It's going to be a random one tonight. You know how I usually lead in, fade out and generally try to make an entry flow smooth?

It's hard to do when tears blur my eyes.

===

They're not bad tears. No, I guess they are. They're not bad NOW tears. They may not even be bad EVER tears. Well, that's not the case either. We all die, eventually.

Thankfully, no one is dying in the foreseeable future.

Kubler-Ross said there were five stages of dying. Hers were Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Me, I see that as all when it's Foreseeable, or closer. Right now, mine are Inevitable, Foreseeable, Approaching, Imminent, Immediate, and Dead.

No one is dying in the foreseeable future, so I don't have to break out the Kubler-Ross stages.

===

Turns out SpouseKitty's liver isn't funny like a three-dollar bill. It's more funny like yelling fire in a theater. Someone out there thinks it's funny, but no one in here does.

We find out on Friday if it gets any more funny. Or less. All depends on one's perspective, I guess.

===

There's a funny (as in ha-ha) Far Side cartoon, captioned "God's Keyboard." God's observing some guy walking under a hoisted piano, and His finger is hovering over one key, the one labeled 'Smite.'

With SpouseKitty, I would imagine that key is like my computer's BackSpace key -- so well-used the ink is wearing off. We had the liver-go-bang at 16; a case of hives so bad the doctor said when he thought he was out of earshot, "I don't know what else to do; I'm half expecting the head 360 and pea-soup next!" (reference to the movie, The Exorcist.)

Actually, no more near misses until a Freightliner t-boning SK's carpool a decade ago. Yeah, Freightliner, competitor to Mack. As in semi tractor-trailer. (To quote 'Mother Good and Grimm,' "If this is a semi, I'd hate to see a full truck!")

===

Well, 'smiting' could be many things. Kitten was premature by 7 weeks. 4.5 pounds when we took her home. That was scary. First two months, we had to keep the house heated to 85 to make up for her lack of body fat.

She was diagnosed with moderate Autism before she was two. She's now ten and at the mild Autism level, thanks to her and SpouseKitten's hard work. I can't claim more credit than staying out of their way.

I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome about five years ago. That's another 'smite' to SpouseKitty, though it did explain that age-old question following me, "How can someone so smart be so stupid?" (about social interfaces.)

Then SpouseKitty's discovery that special-education teachers, even substitute teachers, are at much higher risk of bodily injury, even when their kids don't mean to. No one meant to collapse two of SK's lumbar discs.

Sometime before that, we learned what a C5-C6 cervical fusion meant. (Hint: it has nothing to do with the cervix, and everything to do with keeping one's neck from pinching or shearing one's spinal cord.)

Smite. God's keyboard must have that one key near-blank by then, and that's no even the recent stuff with the thyroid and now the liver.

===

The liver makes for some difficult conversations. It's not as simple as, "If I die, I want this to happen." It's not even, "If I'm in a persistent vegetative state..." Even, "If I'm in pain and it's inoperable..." That one, we've both talked about, and I've had practice.

I had to make the call for my grandmother. Alzheimer's already took her mind. I just gave her body leave to follow.

No, those aren't the hard conversations.

The hard ones are, "How much vacation do you have? I want to see Victoria this spring."

"Let's move up the Disney World trip. It's pretty during Christmas, but it won't be crowded if we hit it before summer."

"Did you know that cruise ships sometimes sell their empties for next-to-nothing the day the ship has to sail? That could be a good way to see the glaciers in Alaska."

===

Hard to keep an even flow when I have to stop every so often. Hard enough just keeping those snippets of conversation together.

I'm typing by Braille right now. Everything's a blur. Still, my fingers know when I've hit the wrong key, and I back space over to try to keep it neat.

===

There's a difference between tearjerker movie tears and these tears. I cried my eyes out during 'Steel Magnolias' and 'Forrest Gump.' 'Beaches' and 'Terms of Endearment.' I'm no stranger to leaving little white wontons on a theater floor.

The difference is simple: with those tears, I could still breath through my nose, even if I did sound like a rattling straw looking for one last drop of soda. With these, it's like I've a code in my node.

===

These tears are fool's tears. They're for naught. No one is saying, "Repent, for the end is near." Heck, no one is even saying, "Repent, for the end is far."

Come Friday, the most likely diagnosis per SpouseKitty's online research is auto-immune hepatitis. Basically, thanks to the liver-go-bang over half a lifetime ago, SK's body thinks the liver is some malignant organ and is trying to reject it.

That is easily treated. Prednisone (oft-times mispronounced, for your amusement, Pregnazone.) With it will come bloating and crankines. Like SK and I don't fight like ... husband and wife already. If you want, read about it here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a601102.html#side-effects

Fun.

===

The one catch is that this isn't a cure. It's not even a full stop. All this will do is hold it off. Even if it's "only" auto-immune hepatitis, that will develop into liver complications later. That's not just 'inevitable,' it's 'foreseeable.'

Then, we start the Kubler-Ross tango and my own stages. Then we start having the harder conversations, when the question isn't a generic 'when,' but a more urgent 'how soon?'

We're only in our thirties. (Well, I just left them, but only by a fortnight.) I thought we'd have more time.

====

Time. That's a funny thing.

When I was in college, I was poor, but had lots of free time. Well, it wasn't exactly free. I should have been studying, and it was costing some major money per year, so it's not really free.

But it felt like it. And it seemed endless because I had no money to make it pass by faster. So I played roleplaying games. Not the online stuff we call MMORPGs (how the heck do you pronounce that any how? em-moor-pughs?) Pencil and paper (and dice, lots of dice).

Cut forward to Kitty Manor, est. 1994. We were in Silicon Valley where venture capital was falling faster than sub-Saharan African capitols. We were working hard, commuting long. I remember commenting that the balances were now reversed: I had lots of money, but no time. That was actually a simplification: I had money, but owed the bank more money.

Now, it's better than even those halcyon days. Our place is paid off. We have retirement funds from those days (yay!) and employee-purchase-plan stock from those days (oy!) We have a little left over from selling out SF Bay Area home, even with the loan we had on it.

When before when I only thought I had money, now I know I do. But before when I thought I had no time, now I know even more how it feels.

===

Funny. We've used funny at least three ways here.

Funny as in "not, but we'll be euphemistically polite."

Funny as in "good for a laugh, if you're pushing the 'smite' key, anyhow."

Funny as in "ironic, isn't it? I thought we were playing a game of 5 card stud, yet I'm only dealt a blackjack hand."

Funny, I thought I had a point with all this.