A health warning...

I sit here today with a 9" incision in my torso and minus a gall bladder. To be honest I am truly grateful to be sitting here! Over the past several months I have at times felt lethargic and low energy. I thought this was a result of reaching my 70th birthday and working in the heat and humidity.  Then I noticed reduced appetite followed by a recurring low grade fever that would come and go without apparent rhythm or reason. I self diagnosed to be a blockage of some type as I was constipated more often then usual. The real bottom line is I was putting all this in my head because I turned 70 and had an underlying belief that that's what one feels when they get to that magic age. The day before Thanksgiving I went to the urgent care with a dull ache in my stomach beneath my sternum (breast bone). The nurse agreed I was apparently more constipated than usual and gave me a prescription for muscle relaxers and sent me home. To clarify, before the past couple months I was seldom constipated. On Thanksgiving I felt nauseous with the continued low fever of 99.5-100 degrees. I continued to feel bad Friday and Saturday, lethargic with no appetite and continued low fever. At no time did I ever feel seriously ill. Sunday things took a drastic turn for the worst! In the afternoon my temperature shot up to over 104 and I was completely out of it mentally. I only have short glimpses of that afternoon and evening. My wife called an ambulance that took me to Shands Hospital in Gainesville where I was diagnosed with a severe load of gallstones. They decided to perform laparoscopic surgery the next morning, a simple quick operation requiring only 4 small incisions. My temperature had then increased to 106 so at 4 am I was taken in for surgery. It was soon discovered my gallbladder was extremely inflamed with necrotic tissue progressing to gangrenous. My short operation required a 9" incision with the operation lasting in excess of 4 hours. I was told if I had not had the procedure done when I did I probably would have not survived more than a day or two!
Why am I writing this? Because I never felt that bad! I am hoping my story will encourage the readers of this to not take those odds and ends pains lightly. We know our body and what is not right with it. As the saying goes, "better safe then sorry"!

Seeing red!

Not long after I lost my baby fat and my nickname I had another "experience". My sister. Need I say more? I love my sister very much, but she did seem to have an agenda. During my early years she did weigh in far too frequently in my "near death" experiences. Unfortunately this time was no different. We were playing with our stuffed animals one day. Not sure if this was before or after she had shaved all their hair off. Anyway, my mom was painting something with red paint when she was called away, I believe by the telephone. My sweet sister (BTW her name is Lois) decided to take the opportunity to paint my fingernails red like nail polish. And dye my hair red. And my hands and arms. I believe my mom used a whole can of turpentine or lacquer thinner, not sure which (though I doubt it really matters) to get the red paint off. I believe most of my hair fell out after that scrubbing!

The year of the tree....

Moving right along, about a year or two after the incident with the pills it was after Christmas and I was merrily playing with my toys beside our tree. Our row house was like most other houses at this time in that it had a hardwood floor. It was right around New Years and our tree was getting pretty dry. My sister who is a year older than me decided she wanted a candy cane and grabbed one from the tree. Turns out the candy cane was not easily forthcoming. In frustration my sister pulled harder resulting in the tree falling over on top of me. Back then the lights on the tree were what is referred to as "hot lights" meaning the bulbs were very hot to the touch. The lights were on at the time of the tree falling over onto the hardwood floor. If even one bulb had shattered on the floor, that tree would have been immediately engulfed in flames with me trapped under it! To this day I consider it a miracle that no bulbs broke when hitting that wood floor.

My father always wired the trees to the wall after that.

An account of my life?

I'll be reaching my 70th birthday at the end of this month and am toying with the idea of utilizing this space to reviewing the memories of my life thus far. I'm not really sure if this would be a great idea. I think it might help me to put things in perspective but not sure how it would appear in this venue. I certainly would not write to gain sympathy because I do not feel sympathy is warranted. I do believe I have experienced more adversity and "bad luck" than most, but the fact I am still here and basically a pretty happy guy suggests I have dealt with the experiences in a positive manner.

An example. When I was born my mother chose to put me on formula rather than nurse me. I don't know her reasoning and don't think it matters except that I was unable to digest cows milk. I quickly lost weight and was approaching a crisis point when my father insisted on taking me home. It was recommended by someone that I try goats milk. I thrived to the extent that my nickname was "Butterball"! Shortly thereafter I was playing in my playpen in the back yard of out row house in Baltimore when things took a turn for the worse. A drug store near our house had recently burned and the cleanup resulted in many pills being dumped in the dumpster. I'll never know what they were but assume they were probably vitamins. Whatever they were they were obviously pretty to look at! Some of the neighbor kids gathered a bunch up and decided it would be fun to toss them in my playpen like candies. Needless to say I gobbled them down as fast as they would toss them in. The result was I came close to dying. I survived, but lost all my lovely baby fat. No more "Butterball" for me!

Touching base

I haven't been on my blog for awhile now; lots happening in my life. Good stuff! Briefly, I have retired from the Federal Government after 28 years of service and have moved to Morriston, Florida.  I am finally getting back to my photography and will attempt to write less on my political and moral views and more on my art and life experiences. I expect my audience can get the gist of my opinions on most of these topics from my previous posts. No changes come to mind.
So, my future. I am fortunate to live in a place where such beauty surrounds me. I hope to take advantage of this by visiting scenic sites throughout Florida to photograph. In addition, I will for the first time have a dedicated studio for still life and portrait photography. I am in the process of building my darkroom, so posts of my work will be a while in coming; hopefully this autumn will see some results. I encourage comments!