Thursday, February 4, 2016

Funny

Life is funny. Crazy how your whole life can change in a day. One thing and boom, your whole life changes.
I feel that I've been kinda upside down and on edge since the ER visit in Oct. So many procedures, so many office visits, IVs, drugs, scary diagnosis......finding out my heart is failing. In that one moment, in hearing that phrase "it's heart failure", my whole life, my whole world changed. It's odd to know that my heart cannot support my life, it's odd to realize that without the pacemaker and drugs, I won't survive. Sometimes I wonder if it's all borrowed time but that really doesn't matter. All that matters is I'm still here and I HAVE to make these changes if I want to live. So my life is centered around a handful of pills in the morning, another handful in the evening. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it all. Some days, I'm scared, some days I'm sad, most days I'm ok. I have to remind myself this isn't a death sentence. I could live for many years like this...or I could drop dead tomorrow. Why worry? No one knows when their last day is going to be but I can't help but think about it. It has made me think about my priorities....all the "One day, I'm going to do this or that" stuff. Lots of things I want to stop thinking I'll do one day and start working on doing it now.
I think I notice things more too, although I've always thought of myself as someone who sees things others miss. But the colors in a sunset or sunrise seem more vibrant, the wind on my face-even when it's a cold wind-, the owl in the trees across the street from my home that I notice calling at night when I'm coming home from somewhere, the peaceful beauty in watching a silent snowfall, the way I can see the emotion reflected in friends eyes when they talk. Things I noticed before but that seem even more important now. I report what my doc tell me to family and friends but I don't really discuss all the ramifications to my life, thoughts and "internal world". I've seen that the few serious discussions I've had seem to make people uneasy, so I just keep it to myself and make jokes about it all. I guess that's the best way to handle it. My biggest fear is ever getting to a point where I lose my independence. I live alone, I like it that way, I don't want that to change. But if it has to, I'll deal with it. In a lot of ways, I feel that this has already taken a lot of my choices away. Never been much of a rule follower but now I have to learn to follow rules.
Life is funny...