About CKD: Chronic Kidney Disease

I’ll try to publish several chapters to my blog before going on to publication

(this book is not yet completed)

Coming up

So I grew up in Berkeley and Albuquerque, mostly. My mom was a book buyer and librarian, and is now retired and living in California. My stepdad died in 1994, but was a carpenter and cabinet maker who quit Cal Berkeley before giving his doctoral dissertation when his first marriage went bad.

His degree would have been in the Latin Classics, and when he phased out the carpentry that sustained, he returned to school as a substitute teacher. 

My dad passed away in 2010, but was not a part of my childhood or teen years. I made peace with him, and appreciate the amends he made.

I went to Berkeley schools, but dropped out of the tenth grade and my mom said I’d have to work, so my work ethic was forged in my mid-teens, and remains active today.

My only health issues as a kid were bad dandruff, acne, bad asthma and insomnia. I was also addicted to food, and had an unfortunate but all too common lust for the airbrushed ladies.

As to the dandruff at least, in my forties, I found a shampoo (Dermarest), that keeps my scalp clear. I tried Head and Shoulders, Denorex, Selsun Blue, Neutrogena, Nizoral, TeaTree, and many more, but over four decades, only the Dermarest/Psoriasis formula worked; that, and the fact that my wife doesn’t allow me to eat a lot of fatty foods much. Cutting down on an oily salty diet made all the difference in the world.

To overcome acne, I consulted with my grandmother, who grew up during the great depression, and probably felt there was a cheap solution to many ills. She simply told me to stop touching my face. I am a stubborn person, but also sometimes very suggestible, and I took her advice; I stopped touching my face, and all my acne went away for good. I’ve had very little acne since that time.

The asthma was a harder nut to crack, and I had to take medicines such as Marax and Theodur. When I had bad attacks, Primatene Mist was a joke (it might have worked for some but not for me), and eventually, when it was apparent my breathing was not clearing up, my parents would take me to Oakland Children’s Hospital, where they’d put me on a nebulizer, which always cleared up my lungs and restored easy breathing. 

If you’ve never had an asthma attack, you might think being grateful for breathing was weird, but believe me, it’s like manna from Heaven, and the kind that the Israelites had not yet tired of. 

My mom used all manner of techniques to help me through my asthma, from weaning me on to a lifetime habit of drinking hot tea, to crushing the bitter nasty Marax over my food to get me to take it. She employed a humidifier to try and keep my lungs open, but later, when we moved from California to New Mexico (in the mid-1980s), it was the dry air that cured me. 

I participated in an asthma study at the VA hospital in Albuquerque, where we lived, after qualifying by having poor enough peak flow meter ratings, likely among other reasons. Before I left for New York three years later, I tried to earn a few extra dollars by participating in another study, but failed to qualify as my lungs were clear!

I was ecstatic, but the doctor or nurse said to remember that the asthma was likely to recur when I got older. That did occur, but so far, in my fifties, the meds are better, the inhalers are way better, and my asthma has never been as bad as in my early teens in Berkeley. Hopefully that will continue.

The insomnia was blamed (by me) on my asthma meds. They were designed, at least in part, to speed up my heart, easing my lungs labor. As a result, or so I thought, I could not sleep until the wee hours of the morning. That did not work well with my (past and regrettable) porn addiction, and it did not work well with school. 

I’d get to school dead tired (if I even went), and between being groggy as all get out. My other bad habit was not helping either.

Later in life, I got to know my real dad, and while he helped to ruin the first half of my life, he did try to make it up in his second half. One thing I learned about him was that he couldn’t sleep at night. He went to bed in the middle of the night, and got up around midday. 

So maybe my theory of the asthma meds being the culprit was incorrect.

Over some of my health issues, in Albuquerque, I worked at some retrospective art house theaters, in arclight cinema projection, and also did restaurant work and sold art supplies at a retail store.

On moving to New York, I studied theater, and performed in a significant experimental Shakespeare production, among other exploits in the field of drama.

During my New York years, I earned most pay waiting tables and managing a café. When the café was held up by a gunman, I handled the situation with calm and efficiency, but later had a nervous breakdown.

End of chapter.

Alternate cover:

(which do you prefer, readers?)