Staying alive

I read a book written in the 1930s called: "Life begins at 40".

But, as you read this 1930s book you begin to see this is only true if you have "all your ducks in a row". If your ducks are not all in a row you might die sometime between 40 and 50. This is just the way the world always was for thousands and thousands of years already.

For example, without my present wife I can say to you truly I likely would have died by 45 or 50 without her or someone like her. Why?

Because I was raised by parents who basically didn't believe in innoculations or doctors much. So, I didn't have much knowledge in how to deal with the medical community because of this. My Grandfather (my father's father) used to say things like: "Don't even go to the hospital unless you are planning to die there".

This is just how many people were until the 1970s and 1980s when people became more educated than before and through their educations began more to doctor themselves, watch their diets etc. and got much more healthy and basically almost doubled their lifetimes over their forebears.

But, most of this had to do with EDUCATION and ongoing useful research into one's own survival and diet and exercise.

I had a scare this past week myself. My daughter got married in Portland a few weeks ago and I had to deal with an ex-wife (we divorced about 26 years ago now) and I hadn't seen her in 10 or 15 years in person and only talked to her on the phone once or twice and then only because she thought I was going to die in 2015 from a burst appendix and complications then with a hernia caused by the laparoscopic surgery at the time because no one told me that if I coughed after the operation that I could get a very serious hernia (which I did) because no one told me that this could happen from coughing.

So, because I was focused on all this the last month my health deteriorated because I wasn't focused on my own health. So, because of edema in my feet and as my coughing increased once again because I wasn't dealing with the problem by going to doctors like I should have, I realized about 36 hours ago that if I didn't do something I soon might be dead from lack of sleep because I couldn't breathe or sleep much because of coughing. So, finally yesterday, we went to doctors on Duty locally and a young doctor saw us and diagnosed the problem which was I needed to increase my dose of Lasix and potassium. I felt really really stupid because if I hadn't been so preoccupied I could have saved myself a month of suffering and lack of sleep. So, if you have edema and if you are coughing a lot and cannot sleep because of the coughing be sure to go to your doctor before it gets so bad you might die from lack of sleep and coughing. The solution of just increasing the dosage of Lasix and potassium was so very simple I'm sort of angry with myself that I didn't just increase my dosage without seeing a doctor.

Note: However, the reason I didn't is because when I went off of Spironolactone because of side effects I almost died for a month a year ago last April and I missed going to Ireland, Scotland and England with my wife and two daughters. So, that was so traumatic for me to send them without me while my son who is a trained nurse doctored me back to health in Portland for a month while they traveled without me. So, as a result, simple solutions that I would have tried before I was too traumatized by those events to do this time in the present.

So, if you have edema and are coughing and can't sleep or breathe right, be sure to go to your heart specialist and family practitioner before you just get so weak you die.