Mortality Has Reared It's Ugly Head

This year I've been feeling my mortality for the first time, and not because I turned forty-seven yesterday. Earlier in the year my wife had a blood clot on her brain and it really made me look at life and assess where I am in my own life. Yes I did realize that I have more than likely already lived more than half of my allotted time and I haven't accomplished much of what I want to. What I learned is that the clock is ticking. Clearly most people end up frustrated in life, not doing the things they would most like to be able to do. We get stuck in jobs we really would rather not do just to pay our bills. After all, it costs (a lot) to pay for a mortgage and associated bills, vehicles and gas, phones, food, clothes....this list could keep on going. The trick is to find a way to pay those bills while doing something that you enjoy. I'm not there yet.

Years ago when I worked at Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, WV my co-workers and I would laugh and joke about men (okay doctors) that would go through a mid-life crisis. These men always bought either a sports car or motorcycle and tried to look younger than they were. Now I feel that I understand them a lot better. Some of them clearly were trying to regain a part of their youth, a time when they were much happier, but they tried to do it by purchasing things instead of finding things that they like. That can only help superficially, smoothing the outside image that a person sends out without discovering what actually makes them happy. Also, it's usually at mid-life when you have the money to spend on these things, unless you're me. I've always been a late bloomer in life.

As for the others who were actually just trying to enjoy life more, well my experiences this year have made me think about what was really important in life. It isn't the things you accumulate, that you own. As a matter of fact those things usually end up owning you. You end up chasing the most recent, newest model or the coolest new gadget. I think it's much more important to be with people that you love and who enhance who and what you are. Basically, if you surround yourself with cool people you'll enjoy life more. Where you live, what you drive, your social status, none of those things are important to me. Making a huge sum of money while nice isn't that important either. What good does it do to make a million dollars a year if you work eighty hours a week and never get to see your family and friends? You never get to see your favorite band or go to the beach or see your child grow.

Believe me, if I could pay my bills off and find a way to support my family on a smaller budget I'd move to Peru right now. The cost of living is lower and there are so many beautiful things to see. I have many ideas that I need to work on, perhaps one of them could be the one to allow me to get paid to do what I like. You can write a hundred movie scripts but if nobody is willing to buy one, well you can't pay your bills with that. It seems that we always need a little help in one form or another to make our dreams and ideas work. Of course you have to put in the effort first to be properly prepared and make it easy for someone to say yes to those ideas. There are untold masses out there who have talent so you have to come with more than that. Determination and a strong will are necessary and even then you aren't guaranteed to succeed. The hardest thing is to find that someone who can help make it happen especially when you don't have any contacts in that field.

All I can do is keep working and planning and doing my research. At least then I can say that I gave it my best effort no matter what the outcome is. You can try and succeed or fail, but if you don't try you can only fail. Besides, if you throw enough crap against the wall eventually some of it will stick. Anybody out there who wants to help show me the way?

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

What Will Be Will Be

As I was driving to pick up my wife two weeks ago she called me to say the reason she needed me to take her to the Emergency Room. Her MRI had shown a dark spot. Immediately I followed my nature and started thinking deeply about what this could mean, not only to her but our family. What if it was something like a tumor? What if it was terminal? What would we do?

Besides being a deep thinker I am also a realist. What will happen is what will happen, there is no avoiding it. I'm not one to sit and bemoan why something has happened to me. Quickly I decided that if it were something that bad then I would make sure we that the time we had left together as a family would be special, that we would do everything that we always wanted to do but put off. If that meant letting the house go back to the bank and quitting my job to have the time for it to happen then I would do it. No question. I also said a quick prayer as I drove that none of this would be necessary.

Thankfully the news has been good. Although she has a blood clot on her brain it seems like surgery will not be needed at this time. By the time of the MRI her body was already fixing the problem. Last week she had a CAT Scan that showed that the blood clot was getting significantly smaller. We're hoping that in the coming weeks it will dissolve completely and there will be no more problems from it.

Then I asked myself, "Why do we always wait until it's too late to make our time special?" Instead of taking time away from our busy lives to do the things we want to do we instead put it off to do "tomorrow." Then we find out that there are no more "tomorrows" and we wish we could change it all. Why don't we try to have that spirit all the time?

Life just gets in the way. I mean we have to work to pay for our food, housing, clothes and transportation and that is getting harder to do every day. It's only natural that we keep trying to do those important things while dreaming of a time when we can do what we want instead of what we have to do. Once realized though, how much longer can we keep putting things off for a better time? After all, time is not infinite.

Published by Don Leach

The Week In Review, Health Scares And So Forth

Last week proved to be a difficult one in my household. My wife had been having symptoms that sounded like they were TIA which is also called mini-strokes. There is no lasting damage but it can be a precursor to an actual stroke so she went to the clinic and had an MRI of the brain scheduled. Five days before the MRI she stopped having her symptoms but decided to err on the side of safety and went ahead with the MRI. Once there they saw a dark spot and sent her to the Emergency Room and due to a mis-communication (happens a lot in U.S. healthcare it seems) she was admitted. The doctor thought that she was continuing to have her symptoms. It was determined that she had a blood clot but that it was old and wasn't currently bleeding so she was allowed to go home. The followup MRI is on Tuesday and hopefully it will show that the clot has decreased in size otherwise surgery may be needed.

She was understandably upset and her nerves were on edge and then she developed something new. She said her head felt like when you fall down and scrape your knee, that sensation, and she was almost sure that it had started to bleed again. On Wednesday she went back to the clinic and they did the neurological tests and determined that she was fine, what she was feeling was brought on by stress and worry. Since then she's been doing much better. Perhaps she just needed to hear from another person to relieve her tensions. Around this time our son started sounding like he was getting a cold but really it was nothing to hold him back. He took his medicine every day and since we caught it early it's almost all the way gone now. He's at a wonderful age when little things like being sick are not enough to hold you back or slow you down.

As for me, well I had a follow-up appointment at my doctors office so that he could check on a few things. He decided to take the decision out of my hands and started me on medicine for high blood pressure since it seems to be getting worse instead of better. He also put in for me to have another sleep study so that I could get a new C-Pap machine for my sleep apnea which as he remarked, is quite severe. I stopped using my C-Pap machine over four years ago after my son was born and it then later simply disappeared. I have my suspicions about what happened but in the spirit of keeping harmony in the house I'll keep it to myself. For now.

Perhaps with a new C-Pap machine and the exercise routine that I started a few weeks ago I'll be able to discontinue the medicine as long as my health improves. The other thing that he discussed was my cholesterol level which is also high. As a matter of fact he said I'm in the pre-diabetes stage which means I need to make lifestyle changes now before it's too late. So I've been doing a lot of thinking about what needs to change and how I can make it happen. I'm already on the way with my commitment to exercise so now we have to see about a change in diet, even though I wrote last time about not doing so at this time. Karma has a way of biting you in the butt, doesn't it?

I believe the best way for me to do everything is to make a loose schedule of what needs to be done each day and that way I can have something to work towards. Since I agreed to teach in my men's quorum at church (two Sundays a month) and I want to start learning to play bass guitar, as well as needing to start to improve my pitiful Spanish language skills (after six years of marriage to a Peruvian woman it's way past due) I'm sure I can fill up the time that I have before and after work. And if I can't then my wife will be more than happy to assist me so I better do it on my own. We keep putting our heads down and are trying to move forward no matter what obstacles are put in our way. The only other option is to give in to despair and give up on life and I don't see that as an option. Life goes on whether we agree with it or not. Stay tuned.

Published by Don Leach