Uncategorized

WHAT’S NEXT?

After my life-threatening blood clot, I thought “why was I given a second chance?” Lying flat on my back in ICU for three days gave me plenty of time to reconcile my life and think about “why was I given a second chance?” I concluded that there is something meant for me to do before going to the other side. I prayed and asked for help to make the right decision. To the best of my knowledge my prayers and request were never answered. I have the feeling that it is up to me to decide what direction to take. So here I am trying to decide, What’s Next?  

My second chance came in February of 2023. Recuperation was a slow process. It took about five months of being a couch potato before I felt like doing anything. I finally started to have more energy in June and received the desire to do more than just vegetate. My medication was adjusted, and the passing of time helped. During that time, I heard about substack.com on an internet news site or some talk show. I opened an account and started posting articles on the substack site. I have currently posted over thirty-five stories on substack. During that period after joining substack I remembered that I also had an old blog site on wordpress.com since 2009. Sure enough it was still there. As they say, “what you put on cyber space it is there forever.” I also started posting on WordPress too. Most of the articles are the same on each site. I just edited them to fit the site. Both sites have good points and other points that do not fit my objectives. You must remain active. If you do not post your audience disappears very quickly. They both have different audiences, and no one has ever commented that they saw me on the other site. 

The articles I have posted already are the ones I have wanted to share since my second chance of life. I do enjoy this endeavor and I will continue to publish.  

I could write about current events in a complicated country and world. There is the border, economy, politics, Ukraine, racism, sexism, gender, and many more issues to cover that I haven’t thought of now. Unfortunately, hatred and anger in these issues has destroyed any chance to have a civil and mean full sharing of thoughts and ideas. I have never seen the amount of hatred and anger in this country as there is now. I am over eighty seasoned years and do not want to get involved with hate and anger.  

I have come to the realization that I am just a speck in this gigantic universe. I am not an evangelist or a motivator. What I comment about will more than likely never have any large traffic draw. I am not doing this for money, and I could promote my site more than what I do. At least I am getting my thoughts out to cyber space instead of filing them in a file cabinet where my descendants will more than likely throw them away without even reading them. Maybe I have already done what I was meant to do after my life-threatening event.   

So, I will continue writing and commenting on anything this year.  

MY BLOOD CLOT PODCAST

It has been over ten months since I survived a life-threatening blood clot. The survival rate for this kind is three to five percent and forty to fifty percent die withing five months after the clot. I consider myself very fortunate to have beaten the odds and I consider this a second chance.

PODCAST

For about 2 months I have been having periodic aches in my left calf. It would come and go and had no specific time or length of ache. I just thought it may be part of aging and didn’t think about it much I

On the night of February 5,2023, I had to go to the bathroom and stood up and a shooting pain went up from the ball of my left heal up through my calf. I could hardly walk to the bathroom. After finishing I came back to bed and laid down. The pain was not bad when no weight was put on the foot. I went back to sleep and woke up the following morning. The pain was not that bad when weight was put on the heal. It felt very similar to the same pain I had when I was diagnosed with a Bakers Cyst back in 2012. I emailed my PCP relaying my symptoms, she responded suggesting I come in and get it checked out. Ironically there was an appointment available the same day at 4:50PM and I took it. After the examination she deduced that I had Plantar Fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis. An ultrasound was not taken. She set me up for PT and showed me how to do some home exercises. I went home satisfied 

On the night of February 6th and morning of February 7th I went to the bathroom twice with no problems. Then about 4am I went again and experienced this shooting pain from the ball of the left foot with serious pain in the calf. Again, I could hardly walk to the toilet. After going back to bed, the pain from the ball of the foot went away, but the pain in the calf was still there. I massaged the calf to try to lower the pain and about 4:30am I began having trouble breathing. I woke my wife and told her to call 911, thought I was having a heart attack. She freaked out but did call 911. The operator told her to open the front door. However, in her panic she turned the key the wrong way on the security door dead bolt and jammed the lock so she could not get the door unlocked. I knew about the problem for about 2 years but learned how to live with it. I will now see that I fix it for good. Because of that the paramedics had to come through the garage.  

The paramedics get here and check me out and determine that I can survive a trip to Swedish Medical instead of taking me to St. Anthony Hospital, which is the closest to our home. I am put in the ambulance through the garage. Put an I V in me and start giving me fluid and oxygen. The siren was used during the trip to Swedish. I would estimate it took 10 to 20 minutes to get to the ER. I went into an ER waiting room immediately. 

First thing they do is have an ultrasound on my left calf area. The ultrasound shows DVT (deep vein thrombosis), in the leg from the knee down to the ankle. Next a CT scan was done in my lung area, and they found a large clot located between my lungs. This is called pulmonary saddle embolism.  With that finding an I V Heparin drip was ordered to start reducing and preventing additional clotting.  

After a period, a doctor came to discuss the situation. He explained that there were three choices that could be made. First choice is to attempt to use medication to clear the clot. He did not recommend this because of the size of the clot. Secondly, go in through the groin, up to the lung area and remove some of the clot and put me under anesthesia. The last option was for me to stay awake during the procedure. He said this option is the one they have had the best success. After discussing with my wife and 2 stepdaughters, I decided to stay awake during the procedure and gave the ok. 

They wheeled me to the operating room. I am in the room before the room is prepared and I am just amazed how much equipment and items are used for a medical procedure. Towels, clothes, pillows, tubing and items I can’t even explain. Finally, they are ready to start the procedure. The doctor told me that they would use a local anesthesia to help endure the pain. The most painful part was when they cut the vein or artery on my right groin. They didn’t bother to tell me that they needed an incision on both sides of the groin. The incision on the left groin was just as painful as the right side. I am glad they used a local anesthesia. I don’t know how intense the pain would have been without it.  

Anyway, the procedure has started and after a period I am starting to feel bad. I shout out, “how much longer?” The doctor says maybe 20 to 30 minutes. I groan. I am continuing to feel bad. I hear from someone in the room, “his blood pressure is dropping doctor”. I am really starting to feel bad, and I get to the point, I don’t know whether I can continue. I was at the point of giving up. I thought I was breathing my last breath. I don’t know what happened or what they did but I started to recover and feel better. The procedure lasted maybe 20 minutes and then I heard the doctor say we are finished Thomas. I was relieved. 

Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later the doctor started talking to me saying the clot they removed was one of the biggest clots that they have dealt with, and I was a good patient compared to some of their previous patients. Apparently, some patients get to the point where they must be restrained because they want to get up before they are finished with the procedure. I asked the doctor, “I heard my blood pressure was dropping”. I asked him “how low did it go?” There was a pause, and he said, “you don’t want to know, and I am not going to tell you.” I never did find out how low it went. As the conversation continued the doctor said, “you know Thomas I think we made the right decision. I am afraid if you had gone under anesthesia, I am afraid we would have lost you.” I didn’t know what to say about that comment. Now I can say I was standing in front of deaths door and Dr. Death was holding the door open. I was given a second chance in life.  As my wife says, “your room wasn’t ready yet. Now my job is to find out why I was given another period of life and find out what is expected of me with this second chance.   

One of the assisting doctors takes over and apparently, they are having a difficult time stopping the bleeding from the right groin incision. I guess they can’t use sutures like normal and being loaded up with blood thinners they must use compression on the wound and wait until it starts to heal. The doctor put pressure on the wound for about 45 minutes before it stopped bleeding. After it stopped bleeding, they wheeled me to an ICU room. During the trip to the ICU room, I attempted to raise my head and the doctor yelled at me “don’t do that, you must remain flat on your back until the incisions heal.” 

It is still Feb. 7th when I go to the ICU room and stay there until the afternoon of Feb. 9th. They wanted to get me to a normal room sooner, but a room was not available until late Thursday afternoon the 9th. I do not remember much about the time in ICU. The worst part was having to lay flat on my back all the time. I could not lay on my side, and I am not accustomed to laying on my back while sleeping. This was pure misery, a time I will never forget. I understand the reason for that is to keep the strain from the incisions and allow them to heal and not break open and start bleeding. Another item I discovered during this stay was a condom catheter, it was like a condom with a tube that went to a bag below the bed and whenever nature called you let it go and the urine went into the bag via the tube at the end of the condom. Since I was receiving blood thinner through the I V, they drew blood every 2 hours to make sure I was not getting too much blood thinner. There is always a concern about internal bleeding.  

Finally, they discharged me from the hospital on Friday afternoon February 10th. Ever notice they want to discharge as many as they can before the weekends. Anyway, in the following months I have follow up appointments, wear a heart monitor, and tested for sleep apnea. The last test was an echocardiogram. They wanted to make sure the blood clot did not leave any long term. Damage. All the tests showed there was no long-term damage.  

In conclusion, it is near the end of July, and I feel pretty good for being over eighty and just dodged death. The only thing I have noticed is that my endurance is shorter now and I tend to get tired sooner. The moral of the story is that if you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a painful cramp in your calf, do not massage the calf to attempt to relieve the pain. The speculation is, when I massaged my cramp a large portion of the clot broke loose and migrated between my lungs and with the constriction and the blood flow slowing down the clot just became larger. The doctors said I was very fortunate to survive a clot of this size. Now I must figure out why I was given another chance of survival. 

FIFTIES MEMORIES VIDEO

Link to video

I totally forgot that I have a You Tube account since 2011. For some reason I thought about it for some reason and guess what! It is still active, and this video is from this site. I don’t have a clue where it is from. I know it is too good to be my handiwork. I know there are others my age and am sharing it.

Also, here is a link to my long lost You Tube account.

MEMORIES OF FAITH

https://tomt2.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/memories-of-faith.mp3 podcast

My first church 

The first church in my life was a Catholic church since my mother was a born and raised Catholic. I guess I can say my father did not have a practicing religion. He was raised a Baptist, but I would say he did not go to church services no more than ten times that I can remember. He never interfered with my mother raising my brother and I into the Catholic religion.  

First a little about the history of this church. The name was St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. It was established in 1924 in an old Presbyterian church in west or southwest Denver. The original was a small grey stucco building, I would say about the size of a small country school building. I distinctly remember the two tall evergreen trees on both sides of the entrance to the church. 

When I was very young, I remember the parish priest, Father Grohman. He was a funny man and full of life. He was probably around 60 when I was young, 

In 1949 father Wogan became the parish priest. Strange man, I could never get close to him. It could have been the normal fear of authority at my young age, and he liked to show his authority. Father Wogan expanded the church. The old gray stucco building was torn down and a new church was built across the alley in 1949. I was seven years old at the time. This church was in the basement because in the next six years a school was built around the structure. In 1955 the school was dedicated and is still open. In 1963 a new church was built just east of the original church, and it is still being used even after the church was severely damaged in the flood of 1965.  

I received my first communion there and confirmation. It is hard to compare the religion what I was raised into the religion of today. In fact, I could say there is no comparison. For example, fear was a big factor. There was time when I compared God to the big accountant. He sat there with his big ledger pad and kept track of every time you sinned and acted human. It was tough getting into heaven those days. Today the game has changed and now I feel like I may have a chance. 

I am sure my past exposure has affected my faith and me. Just as my present exposure affects my faith. The faith I have is based on events happening throughout my life. My life has been a learning experience and the older I become the stronger my faith becomes. 

An influence of my faith 

My grandmother or the mother of my mother was an influence in my faith journey. Grandma was born in Germany and migrated to America when she was seven years old. I am not sure when she learned to read and write English. I do know that she had very little formal education because the migration to America was during her young years when she should have been learning the basics and then she had to go to work to help feed the family. Grandma married and had fourteen children. About half of them died in birth or at a very young age. Her husband died at a young age because of Asthma, and she was left with many children to feed and support. She had to take in laundry and scrub floors so the family could survive. They did not have community support programs during that time. As her children became older, they had to quit school and start work at a young age to help support the family. It sounded like it was a very difficult time. 

 Grandma lived with our family. I think she moved in with us when my parents bought their house. I remember her living with us until she passed away when I was sixteen years old. Her life was hard and a struggle.  

With that said, she was an influence in my faith journey because I never heard her complain about her struggles in life. She was a very religious person. I don’t know how many times a day she would pray. She went to church as often as she could and she always would say, “have faith, God will take care of you.” 

I remember on her deathbed when we would come to visit her, she would say, “you don’t have to come see me anymore. These two angels are here waiting to take me away and she would point in the direction of the corner of the room. To this day I believe she actually saw two angels waiting to take her away. 

Song of my faith 

Here I am searching my brain for a song that is instrumental in my faith. It is in there somewhere, but I am having a difficult time finding it. In fact, I am having a difficult time thinking of any song this is significant in my life. One of the first songs that came to thought of was “Ave Maria”. Why that song came to me first I cannot explain. It just came to mind that many Christmas Carols about Christ is instrumental to my faith. I do believe that Christ is the son of God and Christmas Carols do celebrate Christ’s coming into the world. “Silent Night”, “Away in the Manager”, and others give me a strange warm feeling when I hear them. However, that is just a period in the year. After the Christmas season these songs are not played until the beginning of the next Christmas season.  

I am looking for that one song that affects me throughout the entire year.  

There is one song that I truly love. This may sound strange, but that song is the theme song from “How the west was won”. When the words “the Promised Land” are sung it emphasizes or re-enforces my faith that there is a Promised Land beyond life on this earth. I know it is not a traditional religious song. I may not have a traditional song stored in my brain. Many times, I strongly feel that my faith is not from traditional organized religious practices but from subtle events and ideas that I have experienced. 

Icon of my faith 

Here I am trying to think about an icon of my faith. This is a tough subject for me because I see an icon as an inanimate object with no life. Whereas my faith is alive and vibrant. I can look at a cross and it brings the thought of suffering Christ did for mankind. However, there are other icons or stories that bring the same thoughts to mind. The cross is not the only center of point for these thoughts. 

Being from a Catholic raised environment statues were and still are big in the Catholic faith. I feel that the statues were attempts to remember an individual. They were before photography. I have never looked at a statue as an icon. 

What I am trying to say is that my faith is not dependent on some icon. My faith has come from lessons and teachings of the Christian religion throughout my life and events that have happened between me and the unknown.  

Religion of youth versus religion of adulthood 

What I am today is so much different than what I was in earlier periods of my life. For example, in my young years when I was indoctrinated into faith and religion. Everything was black and white. Or you might say it was either good or bad. You had to worry about the bad things or the sinful aspects of life. Much of religion was memorization, many aspects were just bad, don’t question it, just abide by it. 

As I became older in my journey of life, I attempted to abide by all these rules and regulations. It was tough and many times I questioned my worthiness. I was a sinner and walked around with a large case of guilt. Now that I look back at these misdeeds they now are not as bad as they were at the time. 

As life progressed and other events in my life took place my outlook on life and religion began to change. Religion and faith started to be an important part of everyday life. Whereas in younger years it was a hamper to being happy and feeling good about myself. 

So here I am now. I will never be an evangelist. Religion and faith are a difficult subject to discuss because so much of my faith is an internal gift and what I feel may not work for another. If I can’t relay my faith in words, what do I do? I resort to actions and displaying my faith with what I do. How I live and how I show love to others that cross into my journey of life.  

What is worship? 

Thinking about it I am sure everyone has a different concept and idea on this thought. I am sure no one will ever come up with a one definition that fits all. Even my thoughts on this subject tonight may change at a later time.  

I am feeling that worship is a conversation with God. I have heard that worship is just praising God. Sorry, this does not work for me. I have been in many one-sided conversations, and they can be very boring and useless. To have a good conversation both parties need to be involved and share thoughts and feelings. Many will say that God does not talk to you. It may be that you expect to receive the response like you communicate to God. Is God communicating to you in subtle ways that is not in the form of traditional communication? This could be one of the mysteries of worship. Worship can be a seven-day event, not just an event reserved for church service time. It just dawned on me that I might just link worship with prayer. 

Conclusion  

In conclusion, the above subjects were writing prompts in a writing group from 2009. I brushed them off and refreshed them. It has been fourteen years since they were written, and a lot has happened in my faith.  

First, we have become more active in the Lutheran branch of Christianity it amazed me how close or similar the two are. When I was young, I was told than protestants were wrong and going down the wrong path. I came to the realization that they are God loving humans and try to do the best they can to lead a good life. We have attended many denominations during this period have realized that they are all Christians.  

Finally, I experienced a near death experience last February. I thought I breathed my last breath and was prepared to meet the maker. I must have passed out but somehow the doctors revived me, and I started to feel better. How long I was out I will never know. This tale can be read at “My Blood Clot”. All tests and lab work show that there was no long-term damage and the chances of surviving more years are good. I am now at ease of death, and I am confident there is more after death on this earth. I am convinced that God loves us unconditionally and Christ died for our sins. The hard part to accept is that God loves the bad guys unconditionally and Christ died for their sins too.  

THANKSGIVING MEMORIES

Podcast

The first memory of Thanksgiving is dry turkey. In my younger days we had to go over to my dad’s aunt’s apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. This apartment was an old scary apartment located around 16th and Logan in Denver. The halls were dark and noisy. Echoes would bounce off all the walls and the stairs looked like they came straight out of an inner sanctum movie. Aunt Florence and Aunt Margaret were sisters that lived their older years together, Aunt Florence was a spinster all her life and Aunt Margaret’s husband died at an early age. They had no children. In fact, the only relatives they had in Denver were my dad. 

This does not sound like dry turkey, so let me get back to the topic. The turkey was always large, and we were honored with taking lots of leftovers home. Turkey sandwiches for a long time after Thanksgiving. Not being a cook, I can just speculate what the aunts did to make this turkey so dry. I would speculate that they cooked it too long and never basted or turned over the turkey while baking. In fact, the skin of the turkey was like thin leather. Even the wings and drumsticks were dry, dry, dry. 

The meal came with the normal fixings, stuffing, it was dry also, potatoes, veggies and gravy. Gravy was the savior of the day. If it wasn’t for gravy this dry turkey would stick in your mouth and make a swallow very difficult. The meal would end up with a dessert. I cannot remember much about the desert so I would say it was not very good or bad, just another desert.  

After the dry turkey I remember of going to The Aladdin Theatre for the afternoon matinee. I didn’t make any difference what was playing because my brother and I just wanted to get out of that hot stuffy apartment. Apparently, the weather was mild, and we were allowed to walk home or take the bus. Thinking back now, I am surprised that we were allowed to go home by ourselves because it was quite a distance from East Colfax to where we lived (near Alameda and S. Federal). In those days there wasn’t the fear and dangers that the young generation faces today. I do remember a store walking to the movies that in their front window they had a gigantic ball composed of shoelaces. It must have been close to three feet in diameter. I think the store was a shoe repair place. Every year we could see how the size of this ball would grow. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have good memories of Thanksgiving, but this story is about dry turkey and nothing very good can be said about dry turkey.   

EVERYDAY IS SATURDAY

Audio file for listening, instead of reading.

The sky is blue, the sunsets are beautiful, and the roses smell terrific. I didn’t notice these luxuries before I retired. When I was working, and going through the challenges of life that are thrown at you. I didn’t take the time for the simple beauty of life. Seventeen years have passed since I retired in September. Do I enjoy retirement? Yes, I do! Retirement has been a blessing for me. This is part of the American dream, work most of your life and then enjoy the fruits of your labor. It feels good to see that Social Security and pension payments appear in your banking account every month. Yes, I am living the American dream! 

Since I have retired many people have asked me the question. “What do you do now that you are retired?” As if you are supposed to do something. My most often response is; “recuperating from the last forty-five years”. I was tired! The first 90 days (about 3 months) I did very little. No, I didn’t lie in bed all day, but I took it easy and started to adjust to a slower and more relaxed lifestyle. Now, what I don’t get done today, I can finish tomorrow.  

I retired in September and during our Thanksgiving gathering someone asked me, “Tom, what do you do all day?’ I responded, “every day is Saturday.” That means I don’t have anything I have to do or any place I must be. That phrase stuck and I still use it today.  

My typical morning starts around 6 to 7:00 a.m. No, I don’t sleep in. I try to keep regular hours. I usually go to bed around the same time and rise around the same time. When I get up at the above time this gives me time to get my cup of coffee and breakfast. When I first retired, I was an active stock market trader. I guess you could say I was a pattern trader. However, since the 2008 downslide the market has been too volatile for me, and I invest in stable and secure investments only.  

Retiring has given me many opportunities to do things I have been putting off either because I just didn’t have the time or just too tired to do them. what you don’t get done today; you can work on tomorrow, or the next day, or next week.  

Last fall I joined a small writer’s group at a church in Lakewood. I have always had an interest in writing; however, I never took the time or had the time to cultivate that desire. Now that I am retired, I have the time to cultivate that interest. This small writing group was the catalyst that prompted me to Yourhub.com. Yourhub.com was a bloggers site sponsored by a local newspaper. Once a week they had an insert with blogs they have selected. During this period, I was fortunate to have them select over seventy of my blogs. This was a perfect medium to get the word out and expose your efforts to an audience. The hard part is to get that audience to read your efforts. This does beat putting your efforts into a file cabinet or hard drive and no one ever reads them. After a period yourhub.com disappeared when the local newspaper went out of business. I didn’t write for a while and then I discovered Substack. I then started writing again. At least you have exposed your works to a live and alert audience. 

My retirement has had its downsides. One of the big downsides was winter’s unusually large snowfalls. It kept me inside more than I wanted to stay inside. I am an outdoors person, and the snowy weather has surely hampered my activities and I was getting a lot of cases of cabin fever.  However, spring comes, and I can get out into the sunshine and fresh air and my attitude turns around one hundred percent.  

The only thing that changed the entire environment of retirement is health. We have been very fortunate with health issues, and I attempt to live a healthy life by periodic health exams, eat in moderation and exercise regularly. Unfortunately, illness is part of the aging process. My wife has had a couple of mini strokes, fluid accumulating around her heart and a bout of unexplained dizziness that lasted over a year. I have had two cataracts removed. I suffered with an eleven-millimeter kidney stone that they had to go up through the basement to zap it with a laser and bust it up. I passed chocolate milk from my kidney for about twelve hours. I recently experienced a large blood clot between my lungs. I went through the removal procedure awake because that is what the doctor recommended. I survived the procedure. After the procedure was completed, the doctor was talking to me, and he said he thinks the right decision was made to stay awake because if I would have gone under anesthesia, he thought he may have lost me. Doctor Death was holding deaths door open, and I survived. I have recuperated and I am now well again.    

I try not to think about ill health. It is a part of life and when it strikes us, we will attempt to deal with it when it happens.  

In conclusion, do I have any recommendations for an active healthy retirement? Sure, I do. Keep your mind active. I enjoy puzzle books. These books keep the cobwebs out of my brain. I am a member of Silver Sneakers and go to Carmondy Recreation Center to walk my mile and bicycle my five miles at least three times a week. I feel better and sleep heavier since I have taken up this exercise program. Carmondy Recreation Center has many types of physical fitness equipment so you can design your own activity program. Keep up with a social life. We are social beings and social activity is very important for the well-being and happiness in your life.  

 Attempt to have a financial plan. If you are broke, retirement will not be fun. There are many other forms of entertainment other than television. Enjoy television as a last resort.  Finally, be positive, be active, and be happy.