Journal - The Queer KYD

April 27, 2026April 28, 2026

Paying The Price

A simple journal post for today.

I’m dead tired even though I slept hard last night. Just about every bone in my body aches from the abuse I put it through for a good chunk of last week. Three days later I’m paying for it, as always with the pain comes lack of sleep. Sure enough I woke up this morning feeling blue.

I told my wife, the one and only Mrs. Kyd, that I was “stove up” .

“I’m all stove up this morning.”

“You’re what?”

“You know…stove up.”

“And what the heck does that mean?”

“Stove up” is an old midwestern term I guess. It means you’re dead tired and feeling it all over. If someone says that to you in Kansas, you’ll know exactly how they were feeling.

“Man, I feel for you, know what you mean.” would be the polite reply. They’d know why you were acting so slow.

Please don’t ask me to look it up, or find out its origins, cuz I’m too stove up to bother.

At first I thought my unhappiness today is brought on by the pain I’m going through at the moment. But then it dawned on me it’s being compounded from a lack of people in my life. I’m friggin’ lonely.

I’ve come to the horrible conclusion that I’m really not that important to anyone. No one besides the dogs depend on me, at all. It’s a sad reality when you reach that point. Everyone’s life would be unscathed by my death when you think about it. I have a few friends, but really the gist of the conversations are “you doing alright?” and “yeah, I’m fine.”

“Talk soon.”

I even believe my passing would be more of an inconvenience to my wife, being stuck with two dos to worry about. I know she loves me dearly, but believes we needed two dogs like a hole in the head. Little does she know they’re the only reason I’m still alive.

I do manage to get out and socialize, if and when my body cooperates. If saying hi to a few folks is socializing. But I’m missing people I love and sit here brooding about it.

I had the best of times, kinda sorta, last week. Just a really nice time of it. I say kinda sorta because it would have been better to have done that with a brother or a cousin or someone close. A grandson maybe.

Had a good time fishing was all there was to it, simply standing by the water and trying to catch a fish.

Away from the trials and tribulations of life.

Trying to stay out of my own head.

Wednesday afternoon I went to the trout club which I joined about three years ago. The club consists of a lodge, complete with a small restaurant, a good chef and bedrooms for overnighting. Which is what I did for 3 three days and two nights. Glamping is the term I think, glamorous camping. Although it wasn’t too glamorous, considering the place was built in 1905 and hasn’t change a lot since.

The land the lodge sits on also consists of two large ponds, and one lake between them. Just an hour from the big city, but you feel you’re in the middle of nowhere. The waters are stocked with rainbow and brook trout from our own fisheries, but since it’s catch and release only there’s always some fish to be found. If you’re good enough.

I basically stand there fly fishing, moving from one spot to another trying my best to catch a few rainbows. The sport of a thousand casts it’s called, for good reason. Early morning for 4 hours, then back out again for the afternoon and evening bite.

Civil twilight is the best time to catch fish I’ve always thought. Civil twilight is approximately 30 minutes before sunrise and 30 minutes after. That real quiet, half dark and half light time where you could still make things out, but not all the details.

If anything else today you learned something new…civil twilight.

Friday morning was the greatest time in terms of numbers of fish. Although there were several other old retired fools like me fishing, the wily rainbows liked the pattern and color of fly I was using. Thirty some fish in three hours. They weighed anywhere from 2 pounds on up to the biggest of the day at 12.

Cast cast cast….fish on…netted….released. Repeat. There’s wasn’t any time to think really, to get all wrapped up in thought.

So I sit here all stove up, three days later, wondering how I’ll make it through this day. Waiting for a call or text from someone who cares.

I’m in my head today and need to get out.

April 20, 2026April 20, 2026

“If You’re Having That Much Pain, Imagine How Bad it Really Is”

The title above is a quote from my daughter, who was responding to an email I had sent to her last Tuesday.

If you’ve read the previous post you’ll know how bad I was the Sunday night. All the bad actors were waging war at the same time. (One week later I can sit here at the dining room table and try to post. My new goal is to post at least once a week, which is pretty awful.) That Sunday night the pain had reached one of the highest I have ever felt. Ever. That’s a lot of disasters, accidents and stupid mistakes over the last 60 years, all causing major negative consequences. Broken bones, stitches, bruising, gashes, you name it -I’ve had it.

April 19, 2026April 20, 2026

Totally Irrelevant Dribble: Or How I can Kill Days Navel Gazing

Is that the right term? Navel gazing?

I believe it means that I’m doing absolutely nothing but sitting with my head down staring at my navel. Hours blown while my mind zooms in and out and back to where it started. Repeat.

In my case, just to be honest, I’m staring at a “navel” that exists in a million year old river rock that I stole from someone’s garden. A small slit that was once full of crystals, long eroded over the millenia.

Of course there’s a story behind this.

April 3, 2026April 3, 2026

An Indescribable Feeling of Joy

A couple of weeks ago I opened my eyes, looked at the iPhone on the coffee table and realized I had slept from 10:30 last night without waking. I was basically in the same position I started in, on the couch and curled up in a semi-fetal position. 7:30 in the morning, with hints of sun coming through the front window.

Within 30 seconds of waking, I also realized that the overwhelming nausea I had felt for the last 6 days was gone completely. My pain level that morning was the lowest it had been in several weeks. The normal feeling of aching in every joint was gone, maybe not completely, but enough my mind was not attuned to it. For once pain was not a constant distraction.

March 18, 2026April 3, 2026

Frustration and the Inability to Heal

I’m overly frustrated today, as I find myself exhausted and down. A funk has set in, the shadow of a cloud is once again hanging over my head. Maybe it’s a reaction to lack of sleep for the next two nights, as restless legs have been keeping me up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning before I finally fall asleep. My body aches, but at least I’m not sick, meaning my gut seems fine.

Mrs. Kyd has been traveling, and during our nightly call I told her I could feel my depression coming on and that I was feeling down for no specific reason. Is it this unbearable lengthy winter we’re experiencing, or the loneliness I go through when she’s traveling? I don’t think so. Seasonal Affective Disorder? Hmmm…it certainly plays a role, but don’t think it would cause such ups and downs.

Nothing specific I could think of, I’m just plain down. I wish I could pin this someone or something, because then it could be dealt with. Chronic depression comes on like a common cold. You don’t know how or where you caught it, it’s just there and needs to be dealt with somehow.

I absolutely hate the feeling of being depressed and wish to hell there was some sort of fix, cure, or help. “Pull yourself out of it.” I’m grateful the missus don’t ever say that, but now fully understands this is something out of my control.

Canada is sorely lacking in mental health care. Nearly to the point of non-existence. Even if I was willing to pay out the nose for help, there just aren’t enough actual doctors of psychiatry practicing medicine here. The waiting list is close to 18 months now. And please don’t put me in a group of other people to discuss my childhood trauma, that may work for some but not all.

That was one benefit in the U.S., although you had to pay for it, you still had easy access to a psychiatrist. I’m tempted to find a good doctor in the States and make the hour and a half drive (one way), but doing this every two weeks would be more demanding than I think I could manage on my own. Maybe just have to think of it like a fishing trip.

Sure there’s plenty of psychologist or psychotherapist around, but I need someone with the ability to prescribe an anti-depressant here in Canada. Or else I can fill a prescription in New York that I would simply take with me across the border. There must be some new medication that would help, if not I’ll know we at least tried. But it takes a good psychiatrist to figure out a treatment plan, and follow through with it.

I’m tempted to start making the trip. Besides a little bit of gas and time what can it hurt?

Will pharmacology offer any benefit? Maybe, but we’ll never know until we try. Are there alternatives? Sure, like ketamine treatments. But we know that was disastrous, for me at least. I can still go back on Abilify, and become totally unemotional. No more real lows, but no highs either. Just plain friggin’ numb to the world.

Maybe a simple frontal lobotomy would work just as well, save the trip and the money.

The best way I’ve found to get through these darker periods is to hope for lighter and brighter days to arrive. There will be days when I feel much better than this emotionally, they just are getting to be fewer and farther between.

I’m not one to sit and wait patiently though. I am looking into a treatment called Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or rTMS. The therapy is now being offered where I normally get nerve blocks, spinal epidurals and the like, so I do trust them to have my best health in mind.

Instead of me writing troves of misinformation I thought the link below from the Mayo Clinic would give you a better idea of the treatment.

So watch this space as I go forward with trying rTMS at least. Anything to help…absolutely anything.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/about/pac-20384625

March 11, 2026March 11, 2026

The Gander Attack: A Tale of Trauma (Part 1)

(Author’s note: My apologies for doing this in 2 parts, but there was a bit of background that I thought was relevant. Although this isn’t directly related to my personal situation in dealing with PTSD, depression, and the like, it’s something very similar. Okay, to be truthful, just another brain fart from yours truly.)

This is a tale of a traumatic event, and the resulting consequences suffered by my best friend. It starts from when the two of us bonded, the traumatic event itself, and how it affected both our lives. Since we are inter-connected, we share the same goal of trying to make things better.

My best friend, Blu, was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was a 1 year old puppy. Still in the “cute” stage of puppyhood, but nearly full grown. In my humble layman’s thinking, I now feel the diagnosis of epilepsy to be inaccurate. You will have to bear with me as I let the whole story unfold.

March 2, 2026March 3, 2026

An Infinite Sadness

So after much deliberation, internal debate I have given up on the possibility of ever feeling “better”. An objective reasoning based on a simple method of analysis and data. I wake up sick and in pain, if I’ve even gone to sleep. At times “waking up” simply means getting up off the couch.

When I do sleep it’s from the dose of trazodone, then the dogs wake me up in a stupor.

Yesterday I decided to abandon all hope of feeling half decent and decided I just need to learn how to get by everyday feeling like crap. There is data that supports this, as my TimeTree calendar has a note on every day I’ve been sick since last September.

I was hoping, praying, this year would be different, but I started with a fresh count and after 2 months I’ve been bedridden for 20 days. 20 days out of 60, or for you statisticians a whopping 33%. Not that that has anything to do with statistics.

For 20 days I was totally non-functioning. I would give up on sleep, and if I slept a few hours would wake up from the nausea. All I could do was sip ginger ale, eat a saltine or a Ritz cracker, and go lay down. First the couch, then the bed. Up and down as there is nothing I can do to get comfortable. My own body the villain.

It’s hard to describe the feeling really, the worst seasickness? Or a case of the flu? All wrapped up together. If I’m lucky on day four or five I can eat plain pasta in the form of egg noodles, maybe a piece of toast.

Then I’ve got a week or ten days where I have to grab life and take advantage of the time. Live as much as I can while waiting for it to happen again. I live in fear of the next time, but it keeps on happening.

It’s caused such a feeling of melancholy, way beyond the depression I deal with.

It’s the knowledge that this is what I have to deal with from here on out, that is the way my life will be.

Remorse.

Dejection.

Like life is being slowly taken from me.

I’ve spent the last 10 years dealing with pain, so now this is one more thing to cope with. That’s the best way to put it, just cope.

Sorry if I’m whining, just feeling it today..

February 13, 2026February 9, 2026

Over-reacting or Just Plain Over Acting? Neither, It’s me, it’s normal.

(Author’s note: my apologies for the delay in posting, well actually not posting at all lately. Having been bedridden for 14 days in January I find myself way past being down. Waaaaay past. I’m going to have to force myself to take action, do something, anything, or it’s never going to get better. In the meantime, here’s a look at my day from hell today.)

There’s a reason for the title, as I find myself reacting to a bad situation on a day that started off well. I almost felt half decent this morning, both physically and mentally. Every day has its challenges when you deal with both chronic pain and depression, but today had started off promising. The day wound down with thoughts of ending it all as it’s the only way I can see to get out of this miserable world I’ve created.

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026

Good Lord, I feel Like I’m Dyin

Author’s note: My good friend tells me I’m not whining, I’m venting, and have every right to do so.. So this is a vent about the last few weeks, following a horrible Christmas. Being constantly ill (nauseated) and in physical pain for these past 5 years has been more than a challenge. I don’t know how many more times I can pull myself back up, as the frequency of these “events” seems to be increasing. I was hoping for a break after the Christmas disaster, but alas…)

If you read this blog you know by now music plays a big role in my life. Something is playing in my head constantly as background music, my own personal elevator Muzak. Every once in a while it’s something new, the melody breaks through my train of thought and I have to sit at the piano.

It’s usually something from my past.

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026

The Second Worst Christmas

Seems I’m leaning toward writing about seconds, more specifically the second worst things in my life. Am I saving the worst things for last? Seems that way. But I will write about the longest day of my life, and the worst Christmas I promise. They’re at least a fun read. Someone once told me my life is like a movie with too many plot twists and turns to be real. I wish. The worst Christmas is a long drawn out saga of travel and adventure…haha. But it did have a happy ending, sorta.

But let’s talk about the Second Worst Christmas. Apologies for the shorter length of this, I’m in a fight at the moment. Nothing new, just my body is waging war against an invader, yet to be identified. Whatever is happening, it’s like I’m an innocent bystander who is forced to endure an ever worsening fight with pain, inflammation and severe nausea. The pain in my gut is crippling, and I’m relegated to laying in bed all day, stopping every so often for a cig and more ginger ale..