As I got older, the calories began to be more noticeable, creating areas of collecting fat modules like around my middle and on my buttocks (I liked the way Forest, Forest Gump said “butt-tocks”). I needed more sleep, but still, I didn’t always have to endure that alone. Heavier and less fit, my late forties and early fifties were some of my favorite years.

Now I’m old and my deteriorating lungs have made the way my body burns fat and calories much less efficient. Exercise is so difficult, my work now is mostly sitting behind a keyboard and monitor, there’s no love life now, I got rid of the bicycle years ago and what little shopping and walking I do now is mostly with the aide of a Segway PT. Prob’ly the most difficult habit to break is the staying up late. But if I don’t get at least 7 hours of sleep, my brain and my body don’t function like they should, even in this diseased state.

Most people don’t realize the simplest and benign things in life become strenuous chores when your lungs go bad. Some of the most physically challenging things I do now are taking a shower, drying off and getting dressed. It stinks.

No, really, it stinks – my body odors – they literally stink because I don’t clean them as much as I would like. It saps my energy and causes me to gasp for air. I can’t wear my oxygen in the shower. I suck that O2 through a hose in my nose, and it’s damn difficult to breathe through your nose in the shower. Let alone keep the dang thing out of your way when you are trying to clean yourself.

So, everything I eat contains calories, cholesterol, sugar and fat globules that cling to just about every part of my body now. Yet I continue to eat cake, cook my meals out of a can or box; or eat peanut butter and jelly or tuna fish and egg sandwiches. When I have the money to eat out, it’s usually a cheeseburger and fries or some kind breakfast with eggs, maybe bacon and oh, biscuits – I love teh fresh made biscuits and butter.

My hours are awful. I stay up until 3 or 4 AM most of the time and can’t sleep past 10 AM or so without feeling totally guilty for staying in bed so long. Well, it really ain’t long enough for my body, but it seems too long because it’s so late in the morning. I used to get up at 7 AM to get ready for work. Occasionally these days, it’s nearly 7 by the time I push myself away from the computer to go to bed.

What is the solution? I don’t know. If I did, I might be talking about what a great life I have even with late stage emphysema. I’d be braggin’ on my appeal to the ladies (and to be honest, there was a certain amount of pride in getting flirted with by gay guys – just before it grossed me out, but there was still this thought that, “I got it goin’ on”). In fact, this would be a here’s-how-ya-do-it article instead of a woe-is-me article. Hey, I told you I might do this.

My hope is that just writing it down for me to see – and you too, of course – might give me some of the motivation I need to stop this bad behavior. I kinda have a feeling I know what the root of the problem is: HALT – Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired. I’ll think on it and maybe that will be my next article. But at least now I have this etched in stone… well, in the ether anyway. It’s there in front of me and now I have to think about it every time I look at my computer (or at least when I visit this site). We shall see if it helps.

Your words of encouragement would be nice. I can even take a little criticism. But I guarantee you, SPAM will not be eaten, it will be destroyed.

My health has deteriorated, as is expected with a disease that is chronic and has no cure. But they adjust my medication levels and even changed some of the inhalers. To be able to go and do the things I like to do, I get around on a Segway and even take it into stores and restaurants when I need to. I’ll talk more about the Seg in another post, but I am mobile.

When I look at my Other Foot List, I realize much of that has changed now. Again, more about that later, in a revised list. It’s true that some things change and some stay the same. I am trying to go with the flow. I was depressed and closed myself off from the world for a very long time, except when I absolutely had to do something. But I feel like something happened a few weeks ago and now I am more excited about this life than ever before.

I’ll expound on that more, as I keep saying, later and in other posts. I wanted to get this message out to you though – I’m not dead yet. I don’t fear the inevitable as much as I did and I am willing to try to make the transition as much fun and interesting as possible. Thanks for hangin’ with me.

I get to take long, leisurely showers now… Not because I have the time or inclination, of course, but because I don’t have much choice. I get out of breath just washing my hair.

Friends and family wait on me hand and foot… Not because I am so dynamic and popular, but because I can no longer do some of the things I used to take for granted.

I got to spend a little time laying around in bed with these really cool wires attached to me after a heart attack, caused by a low level of oxygen saturation in my blood.

One of the best things of all is the really cool back pack I get to wear every day now.

Had I got interested in hiking and jogging when I was a punk kid, I coulda had one a these things filled with my favorite beverage. Which prob’ly woulda meant I mighta quit smoking sooner to devote more interest in that healthy pastime. But noooooo, I gotta wait ’til I hafta wear one of these things — with a canister of oxygen insteada water.

On top of that, I got some horse pills an’ these inhaler things (4 different ones) I have to do 4 times a day — one is Albuterol and an AeroChamber. It’s so funny that it looks like I’m taking big ol’ hits off a dope pipe, which I haven’t done in 20 years. I can hardly wait for the first time a cop sees me do it out of the corner of his eye. Talk about déjà vu.

And the pill cutter… what th’ heck is that all about? Can’t they make a smaller pill? I gotta have this guillotine type instrument – an’ I already cut my finger once!

Yeah, man, that suicide on the installment plan is really startin’ ta pay off now. They keep tellin’ me, “quality of life”. This is real quality, I tell ya. The good news is I only have to go through it for another 2 or 3 years (according to the eviction notice I got from my doctor a couple weeks ago).

Lest you think I have sunk to my lowest ebb, I am not giving up. I am still trying to be as active as I can. I am trying to lose some weight (gained 80 pounds when I quit smoking – at 258 now) so I don’t put such a strain on my Segway, which I have to use if I wanna go more than 50′ without a car. I do love building my professional and special interest websites – The Floor Pro Community, enterpriseJM and Grump’s Place among several others.

It’s not my intention to gain your sympathy here. Some people seem to be absolutely clueless about the rights of all humans to live free of unnecessary and involuntary danger. Yeah, I lived in danger for many years, but I have the right to be free of it now. My lung disease is significantly advanced compared to a lot of other people.

There’s prob’ly millions of people who recognized (or maybe not yet) that smoking was damaging their lungs and hearts and they are able to walk around without the aid of o2, inhalers and pills. But they still suffer every time some dolt blows smoke their way thinking they have the right to.

The fact is, far too many people don’t use common sense or have the slightest consideration for others. I sure didn’t as a smoker, a dope head or a selfish and self-centered punk kid. So, it’s guys like me that suffer because we don’t want the little bit of time we have left to be shortened even 2 minutes because someone else feels like havin’ a smoke. We might need laws that tell smokers when and where they can light up. It’s either that or guys like me will just bust their heads open with the ugly end of an oxygen tank. Whata they gonna do, give me free room and board in a hospital for a few more years?

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just do it where the rest of us don’t have to breathe your left-overs.

That was in Alaska, where I was born an Army brat, and I had dived head first from the porch into the drift that settled in our front yard. The snow, stiff and crusty, held me firm and I couldn’t move. I panicked and screamed for help.

There’s no screaming now, but I am panicked. I shouldn’t be surprised, since I’ve been walking around with a hose in my nose, snorting o2, for the past two and a half years. I knew then that I wouldn’t live to the old age I had hoped for, but somehow it didn’t hit me like it did a couple of days ago.

My medical care is through the Veterans Administration. It’s all I get because I was too foolish to get insurance at any time during the last 35 years of my career in floor covering. So anyway, I go to see a pulmonary specialist on the 27th and after about 45 minutes of questions and him methodically tapping out 2 finger style on a keyboard, he tells me that the Emphysema is spread throughout my lungs so much that lung reduction surgery is out of the question. He mentions the possibility of lung transplantation, but wants me to know that it doesn’t have the long-lasting effect they had once hoped for. He talked about the danger of that kind of surgery. He said that only 50% of patients who have the surgery live 5 years.

My hopes weren’t getting up there where I thought they’d be. I asked him what kind of time I might have left without the surgery. “Two, maybe three years,” he said. I was actually surprised I didn’t cry at that news. I remember crying like a baby when they wheeled out my first oxygen tank over 2 years ago. It was a death sentence then, but the other day was the official eviction notice.

I left there thinking I have to do whatever I can to beat that 3 year mark. It was a kind of slow-burn panic. I don’t want to live the way I have been for the last year. I was evicted from a beautiful home I lived in for 17 years because I couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore. My new home is a cracker-box I really should be grateful for. The best friend I’ve ever had has been very generous and supportive, giving me a place to live, giving me an opportunity I would have never gotten to have my mobility device (a Segway) and just being a great friend. But I miss having more than 2 rooms. I miss the nicer things I enjoyed. I miss having a yard all around, fences, a workshop, lots of deck to lounge on and so much more.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time adding Adsense to all my websites (I used it on only one site previously). I set this site up, not only to do this blog, which I have wanted to do for a very long time, but to get some advertising dollars rolling in. My small military pension is less than one-fourth what I used to make and I am sick and tired of being poor. I did my time back in the old days of my youth.

But the day wasn’t only spent trying desperately to generate some income opportunity. I ate healthier. I tried breathing exercises. I walked about 3 blocks. Used considerable energy and strength to move my street tires and some other stuff into a storage unit and did 3 loads of laundry. If I’m true to my habits, I might be good for another day or so before I settle back into my “easier, softer ways.” But I don’t think I can afford that kind of attitude anymore. I think I have some hard work ahead.

We’ll see.