Double A Penny - Step 20 - I Survived
It has been one month since the day of my surgery. I did survive to continue the fight for another day, in life, love and the struggle to complete DTAMP.
It was a difficult surgery. My surgeon was the best around but even he was baffled when they opened me up and found a strange organ that they couldn't identify, where no organ should be.
They decided to continue with the operation and soon discovered that the organ was one of my kidneys. It seems I had what is called a pelvic kidney. For some reason it had either moved way down into my pelvic area or I was born that way. It turned out that the choice I made for a bag was the only way it could have been done because of the pelvic kidney. The other two choices would not have worked.
After the surgery the first night was difficult as I would stop breathing and the nurses had to stay with me all night to keep waking me to tell me to breath when I fell asleep every 45 seconds to a minute.
The hospital stay was difficult for a number of reasons but the worst was the smell. Some drug they were giving me made things stink so bad I couldn't stand it. Even though I could barely walk I would hide in the little bathroom in my hospital room because that was the only place that didn't smell bad. I only slept for about an hour every 24 hours because of the smell.
I couldn't eat or drink very much so I lost 10 pounds. I was so happy to go home.
On the way home we had an automobile accident. A school bus decided to cut in front of us then slammed on the brakes when she was half in our lane. She said she didn't think she could make it so she stopped. It ruined our car. The police came. I was not feeling to good at that point. I was really barely able to come home.
Then later on the highway some pickup truck dropped a large object in the road, people were swerving to avoid it but someone hit it. It exploded into dozens of pieces and seemingly by magic they all gathered themselves together and came at us from the other lane and hitting our car making very bad crunching sounds all underneath.
It was all pretty scary. I admit I was scared to go into the surgery that day. Not only that but the night before Hurricane Irene was coming and they said it was going to be as bad as 1938 storm. My dad used to tell me stories about that storm and how his Mother carried him over her head in deep water with 12 other kids trailing behind her.
My thoughts were who is going to protect my house, the paper work in the basement is not replaceable, we are in such trouble. I didn't expect to have to fight a hurricane as well as go through the surgery. My basement did flood a little but our kind neighbor came over and got the water up.
Things have been slowly improving over the last month and I am on a lot of pain killers and medicine.
The truth of the matter is that I was dying. The doctor indicated that the pathology report showed that I not only had bladder cancer but there was also a tumor in the prostate as well.
But nothing was found in the surrounding area and the doctor feels that the surgery was curative. The cancer is gone and he was looking forward to seeing me run the marathon next year.
I am grateful for all the people that have helped us as we went through this. People sent cards and balloons, visited and called, made food for us and helped protect our home during Irene.
I do not like wearing this bag on me. I have nightmares of being trapped inside some cyber machine suit and will never be able to get out of it. I have lots of dreams of trying to escape something.
But I am alive and will continue to fight the good fight.
Sadly, as you can see from the timeline, I took a huge hit with a stock trade and lost a large portion of the DTAMP stake. It has been a big discouragement but as in all things I have to stand back up and keep moving forward.
This Double Your Way To A Million Blog is based upon the Doubling Method "How to Double Your Way to a £Million in 28 Steps". Using the Doubling Rule it is an attempt to "Double Your Way to a Million" by going from one penny to a million dollars, starting from nothing. At the beginning you start by finding a penny and then double a penny until reaching $1,000,000. posted by Xinfinitum | 9:14 AM PermaLink
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