and if you believe that, I have a really cool commercial property for sale, runs from new jersey to new york.....
Since a few weeks ago, I have gone from elated to miserable, from very very sick, to amazingly healthy, from very encouraged about my future, to checking out prices at crematoriums. Life is giving me some choices (which is rare in and of itself) and some of those choices aren't all that bad, given certain assumptions.
The Numbers:
Best case: I can live a normal life, die of old age. 2% probability, and 'old age' is defined as 70.
Worst case: My brain explodes before I am finished writing this. .003% probability. (Okay, I made that one up. :-)
If I do Nothing: in three years, I have an 89% chance of still being alive
In 5 years I have a 70% chance of being alive, but with a 30% chance of suffering a debilitating stroke.
in 11 years, when my son turns 18, there is only a 22% chance that I will be a normal, functioning 55-year-old man. There is a foggy probability melange that mixes death, severe disability and systemic organ failure that is so dismal it doesn't bear repeating here, not if I actually want to function for the rest of this day. Let me put it another way: 20 years of uncontrolled stage 3 hypertension is pretty much a death sentence. Melodramatic? yes, it is. but the numbers don't lie, and they lay out a neat probability line for how my health future looks.
I realize I am obsessed with this, probably obsessed with it beyond all proportion. It is almost impossible to work out proportionality when, on one side of the ledger is EVERYTHING and on the other side is.... well..... everything.
This is mortality, closing in. I have expected it for years, but I am now FEELING the crush of it. My nemesis has a new name (hypertension) which replaces my former nemesis (asthma), which was far more annoying, but a tad less deadly. Of course, the asthma isn't gone, it's just getting it's clock ceaned by the sheer brutality of death from uncontrolled hypertension. Blindness, diabetes, heart and kidney failure. Slowly.
The doctors I have spoken to are split evenly (2 against 2) that my hypertension is a lifestyle problem, or an endocrine problem.
I hope the two on the lifestyle side of the argument are wrong, but I suspect they are not. I am beginning to believe I need to fundamentally change who I am to beat this.
And fundamental personal change is a mystical thing.
Historically, I adapt quickly and well, but this bump in the road is rather large. We will see. Less optimism than in my last posts, but the despair I felt after my last e/r visit (which I have not yet written about, the despair was THAT bad) is receeding.
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6 comments:
wow its been awhile since i've read this.....holy shit!!!!!!!!
so they are split on what they think....so they just don't know.....are you doing any better since the post, or since I last saw you with the new medication?????
this might be a dumb question.......but did you actually look up those percentages????
No seriously.......
I did the same thing when I got the heart failure. I was obsessed with the numbers......something about numbers can be either extremely comforting, or terrifying depending on if they are in your favor or not........
just remember, you can't predict the future.
They gave my husband's grandfather 6 months to live with his cancer, he lived 5 years.....sheesh...I hope they find out what is really wrong and get you back on track
ok one more comment I promise......
isn't the lifestyle change one more likely to get better?
yeah...I know.......change is hard.....just weigh the pros and cons though......
not as good food versus death
less salt versus death....
yeah I"m being dramatic.....seriously worried about you! I know how scary heart shit is......i could'nt imagine if mine had gone on any longer than it had......
Yeah, I am actually doing much better. Been in and out of the E/R, and they are fiddling with my medication.
The drugs they prescribe for high blood pressure are mostly innocuous, diuretics to reduce water retention, and a bunch of chemicals that do things that are understandable only by cardiologists. But they are taking a pretty heavy toll on my life. The meds are supposed to be almost unnoticeable, but being that I am who I am, they arent doing to me what they do to normal humans. I feel slowed, turned into a zombie, and lightly garnished with celery.
Yeah, I did look them up, that's why I am so spooked. the numbers suck. But they are serving their purpose of scaring the crap out of me. Lifestyle change is REALLY hard. I remember quitting smoking, back in the day. I have not smoked a cigarette since 1987, and I am STILL having smoking dreams. And occasional nicotine cravings. I even caught myself smoking a joint thinking "I wish this was a cigarette" This lifestyle change is much harder than that one was. I have to stop getting excited. Me. Stop. Can you imagine, even in your mind's eye, me sitting quietly and passively?
AND, Meri, if I ever run another D&D game, your character just got 20,000 experience points for commenting on my blog. :-)
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