A contingency Plan

What would you do if everyone keeps telling you that having surgery is extremely dangerous?  With that being said you also need to know that if you don't have the operation the cancer is going to spread and will eventually kill you?  Would you elect to have the surgery and hope that the doomsayers are wrong and that everything is going to be alright or would you take the chance of the cancer staying contained and never spreading?    It is a hard question to process and think about and even more of a drag on your mood and emotions.  These are the questions that I am facing.

However, I think that I have made my decision based upon my past experience with cancer and have decided to have the surgery and hope for the best.  However,  my grandmother always told me to hope for the best but plan for the worse that way you will never find yourself in a situation of disappointment.  So I have gone ahead with the plan to have the surgery and have found a surgeon who can do a minimally invasive surgery which doubles my outlook and recovery time.

But as always I have a contingency plan in place in case things go horribly wrong.  I have asked that my doctors do not resuscitate me in the event of heart failure or death under the anesthesia.  If I am on life support I have asked my step mother and father to make sure that the plug is pulled and that I am let go.  I do not want to have a machine doing the hard work for me even if there is a slight chance that I might pull through.  It is my understanding that the longer you are on the machine the harder it is to come back.  Also I am not sure what would come back if my consciousness has already left my body. 

I am a believer that we are energy beings and I believe that all energy exists in the universe and is neither created nor destroyed just changed.  Therefore if my mind checks out, I check out.  I am ready to start the next phase of life. I have been battling this disease for way to long and the journey has been very rough and tiring, I am ready to move on.  I am very tired after fighting for 22 years. 

Now that this is the 5th bout of cancer that I have suffered through I want to just let go but I don't know how to.  Life is all about choices and decisions we make and the consequences that result from them. If we are comfortable with the consequences then the action taken can be seen in light of our own best interests.  Though it may be hard for others to accept the choices we have made, because no one truly understands where you are at in your own personal life which forms the basis for the conclusion you have reached.

In all things you should weigh the risks and make clear choices that help reduce or eliminate the risks you face. So, putting a contingency plan in place is the best option. It shows that you have viewed the scenarios that surround each issue and have made a conscious decision based on predicted outcomes and should something unforseen crop up you have a way to deal with it. It also shows that you have weighed the consequences and have chosen the best alternatives that you see.  Remember that the future is not set in stone and can be changed by a single situation and reaction. Therefore, I suggest that not only do you come up with a plan to deal with the immediate concern, but also any other conceivable outcomes.  This ensures that all contingencies are met and dealt with at the appropriate time and place. You also might want to work on an exit strategy a separate plan that allows you a quick and orderly retreat and allows you to avoid the risk totally if the cost becomes too great for you to accept.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you.

Uncle B 

Unexpected news and uncertain revelations

Well 2016 is well underway and we have all made it through the first month and a half and seem to still be chugging along.  For now that is!  Just when you think things can't get any worse something creeps up from the shadows of the past and hits you squarely in the head. 

The past 5 years haven't been very kind to me or my health and I am always surprised when I think I have something licked and it turns out to just be a recurring item in my bizarre and strange world.  I have known for a very long time that my body has a different notion of living than my mind does.  My mind doesn't seem to think that there is anything wrong with me physically and my body seems to take pleasure in revealing at the most in appropriate times that the mind is lying to me.  It seems almost like a dream now that I suffered from near catastrophic paralysis just 2 years ago when my spinal column was invaded by a nasty bacterial infection.  Oh I made it through that lovely situation by living in a nursing home/rehabilitation center, months and months of therapy and intravenous drugs and slowly I recovered.  Not fully, my strength never seemed to come back from that and the pain in my spine has never really gone away.

But nothing had prepared me for the news that I received this morning.  Nothing could have at all!!

For those of you my faithful friends and followers that have been going through this journey with me you will see that no matter how many things change in ones life, there are just as many things that remain the same.  When I got sick with my back trouble in 2014 my mother was going through something very similar.  I got better, I can still walk and use my legs and my spine seems to be fusing at right locations to eventually lead to a full recovery.  My mother on the other hand wasn't so lucky her doctors operated where my did not.  My mother never walked out of that hospital, she was irreversibly paralyzed from the waist down.  Damage to her spinal cord has made it impossible for her to walk and has dramatically changed her life.  Tuesday she was supposed to go to the doctors about pain that she had been experiencing in her feet and she was hospitalized all over again.  I found out this morning when I called her that she is also suffering acute renal failure, something that I am all too familiar with.  Since I suffer from it constantly since my initial colon surgery in 2005.  Yet, this was not the only thing that my mother was told she was told that the infection in her back is back and that she also has a lump in her breast which appears to be at this point cancerous.  Now, please understand that I have known that my mother was experiencing problems that I could not even begin to imagine, but somehow I have always thought that my parents were invincible and that I would be the one that would leave the earth before them.  Now, I am not so sure of that anymore and I am scared and worried about my mother.

But that wasn't all the news that I received today that has given me pause and the need to reflect.  See the results of my test have come back as well and what I thought was just a benign growth on my right kidney has turned out to be a whole other creature indeed.   This morning I was told in no uncertain terms that I need to have surgery that the tumor has grown vastly in just a few months time and now cancer threatens my entire core being once again.  Funny just a few short months ago I was given a totally different outlook on my health and wellbeing by the very same doctors that are now telling me that my situation has turned from serious to grave. 

Funny using that word to describe a state for which I have been preparing for since 1991.  Since June of 1991 I have known that my health had taken a turn for the serious and that I would forever after have a complicated life ahead of me.  But the Grace of God has seen fit to give me a pass for a very long time and has allowed me to share my life with many people that would have never had the chance to get to know me had I died all those years ago.  Life hasn't been easy and at times I have feared for it, yet somehow I knew that my time and usefulness hadn't come to end.  I felt that there were many things that I needed to do and say before I could finish what I had started here on Earth with my birth.  So when the doctors told me this news that they were going to have to go in and despite them repeatedly telling me that I would not endure any more surgeries that my body had  gone through enough and simply couldn't recover.  What am I supposed to think and do now? 

I do not fear death as I thought I might, I just don't feel like dying, I am selfish I guess because I want to live.  I want to accomplish a few more things before I have to say good bye to this world.  However, with the doctors not giving me much hope on this front anymore, I am just wondering how I am going to tell all the people that I love and who love me that I may not be seeing them anymore.  I have lost so many people along the way to this point in my life.  People who I felt deserved a more full and better life than I did. Yet, for whatever reason God chose them to come home and left me here to carry on.  I knew in the back of my mind that things weren't right and that I probably wouldn't make it to my 50th birthday, but I thought as we all do that I would have more time.  I am not afraid for myself, because I know that I am about to start a new adventure in a totally different way, I am scared for you those I leave behind in this world that has gone crazy, where total direction and certainty of our entire nation is left in the balance of chance and fate.  This election year is shaping up in the most uncanny way, people don't recall history very well at all...Barry Goldwater entered into an election that was rudimentary and fundamentally the same as what is happening now. Untraconservative and Socialist squaring off.  Both sides of the parties one so far right and the other so far left are going to cause such an unstable rift in our political landscape that our Nation will not recover fully from it this time. 

The world is changing, governments have come and gone and yet the same old bigotry, hate and intolerance survives in the world.  I have tried my entire life to bring hope and joy to those around me.  I was successful a great many of those times, but there have been other times when I have failed utterly and miserably. I take what I have and what I have been given and I give without failing to those I see in need.  My help is never enough but it is always on time.  I am leaving this world without a legacy, I don't know who will be crazy enough to give as much as I do, so I don't know what is going to happen from here forward.  All I know is that I still love each and everyone of you, there are others with my family name that will carry forth that love after I am gone.  They don't know you, and some have never met me, I am sure they all know of me and who I am, but I have lived a life of my own choosing and I know that my death is going to come before any of us are prepared.  I just know that time is running out and the my race is no longer important. 

So in a flash just like that branch of the family tree that I am apart of seems to be about to disappear shortly and irrevocably forever. 

To the rest of the Zepp clan, I stand in awe and amazement of where and how we all started and I am thankful that I was apart of your family.  Many of you have accomplished some very amazing things and have overcome so much hardship and turmoil to get to where you are today.  But you all have become successful in all your endeavors and have created something that is going to last way after you are gone.  I unfortunately was not so lucky, there are many that will remember me in there hearts and minds fondly.  But my choices and path have left no one and nothing.  I have no children, I only have you my family and I hope that you remember me as I was a kind and gentle person who loved to help others.

I may not make it through the surgery and the treatments that are coming faster than a speeding bullet.  My mother might not make it through her treatments and surgeries that are heading her way. So we are preparing you, making sure you are ready to LIVE!  Because life is a banquet and there are too many people starving out there.  So be true to yourselves and love each other and go forth into the world and make a difference. 

As always my hopes and dreams are with you.


Uncle B