My Health

                                                                         18 March 2015

Health

Now, I have a lot of things on my mind, in fact, I had planned to start writing a little about the people who have had an impact on my life. There are a whole bunch of folks, but I have to put that on hold for just a bit.

This blog is going to be about my overall health. I am 56 years old at the time of this writing and I feel like I am at deaths door.....well...almost.

I feel like shit. I have been sleeping. A lot. My sleep schedule consisted of a bunch of 3-5 hour naps at random times in any given day. I do make sure I am awake when I need to be (with the help of the alarm on my smart phone). I even have alarms for when I am supposed to take my pills, take my shots, take my son to school, pick him up (different on Wednesdays) and then I set alarms for stupid shit sometimes. Like when I should take a shower or go to sleep. Weird shit like that.

Ever since I went through my latest sleep study at the VA Hospital, I have not been sleeping very well at all. I wake up with headaches. Feeling congested and a sore, dry throat. I am sleepy shortly after I wake up. My back hurts from laying down so long.

I know, I am rambling....so I will get down to the point of this blog. I think about death. I haven't given death this much thought since I was a kid. Back then, the reason for devoting all this thought to death was the fear...the unknowing what will happen after death. I worried about it. I don't know when I finally overcame that fear, because I still felt anxiety over it up until my 30s. At some point, I just came to realize that I could not worry about the eventuality. So, I made my peace with death.

But, here lately, I have been thinking a lot about death. I have been retired since 1997. I have gotten fat and lazy. I have diabetes, a bad heart, and take about 17 different medications. I am getting real tired of it. My emotional state is like a roller coaster. I can go from feeling good about things in my life to worried about my health, to not giving a shit and then wanting to cry. All in a very short time. I have no one to really discuss this with, because I don't what these thoughts to get back to my wife. I love my wife dearly, and would never do anything to assist in my life being shortened, but it doesn't keep me from wondering what would happen after I died.

I met Franzie online in 2008. We were just friends who made each other laugh at first, but then I started feeling much stronger emotions for her. It was not long before I knew I did not want to be without her in my life for however long that may be. She lived in the Philippines and I lived in Niagara Falls, NY at the time. For us to pursue a life together would be quite a bit of work. Either I would have to move to the Philippines, or she would come live here in the US with me. Either way, I wanted to be with her.

Bottom line, in November 2008 I flew over there and on 2 December 2008, we were married at her family home in Camaligan, Philippines (just outside Naga City in the Bicol Region of Camarines Sur). After a brief return trip to the US, I made the arrangements to plan on spending whatever time it would take for Franzie and Nathan (our son) VISAs to come live here in the US. It is what she wanted to do.

It took almost a year and in late October 2009, we flew back to the United States (Franzie's first time out of the Philippines).

Now, without going too far off subject, I will just say that here it is almost 5 and ½ years since she came here and I feel I owe it to her to prepare her for life without me. Since she came here, she got a SSN, she learned how to drive and got a driver's license and in February 2013, we bought a home. I did not want her to be stuck in an apartment should anything happen to me. We bought her a car and she has a job that she has been at for over 2 years now. ...and last year, she was sworn in as a US Citizen which enabled her and Nathan both to get US passports.

We are in the process of petitioning the government to issue VISAs to her parents and we are hoping that they will be here this summer. After that, I feel I will have prepared her to carry on without being as dependent on me. I don't want that to be misunderstood that I would be ready to die at that time, just that I will feel she is more independent and will have a family network here for her should anything happen to me. This would give me a little better piece of mind, which hopefully will help me to control the ups and downs of the emotional feelings I have been having of late.

There is only one thing I fear in this life. That is losing my wife or one of my children before I die. Selfish, I know....but I would gladly trade my life for any one of theirs, without hesitation.

After writing all of this, I seem to forget what my exact goal was in writing this in the first place. I guess it is because I have been feeling bad, health wise. I am not ready to leave this world. I want to try and follow my doctors guidance and keep sucking in and blowing out for as long as I can....but do not want to suffer. For me to suffer and having my family see me suffer will make it that much more horrible for me.

I have not made my blog publicly known for the reason that I do not want my family to read these pages until after I am gone.

Now, having said all this, I feel I can go ahead and start writing about the people who I feel have had the greatest impact on my life...just had to get this out of the way first.