I’m writing this at 4AM, July 15 of 2015. I’m 67 and bored with my life and myself. Nothing new there, but it has all gone on way too long and last night was a typical night in a life full of typical sleepless nights. If I live long enough to see this blog entry published, I’ll be 70. 70 years and I’m tired as hell.
For years, I thought my step-grandfather died in his 60s but this morning I discovered my step-uncle, Barry, had logged Sarge’s life stats in a genealogy website and that Sarge died when he was 72. Not a short life, by any practical standard. Too long for me. Sarge didn’t “fight” his end particularly hard and I wonder if we had other things in common. He died from emphysema and complicating factors and smoked his whole life, right up to his last year on oxygen. To me, that feels like a serious attempt to intentionally wind down his life’s watch. Likewise, I decided to do the same thing a decade ago. So far, it’s not working all that well for me.
Two and a half years ago, I screwed up the end-of-life plan and I’ve regretted it ever since. I had a minor heart attack, correctly diagnosed it, and allowed myself to be poorly transported to a hospital emergency room. What followed were 3 of the most expensive, least productive, most miserable days of my life. In the end, I fought off physician-attempts to do significant surgery, absolutely refused any consideration of medical devices, and ended up with a 3mm stent on my right coronary artery. Usually, implantation of any foreign device in your body requires lifetime anti-rejection, antibiotic, and anti-inflammatory medications. My doctors prescribed two incompatible blood pressure medications, while I had not shown any signs of high blood pressure, a clinically ineffective anti-inflammatory, and a cholesterol medication. All of which listed “possible severe depression” as a side effect.
Mostly what that experience proved was that doctors and hospitals could not care less about patient health or safety. Their one and only concern is emptying their “customers’” (not patients) pockets as efficiently as possible. At this point, I’m pretty much doing the Christian Science thing without the Christian bullshit. I no longer have a doctor. I don’t bother with a physical exam schedule and haven’t for three years. I’ve tossed my cardiac meds and use the internet to self-diagnose and treat any physical problems I have. The sooner this watch runs out, the better. I have no desire to see how the next decade plays out. The last seventy years have been, on average, more painful than interesting and there is almost no chance it will improve from here out. I did live long enough to experience an intelligent President, but even that was fouled by the most corrupt, lazy, insentient Congress in history. So fuck it. It's your ball now.
POSTSCRIPT: (8/20/2020) I remember when I was a kid, I'd write down my dreams in the middle of the night, thinking "That's a great [song idea, story idea, thought" and the next morning, I'd wake up and read what I'd written and think "what a moron." I'm not willing to go that far with this essay, but it's interesting to read something written for a period that I was sure I would not live to see.
Be warned. I wrote a half-dozen of these things, back in that 2016-16 period I wrote a half-dozen "Post Mortem" essays. We'll see what they look like as they arrive. When I wrote them, I really intended them to be "post mortem" and be the only example of me living up to a writing ideal I've always failed, "Write as if everyone you know is dead." Instead of everyone else, I assumed I'd be the dead one, but it's a similar effect.
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