Dantche's World

Well, it has been so long since I wrote anything here I figured I am finally over the burn enough to talk about it. Around the 15th of October I was up late and made a fire in the fireplace using a few too many logs. The largest log apparently was rotten and when the bottom burned out it rolled out of the fireplace and onto the newly refinished hardwood floor. I was asleep on the couch not 10 feet away!

Fireplace and immediate area after fire, its hard to see but it all had to be rebuilt and refinished

I awoke suddenly to see my office engulfed in flames and the urethane on the floor burning. Realizing that the house is a giant tinder box I worried about the impending structure fire and not myself.... BAD DECISION.. while attempting to stomp out a puddle of liquid floor stain (or so it appeared) I managed to stomp in it hard enough that it went up my pant leg and stuck to my leg still burning. Realizing this was not a good thing I tried the old stop drop and roll which stopped the  open flames but apparently was too late to stop the third degree burns from happening. I am unclear about the timing of the rest of it but I do know that I went into shock, couldn't  feel my leg at all, ran outside and got the hose, turned it on, and went back in to put out all the fires myself. There was a thick cloud layer about 3 feet off the ground you had to duck under to see where you were going and I was going wherever I could cool down the burnt leg I had.

I got into the shower and got it all wet and when i  peeled back my pant leg all I saw was white papery skin that fell off and then white meat that was my leg. Chelsea then convinced me I in fact did need to leave for the hospital and she drove me to Marin general. I hobbled to admitting and at this point I honestly mentally was thinking I had like second degree burns, they would blister and hurt but that I was going home in a few hours with some good pain meds. Right before I put oen to paper to sign my name the shock wore off and every nerve in my leg woke up and told me it was unhappy with me. I have since blocked out the ability to remember how it felt but lets just say I tried to rip the throat out of anyone not carrying a syringe of morphine or dilauded!

The Doc at Marin General  took one look at me and said we cant help you here you need to go to the burn unit in the city! This was when my hopes truly sank, I have never needed to be moved somewhere because it was so bad a specialist needed to see me!

I took a long ambulance ride to St Francis hospital and was brought in to the bothin burn unit

Bothin Burn Unit

more to follow!

I once described what went on in my brain and why I had used certain self presribed medications in the following way. Imagine your brain is a small apartment with 4 bedrooms whose doors all point at each other. Now imagine there is a guy in each of them talking out loud and thinking about something completely different than the other 3. Whenever you sit down quietly to write down one of the four thoughts clearly, such as doing homewrok for school. jottting down a long email for your job, etc. the other 3 begin isbehaving and draw the power of the fourth away from him increasing their volume levels until you cant concentrate on what you wanted to. The maddening part is that when I try and focus on something important, I have to find things for the others to keep themselves amused to get even this much written down.

In the time it took to write the above, I had to check on my porn being downloaded, look out the window 3 times, wonder what gardening tasks to go do, determine if I could eat anything within eyeshot, worry about not having any money and what to do about it, and try and write the wehole rest of this entry in my head.

No, I am not hearing voices, noi the people in the rooms do not have names, and no number 2 did not say to kill your mother and chop her up in little pieces. I was able however to visualize the most gruesome movies scene depicting said act as the most gruesome real slaying I had heard of simultaneously.

Maybe an easier analogy for why/what my life is would be a race car with probably 3 of the worlds best engines in it, only problem is they are all 3 attached to the same driveline and have offcenter elliptical gears, meaning it makes tons of noise, produces unbelievable energy but explodes before getting to the finish line.

It is sad to think that a tremendous personal goal for me is to FINISH what I start, no matter how trivial the project may seem