Cheerleading for Heart Failure

                                                       

You have to have a somewhat morbid sense of humor to cope with illness. When I went to the emergency room, the doctor said - "I have bad news. The spot on your lung is cancer." Then he went on to say: "And...."

"Wait," I asked, "you mean there's more?"

"Yep," he told me, "you also have some congestive heart failure going on."

When I left, I had to chuckle a little at the irony of having two diseases and having to root for one or the other.

"Come on, heart failure!"

After all, who wouldn't rather die in their own bed of a massive heart attack than to linger painfully on while cancer drags you down and down? If that's the way it happened, of course, quickly and suddenly. But no strokes that propel you into a nursing home, please.

Because that is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid to die but I'm terrified of helplessness. I have the best friends in the world but I don't want to have to depend on them anymore than I already do.

And hospice? Oh, God, I have an absolute horror of hospice. I don't want strangers coming to my house to feed or bathe me or even just to pat me on the hand in an effort to comfort me. My prayer has always been - "go away and let me do this on my own."

So that's why I root for heart failure to prevail over cancer in the end.

It's strange too because sometimes the different things you need collide with one another.  I'm anemic and so I take iron pills, iron deficiency being the main cause of anemia. Iron pills lead to constipation. When I read up on anemia, the website said to be sure to take a Probiotic because keeping your colon healthy is very important. Probiotics work in the opposite direction as iron. So you take these two pills and you have to wonder if your body is saying, "make up your damn mind." To go or not to go?

Plenty of food, the anemia website says, is essential.  I hate most of what you're supposed to eat - chard, spinach, beets, liver. Yuck! But one of my two diseases has taken my appetite. I don't know which one to blame. I eat but it is now more of a chore than a pleasure. So, on the one hand your metabolism says, "food, I need food!" and on the other hand, it says, "nothing really sounds good." I remember when I would have given anything to voluntarily curb my appetite. Another irony.

Just for my own curiosity, I'd like to know how many of a certain kind of pill you'd have to take to end things yourself but how do you Google that question? Would anyone answer? Would you get turned and have Adult Protective Services make an emergency welfare check? I have two loaded guns but I'm pretty sure I'd never have guts enough to pull the trigger.

If all this makes me sound depressed, I'm not. I have a rather black sense of humor and if anything, I find the oddnesses life puts in front of you amusing.