Posted on by mikebobsworld

My Health Journey Continues

It has been a long time since I have tackled writing my blog. So much has happened to me that I couldn’t keep my mind together enough to write. Now most of those things have come to a close and it’s time to continue my story.

In November I began to notice that my left foot was bending more and more inward at the ankle. If I put a shoe on my left foot at the ankle would bend to 90 degrees, and I got worried. I saw my regular foot doctor, but he said I would need to go somewhere else as this probably required an operation that he didn’t do. I became homebound and officially a cripple. I got a walker, a wheelchair and a shower seat as I could no longer stand in the shower. Eventually, I added a knee scooter to the mix and an electronic recliner that takes me up to the standing position. I use all of this stuff.

I went to see a foot surgeon, a guy I’ve known for years and he immediately had x-rays taken of the ankle.  The result was that I have Charcot foot. Char Cot foot is a deformity of the foot brought on by neuropathy, a condition I’ve had for years. Neuropathy is a condition where the nerves are damaged. It can happen in different parts of the body. Mine is from the toes to my knees in both legs and I have it slightly in my hands as well. Charcot foot happens when a bone breaks in your foot. It goes unnoticed and fuses to another bone instead of where it belongs. Neuropathy is mostly a diabetic problem as is char cot foot but I am not diabetic and got neuropathy genetically from my father who is also not diabetic. Somehow, it’s in our genes.

There is no cure for charcot foot or neuropathy. I need to wear a device on my leg called a CROW boot. This boot does not promote healing but allows my ankle and foot to remain stable so I can walk. There is an operation for the condition, but it involves breaking most of the bones in the foot and then resetting them. It’s a dangerous operation and usually ends in the foot being amputated. My doctor did not recommend this. Maybe, in time, they will find another way.

With all of this going on, mentally, I have not been doing well.

I challenge anyone who is single to be housebound for six months.  It’s not easy on the mind or the body, especially your mind. You wonder where your friends are, and then you wonder who your friends are when so few ask you if they can help. There’s trying to figure out what you can do on your own when you can’t walk. Amazon delivers groceries now, but they don’t always leave them where they should, and before I got the brace for my foot, it was terribly painful to go downstairs and bring the groceries up myself. No one asked if they could go grocery shopping for me.

Preparing meals was also hard. I have to sit to prepare meals because there is too much unsteadiness of my feet.  I can only stand for short periods of time but I found ways and ate a lot of Hungry Man meals and other frozen products. Maybe not a good choice but the best I could do.

Then there is the loneliness. Sitting hour after hour praying the phone would ring or making phone calls only to find that no one wanted to answer. Hoping people would come to visit, but they rarely did. I love my apartment, but it did become a cage, and I grew angry.

Anger is a deadly emotion when it has no place to go. It slowly eats at you and shifts to depression. That depression is like walking through the valley of the shadow of death. You begin to believe that very few care about you, and fewer still want to help you. As a Christian, you wonder where the church is and why they didn’t step up to visit you or help. Jesus said that doing things for the sick is like doing things for him. But again, few came to help.

Some did, and these people kept from total despair. Chris came and cleaned what I couldn’t and then stayed, and then our mutual friend Tom came, and we had dinner together. They were and hopefully will continue to be great nights. Tom became my driver for a while and got me to the appts I needed to go to.  My friend Rob brought lunch a couple of times. My friends Jess and Dennis also brought meals. My Friend Lorraine and my cousin John helped me get my meds as I couldn’t get those on my own at all. This may seem like I had a lot of help, but it wasn’t enough. There was so much I just couldn’t do and, in some ways, still can’t.

I had to walk through self-blame and self-hatred. I had to accept the fact that I have a permanent disability that cannot be cured, and I must learn to live with it. Getting to acceptance is a very hard thing. I called my brace in the above paragraph a device, but it’s not. It’s a very heavy two-piece boot that I have to strap on first thing in the morning, and I cannot remove it until I go to bed. It is not pain-free but is a tiny fraction of the pain I go through when I don’t wear it.

The brace cannot be worn in the shower, so showering is painful. I have a shower bench now, but that doesn’t help with getting in or out or when you’re drying yourself off. You have to stand to do those things, and it hurts.

Getting my hair cut is an ordeal too or at least it was. My friend Jess is a stylist, and she came to the house to cut my hair a little over a month ago. She’s looking at her schedule to see when she can come back. That’s very kind of her because right now I’m not sure I could get into my barbershop.

I haven’t addressed the loneliness. Too many hours of being alone and not seeing a single person is very hard for me. I keep hoping the doorbell will ring or the phone with go off, but it doesn’t happen as much as I need it to. I am grateful when it does.

These are my challenges. I haven’t written this blog for six months. I lost my voice and didn’t think I’d find it again, but by the grace of God, I have. I thought I would be silent forever, but I’m not. I’m not looking for anything for me, but if you know someone who is alone and sick or disabled don’t leave them like that. Go and ask what you can do. Doing for others is part of the beauty of being human.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I have no idea what to write about in this space.  Most of the time an idea strikes me when I sit down and see the blank sheet of paper on my computer screen. Today I had a hundred thoughts but none of them would make a good blog on their own so here are one or two that I thought you may find interesting.

First The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power starts next week on Amazon Prime. If you are a Tolkien fan you have been aware of this and you are either anticipating the show with joy or dread. What amazes me is the number of people who have decided to give a negative opinion on a show they haven’t seen.  The show is based on the side stories that are told in The Lord of The Rings and its appendices. There is a lot of good material there and The Tolkien Estate and Trust are involved in the production. I think we are in for a treat. I will never understand how anyone can be judge and jury on something that no one has seen.

I also read this week that schools in Florida are beginning to ban books.  Banning books in any place is very frightening to me. This is behavior that occurred under Hitler in Germany. The government of Florida is not allowing the public to consume what our free press is producing. Now the first I read of this there was a list of books attached.  That list was revealed to be bogus. The correction was down to two known books The Diary of Anne Frank and The Bible. Banning either of these books from schools is just stupid. Most of our laws are based on Biblical principles. The Bible has played an important role in U.S. history and students should have access to it for that reason alone. The Diary of Ann Frank seems to be the desire to forget what happened to the Jewish people under Hitler. It used to be required reading and now it’s being banned. Something is dreadfully wrong here. I know it’s only in Florida at the moment but how long until this spreads to other states?

I also want to take a moment and discuss something that gets little press but is slowly becoming a national issue with both men and women and that is porn addiction. Porn addiction or sex addiction or as it is referred to clinically Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder is now something that is being taken very seriously by the medical and psychological community. Globally the porn industry takes in 97 billion dollars a year. This is an industry that everyone says they never look at but let’s face it more people do than don’t. Pornography is addictive because when you orgasm the same areas of the brain get stimulated as when a person uses heroin. Some people can use small amounts of heroin and not get addicted. Sex is the same. You can have a healthy sex life and not be an addict. Sex, however, when used inappropriately can lead to addiction and its consequences can be just as severe as abusing drugs or alcohol. The sex addict opens him or herself up to danger when they participate in anonymous encounters.  There is always the threat of venereal disease or AIDS. For those who use pornographic material the law of diminishing return applies.

The pornographic industry is very smart when it comes to marketing its product. You can go on the internet and get almost anything you want to see at no cost. The problem sets in when the free stuff fails to satisfy in the same way. At this point, you begin to look for something a bit more graphic or exotic, you may still find some for free but slowly it will become less and less and then you begin to pay. Once hooked on the paid sites people begin to spend more and more money sometimes up to six or seven dollars a minute to get what they crave. The industry has you hooked and an addict is born. This is the law of diminishing return and it works the same way with drugs and alcohol.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. For many people when pornography fails to satisfy they find themselves craving live encounters and employ male and female prostitutes. All of this can turn into hundreds and thousands of dollars a year for just one person. There is however hope for the addict.

Sexaholic Anonymous has been around for years recognizing the problem before the medical community did. Other groups have recently sprung up as well recognizing that this problem is more common than anyone wants to admit. The biggest problem and parents take heed, is the porn shop we have in our house.

In the year when I was growing up buying pornography was embarrassing. If you bought it at all, you went to a store that was nowhere near where you lived. You secreted it into your house and hid it from prying eyes. Now porn is available instantly on your phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop computers. Anyone and everyone is just a few clicks away from images they are better off not looking at. And this is both men and women.  According to the U.K.’s Daily Record, one in four women are admitting to using pornography. That’s 25% of the female population. Men’s usage is in larger numbers but women are moving up.

The reason I am bringing this to your attention is that these things need to be talked about. People need to know that there is help and that they are not alone in this battle. If you are caught in porn’s grip you are just as many clicks away from finding help on the internet as you are from finding your next hit.

Random thoughts. The things that run around in my head that need a voice. I’m sure you have thoughts about some of the things I wrote about today or maybe some thoughts about another topic all together feel free to leave your own ‘random thoughts” in the comments.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

How Can I Help; The Philosophy of New Amsterdam

For the last four years, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the television show New Amsterdam.  New Amsterdam is a fictional hospital in NYC but it is based on the very real hospital Bellvue also in NYC. The show’s stories are interesting and compelling.  The scripts are well written and the cast of characters well defined.

In the first season and for the last four years the show centers around Dr. Max Goodwin. In the first episode, Max takes over as what I believe is now called The Chief Medical Officer in a hospital.  In other words, Max was running the show.  In the first three and half seasons, Max stays in this position until he marries Helen the head of the oncology department and they both move to London Helen’s original home.  Max is back now trying to get the hospital back from the evil woman who the board elected to take his place.  The culmination of that will take place tonight, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. 

In his first season, Max is constantly asking the same question whenever a problem arises.  That question is, “How can I help?”  That attitude begins to take over the whole hospital as you begin to see the main characters more and more, some subtly some overtly begin to take on the characteristic of caring for each other and the patients of the hospital.

Now you would think patient care would always be the top priority of all medical facilities.  Having worked in medicine for 30 years as a dialysis technician and a medical assistant.  I have seen the level of care for patients being eroded by government rules and paperwork.  Hands-on care by nurses is now relegated more and more to technicians who sometimes do not have the experience or the education to take on that care.  Mandatory 12 and 13-hour days made people exhausted by the end of their shift, and basically useless on their days off in between shifts because of sheer exhaustion.  Let me tell you no one asked, “How can I help?” We were all too tired just trying to keep up with our own work.  I know this because I left dialysis while working under these conditions.  But that is not the point of this blog.

What is the point?  The point is how better the world would be if, when we are told about another person’s problem our first response would be, how can I help?

We live in a world where the rugged individualist has become something to aspire to.  “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” or “Do you have to have someone hold your hand?” are both cliches that tell us we are all to be self-sufficient.  That we shouldn’t need anyone else and to quote Dolly Levi from The Matchmaker that we should “Thank God that no one else’s life is tangled up with ours.”  In The matchmaker, which became the musical Hello Dolly, Dolly learns that living that way is ultimately unhappy and the play and musical is her attempt, “to rejoin the human race.”

I think it’s time for us all to rejoin the human race.

People were never meant to live life on their own.  It’s a Bible fact that says two are better than one and that’s not about marriage it’s about life.  No one should have to or ever feel like they have to go it alone.  And yet many people do.  If this weren’t the case songs like Elinor Rigby or Alone Again Naturally, or Dust in the Wind, would never have become popular.  Let’s be honest those are basically songs to commit suicide to, and I’m willing to bet that some people have.

Suicide is another problem which I believe stems from the idea that everyone has to make it on their own.  Now, that is not the only reason.  There are many other reasons people commit suicide.  If you grow up being taught that this is the ideal way to live, making it on your own, then the minute you realize you cannot live this way you have to consider yourself a failure or feel less because you have to ask for help.  Can you imagine with me a world that instead of chiding you for not making it on your own, asks, “How can I help?”

It would be a friendlier world.  People would no longer be looking only at their own interests but also at the interests of all the other people in their lives.  Dickens makes this perfectly clear through the character of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.  Marley was dead and in chains, eternally remorseful for all the times he “minded his own business,” and did not reach out a hand to those who suffer or are in need.  I call this part of Marley’s discussion with Scrooge, “Marley’s Lament.”

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”

“Life’s opportunities misused.”  Marley is not talking about opportunities to advance his career or to make more money.  He took advantage of all those opportunities and it led him to eternal torment.  Marley is referring to all the times he saw someone in need and walked away believing it was none of his business instead of asking, “How can I help?”

We are all, in many ways, self-centered these days.  First, it’s ourselves we look to and then our families.  After that, we may find time to help out a friend, but many of us don’t.  I’m thinking of myself as much as anyone else.

Today, for instance, I was just coming in from the doctor’s office, and a lady who I know just a little was coming in thru the other door.  I let her in so she wouldn’t have to scramble for her keys.  We said hello and I headed for the elevator.  While I was waiting she said a package had arrived that was supposed to help her with her TV reception.  She said she hoped she could figure out how to hook it up.  I responded that those devices are usually very easy to hook up and it should be no problem.  The elevator door was closing when I realized that she may have been actually asking for help.  I stopped the elevator door and said if you need any help come on up and get me.  I couldn’t just volunteer to come with her and set it up as I had to get out of the shoes I was wearing.  They help my feet but I can only wear them a little while each day.  I don’t have her phone number or apartment number so I can’t reach out and see if she needs help. I feel a bit bad for not saying outright, “how can I help?”

Most TV shows are entertaining very few are inspiring.  New Amsterdam is a show that I find both entertaining and inspiring.  It’s a rare breed of television show and I hope you all take some time to catch up with it.  It runs on Peacock and Hulu as well as NBC.  I don’t know where you can stream the whole series, although it may all be on Peacock.  I really encourage all of my readers to watch.

HEALTH UPDATE

I went to my Primary Care Doctor today and though he was pleased with me in general, the bottom line is I gained two pounds in the last month and lost none.  I wanted to avoid telling you this but when I began this journey I made a promise to keep you informed win or lose.

For me, I didn’t really lose this month.  Yes, I gained two pounds, but I gained those pounds while actively dealing with another health problem.  The stress of that problem influenced me to eat more than I was.  Previously I was never hungry at lunchtime, all of the sudden I was always hungry at lunchtime and I had only bad choices to eat.  And I ate them.  That health issue is now under control and I am back on the path I had been on.

That’s it for now.  Here’s my parting thought, if someone relates to you a problem they are going through, instead of offering advice first ask, How can I help?

The picture is the central cast of New Amesterdam from top left Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) Head of Psychiatry, Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) head of oncology, the big photo Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) Bottom left Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery) Head of The Emergency Room, and last Dr. Floyd Ryenolds (Jocko Sims) Head of Cardiac Surgery.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Holy Week and Health

I have written extensively on Holy Week elsewhere.  I have, however, never taken the time to introduce the life-changing possibilities that are given to us because of this week.

Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday.  I wrote a little about Palm Sunday in my article on Lent.  Palm Sunday is the remembrance of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he is praised and palm branches are spread on the road before him and waived in the air around him.  This is a King’s entrance into a city even if that king is riding on the back of a donkey.

We know from scripture that many things occur during this week.  Jesus cleanses the temple from money changers and teaches openly in the temple.  We know that the Jewish leaders form their plot against Jesus and we know that Judas Iscariot agrees to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. With that background, we come to Holy Thursday.

Holy Thursday has two significant events.  Or maybe three, the last supper, Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, and then his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane.

The Last Supper is the time that Jesus is the most intimate with his disciples and gives them his last instructions.  Hel also gives instructions for those who would believe in him because of the disciple’s word.  He wants his church to be one.

The Church being one is something Christians have struggled with since the reformation 500 years ago.  The Church is not one.  It is splintered into denominations and sub denominations all believing that they have the correct view of the teachings of Jesus and the writers of The New Testament.  This is much to our shame.  We all live in the same house but we divide ourselves into separate rooms rarely venturing into the other rooms.  It will be a great day when Jesus comes back and reunites us all again.

Holy Communion is established during The Last Supper.  Jesus took bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, “Take and eat this is my body,”  He then took a cup of wine and blessed it and sent it around to his disciples and said, “this is my blood.”  This was to begin to make the disciples understand what was about to happen.  Jesus’ betrayal, an unjust trial, a whipping or a scrouging, and his death on the cross.  Holy Communion is a reminder of all those things to all Christians no matter their denomination.

After the supper is over Jesus takes his disciples to a garden on  the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem it is there that he prays to God that the events that are about to unfold could be passed on but he ends with “Thy will not mine be done.”  Judas then arrives with other men to arrest Jesus.  He betrays Jesus with a kiss and Jesus is led away.  Hid disciples scatter.

The illegal trial l being held in the dead of night is slow going.  No witnesses can agree.  Caiphas, The High Priest, eventually asks Jesus if He, Jesus, is the son of God, Jesus responds “I am.” This is all the disbelieving religious rulers of Jersusalem need to hear.  Caiphas proclaims blasphemy and hopes for Jesus’ death but that decision is not his to make.  Israel is held by the Roman Empire and only the Roman Governor can sentence anyone to death.  So Jesus now Jesus is brought to the Roman Quarters to find his fate which would be decided by Pontius Pilate.

Pilate can find nothing legally wrong with Jesus.  Not by Roman law.  Hoping to appease the Jews Pilate has him scrouged.  This is a whipping but the whip is made up of several leather cords.  Each cord has bits of metal and bone tied into it.  With every lash pieces of Jesus’ back start to rip off slowly exposing the muscles as his skin is shredded.  There is a belief that Jesus received only 49 lashes as Jewish law permitted fifty and the Jews stopped at 49 to not break the law.  This beating, however, was done by Romans who had no reason to obey Jewish law.  The number of lashes could have been less or more.

Jesus then appears before Pilate again and Pilate offers to set Jesus free but the Jews would have none of it shouting at the governor to crucify Jesus.  Usually a scrouging was enough.  But these people wanted blood.  When the Jews brought Caesar’s name into it saying that if Pilate did not have Jesus crucified he would be no friend to Ceasar.  Pilate had no choice it was between this man and being reported to the emperor.  Pilate washed his hands to show he had no desire to kill Jesus.  He then sent him to be crucified.

Crucifixion was a horrible way to die.  First Jesus was forced to carry the crossbeam to the place of crucifixion.  He was too weak to do this by himself due to the loss of blood and Simon was forced to help him.  When they got to the destination the beam was flung to the ground.  Jesus was roughly pushed to the ground as well and his hands were stretched out across the wooden beam and then his wrists were attached to the cross with large nails.  The beam with Jesus attached was then raised to fit into the vertical beam of the cross.  This had to be excruciating.  At this point one nail was driven through both of Jsus’ feet, which were placed one on top of the other, securing them to the cross.  The knees were left bent a little.

This happened at about the noon hour.  For three hours Jesus would hang from that cross.  In the position that he was in he couldn’t breathe and to get air into his lungs, he had to push up against the nail in his feet which hurt tremendously.  He would grab a breath and speak.  These were the seven times he spoke.  His last words were, “It is finished, Fathe into your hands I commit my spirit.”  And Jesus died.  This is Good Friday.

The Roman soldiers pierced Jesus’ side to prove he was dead and water and blood came out.  This indicated that Jesus died of a heart attack brought on by suffocation.  His body was released to Joseph of Arimathea and was placed in Joseph’s tomb in a garden not far away.  The tomb was then sealed with a huge stone and a Roman guard was posted to guard it.  Many would think this is the end of the story but it isn’t.  Jesus, on the third day in the tomb, rose from the dead.  The stone was rolled away and Jesus left the tomb and death behind him.  This is Easter Sunday.

Jesus’ death and resurrection were God’s plan to reunite the world to himself after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden.  All men sin and “fall short of the glory of God.”  God required a sacrifice to take on all of the wrath of God against sinful people.  He chose his son to make that sacrifice and in so doing set us free.  “Whoever believes in the son of God have the right to claim themselves to be children of God.”.

What to do with this.  First, you can’t dismiss it once you know it.  Jesus is either the risen son of God or a total fraud.  You can’t say he was a great teacher because of the many things he taught the central fact was he claimed to be the son of God.  He predicted he would be killed and that he would rise again.  Jesus fulfilled more than 300 prophesies from the Old Testament.  Bearing that in mind Jesus is either who he claims or he is insane but you can’t say he was a great teacher.

So the next thing to do is to decide what you will do with Jesus.  If you believe him a whole new life awaits you.  If you dismiss him you may find yourself in a place you do not want to be for all of eternity.

What does all of this have to with health and weight loss?  Quite a bit.  You see Jesus wants me to live my best life possible.  And part of that is living a healthy life. I have fallen into many bad habits that destroyed my health in many ways.  But Jesus not only saved us from our sins but he offers the inner strength to do the impossible because ‘Nothing is impossible with God.”  And I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead for me to be the best me.  He allowed himself to die so that I could live a good and happy life.  That life includes good health and a servant’s attitude.  Being healthy and also being able to say, whenever the opportunity arises, “How can I help?” to anyone who may need help.

My health journey continues.  I have been in physical therapy for the last six weeks at Advanced Physical Therapy and Aquatics.  I am being well taken care of by Josh and Steve and the rest of the staff.  They have developed a program for me to follow that has helped me gain strength and stability in my body.  I was evaluated on the first day I was there and reevaluated yesterday.  The reevaluation showed marked improvement from where I started.  I thank God for leading me to this place and for the expert guidance of the staff.  If you live in or around the Springfield Delaware County area of Pennsylvania and you need P.T. this is the place to go.

I went to see my primary care physician today and found that I have lost two more pounds.  At first, I was disappointed, but the nurse and the doctor pointed out that it was better than nothing which is another way of saying I took two steps forward and no steps back.

Easter is a time to rejoice and there are so many things to rejoice about.  You know God in one way or another tells over 800 times in The Bible to rejoice, to be glad to be happy.  In the book of Proverbs, it says that “A merry heart is good like a medicine and a downcast spirit dries up the bones.  I think this idea has been distilled down to “Laughter is the best medicine.”  And it is!  We all go through rough times.  Times that we think we will never laugh again, that joy is impossible.  But those times don’t have to last.  You can find joy again by turning to God and turning to others.  I have found this to be the truest thing in life.  Happy Easter and may God bless us, every one.  (This applies even more at Easter than Christmas)

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Setbacks

Life is full of twists and turns.  It has surprises-both good and bad and can take you on roads you never meant to travel.  Hans Christian Anderson said Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by the finger of God.”  GK Chesterton wrote, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.  Children already know that dragons exist.  Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”  I think as adults we forget about the lessons of fairy tales.  Not the sanitized versions of fairy tales that Disney has given us.  (I do love those but they aren’t accurate)  The true fairy tales that were collected by the Brothers Grimm in Germany or the romantic French fairy tales or the stories written by Hans Christian Anderson and the ancient fables of Aesop are long forgotten as we enter adulthood and yet we need those lessons even more at this time in life.  CS Lewis said, “One day you will be old enough to read fairy tales again.”  For me, that time has come.

The last two weeks have been a heavy time for me.  Emotionally I fell into a deep depression that made me unable to write this blog.  My heart was so heavy with sorrow that I wasn’t sure I would ever write again.  When I disclosed this depression to my friend Richard he told me to write when I was ready and not before.  I took that advice and I stayed away from my keyboard secretly wondering if I would ever write again.  While in this depressed state I woke up one morning and got out of bed and when my feet hit the floor something happened to my left foot.  I could just barely walk.  There was a stabbing pain every time I took a step.  This was a Sunday morning and I dreaded going to the emergency room of any of our local hospitals so I stayed in bed and waited until the next day to call my foot doctor.

I felt very alone and abandoned during this time.  The depression hadn’t gone away and my injury of, whatever this was, just made things go darker.  Because of all of this and being afraid of falling I canceled a trip to NYC to see Hugh Jackman in The Music Man.  I had the tickets for three years.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience but I had to let it go.  Doing this, though correct, made things much worse.

I went to the foot doctor the following day and he did X-rays right there in the office.  My foot got a whole round of pictures taken.  I think to this day there are more pictures of my feet than my head.  The X-rays showed that there were no broken bones but a swelling of the bone occurred.  It was a flair-up of arthritis in my foot which is severe in both feet, but the left foot seems to take the brunt of everything.

I was told to go home and stay off of it as much as possible.  To ice it and cancel my physical therapy until the next week.  I was told it would take anywhere from 3 days to 21 days to heal.  So I stopped at the market loaded up on provisions and went home.

I was severely depressed, I was confined to my home, I had to cancel a trip that I had waited three years for, and I felt I had no hope.  What do you do when you feel you’ve lost everything that matters.  First, you eat.

I, without a doubt, have a comfort food addiction and I allowed that addiction to have full control.  I bought vanilla icing and spread it on Pop-Tarts.  I was eating ice cream and chocolate syrup.  I went to McDonald’s for the first time in 4 months.  I was binging eating and it was to make the pain I felt go away.  It didn’t do that.  It just made me feel worse.

This behavior only lasted a couple of days.  One morning I woke up and was reading my daily devotionals.  I receive, every morning, in my email, a paragraph or two by Henri Nouwen.  That morning’s writing was talking about entering the gate thru the narrow road.  And as we get to know Jesus through that narrow gate it can be painful.  But the pain is good because it helps purify us and changes us into the men and women God created us to be.  In other words, it molds us like a sculptor shapes a piece of stone into something beautiful.  In other words, God is like Michelangelo as he carved out David.

The email also talked about the Eucharist.  How we need communion for strength to get through the journey of our lives.  I thought about that.  I don’t believe, as the Catholics do, that The Eucharist is the actual blood and body of Jesus.  I do believe that something very important takes place when you receive communion.  I think God blesses you and his face shines on you and a divine something happens in that moment and a spark of who Jesus is, enters you.

With those thoughts, a peace that I have not felt in a very long time came down on me.  The peace that the Bible describes as being beyond our understanding.  I felt that everything was going to be alright and though both the road and the gate were narrow I could make it through despite the pain.  I began to follow my new diet regime again.  I threw out what was left of the Pop-Tarts and frosting.  I don’t think there was much more to get rid of.  My soul and my house had been cleansed.  I felt better.

I am back in physical therapy as of yesterday.  The pain in my foot remains but is not as severe.  I’m making good food choices and I feel emotionally well.  I am glad that I gave in but I didn’t give up.

I read a quote recently that I hope inspires you as much as it inspires me.  Life is full of hurdles that seem to be too high to jump and chasms that seem too wide and deep to cross, but we were made for these challenges. We were created to be in this world and to become our best selves despite adversity.  The quote comes from a book my friend Beaj recommended to me.  The book is called The Gap and the Gain and the quote is “The rule is simple: the person who fails the most will win.  If I fail more than you do, I will win.  Because in order to keep failing you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.”  The Gap and the Gain is by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

I began this blog by talking about fairy tales and dragons. I am on a fairy tale adventure right now. The stories of Hansel and Gretel, Price Phillip slaying the dragon in Sleeping Beauty, and Frodo taking the ring to Mount Doom will inspire me to travel on the road I’m on and to stay with it. I will destroy the dragon of depression and will kill the witch of being overweight. That is my quest and my destiny.

Next week my new weigh-in results and Holy Week.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

To Everything, There is a Season

Solomon says in the Book of Ecclesiastes “To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under Heaven.  Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.”  Stephen Sondheim wrote in Merrily We Roll Along, “It’s our time breathe it in worlds to change and worlds to win.”  And I am writing today it is my time.

After writing last week’s blog about letting go of people in my life who had become toxic for me I felt a new freedom.  The freedom to relax and be me but also to get on with life.  It has been said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  While I was feeling the need to constantly ask forgiveness from three people that had stopped caring about me, I was examining my life through their lens.  Seeing me as I thought they were seeing me trying to live up to something that didn’t exist.  After breaking free of that bondage, and bondage it was, I was able to see myself more clearly with a better lens and make the corrections in my life that needed attention.

And I did that.  I started going back to meetings that I had been neglecting.  I made phone calls to people whom I hadn’t been talking to but should have.  These folks encourage me and I can encourage them.  It becomes a give and receive, relationship as all relationships should be.  If you are in a relationship where you are always giving or are always receiving it’s probably an unhealthy relationship.

I have had a more peaceful life.  It’s amazing how much you calm down when you stop worrying about what someone else is thinking about you.  It’s good to feel calm.  I have also been able to read and concentrate on my reading.  Reading has become joyful again.  My spirit is lighter and I am smiling more.  I am in a much better place than I have been.

That’s not to say that I don’t have issues that need to be dealt with.  I saw my doctor today and he is sending me to another specialist to deal with my foot.  I fractured several of the bones in my foot back in April and though the bones healed the pain and swelling have not gone down.  It’s very difficult to walk but I do what I can.  Going to the market has been an achievement but I do it when I have to do. 

The saga with my ears continues and I need to see two doctors about that.  An ear doctor and neurologist.  All of the appointments are made.  I don’t know if I have written about my ear in this blog.  Let me get you up to date.  My ear has been leaking fluid for about four years.  The big question is what the fluid is.  The infectious disease doctor thought it was an ear infection and what was leaking out was a byproduct of the infection.  A doctor whose title I can’t spell but we’ll call him a super Ear Nose and Throat doctor thinks that what’s coming out of my ear is spinal fluid.  This guy tested the fluid in my ear and the test came back inconclusive.  He wants to do a radical surgery on me where he will cut a hole in my skull and dig down to where he believes there is a crack in my skull and patch the crack up.  Needless to say with a test that has come back inconclusive I do not want this surgery done.  I have been dodging seeing him until I can get another doctor to run the test on the fluid.

So as you can see life isn’t easy but it does have its moments of joy.  These come from friends that visit me or unexpected phone calls.  These come from the things that delight me like the latest Spiderman movie which was awesome or finding some of my favorite TV shows from the past are available to watch for free on YouTube.  These shows include Here Comes the Brides and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Joy comes unexpectedly and it really should.  If we were full of joy all the time how could we possibly know what Joy is?  There will always be sorrow and sadness in our lives.  It’s been that way since Adam and Eve left The Garden, but if any of us only experience sorrow and sadness we will go mad.  We’d have to.  Or we would become angry and bitter a true Scrooge as Dickens describes him at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.

So when joy comes we take it to heart and remember it.  Our joy whatever it is will get us through the tough times if we remember it.  So write down what brings joy to you.  Journal your joy moments so when things do get black you can look back and maybe smile through the hardship.  Auntie Mame says, “Life is Banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”  Eat the banquet that is in front of you.  Auntie Mame echoes Jesus who said, “A thief is only there to steal, kill, and destroy.  I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better than they ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 The Message Version)

And now an announcement that I was to make last week but had to put off because my doctor had to cancel my appointment due to Covid in his office.  I can make it now.  Since starting my new eating regimen on December 6, 2021, I have lost, drum roll please, 22 pounds.  What I am doing is indeed working and I intend to stick with the program.  A big thank you to everyone who has encouraged me.

Until next time may God bless you all.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

And The Changes Continue…

The last two years have been rough on all of us.  I don’t think anyone in this country has not been affected by the Covid 19 virus.  It caused the deaths of loved ones and it has also caused those we love to separate from us.  This has been the hardest part for me.

Politically I am neither a full-fledged republican nor a full-fledged democrat.  Both parties have a lot to offer that this country needs right now and yet instead of seeking a balance we keep going from one extreme to the other.  Heaven help us all!

This blog is not about politics.  I hope it never will be.  This blog is about loss and change.  The first friend I lost was not even over an argument.  I corrected a post he put up on Facebook in the comments.  The post was political and inaccurate.  It doesn’t matter what the issue was.  He got mad at me for pointing out what was wrong and stopped speaking to me.  The second friend I lost I have known for over 40 years.  He texted me early one morning telling me of a situation he was in.  He felt threatened.  I offered the best advice I could at that hour and the texts kept coming.  Eventually, he told me he didn’t like what he was hearing from me and he too cut me off.  I got angry at this and probably sent a text or two I shouldn’t have.  The third friend just stopped talking to me for no reason whatsoever. He just stopped returning my calls.  He was a mentor to me and I relied on his wisdom for many years and now he is just gone.

Now, after all of this happened I did everything in my power to win these three back.  I asked forgiveness, sent ecards on holidays, left messages asking how I could make this right or how I could be forgiven.  I got stone silence.  It began to make me sick as I kept going around and around in my head about how I could make things right.  Everything I tried failed.  And the silence continues.

I was doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result and that is one of the definitions of insanity.  I was making myself insane trying to win back the friendship from three people who didn’t want me back.  They had control over me as long as I continued to beg for their forgiveness.  Something had to break and it did.

I finally realized that these guys were renting space in my head.  Space they had no business being in.  I called on a good friend who talked with me for a long time.  He asked me very direct questions if I was angry or bitter towards these three men and I’m not.  I’m hurt but I can honestly say that  I would welcome them back if they reached out to me but it is time for me to stop reaching out to them.  And I have.

The freedom of letting these three men go is amazing.  I feel better about myself and my life.  I no longer feel guilty about the situation because I know I have done everything I can to make it right.  The ball is in their court.  All three of these men are Christians I am looking forward to the day we reunite in heaven and can talk these things out and forgive each other there.  If it happens here all the better but I know it will happen one day.

This marks the end of the first month of my efforts to try and lose weight.  I will reveal at the end of this blog how many pounds I have lost.  I truly hope I lost something.

Starting a diet at the beginning of December may not have been the wisest course.  December has more food traps than any other month of the year.  I was able to maneuver through most of them.  I didn’t say no to all treats but I cut back and ate less of my favorites than any other year.  In the past, I would have gained a pound or five over the holidays.  This Christmas I think I lost.

One thing that stands out is I got in the car the other day and found it very easy to get my seatbelt buckled.  This has been difficult for quite a while now and yesterday it clicked with little to no effort so weight must be coming off or at least inches.  I’ll know for sure on Tuesday when I go see my doctor.  I have not weighed myself at home at all, only there.  When I see what his scale says I’ll come home and calibrate my scale here so I can weigh more often.

The original diet plan was to have two Slimfast shakes and a piece of fruit a day.  One of each for breakfast and one of each for lunch.  I found early on that I didn’t get hungry at lunchtime and so began skipping the second shake and fruit.  I seem to get hungry at about four PM and so I just plan dinner for five.  Sometimes I feel like my blood sugar may be dropping in the afternoon.  At those times I will eat a healthy snack.  My sister sent several bags of roasted and shelled chestnuts.  I love those and they are a good form of protein.  The whole bag is only 200 calories.

Dinner is for the most part meat, potato, and a vegetable.  Sometimes with a little sweet treat.  Last night I had eggplant parmesan and a nice multigrain roll with Land O Lakes butter mixed with olive oil.  All I drink anymore is water.  I have had some juice in small amounts on occasion but it has mostly been water.

Before the beginning of December, I lived at Fast Food Restaurants.  I love McDonald’s and a standard order would have been two triple cheeseburgers a medium fries, a Hi C Orange Lava Burst, and two apple pies.  I would have this several times a week.  I also frequented Arby’s, Burger King, Popeye’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried, and Wendy’s. Some days I would get breakfast lunch and dinner from these places.  I craved it.  I even felt I needed it but I was wrong.

Since December 6th I have not been in a Fastfood restaurant or used the drive-thru. The closest I got was a small popcorn at the movie theater when I went to see Spiderman No Way Home.  I figured going to the movies is not a regular habit for me so I could treat myself there.

Today is Sunday and as most of you know I publish on Wednesday morning.  I will finish this blog up when I return from the doctor on Tuesday.

It’s now Monday and my doctor’s office just called.  It seems there has been an outbreak of Covid amongst the staff and my appointment has been moved to next Tuesday so the weigh-in is postponed another week.  Seems like Covid is again changing our lives as I also heard at least one college is going back to Zoom classes when the semester starts and one community theater just shortened its schedule by eliminating two shows.  I find it inspiring that people are taking the correct precautions now.  No matter what life will go on and one day we will be out of this mess.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

2022 Is Here! What Will You Do?

Ok, let’s get this out of the way.  I am not fond of the celebration of the New Year.  I kind of feel like it is a bit of a cheat.  It seems to be a day where we are offered a new start where all the bad things disappear, and all good things take their place.  That is just not the case.  When you get up on January first the same issues in your life are right there staring you in the face and no amount of toasting in the New Year will solve those issues.

Now I know this is just me, or maybe not.  There are probably a few people who agree with me, but the majority are sure New Year believers and maybe they have a point.

New Year is a time of renewal in many areas of our lives.  A time to evaluate where we are and correct the course is necessary, To do this though you must do a deep self-examination and this is hard to do because it means being brutally honest about all areas of your life.

For instance, let’s use me as an example.  I admitted to myself a couple of months ago that I am overweight, grossly overweight and if I didn’t do something about it I would probably die much sooner than the rest of my family who weighs in the right range.  I told myself to look around, there are no old fat people.  And as far as I know, there are none.  I have been obese for years and the medical community didn’t warn me of the dangers, in fact, most of my docs avoided discussing the matter until I said, “Im fat and something has to be done.”  Then they could speak.

I believe one of the reasons the docs are afraid to talk about weight issues is because of this new thing called fat shaming.  Now while I totally agree that kids on the playground should not insult the fat kid, I disagree that once you have grown up and someone mentions your weight you should be happy someone cares enough about you to say something.  To tell heavyset, obese, or fat people to feel good about themselves and to be proud of who they are physically is just plain stupid.  I’m going to be quite clear.  I’m ashamed of myself for letting things go this far. I’m uncomfortable in movie and theater seats.  I don’t like the way I look and I know I am damaging my body by being this size.

This is a brutal self-examination but it is necessary if there is to be change.

We cannot live in a world where change is scorned or where people fear it.  We did, in Europe for many years and that time in history is called The Dark Ages.  Nothing changed during those terrible years but when they ended people began to think and thinking both good and bad is what brought us where we are today.

You can have Dark Ages ib your own life.  That time when you see yourself as perfect when you are far from it.  All the years I denied I was gaining weight were my own Dark Ages and it has led me to where I am now.

It’s not just the weight and how I look.  It’s getting out of breath while carrying something.  It’s feeling my heart race when all I’ve done is walk across the room.  Being short of breath from doing the simplest of tasks and having my feet and legs hurt all the more because of the weight I carry.

That exams my physical body and assesses the problem fairly well.  Now, what’s to be done about it.  I have already begun a program of weight loss.  With my doctor’s approval, I am doing Slimfast for two meals and a sensible dinner.  The reality of that plan is my morning Slimfast shake with an apple and 16 ounces of water lasts me till around four o’clock so for the most part I don’t use the second shake.  I know my stomach, at least, has shrunk as I can only eat a much smaller amount at dinner than I used to.

After a physical assessment is done a mental assessment must also be done.  My mental and emotional state, in general, is better than it was before.  I still need therapy and appropriate medication but in many ways, I am a much calmer person than I used to be.  I can be honest with myself, I no longer rely on comfort food to help me get thru rough patches and other negative behaviors have become much more under my control. My emotions are no longer controlling me as much as I realize that emotions are first response tools.  You have to be careful to digest a first response and think about it before acting on it.  If I get bad news, for example, my first response would be to eat something to make me feel better about the bad news.  I can’t do that.  First response emotions will die down and go away after a while especially if you use your brain to think through your response.  If we respond to anything in anger or fear it is pretty much assured we will regret what we have done.

Now I think more before I react.  First thoughts may be McDonald’s will not solve my problem.  Second and third thoughts could well be the solution to those problems.  Self-control is the beginning of learning how to deal with emotions.  If you have strong emotional reactions to anything, given time, rational thought will calm those emotions down.

We are made in three parts, The Physical, The Mental and The Spiritual.  Many people regard the spiritual as unimportant or attached to emotions.  It is not.  For me, the spiritual parts of us are about our relationship with God and his with us.  I am a Christian and I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, as an adult lived a sinless life and taught the precepts of the Kingdom of God.  At the age of 33, he was crucified for what he taught but on the third day, he rose again from the dead.  He was seen by many and ministered another 40 days here on Earth before he was bodily taken up to heaven.  I believe that if you believe all of what I have just written and believe that Jesus is Lord you have a place in eternity with Him.  Repeating that is a way to decide how much work my spiritual life has to go.

This year I’m good.  However, Jesus taught us that we should be good to the poor and the suffering.  This year my question must be what I’m doing to follow my Lord in that area and the answer must be not much.  And I’m not sure where I should start.  My physical issues are many and my resources are tight and yet Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol “Any Christian working in his little sphere will not have time enough, in this life to complete all he can do.”  I paraphrased that but the answer I seek is what can I do?  Hopefully and humbly in future blogs, you will read the answers I found on how to help.

New Year’s may not, in reality, be a new beginning.  But it can be a renewal.  Get past the parties and the cork popping and really dig into who you are and who you want to be in the coming year and you find yourself on the greatest adventure anyone can take, the adventure of conquering yourself.

God bless you dear reader and Happy New Year.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Moving Day

This weekend began and ended the short journey from Secane where I’ve lived most of my life to Swarthmore.  To be upfront I know moving is hard but it should have never been like this.

It started badly from the very beginning.  My friend Bill arrived on time to help me at 8 a.m. the same time the movers were to arrive.  The movers did not show up until 10:30 they were two and a half hours late.  But wait let’s backtrack.

The trouble started with the initial phone call.  I  was hiring this moving company, one I had used before, both to move me and pack for me.  The main area of packing was to be my books.  I told the person doing the intake what I had to move and I specifically stated that I had seven bookshelves filled with books.  When the packers arrived they had nowhere near the number of boxes they needed for my books.  They called for more but it took about forty-five minutes for those boxes to arrive.  In the meantime, they put my books in boxes too large for them.  More on that later.

Bill, who was devoting his day to me, only had until 4 p.m. to help me.  It was generous of him to give me eight hours.  With the movers being two and a half hours late that made the time that really needed him on the sight of my new home that much shorter.  The loading of the ruck was uneventful it was the unloading that there were major issues.

My feet and my legs are very weak.  And quickly became painful when I am standing or sitting up.  Right now, my left foot which was injured in April is throbbing as I write.  This meant I knew I had to be very specific with the boxes as they were packed so that they would end up in the room they were destined for.  So every box was labeled accordingly.  I planned to sit near the door have the movers read me what was on the boxes and then let them be placed in the right rooms.  I even labeled the books as to which shelf they were to go.  This should have been easy and clean cut.  It became chaos.

The movers were bringing four boxes in at a time.  They barely read the boxes and when they did only the box that was on top.  Some boxes that were clearly marked, they asked “where does this box marked bathroom go?”  I told them which bathroom to put it in but it ended up in the far corner of the office.

At one point I noticed a gouge in a triangular shape outside the apartment door, in the wall that had just been freshly painted.  I asked the mover if he did that and he admitted it to me.  I then asked if he was going to report it and he said he would when they checked out at the end.  I was there when they called the supervisor and the damage was not reported.  I knew I was going to have to report it myself

Bill was doing all he could to help me.  But he ended up helping them by running up and down five flights of stairs with some of the lighter things.  It was during this time that he notices something strange.  One of the movers kept disappearing.  I thought the guy was unloading the truck but it seems that was not the case.  More on this later.

Between the bedroom and office furniture as well as the boxes I became more and more confused.  The one thing I did get out was where to place my bed and dresser.  I was in the room when the dresser was placed, I was not there when the bed was placed.  I had shown the mover where the bed was to go and it was made doubly clear by where the nightstand and lamp were placed.  When I finally got the chance to look in the bedroom the bed was in the wrong spot.  Not at all being able to move the bed I had to move the nightstand and find a way to power the lamp as there are no outlets on that wall.

I felt things were moving awfully slow.  I blamed it on the elevator.  It took less than two hours to pack the truck and four and half hours to unpack it.  Bill, as I said earlier, had to leave at four but he felt bad going.  I started to tear up.  Towards five o’clock I heard an argument between the two movers taking place outside the apartment in the hallway.  The one was telling the other that he had to stop and pray.  The other one said that he shouldn’t stop now as there was still a lot to do.  The first one said that it was past dusk and he had to stop.  The other guy came into my apartment and I asked what was going and he said, “that the guy had gone to pray and it had been happening throughout the day.  That explained the disappearances.

Eventually, it ended and I was left alone.  I first went and looked in the office and almost every box was packed in the office.  I couldn’t move any of them.  Then I looked in the bedroom and saw the bed in the wrong place.  Then I looked at the box in the bathroom, which I thought was the bathroom box it turned out to be a box of linen.  It was then that I lost it.  I called my sister and was talking to my brother in law, I started to cry uncontrollably because I couldn’t do a thing by myself to straighten the mess out.  My sister and brother-in-law live in Tennessee and he couldn’t help me.  In my mind, there was no one to help me.  I couldn’t begin to figure a way out of this mess.  I sobbed hard tears and cried out to God to send someone to help.  Then as God does on occasion I heard a still small voice say, “call Rob.”

Now Rob had been my wingman on packing day making sure the boxes got labeled correctly in one room while I was in another.  Rob is the leader of the Christian men’s fellowship that I was an active member of before Covid.  I hadn’t been back to the group but Rob and I stayed in touch.

It was a short call.  Rob said he would round up a couple of guys from the group and they would be over the next night.  Then the still small voice came again and said, “Call John.”  My cousin John had given me the past three Tuesday mornings to help me move in.  He was great to me and had told me if I need him again to just call.  So I did.  John promised he would come over on Monday morning.

From then on I just did what I could.  Which wasn’t much.  When I woke up the next morning I was determined to go to church but realized the bathroom supplies were in no box that I could even see.  So I had no soap or shampoo or toothpaste.  Somehow my little men’s traveling shaving kit was where I could get to it.  I had my razer, a toothbrush, and a travel-size bottle of Pert, so I made do.  I shaved, brushed my teeth with no toothpaste, and washed my hair and my body with Pert Shampoo and Conditioner, in the long run, soap of any kind is still soap.

I went to church, unpacked some small boxes that I could handle, and at 5:00 Jerry, one of the first men to come from the men’s fellowship, arrived.  He quickly got to work by tackling the wardrobe boxes.  These were four huge boxes filled with my clothes and coats.  They had been placed in front of my closet so I thought I could empty them myself but they were all placed backward with the side that you open the box on facing my windows.  These boxes have a rack inside of them.  Had they been facing the right direction, I would have opened a panel on the box and taken the clothes, still on their hangers, and placed them in the closet.  It should have been easy but I couldn’t swing the box around.  I tried opening one box on the opposite side and the whole rack collapsed.  I couldn’t pick the clothes up at all.  Jerry, moving like the wind, had all four boxes unpacked and all the clothes in the right closets in half an hour.

At 5:30 Rob and Travis, my other volunteer arrived.  Quickly the three of them had all the boxes in the right rooms.  It was at the ned that I found my bathroom box in the far corner of the room sitting all alone.  I thought that was going to be it.  I was wrong.  Though Jerry had to leave, Travis and Rob stayed and they unpacked and filled 5 of the seven bookcases.  I struggled not to cry at the ned.  These men gave me their time and their energy.  They were good company too talking while they worked and I directed.  They were happy to help.  It was a blessing given to me by them through the grace of God.

I felt like a tone of weight was off my shoulders.  Because the boxes were in the right places I stayed up until two a.m. emptying boxes and putting stuff away.  6 a.m. I was shocked when my alarm went off but I knew John was coming and I shook off the cobwebs.  At 8:30 John and much to my surprise and delight, his brother Nick showed up.  They made quick work of the rest of the books and helped me with some other stuff.  Again another blessing.  When John and Nick left I had a home.  There were still boxes to unpack and stuff to put away and pictures to be hung but that could be done over time.

I got a call that day from the moving company asking for an evaluation of how things went.  I held back nothing. The information I relayed was sent up the chain and I got a call today from an administrative person.  He listened to the whole story and told me that he would get in touch with the building about the wall repair and I would hear back from him later today about what they would do for me.  So far I have heard nothing and the workday is winding down.  I fear I will be disappointed again.

I have been told that moving is one of the most stressful things anyone ever does.  I never felt that way before but that turned out to be true this time.  However, every black cloud has a silver lining and my silver lining is all the people who reached out to help me, the people who took time to listen to me and to support me emotionally.  These people are the stars of this show.  It is my prayer that God blesses all of those who helped me and it is also my prayer that each of you, when you hit any snag in life, that there will be good people around to help you. Jesus said, “What you did for the least of these you did for me.”

Posted on by mikebobsworld

It’s Not Where You Start…

It’s Not Where You Start It’s Where You Finish is not only the title of a great song it perfectly describes my life now.

It has been a crazy week.  Getting ready to move has many of its problems, but throw in a holiday and a Covid scare and you get quite the mess.

Last weekend I got a call from someone I had been hanging out with the previous Saturday that they had tested positive for Covid.  It would be a far stretch that I would have caught it from this person but the possibility was there so I went and bought a home Covid test.

Have you done a home test for Covid?  My understanding is that the home test for negatives ranges in the accuracy of the high 90s.  It seems they are less accurate for positive results.  The procedure for self-testing is a little hard.  There is a card that has to remain flat on the table the whole time.  Then you put 6 drops of reagent in a hole in the card.  Then with a long cotton swab, you swab out both your nostrils for 15 seconds each.  Then you slip the swab into a lower hole pushing it into the hole that has the reagent.  You then close the card and seal it and wait 15 minutes.  If a line appears in the lower half of the window of the card you are positive.  If it remains clear you are negative.  That’s it.  The kit comes with two tests.  I did them both and both came back negative. YEA!

Because Thanksgiving came less than ten days from my exposure it was prudent to stay home for the holiday.  There is no point in risking other people’s health until you are sure you’re not carrying.  At ten days out I took the second test and confirmed being clean.  Yea for modern science.

I don’t recommend spending Thanksgiving alone.  I wasn’t all alone, my housemate and I had breakfast together and I tried to make it festive.  We had fried eggs, Taylor Pork Roll, Buttered Toast, and Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls.  It was nice.  I wouldn’t see my housemate for dinner as she was working.  It was the last holiday we will spend together as housemates as my move has arrived.  I ordered Thanksgiving Dinner from a local diner and enjoyed it.  It’s not the same eating by yourself but the tastes were there and I had memories of Thanksgiving’s past and there will be more to come.

Friday it was time to organize as much as I could.  I have two rooms in the house that I live in now, an office and a bedroom.  I can cram a lot in a small space and it all had to be packed.  Statues and pictures and toys and ceramics and all other kinds of stuff went into box after box. 

Cleaning out the two closets were particularly interesting as I found stuff I thought I had lost buried under piles of other things.  Looking back it became a bit of a treasure hunt as both closets contained some wonderful items long-buried but now coming back into play.  I was Indiana Jones in my own house.

Right now the living room is filled with packed boxes waiting for Saturday when the movers come.  But that’s not all.

On Friday the movers will come and finish my packing.  Because of my disability what I could do the last time I moved I cannot do now.  My legs are in pain a lot and so are my feet.  I have an extensive library and the last time I moved I brought all the books and all the shelves over to the house myself.  I can’t do that now.  It’s just not possible, so the movers will come on Friday and pack the books up and my clothes, another item I moved in the past, and my large electronic devices.  They will be in charge of safely packing my stuff and then moving it the next day.

One of the things that this move has forced me to realize is my limitations.  I’m heading for 61 years old and my body doesn’t work like it used to.  Some things need to be changed, things that are in my power, and I intend to make those changes.  Still, there are other things that I have no control over like severe arthritis in my knees and feet and the neuropathy in my legs.  These are things whose influence will lesson as I take off weight but they will still be a part of me.  The pain will lessen but will not go away completely.  If I can get enough weight off my knees will be replaced and that will make some difference in my life.

I think the thing to keep in mind here is not that I have all these issues but that all the obstacles the issues have presented can be overcome.  With the help of family and friends, a very difficult move is made so much easier.  My niece and her husband were a tremendous help.  Yesterday my housemate, Lorraine, helped me clear out the bedroom closet. My legs being what they are I could not have done it without her help. My cousin John has come over every Tuesday and carted stuff over to the apartment for the last three weeks and is happy to help more if I need it.  My friends Rob and Gary have supplied boxes and support and Rob will be my wingman on Friday watching the guys as they pack and making sure the boxes are labeled correctly.  My sisters have also been a big help.  Even from Tennessee my sister Susan and her husband Kirk have given me encouragement and solid advice.  My sister Trish has helped with all the financial details and the stuff I didn’t know anything about as I never signed a lease before. My friend Manny has always been there for me for more than forty years. Though we are separated by miles he has been my greatest encouragement. A true Barnabus. A name meaning “Son of encouragement”   Lastly, my friend Bill has given me his whole Saturday to help me unpack and settle in. I’m very grateful to those I’ve mentioned as well as those I haven’t.

Moving is a great adventure and as the song says, it’s not where you start it’s where you finish and I’m going to finish on top.