Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Thanks TLC, for all the Nightmares

My entire life I’ve had a small problem with insomnia. It’s not an every night thing but at least one night a week, I can’t get to sleep till 2 or 3 in the morning. No it’s not PTSD, it’s been happening since grade school. Well, on two of my recent episodes, my kind wife was surfing around the TV before stopping on the learning The Learning Channel then proceeded to turn over with the remote and falling asleep. Leaving me up watching things straight out of the twilight zone.

Examples of the type of programs you can expect at around midnight on TLC:


Woman with Half a Body, was just too much information. The show follows Rosemarie Siggins around for a couple of years and compresses a couple of years of film into an hour show. This lady has it tough, she had her legs amputated when she was a child because genetic condition that deformed her legs and left them without sensation. She sounds pretty stubborn and shows a great distain of wheelchairs so she gets around on a skateboard. Her home life is a wreck, her mom dies of cancer, her 29 year old brother has the mentality of an 8 year old with a temper and her dad has Alzheimer’s and she has begun to realize that her stubbornness of independence has worn out her shoulders. Yet she is able to have a son, a husband (who likes to work out with 30 pound weights) and a hobby of working on cars. Another reason not to complain about my life, ever.


Face Eating Tumor, is a program about a five year old Indonesian boy named Noventhree. Who has a monstrous tumor caused by a disease called Gigantiform cementoma. What it does, it eats the bone and tissue around it turning it into a spongelike material that is made up of bone and soft tissue mixed together that takes over most of the face. A team of heroic Taiwanese doctors take on the case and over a series of 4 surgeries carve a couple of pounds of this bony sponge out of this kids face while shaping what was left with a dremel tool into a face like shape. See, all surgeons have this godlike urge to do what seems impossible. There was commentary through out the whole program but the thing that disturbed me the most was about this brother and two sisters that had this, I think I would sterilize myself before passing it on to my kids, let alone trying to have a herd of them. Definitely a gene we can chop out of the gene pool and if I get it, it’s time to swallow the gun. At the end of the story, they tell that he died of a respiratory infection on Sept. 14, 2005 at 7 years old.

The 750 Pound Man: I admit I forced myself to fall asleep halfway through this one, I remember reading about John Keitz dying of septic shock back in September while dieting at a retirement home. I did see enough of the show to see how they had a special ambulance with a ramp to take him from place to place (wish we had one, I could have used it to move that 630 pound tool box). Anyway family, if I let myself go this far, haul me to the ocean and let me go to be with my brothers of the sea.

The point of blog post is that watching these shows before going to bed is giving me nightmares, it’s my morbid curious nature that keeps me from turning my eyes away. Why God? Why? The horror! I can’t get these images out of my head!

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