ten broken teeth with exposed roots. ​ I’m a shitty sight. If not for regular showers and washed clothes, I’d look like I live under a bridge. But give the current administration time. ​ So what’s the point? I guess I’m just too stupid to give up. Mentally I’m a certified trainwreck with the paperwork to prove it, yet here I am—like a wad of gum you can’t scrape off your shoe. ...

  After a night of raw seventies-style fever dream, I woke up disturbed again by the whole thing, struggling to make any sense out of it, considering that’s not the way I grew up. I mean, I didn’t grow up in a low-income trailer park or surrounded by desperate people who always stay in trouble with the law. That was to come much later with the people I associated with after my first wife. But who knows, maybe that’s where the dream came from? Now, I’m sitting here some 40 years older and a lifetime away from that world. Still a stranger in a strange land, tiptoeing his way through the landmines laid by the natives. But even when I do make it home, I’m a stranger there myself. For time still affects us, whether we know it or not. And like most humans, we take the path of least resistance just to make it through, even if it means abandoning the moral values we once held true. So I sit in my “cone of silence,” creating my own world, surrounding myself with like-minded people. Peop...