Sunny with a Chance of Death

So after ferociously making blog notes and ideas all week long I've decided to take this one in a completely different direction.  You see I am getting over pneumonia and was in Easton Hospital last week from Friday to Saturday, no doubt in my mind they let me go way before they should have.  By Sunday morning I was still miserable and went to see my local family doctor on Monday.  He 100% agreed with me that I should NOT have been discharged. We worked out a plan and he gave me some new medications, one of them being the infamous steroid taper, the drug all of us CFers love to hate and hate to love.  My normal dose is 10mg/day and he increased it to 60mg/day for 3 days then 40mg/day for 3 days then 20mg/day for 3 days and then back to my normal dose.  Basically the last 3 days I've been in a mania state, furiously and fiercely cleaning the house, sorting through dusty paperwork that has been sitting around untouched for years, you know the deal.  I imagine this must be what it is like to be a pregnant nesting mother to be.  As I am feeling much better I do go to UPenn tomorrow to the urgent clinic, they need to evaluate me and see if I need to be admitted for an emergency bronchoscopy to rule out the possibility of rejection.  My original bronch was scheduled for 1/26 but both my family doctor and Penn agreed that I should be seen sooner for an immediate evaluation.  So tonight I'm getting my shit packed just in case, my amazing and wonderful sister Mary took off of work to take me so the 3 of us (my niece Pay Pay is coming too!) are definitely going to have a little adventure.  Since I don't know what the future holds I wanted to blog tonight in case I have any major updates I won't have to start from the scratch.  

In going through my mania cleaning I came across several old notebooks and spent the next five or six hours pouring over them, reliving memories both wonderful and heartbreaking.  Over my next few blogs I am going to share some of these very personal memories.  

Before my first transplant I was trying to be a responsible adult, I obsessed over death and funerals and made many notes on how I would want mine to be, what I would want said, what I would want read, what songs to play and I even made a list of my most precious possessions and who was to get what when and if I died.  I am now going to list the memorial quotes, poems and song I would like played.  Some are for humor and some are just downright morbid but this is a process, a long one that takes you to unexpected places and reveals unexpected emotions and feelings.

Quotes:

I am ready to meet my maker.  Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter - Winston Churchill

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough - Seneca 

He who has hope has everything - Arabian proverb

Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it it still dark - Anonymous 

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter - E.E. Cummings 

There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle - Albert Einstein

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are - Teddy Roosevelt 

Until you know that life is interesting - and find it so - you haven't found your soul - Geoffrey Fisher 

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.  Delicious ambiguity - Gilda Radner 

Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there.  What you choose to do with them is up to you - Richard Bach

I look at life as a gift of God.  Now that he wants it back, I have no right to complain - Joyce Cary

...and my personal favorite...

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars - Elbert Hubbard 

Poems:

Death is Nothing At All - Henry Scott Holland 

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!


God's Garden - Anonymous 

God looked around his garden
And found an empty place.
He then looked down upon the earth,
And saw your tired face.

He put his arms around you
And lifted you to rest.
God's garden must be beautiful,
He always takes the best.

He knew that you were suffering,
He knew that you were in pain.
He knew that you would never
Get well on earth again.

He saw the road was getting rough
And the hills were hard to climb
So He closed your weary eyelids
And whispered "Peace be thine."

It broke our hearts to lose you
But you did not go alone...
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.

Song: 


Home - Paul McCartney 

For so long, I was out in the cold
And I taught myself to believe every story I told
It was fun hanging onto the moon, heading into the sun
but its been too long, 
Now I want to come home
Came so close, to the edge of defeat
But I made my way in the shade, keeping out of the heat
It was fun shooting out at the stars, looking into the sun
But its been to long, 
Now i want to come home

(chorus)

Home, where there's nothing but, sweet surrender
To the memories from afar
Home, to the place where the truth lies waiting
We remember who we are
For too long, I was out on my own
Every day I spent trying to prove I could make it alone
It was fun hanging onto the moon, heading into the sun
But it's been too long,
Now I want to come home

(8-bars lead)

For so long, I was out in the cold
But I taught myself to believe every story I've told
It was fun hanging onto the moon, heading into the sun
But its been too long,
Now I want to come home
Yeah it's been too long,
Now I want to come home
Been too long . . .
Now I want to come home


That's all for tonight folks, as you can imagine I am both physically and emotionally exhausted.  As always thank you for reading and your feedback.  I love all of you and plan to be around for many many years to come

Peace