1985

6 months before my father had passed away. We were getting on a JAL 747 to Tokyo's Narito Airport. I worried a little about my mother who had just lost my father after being married to him 39 years, but I also worried about myself surviving my father's death. In some ways neither of us really survived his death. He was always a larger than life person. It's not that I'm not at 6 foot five inches because he was 6 feet 2 1/2. But, there was always something about my Dad that was amazing. He had been valedictorian of his senior class in High School even after crashing his Harley 74 motorcycle when he was 14  in 1930 likely and almost having to have his leg amputated from the accident after a German Shepard dog ran out in front of he and his brother on a gravel road. His brother was on the back and just jumped off and was okay but Dad's leg got pinned under the motorcycle. He often talked to me about how awful it was to be on morphine as a pain killer then for around 6 weeks time while his father and the doctors debated over whether to amputate his leg. (They didn't have antibiotics yet in 1930) so they were worried about gangrene which killed a lot of people then. However, his father refused to let them amputate his leg and he recovered without dying. He said he had a nervous breakdown after that but I'm thinking he was actually having withdrawals from Morphine (something which people didn't talk about much then if at all). So, likely he wasn't told about the problems of Morphine when taking it that long. Maybe he never connected the dots and understood he had been having Morphine withdrawals. Either way he didn't ever want to hallucinate like that for 6 weeks ever again. My wife said the same thing with Ether I believe it was to take out her tonsils when she was little. I still have mine by the way. So, both of them really hated what Morpine and Ether do to you in your dreams and waking consciousness.

Last year my appendix burst and I was in the worst pain I likely have ever been in and so I called my friends to drive me to the hospital because I don't think I could have driven then because the pain was about a 9.5 if 10 means you just passed out from it. So, in the hospital they offered me morphine too. I was scared because of my father's stories and asked them to not give me the most powerful dose so they gave me a half dose. I was afraid of hallucinating and hurting someone because I'm 6 foot 5 and very strong. But, luckily all I saw was when I closed my eyes I saw all my family pictures from my Iphone which actually was a kind of nice distraction from thinking I was likely going to die then. The next few days were so bad after they released me (without a proper diagnosis) that I didn't want my wife to see me die. So, I didn't tell her just how bad it was. If 10 was normal energy level I was at a 1 or a 2. I couldn't defecate because morphine is constipating for several days. This meant I couldn't eat anything without throwing it back up. So, this meant all I could do was basically sleep and drink water if I didn't want to throw everything up. Finally after 4 days I had a bowel movement and so I could keep a little piece of mango and a couple of teaspoons of yogurt down without throwing up.

It was like this for about a week so I was getting really weak. My wife finally showed up by Wednesday (This started the previous Friday night) because my friends told her they were worried I might die or get worse. So, finally she showed up and was angry at me for not telling her how close to death I was. But, I couldn't have dealt with her seeing me die. I'm the kind of person that wants to be alone when they die. If I have to worry about others then it just makes it worse for me and likely would just help kill me quicker.

I wanted to literally crawl into a hole and die. That was basically how I felt.

One week later they did a CT Scan of my intestines and told me I had a burst appendix. I told them I was too weak to survive this operation. They told me I likely wouldn't survive if I didn't have the operation. I expected to die so was very surprised when I woke up alive after the operation. It was Easter Morning almost then 2015 so I felt sort of resurrected at that point. I survived the last year since my appendix broke in late March of 2015. This has been one of the stranger years of my life as a result of all this. But at least I lived. My wife is pretty happy about this and my kids too. How do I feel about all this?

I just made a promise to myself to try to live at least 1 year after all this. I've almost done that now.

By God's Grace