This seems like important news.

My Vietnam wound reopened in early November last year, violent pain, about the same level as the original wound (9+), leading to a life changing epiphany, the one profoundly good thing to come out of all this.

when the pain became unbearable and even oxycodone couldn't touch it without me nearly falling down the stairs, I used cocaine one last time for instant relief. That was the first time since before Hurricane Sandy, maybe three years. I had tried quite hard to rebuild my life since then.

Cocaine, easily available, would wreck everything I had built, I have no control over such a drug, it was the first time in my life I realized that.

That night, during a moment's cocaine-blessed relief, I held my life in one hand and the drug in the other, I could only have one.

I threw the drug away, everything concerned with it, never so glad. I was scared straight. I am more afraid of the drug than I am of the pain.

I will not give up everything else. I have always had a craving, had to go to meetings, but now, no more. Ever. In a single night I have lost all yearning CRAVING, I am for the first time ever, drug free. I am also probably aware that it might kill me at this point. I haven't the slightest desire.

but this experience came at a severe cost.

the biopsy at the end of June then surgery coming in August, is for the consequences of my ancient ak47 gunshot wound from Vietnam 1967.

in which I had developed osteomyelitis. There was an extensive procedure back then to cure it.

About six years ago, while Donna was still alive, I had my last ferocious Vietnam dream.

In some bizarre compulsive twitch, my hand scratched at the wound with my very hard fingernails and opened the artery at the site, causing four-foot arterial jet of blood. I cinched it down with a sock and belt until a surgeon could sew it closed.

But it reopened the site, which either became re-infected or allowed access to a never healed infection

The twitch –

The dream that caused all this was of me in the St. Albans critical ward, when the doctors and nurses making rounds suddenly stripped off their gowns and masks to reveal

That they were a squad of NVA, fully armed, spraying the ward with machine gun fire, bodies flying off the gurneys, and my hand compulsively went to my wound, clawing, opening up that artery.

My last Viet Nam dream had come home with me, very visceral. I think the "infection" was far more than in my leg.

now, since last November, the site will not close and the underlying bone infection must be excised, pins must be added, bone replaced, skin to cover,

first checking that chronic infection has not become carcinogenic already, as is often the case.

all revealed by a very visceral nightmare.

I was just told much of this procedure on Friday and had to get this all out.

I should walk again in a few months, maybe autumn, healed within a year. A good leg, much metal, no cancer.

to begin the therapy to stroll with my dog again and even may be dance one more time. Yay!

It's unclear if I had this infection for many years and age allowed it to surface. I do everything now to rebuild my immunity,

make all that surrounds that tissue as healthy and strong as I can.

Between this and my COPD, there is significant struggle, but it brings greater focus, drugs are a distant memory, there are no more nightmares,

the rest of me is healthy, and I take care of 94 year old Mom, a struggle in itself.

I have to arrange constant care for her for the many months I can't be there.

But this part can be treated with sequential surgeries and antibiotics, I think the rest will be alright.

There is light at the end of all this, I will make it all positive.

Maybe read War and Peace, Moby Dick, "The making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes. Work on upper body strength. Learn demanding guitar pieces.

Try to write better. Draw. Record.

I think I am far better now already.