Stark reality...

 Just watching the news this morning...they were talking about a shortage off drugs, specifically cancer drugs, but also others like antibiotics, etc.  How doctors are having to choose who to treat or alternate, less effective treatments.  Why?  Because of the demand for quick introduction of generic drugs to keep the costs down.  They didn't point this out in the story (how could they?  they have 2 minutes to keep our attention, right?), but what this tells me is that as consumers and patients, we have two choices: we can be denied treatment because the drugs aren't available, or we can be denied treatment because we can't afford the drugs that can treat us. 

Who's to blame for this?  Well, the reality is that no one is really to blame.  Is it fair to blame the drug companies for wanting to pay for the very expensive research it takes to develop a new drug?  No, not really.  Pharma does have a reputation for greed, like in the case of EpiPens and some other drugs like insulin.  And maybe there needs to be more government oversight, but if there is no profit in development and production, why do it?  None of us work for free and we shouldn't expect anyone else to.  

Can we blame the insurance companies?  We bitch about insurance premiums, but when something happens and you need care, take a look at the numbers - those premiums get "eaten up" very fast if there's an emergency room visit, or a hospital stay, or the need for some of these ridiculously priced drugs.  I used to be one of those "bitchers" - we were both healthy and it was just the two of us...Mark was in the union and $5/hour of his wages went to health insurance.  I'd say, "That's not fair!  We're only two people and the guy that has 6 kids pays the same amount!"  It seemed outrageous until within a couple years, he had an outpatient sinus procedure that cost around $10,000, and I had surgery for a detached retina that cost around $19,000. (Our deductible was $500!)  He would have to work for 2-1/2 years to pay that back!  And when he went through all that stuff that ended in him losing part of his leg, that was near $250k when the dust settled!  Needless to say, I quit bitching.

Who do we have left to blame?  The doctors?  I think they're doing the best they can.  What it really boils down to is this:  LIFE ISN'T FAIR. That's it. And there's really no way to make it fair.  At least not in a way that will make everyone happy.  Do we put everyone's name in a hat who needs treatment for cancer and make it a drawing?  If so, do we only put in the names of people who have insurance?  Then do we eliminate the people who can't afford the co-pay?  Because it's not fair to "stick" the hospital or doctor with our share of the cost, right?  People seem to think that it's ok to "stick it to" the people with deep pockets.  But we do that long enough, and like the drug companies who've decided it's not worth it to manufacture the drugs, the doctors will stop doctoring and the hospitals will close their doors because it's a money-losing business.

Here's my take on all of this depressing line of thought... Media, doctors, pharma have spent so much time indoctrinating us about sickness and ill-health that we've come to expect bad health to catch up to us eventually.  And anyone who understands the human mind knows that you get what you expect, what you think about.  We are bombarded every day with programs that tell us what to believe and we (unfortunately) gobble it up and it festers in our minds until it manifests into a health issue.  

My "spiritual guru" says the secret to good health, to finding joy, to getting whatever we want is to shut out the rhetoric about the things we don't want and to think only about the things we do want.  Don't be so quick to listen to the story about how to AVOID something - avoid being fat, avoid encountering road rage, avoid a strained back.  Don't listen to the hyperbole about fixing wrinkles, the latest diet, or how many steps a day you need to take for good health.  Don't absorb the hype about disease and drugs and side effects and what you can expect as you age.  These are all things that poison our minds with negative expectations.  We get old, we get wrinkles - we expect it and it happens. So many of these are so deeply ingrained that we can't shake them no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we meditate, no matter how we push the thoughts away.  They're completely entrenched in our subconscious mind that it is nearly impossible to dispose of them and most people never do.  My spiritual guru says that if we truly believed it, we could grow a new limb after an amputation.  It could happen someday, when that first person comes along who believes it with every fiber of their being - once it happens, that little seed of possibility, over time, could turn into "probability", and someday, it will be routine for people to lose a limb and simply regrow a new one!  Thank of that!

The mind is our most powerful tool and I've read that we only use about 10% of our brain power.  I'm sure that's an average, and people like Einstein, Stephen Hawking and other brilliant minds use(d) more and there are those that use less (I think I know some of them!)  But imagine what we could accomplish if we put what God gave us to better use!  Not just to use, but use in only a positive way.  No thoughts about disease or pestilence or war or ugly politics.  As we move away from those subjects, our vibration rises and our health improves, our spirits are lifted, our psyches feel rejuvenated.  It's been pointed out by many of those who believe in this "you get what you think about" movement that the word "disease" can be broken down to it's literal "dis-ease" - disease comes from your body experiencing dis-ease with life.  Unhappiness with x, y or z... your marriage, a problem child, a job you hate, where you live, what's happening around you, bad parents, a friend who is drug addicted or simply THE NEWS... To live with something very negative will eventually affect your wellbeing.  That doesn't mean you have to dump the spouse, or ditch the difficult child or abandon the friend.  But you have to find a way to SEE the situation differently so that it won't affect your wellbeing.

I actually have a pretty good example of how I used this strategy, though I'm not claiming to be an expert at it.  Mark was a heavy smoker and it was smoking that was his demise - he never got lung cancer, but it got him in many other ways.  Apparently his cardiovascular system was already compromised by his genetics and having been a smoker for many years (which further constricts the veins), it took it's toll when he was 52 and he had a blockage in a vein behind is left knee. First, they tried to clean it out, sort of "roto-rooter" it.  That didn't work. Then they tried to do a bypass, which means they take an unused vein (before this, I had no idea we had "extra" veins in our bodies!) from another part of the body and replace the section that is blocked.  So they sliced up one of his arms and removed a vein... "not suitable".  I'm not sure if that means it wasn't big enough, wasn't strong enough - they never explained that to us.  They tried the other arm and both legs, but couldn't find a vein that would work, so they closed him up to plan a new strategy.  He came out of surgery looking like Frankenstein!  He had incisions from wrist to armpit, held together with staples, and from knee up his inner thigh.  

Well, to make a long story short, over the next few months, his foot started to "die" and he lost his big toe and was in excruciating pain.  It was clear it was not going to get better and one of the doctors got very frank with us one day and said that if he were in this boat, he would amputate the leg "at this point (he indicated about 5" below the knee), let it heal and be done with it.  We could keep whacking away at your foot, trying to get it to heal and waste 2 years of your life, or we can take it off here, you'll be back on your feet with a prosthetic leg in less than 6 months."  It was a little overwhelming to hear, but Mark was ready to be done with the pain.  The doctors made it very clear that if he kept smoking, this disease, which they call Buerger's disease would progress and all of his extremities would be at risk.  And they told the story of a local lawyer who, over time, lost both legs and some fingers because he refused to quit.  

I won't go into any more of his gruesome decline over the next 14 years because this is all I need to say to explain how it pertains to my personal use of the technique I mentioned above.  Mark did quit smoking and seemed to have made that decision that he wanted better health.  But I soon realized that he was sneaking around and smoking.  At first, I just pretended like I didn't know thinking he surely can't smoke very much if he thinks he's keeping me in the dark.  But there came a point when I found him smoking and could no longer deny that I knew.  So I had to take a stand.  I ripped into him like I had just found out, told him I can't sit by while he kills himself this way, did all I could to make him feel guilty.  And he promised to quit again.  And we played this game for about 6 months.  I'd catch him again and raise hell.  He would promise again.  I was just raising my blood pressure and all kinds of holy hell with my body - joint pain, a hip going bad, headaches... At some point, I sat down and evaluated the situation and remembered some age old advice.  Ann Landers:  "Imagine life without him then ask yourself - are you better off with him or without him?"  I knew in some ways I might be better off without him, but I still loved him and my life would be very difficult financially without him.  And he was still my best friend, in spite of the fact that HE didn't seem to give a rat's ass about his health!  I would miss him if he was gone. And when I talked to my Mom about this, she said "If you want to stay, all you can do is face the fact that his behavior is going to shorten his life and deal with that."

So from that point on, I told him I would not give him any more grief about smoking, except to say that I do not want him smoking in the house.  He could smoke in the basement bathroom when it wasn't conducive to go outside as long as he ran the vent fan for a half hour after leaving the room.  And then I simply let it go, stopped fretting about it and decided I would appreciate the time he had left without feeling it was my duty to "keep him in line."  We all have a right to do what we want with our own bodies and if that's how he wants to go, it's his God-given right.  It took a lot of pressure off of me to let go of that feeling that it was my obligation to control him. And I started to feel better.

So I guess this rant started with that negative story on the news this morning.  I think I need to do what Jerry Hicks did at a much younger age.  Jerry was a "seeker of truth" let's say... He knew instinctively (which I think we ALL know instinctively, some are just more aware...) of this concept of "you get what you think about", and he quit watching TV or reading newspapers for several years, and because he stayed away from the news (which is more specifically the BAD news, because who talks about good news??), he had tremendous personal and financial success.  He didn't have the weight of the daily bad news holding him down.  Time for me to avoid it!

 Sun., 12/17

I'm not being a very good blogger! I really need to make it a point to spend some time once or twice a week writing. It helps to clear my mind and express what's going on. Not that there's anything terribly important going on.

This will be my third Christmas without Mark. My first Christmas without Mom. Things were starting to go bad for her this time last year. The first part of November, the family got together for Will's birthday and she didn't feel up to going. I think that was the beginning of the end. She was there for Thanksgiving but I could tell she was not feeling well at all. It kind of felt like she was gritting her teeth to be there and tolerated it as long as she could. I kind of remember thinking that this was not a good sign because Thanksgiving has always been her holiday. The one she looks forward to all year long. She didn't come to Christmas at all, she just wasn't up to it. When you think about it that way, she had six pretty miserable months. I hate to think of it that way because that's a long long time. Makes me very sad.

Planning to get together with my sister next week. She's busy on her birthday which is the 19th, so we're going to get together on 20th, which is Mark's birthday. This would be his 69th...wow, where did the time go??

Life is pretty dull right now.  The last two weeks, I've worked Monday and Tuesday then mostly just hung out at home, puttering a bit with little chores, watching TV and doing puzzles.  Merry and I did go down to Villisca on the 7th to scatter Mom's ashes on Grandma Dora's grave.  It was predicted to be a nice warm day, and it was - perfect for the "hunt" of trying to find Grandma's grave.  It was a challenge... in fact, we were starting to think her stone had been stolen, but it turned out we were looking at the "directory" wrong and instead of being 10 east and 3 north from the road, it was 3 west and 10 north from the road.  We had tentatively planned to scatter her at the farm, but I just thought since Grandma seemed to be there when Mom was in her state of transition, it seemed more suitable for their "remains" to be together. Afterward, we had lunch at a little diner there in town - we had picked up Kris, Merry's friend, in Red Oak.  She knew Mom very well when they were young and Mom and Kris's mom were best friends.  Her mom passed about 4 months before Mark and we were there the day before she passed when she was in that unconscious state consoling Kris. 

I spend an awful lot of time missing the fab three...  It can get me feeling a little blue when I dwell on the fact that the three people I was closest to in the world are all gone. Now that things are pretty much as I want them in the house, I've lost my "focus" that has kept my mind and psyche occupied for the last two years.  Not that I couldn't find other things to improve, but I've kind of "shot my wad" monetarily for awhile.  I got to thinking... I've spent a LOT of money the last 2 years starting when Mark went into the home.  Had the house painted in Aug. 2021 to the tune of about $3000... Getting the basement "rehabbed" cost me about $3000 as well, but that doesn't include what I spent at the Furniture Mart on carpet, the TV & surround sound, which was another $4000 or so. (That stuff I'm still paying for as NFM offers no-interest financing.) That took me through to the start of 2022.  Then of course the hail storm and the tree falling on the house - that ended up creating a bit of a windfall.  I got about $24k from the insurance company and spent $4800 on the tree removal and a little over $15.5k on the new roof, leaving about $3700 left over.  In 2022, the last room in the basement ended up costing about $3500 for the ceiling, paneling, trim and all the labor which "ate up" that "extra".  Also in the spring of 2022, I had the sunroom & dining room windows re-glazed to the tune of about $1700.  I got my new HVAC system in the fall of 2022, which cost $6400.  And earlier this year,  I had the gutters fixed and one new window put in which cost another $4000.  And the big one in early summer... the generator for about $12k.  I figure I spent almost $30k out of my pocket in the last 27 months!  Some of it was stuff we'd put off for so long and it really needed to be done.  But a lot of it was fixer-upper stuff.  In other words, I could have lived with it the way it was, but my thought was that I'm at an age where if I don't get it done soon, I won't have much time to enjoy it. I mean, who knows how many more years of good health or living in this house I have left?

So now I need to just spend some time recovering from all the expenditures over the last 2 years.  I still need to deal with the stucco above the porches, but that seems to be more about finding someone who can DO it as opposed to scraping together the money.  Apparently stucco work is a dying art...

As for my plants, most are either dormant or growing very slowly, but I'm surprised at how many are still experiencing growth spurts! Almost everything sitting in the south window in the living room is actively growing.  I'm sure that's because they get bright indirect light all summer long while the sun is north, but now they're getting direct sun, albeit not very many hours.  'Noelle', which got a HUGE leaf over the summer, has a new vine.  Skinneriana (or what I bought as that) has more than one new vine.  My texture-leaf kerrii, which has looked fat and happy but has not put on any new growth in over a year, has a pair of new leaves.  I have a couple different Dragons in hydroton and they both look ready to burst forth with new vines.  Variegated macrophylla has several new vines.  It all looks fabulous!

In the kitchen, the new hueschkeliana I got from Colorado Kathy is doing awesome, and my restart of my old one is looking happy again, too.  My wayetti growing in hydroton, that has been on the north shelf for many, many years is actively growing.  And the Dischidia ovata is climbing up over the higher shelf.  This is the time of year it gets pretty easy to start neglecting the plants in the GH.  I need to be diligent about keeping them watered enough!

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Mon. 12/18

Worked the airport today.  Ok, I'm using the word "work" loosely!  It was DEAD!  I had to spend the first hour doing one-on-ones because none of my crew was there.  Todd usually shows up EARLY, so I usually come in at 8:40ish, but they didn't call him in.  Jeff usually comes in at 9:00, but he hasn't been working because of an injured rib, but they called him so I thought "maybe he's better and will be there."  So I came at 9:00 and no, he wasn't there.  Gary usually comes in around 10:00.  It was freezing! The temp was in the 20's, but the wind made if feel like the low teens.  And because it was dead, I had to wait in the garage for cars to bring back.  So I got really chilled while I waited for Gary to show up.  Then, just before Gary got there and as I was driving out, I saw Todd coming in.  So we all got together and had a warm chase to do nothing in!  I probably didn't move even 10 cars and we finally left a little after 2:00.  There is just no point in them paying us to drive in circles and do nothing.  I couldn't convince them to let me call Erica to see if there was something else we could do...

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I had ordered three new chairs for the living room.  After I had it painted about a year and a half ago, nothing matched the new color.  So I decided I would splurge for my 65th birthday and get new stuff.  I got two very high-end leather sitting chairs that are even nicer than they looked online:

They're not snuggly chairs, but my living room isn't a cozy-type living room.  There is no room for a couch because of so many doorways (2 regular, and the double for the French doors), so three chairs is about the best I can do.  I see it more like an old-fashioned parlour, where you would sit and visit, but it's not a "gathering place" for the family.  They are very comfortable as well as classy...  And here is the LaZboy I got for my "sleepy" chair:

They only offered this in boring grey or beige at the Furniture Mart, so I special ordered it in this fabric.  It's really very nice, much more solid than my old chair.  Down side is that it touches the wall when it reclines because I don't want to pull it out any further.  But I love it.  I took the red chair to the basement.  I put the "cow chair" in the sunroom and put the sunroom wicker chair on the porch.  I had them put my old "sleepy chair" in the garage to have it hauled away.

 

In going through more of Mom's pictures, I found this one:

I love this picture, which I'd never seen before.  From left, it's Aunt Rosalie (2nd oldest), Great Uncle Tom, then Aunt Verla (oldest sis and the "real beauty" as Mom used to say), and Mom on the right, who was the youngest of the three.  Uncle Tom was her dad's brother.  She had very few memories of her dad.  Grandma Dora married her stepdad when she was only 6 and her dad had gone off to war right after she was born, so what memories she had of him were after they were separated.  Then Aunt Judi, the only one left, was born to Grandma's 2nd marriage when Mom was about 9 or 10.  Her stepdad never really treated the step-daughters very well - wouldn't let them call him "Dad" even though Mom, at her young age, wanted to so very badly...

 

Anyway, Uncle Tom is a great memory.  He was so kind, always soft-spoken and easy to love.  Aunt Mary, his wife, was a true tom-boy, and I always wondered if she was born today, would she have been a lesbian.  She wore men's clothes and kept her hair very short in a manly style.  But Uncle Tom adored her nonetheless!

They lived in a little shack house in a tiny town, had no indoor bathroom - just an icky old outhouse.  We had one, too, but we got an indoor bathroom by the time I was a few years old.  I just remember them as being dark and creepy and either very cold or very hot and being scared of spiders!  Thank god for modern plumbing!  LOL

 

Well, that's about enough for now.