When I was a child I thought I would live forever. And then my best friend died, and Mom explained death to me in a way that perhaps no parent should. "When you die, you go in the ground and get eaten by the worms."
And look at me now.
After that I've never felt very long for the world. During high school I got it into my head that I was going to die at 48. I changed my mind and lowered it to 46. And there it remained for a few years. Around the time I started drinking and exploring a more social side of my life I realized that if I continued in the same fashion I would live to 40, and that's it. People would ask me what I would do if I somehow lived to 41. I advised them glibly that I would kill myself at 1:59 am on July 25, 2018. My reasoning? I was born at 2 am on the dot. I didn't mean it, but I said it as seriously as I could so whoever asked me *had* to wonder if I was telling the truth.
It was a different world.
And suddenly, magically, I turned 41. As of this writing I have less than a month before my 46th birthday. That will put me within seven years of the age Mom was when she died. I felt that I could beat that score. I believe I said that during the GF I wrote last Monday.
So when I found myself in the ER, waiting for my room in the hospital to be ready, thinking I might have a tumor in my small intestine, things got a little grim for me. I felt like it really was the end, and I wasn't going to beat Mom's record. And yes, I did come up with a story idea, but that's not all I did as I rested in the darkness, morphine calming the screaming bastard in my lower back.
I thought about all the people who needed me to be around, and I thought about ways to tell them that I wouldn't be there. I felt especially bad for the brother who lives with me. He can't afford to keep living here without me. I thought about things I wanted to tell my loved ones before the end.
But it wasn't all doom and gloom in that room (ah jeez, someone call Dr. Seuss). I wondered, what if it's nothing? Or what if it's something that can be easily dealt with? What if this isn't the end?
I couldn't just keep doing business as usual, that's for sure. I don't know how the rest of you view me, but my life is fairly pathetic. It's pretty much work, then tasks around the house, then hang out watching movies and shows while getting high and waiting for bedtime. Get reading and writing in whenever I can. I used to have a rich social life. It's dried up for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that people think that since I'm no longer drinking, I no longer want to hang out. It's wrong, but here's the thought process: "Hey, all we do is drink at bars. He probably doesn't even want to see a liquor bottle. Let's not invite him for his own good." I can and have spent time in bars without drinking. Without even being tempted to drink. It's actually kind of fun because I was usually the drunkest person in the room. It's fun to see other people get fucked up.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about tonight. Because once you've had a brush with death you can't let the status quo take over again. So I thought about ways to improve my life.
I want to quit caffeine again, but more to the point, I have to stop drinking energy drinks. One positive side effect of not drinking booze is a nearly endless reservoir of energy. I'm bursting with it throughout the day. I used to be able to sit quietly and still. Now I fidget. I try to burn it off by rocking out to music whenever I drive, but it's not enough. The only time I'm tired is when I wake up in the morning. That's when I feel I need the energy drinks, so that's when I drink them. I have to stop that.
I also want to quit Caffeine Free Diet Coke. I'm only down to one or two cans a day, but that might still be too much. It's the most healthy of the soft drinks, but it's still pretty unhealthy. My idea is to spend my days drinking nothing but water. The problem is, when I do that my heartburn returns for some reason. I'll just have to battle it with Tums, I guess. I'm not getting rid of soft drinks all together. I think I'll let myself have them if I'm at a restaurant or at a friend's place for dinner, etc.
But the biggest thing I want to do is get back to working out. I can't work out my entire body. I'll have to cut anything having to do with my legs. Maybe my back, too, although from what I understand there are a few moves I can do with my back that won't impact where I have constant pain. And that pain shouldn't be a problem after Friday, when I'm getting another spinal injection. At least for a while.
Now that I don't have a bed I have the room to work out again. Oh yeah, my bed. After 30 years of service it finally fell apart on me. I flipped and rotated the mattress a lot. Hell, I rotated the box springs, too. Until finally it had to be tossed. I sleep on an air mattress that's honestly more comfortable than that bed was near the end. That bed had lumps and divots. There was only one comfortable place to sleep on it, and that was pretty sweet while it lasted.
Shit. I'll bet my bad back is because of that fucking bed.
The only drawback is, the air mattress runs low around 4 am, which wakes me up. If I'm lucky I can keep my eyes closed and reinflate it and then go back to sleep. I can also do it if I keep only one eye shut. But if both eyes open? The chances drop significantly.
My aunt says she'll buy me a bed for my birthday. I'm going to talk with her about it this week. Heh. I remember when I was trying to get out of the hospital, I sat on the couch looking at the bed. I was begging to get out of here, where I had an actual bed, to go back to my air mattress at home? I guess so.
I also plan to walk more at the forest preserves I frequent. See? I have such wonderful ideas to improve the quality of my life, but whenever I do that? Something horrible happens to me.
Naturally, with my head full of these ideas, I got a call from my GI doctor's office today. He wants to see me ASAP. So much so that he's coming in on a day he usually doesn't. That can't possibly be good news. When I talked to the hospital GI doc she said that she hadn't watched the whole video the camera pill recorded. She said she glanced through key parts of it. Maybe my GI doctor took a closer look? Maybe he found something?
So maybe I should hold off on this stuff for now, at least until after I see him. I've said before, technically this cancer scare isn't over. There's still some stuff to investigate. They scanned my whole body except my head, so maybe that's where the tumor is?
I know it's kind of pointless worrying about it now. Think of this as me whistling past the graveyard. I'll keep you updated on everything.
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