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the net’s informative gay podcast & blog from pittsburgh

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Sports Hell

March 23rd, 2009 by jason
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I work with a bunch of meat heads.  This old queen is sick and tired of hearing basketball conversations.  I’d swear that each and every one of them has “basket balls”.  Of course, their sport of choice changes with the seasons.  I don’t mind a little sports talk but when it gets to the orgasmic level, I crank up the iPod.  Thank you Apple! 

Plus, today being the first day of the work week and the end of an era, there will be engrosed conversations about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica.  I think I’d rather hear about child rearing.  One thing I’ll say is that we have a dedicated bunch.

Do you think some people follow sports and cult TV shows and movies such as BSG and The Watchmen just to feel like they belong?  Also, it seems that the more excited one gets, the more they are accepted.  Maybe I’m just witnessing that damned male caveman attitude that women have been complaining about for years.

Switching topics, in the last month I have been to the ER for a bad drug interaction and placed back on the pain drugs which make me tired as hell and the ones that make me forget certain words… frequently.  I see the Dr. next month, thank god.  I’m telling you, anticonvulsants are nasty drugs.  I feel the pain for anyone who has to see a neurologist, or cardiologist or proctologist for that matter.  One final matter, don’t get trigeminal neuralgia (LOL, as if it could be prevented…).

(1st Gen “iPod Classic” 80GB)

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Rushing Ice

February 13th, 2009 by jason
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A steady ice flow today on the Allegheny River.

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If I only had a brain…

February 9th, 2009 by jason
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This is my brain.  It is from an MRI/MRA with contrast that I had a few months ago (record identifier blurred out).  This shows a cross-section somewhere about 1/2 way through.  Expectant mothers commonly carry around ultrasound pictures of their pending children, but I have a picture of my brain.  Yes, that is my nose on the right side… the image kinda wraps around.

Jason's Head MRI

Now that you’ve seen my brain, you can see that it looks normal.  Unfortunately, to the doctors, it looks normal.  Imagine having an invisible illness that neither doctors or normal people can see or feel.  In fact, the image above was taken with a million dollar MRI machine and it could not find any anomalies.  You have a rare condition called trigeminal neuralgia.  It is a neurological condition that causes what can be described as the worst pain in the world.  I will place it in the class of “natural” childbirth, kidney stone, and cluster headache pain.

Now, you have pain in 1/2 your face that makes you unable to do anything.  All you can do is try to not move and hope it won’t kill you until it passes in a few seconds or minutes.  It is debilitating and makes you just want to cut your face off.  You now have two choices: death or drugs.  That makes the choice pretty clear.  The big problem comes with the only class of drugs that work on this pain.  Opiates such as morphine, codeine, Vicodin, OxyContin, Dilaudid, Demerol, fentanyl, etc. do NOT work on this pain.  Do you know how difficult it is to have level 10+ pain and can’t take a pill to get ride of it?

That leaves the drug treatment of trigeminal neuralgia to anticonvulsant drugs (aka. anti-seizure and anti-epileptic drugs).  The side effect profiles of these drugs are incredible.  They are for the most part just nasty drugs, especially the ones used to trigeminal neuralgia because they must be given in extremely high doses.  People take them because they have to.  I am on one of the front line drugs, oxcarbazepine (Trileptal).  Most people start on that or carbamazepine (Tegretol).  I was already on 300mg per day of Trileptal as a mood stabilizer but am now up to 1,200mg.  Frankly, to me, that much Trileptal is as close to debilitating as possible.

To be mostly pain free I have to put up with a lot of shit.  I have no energy and am pretty weak.  I have stuff like ataxia and abnormal gait.  That means I must walk with a cane because my feet don’t always do what I want them to do.  I’m not dizzy, but have trouble controlling what’s going on down there.  I also can’t sleep because of that shit I take.  The energy I do have is enough to give to work.  Someone has to pay the bills!

All this means that I can’t podcast and blog as much as I want to.  I also can’t be as active in the podcasting, blogging, and local LGBT community as I want to be.  Because the pain is as bad as it is, once you find a drug that provides relief, you become incredibly fearful of trying another one that will possible help as much with fewer side effects.  Six months in and I am finally ready to take that step.

I never imagined that I’d be going through this at 28.  I’m writing this as a piece of education.  I don’t want sympathy.  I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.  For a good reason I just feel that I need to explain why I don’t respond to people like I want and why I’m absent from life right now.  Of course, I’ve never been good at any of that, but now that I’ve totally lost it, I realize how important all of that is.  Hell, it is a lot for me to even write this.  It sucks; it’s life; put up with it.  Depression has kept me in the house for years but never this bad.  Before I could have at least left the house with some amount of prodding.  Now, I can’t even muster the energy for much of that.

The good news is that I go see my neurologist Tuesday and will hopefully get on the path of finding a drug that helps to suppress the pain and gives me my life back.  I want people to be educated on what I’m going through and know that I do care about them and will do my best to get back to being the Jason that I want to be.  TV and movies aren’t my only love but they are the only love that I can currently embrace.  Somehow I just have to know that it will all get better… no matter how hopeless things seem.

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Holy Snow, Batman!

January 30th, 2009 by jason
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It is really snowing now. The Pittsburgh skyline has disappeared!

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1/2 an inch my ass!

January 30th, 2009 by jason
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A snowy view from the office window. They said at 6 am it would be
half an inch today. So far they are WRONG!!!

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#156 Cheaper than a Shrink

January 24th, 2009 by jason
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This one rambles a bit as life has been a little rough this past few months.  Sometimes you just need to get things off of your chest.  Also, my various work coming out experiences.

http://www.jasoncable.com/podcasts/com.jasoncable.podcast0155.mp3

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Inauguration Day Message

January 20th, 2009 by jason
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I remember thinking in the early 1990s, “Will we ever see a woman President?”  Today we are seeing the inauguration of our 44th president, Barack (yes, Hussein) Obama.  I’m adding his middle name for all of our ultra- neo- conservatives out there (and also the Fox News junkies).  This is a momentous occasion which we should celebrate.  WAIT!  That last sentence is what I’m supposed to say.  Let me go into “Jason speak”…  Yeah, it’s great that we have finally, partially gotten past certain prejudices in this country, but c’mon people. 

I’m either so depressed that nothing matters to me, still burnt out from the election from hell, or am looking past “pigmentation problems” that I am not getting excited over the color of our new president’s skin.  I would feel differently if it were a gay man or lesbian being elected.  Certainly I will admit that.  I don’t think it is as personal for me because I have not experienced the same sort of struggles that black people have and do.  Why is it as personal for a white political commentator on TV as it is for the survivors of the civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s?  Should it be?  We all have been putting on these masks to make us look less racist which in fact make us more so.

Yesterday I pulled out and watched the seminal movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”.  While many people may find this movie terrible today, it was really groundbreaking for its treatment of black/white married couples.  Many of the principles in the movie I see to this day.  The most important message is that skin color shouldn’t matter and doesn’t make people different.  I had this instilled in me once I moved out of small town America.  To the residents of a lot of these isolated areas, this election means much more.  It’s embarrassing that we celebrate our racist history on this momentous occasion.

I am not trying to minimize the importance of the U.S. as a whole seeing past the color of one’s skin today.  We are making history in an awkward way.  For hundreds of years these prejudices have been at the base of the culture of Americans.  Finally, we are starting to break them down.  We have a hell of a long way to go and I hope that it happens fast.

Let us celebrate our rehabilitation today.  Let us celebrate change from the last eight oppressive years.  Let us celebrate our overcoming of racial barriers and stereotypes.  Let us celebrate social liberation.  Let us celebrate our bright futures.  Let us celebrate a man who will influence positive change. Let us celebrate diversity.  Let us celebrate a first in America.  Let us hope for more.

Thank God or any deity or lack of deity in which you do or do not believe that George W. Bush is out of power.

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Ice on the Allegheny River

January 16th, 2009 by jason
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Cold in Pittsburgh

January 16th, 2009 by jason
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Reminder: Protest Tomorrow in PGH

January 9th, 2009 by jason
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The Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents has continuing coverage on the protest rally tomorrow, Saturday, January 10.  Unfortunately, I am not able to attend due to my health.  The joys of trigeminal neuralgia in the winter preclude me from the procedings.  The escalation of pain is often set off by extreme cold and mine seems to be no exception today.  I do encourage everyone in and around Pittsburgh to join in giving a voice to our equal rights struggle.  It is really sad to see how many lesbian, queer, gay, bisexual, etc. people don’t know that they can be fired for being gay.  Yes, as a gay male working at a private company in Pennsylvania, I can be fired for being gay.  I hope to hell Obama can at least help us with that little issue.  Read more about the spirit of the rally before you go!

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