[Edit: 2018.10.30. There are some horrific mistakes in what is written below. The worst are inexplicable use of incorrect homonyms of the intended words. I am not fixing them. I don't care to do any more than make this note, just so any imaginary reader knows that I know how stupid I am. For some reason that is important to me, or something.]
Obligated to who or what? I guess a little bit of OCD in me that thinks that I've been blogging all my health bullshit, I might as well make sure I keep it up-to-date. Apparently I lost the little bit of OCD that gave a shit about style or grammar.
This is what old people do. We talk about our gross boring health bullshit, and bad writing, while you anxiously wait for us to die.
I almost did, maybe. Yeah, probably.
If I had written this months ago, it would be peppered with amusing anecdotes demonstrating how profoundly I distrust all medical professionals.. But now I have either forgotten or lack the will to try to remember.
So, just the basic facts:
I almost died of acute congestive heart failure.
It took medical professionals an unacceptably long time to figure this out.
As a result of their aggressive treatment for congestive heart failure, I was released from the hospital while in acute renal failure.
So now in addition to calories and carbohydrates, I have to severely limit my sodium intake and closely monitor and limit my intake of water, or anything that is composed in part of water.
Watching sodium is a good idea anyway, and I was already giving that some attention, but this is a whole new color of threat level.
Limiting fluid intake is counter-intuitive, after a lifetime of doctors and everyone else hammering away about the importance of adequate hydration.
It's even better that all that. If I over-due the fluid intake limiting thing, I go back into renal failure, and get horrible leg cramps when I try to sleep.
So life is now insert apt metaphor or simile here.
Oh yeah, I also have an enlarged heart because I have basically been living in a constant state of congestive heart failure for decades. It just took a minor sickness, over-treated by chicken soup and electrolyte-laden beverages to push me into a sufficiently acute state to be diagnosed.
So the good news... yes, I am capable of perceiving the presence of and dutifully reporting good news about myself... When I have the balance just right and I am not leaning hard towards acute this or that, especially the heart failure thing, I can actually walk at a brisk pace for several blocks, even uphill, without collapsing in a wheezing pile of oxygen starvation and a heart like a hulk fist trying to beat it's way out through my sternum.
One more thing: when they did a CT of my chest before they had any idea what was wrong with me, whoever wrote up the interpretation of my imaging noted a large number of various sizes of something he called "nodes" in one of my lungs. Not one doctor read this. I did, and I pointed it out to my Primary Care Physician. The follow-up CT to see if they're still there and if they have grown is in the next month or two.
If God exists, he hates me.
If the universe has intent, it wants me dead.
If everything happens for a reason, the reason is so I will die.
I have far outlived any purpose I may have had.
My possibilities for satisfying any selfish personal goals have narrowed to nothing.
My psychiatric medications have robbed me of my vital powers of self-delusion.
I'm just running the clock out.
But how in Hell am I supposed to plan a decent suicide if I am constantly being forced to fight for my worthless piece of shit life?
Ok, time for grandpa to take his pills and go to bed.