I am 61 years old today. Wow! Seems so weird even writing that. I don't perceive myself to be 61; it's like . . . . how did this happen? Where did all the years go? And how the heck did they go so fast?????
It's like . . . . it all lasts only . . . . 5 minutes.
Yet here I am.
My son came up here to the Pennsylvania house last night. Arrived a little after 8:00.
He's going to his job from here and will return here tonight after work.
I got a new Behringer MDX-2600 Audio expander/gate/compressor/peak limiter as a Birthday present from him and my wife, to replace the one that I've used since setting this house up as a backup broadcast facility after my mom died in November 2021.
The audio gear that I've been using seems to have suffered a strange but now recurring audio failure, causing audio levels to randomly change. Weird.
My son will install the new gear after work tonight.
It a little frustrating to be getting up in my years. There's physical changes that I don't like . . . at all.
For certain, the heart attack I suffered in April 2019, which forced me to get open heart surgery and quadruple bypasses for clogged heart arteries, was a big deal. But it was small compared to the SECOND heart attack I suffered seventeen months later, in October, 2020 after two of the four cardiac bypasses clogged with blood clots.
That second heart attack was very much worse than the first, and it was during that incident that I went into heart failure on the cardiac catheterization lab operating table, and felt myself dying.
I have told this story a number of times; I had never experienced "dying" before, yet the feeling is so utterly distinct, you KNOW IT when it's happening. It's not painful, or scary . . . it just . . . happens.
Thankfully, the Doc was able to fit a stent under my clogged left circumflex artery opening and restore blood flow. That artery had been bypassed but its bypass was one of the ones' which had clogged with blood clots. So if he wasn't able to get a stent to move arterial plaque away from the opening and restore blood flow, I would have been dead.
Fast forward to about a month ago, I felt the same types of "twinges" in my chest that I had felt before my first heart attack. I told the Doc, he scheduled me to go in for another cardiac catheterization and when they were in there, they saw that the walls of my left anterior descending artery were wilting inward and restricting blood flow. So they did angioplasty to open the artery, but when they removed the inflatable balloon, the artery walls just wilted closed again. So Doc said he had to Stent that, too.
So here I am, now having had two heart attacks, open heart surgery, and now two stents. WOW!
The leg from which they took veins to use for my bypass surgery, swells-up from time to time. Docs said the blood had to find a new way to get back to my heart after they took the vein, but for some reason, the leg swelled a little for a long time after the open heart surgery.
Then, my right knee (same leg) and right hip started deteriorating. It felt like the connective tissue that hold my muscles and ligaments to my bones, was just falling apart. So the right knee swells a lot almost every day now, and it makes it very uncomfortable to walk - especially if I have to do stairs. The hip hurts when I lay down. I don't need this shit.
I've also noticed lately, I seem to be getting a bit forgetful. I'm having trouble instantly recalling proper nouns. I know the word I want to say, I just stop mid sentence to have to recall it. Weird.
Yes, I take vitamins, Co-enzyme Q-10, and Straus Heart Drops. No, I didn't take the COVID Vax . . . and I won't. Those so-called "vaccines" are clearly dangerous and worse, they don't work. No one is putting that shit in me.
So with all that, I've attained 61 years on this planet. Not too shabby, I guess.
My marriage has changed a lot. After 31 years, it's not so good anymore. That's why I'm up in PA while the Mrs. is in NJ. I needed time away to figure out how to proceed.
The wife and I talk several times a day, but it's just not good anymore.
I'm too old to bother coloring my hair to get rid of the gray, hit the gym and go out to stud. Been there, done that. It's all "wrote" for me. Besides, my son tells me that women today, are all "nuts."
I'll take his word for it. The last thing I need is to go out to play the field and find myself with a psycho-slut-from-hell. Too many of them around nowadays.
Anyway, I just focus on my work and my show. Pay what few bills I have, and am doing my best to get right with God and enjoy the time I have left.
Given the way things are falling apart in our world, that may be a lot less time than any of us think!
And so it goes, this fifteenth day of March, 2023.
