Getting Old, sick and tired.

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by Thunder5Ranch, Sep 2, 2017.


  1. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Yep it happens to all of us :) I knew when I chose to live a a very rural life and be as self sufficient as I possibly could, that one day I would get old and not be able to do the things I did in my younger years. Grandpa dispensed a lot of good advice in my youth, and I took it as the gosphel. "Never go into debt, if you can't pay cash for it you don't need it", being the best advice I ever followed. Equally as good has been, "what you did yesterday will always determine how well you are going to do today, and what you do today will determine on well tomorrow is going to go". Usually chased by "Always do better today than you did yesterday and be planning today how you are going to do better tomorrow". These were much more than just words to me, growing up on a small farm that struggled through 70s and 80s and seeing first hand how bad things could get when hog prices dropped to .08 cents per pound and we couldn't give the grain away. It was Grandpas living those words of advice that saw us through those times.

    I joined the army for a fun and exciting first job off the farm in 1985 and took leave in 1991 to return home for Grandpas funeral. I thought to myself in his 87 years of life the man had seen a lot. The great depression, he fought in WW2 and Korea, Farmed through the prosperity of the 50s and 60s, saw the green revolution and largely rejected it, struggled to survive the small farms being devoured by consolidation in the 70s and 80s and did it, and lived life his way, and on his terms the whole trip. He left the Farm to myself and one Uncle that was only a few years older than me and we were more like brothers, hell we were raised like we were brothers. The day of the funeral his other 3 kids were already plotting how to get control of the farm and cash it in. As expected they contested the will and neither myself or my uncle had the funds to put up much of a legal fight. The army required my presence back in Iraq/Kuwait and my 30 days of leave was not nearly enough time to get into a estate fight. Long story short they won and we lost and the farm was auctioned off. So I saved everything I made in the army over the next three years, I had a decent chunk saved from the enlistment bonus, the re-up bonus and the combat pay. Drove a tractor trailer after getting out since it was a isolated job and the truck was home, like anything else you can be a broke truck driver or you can live on the cheap and sack away the money. I hated the job btw :) But it was a means to a end. I quit driving in 99/2000 at 32 years old and with $317,000 in my dirty sock.

    I used that money to buy my land, the base equipment, livestock, and a brand new 2001 dodge 2500 larmie diesel that I still drive today. In 28 days I will turn 50. I find myself looking back over the last 50 years and judging myself over those years. Asking if I had everything to do over, would I do anything different. The answer keep coming back no. I can honestly say I have never intentionally lied to anyone, and there were more than a few times a little flexing of the truth would have spared me a lot of problems. I have been wrong more than once or twice and will be the first to admit when I am. I am after all only human and perfection, while a worthy goal is not an obtainable goal. But it is not about being perfect, it is about being strong enough to weather any storm and come out alive and with your honor intact.

    So here I sit closing in on 50 years old, well into year two of trying to recover from the havoc the sepsis last year played on my body. Learned last week that the weeks of intense fever last spring and summer caused some brain damage....... No not the slobbering idiot kind of brain damage :) It basically fried my brains hot and cold receptors. 80 degrees feels like 120 and 60 degrees feels like -40 and my brain with its fried wiring is constantly trying to run the air conditioner and the furnace at the same time anytime I am out of that 65-75 degree sweet spot. To the point if I don't go inside after a hour or two to level things out the brain will just shut me down. Ad into that the organ damage from the septic infection and I find I can only physically do a fraction of what I could do in the early spring of 2016.

    So what I did yesterday is having a great sway on how well things today are going. The things I built, the infrastructure I put in and the things I did to make things easier as I aged are really coming into play.......... 20 years earlier than I expected or planned for them to come into play though :) Never having had any debt and owning everything outright, sure is some serious peace of mind. If I were living the normal life, after my income dropping to 20% of what it had been and trying to make car payments, a mortgage payment, credit card payments and every other payment the vast majority of people seem to have.......... I would most likely have had the farm foreclosed on and be in bankruptcy right now. As it is I am living comfortably, the farm still makes enough to pay what few bills I do have and cover the taxes. People keep telling me I need to go on SSD, I keep telling them to stick that idea up their back side. I can still do my work, just less of it, I can still walk, use both arms, see, hear and unfortunately when around the neo hippies smell........ Someone needs to tell them enmass that NO YOUR BODY DOES NOT SELF CLEANSE AND YOU SMELL LIKE POOP! There is a reason why back in the day when we came in after weeks in the field that we spent atleast a hour under the hottest shower we could stand :) WE WERE GRUNGY AND SMELLED LIKE POOP! Don't think even the base gate whores would have touched us ;) So to my way of thinking, I can feed, house and provide for myself......... therefore I am NOT DISABLED.

    I have lived in a black and white world and have never accepted grey. Grey areas in my opinion are nothing more than doing wrong, when you should have done right. Nothing is more complex than we make it. Infact everything in this world is remarkably simple. People make fortunes and fame and collect power, control, and money by making things complicated. Guess complicated is also on the other end of the spectrum a good tool for generating sympathy and handouts.

    I live in a world of natural consequences, both positive and negative. You work, you make shelter, fire, food and safe water to drink and you are comfortable ( A positive consequence) If you don't do these things you are exposed to the elements, cold, hungry and Thirsty (A negative consequence). I don't get how these poor schmucks who are perfectly healthy, go through life expecting everyone else to provide for them and pay their way with no or minimal effort on their part. Don't get me wrong I have no problem taking care of those who really cannot take care of or provide for themselves, it galls me to to end to pay for people who are perfectly capable and choose to be dependent. Worse yet are the worthless breeders that refuse to provide for themselves and depend on everyone who does work to provide for them........... that then make a house full of babies for the working to provide for. This don't judge them you don't know their circumstances is pure BS, if they men and women both are healthy enough to screw each other silly and make welfare babies, they are healthy enough to to work and provide for themselves.

    I hate millenials in general, sure there are exceptions. The majority are tech and mommy and daddy dependent pieces of human fecal matter that have never known hardship and blame everything wrong in their lives on Gen X and the Babyboomers. Guess what we had the same problems, the same struggles and most of us did not inherit a damn dime or have a trust set up for us. Most of the older Mills I meet either have gotten a phat inheritance or have a trust fund set up for them and still cry about how the boomers and degenration X screwed them over. God help this Country when these asshats take full control of it. Idiots can't do anything without consulting their Oracle called a smart phone. But hey while we are teaching our boys to be girls and our girls to be boys and to be whatever you identify as............... Other not so nice places are teaching their little boys how to kill with knives and AKs and how to properly fit a suicide vest under the girls dresses..... With eye on America. And these dipshits think every bad guy in the world just wants to be our best friend.

    My big question is why is North Korea still a country after that missile over Japan? The fat little pug has made the threat, has the missiles, and has the nukes. Are we really going to wait for him to land one on us or one of our allies before we castrate the little prick. More of that doing the wrong thing instead of the right thing. It would take around 5 minutes to eliminate the nuke threat and another 168 hours to mop up any resistance and reunify Korea under the Souths control and send a clear message to the rest of the little pricks around the world, this is what happens when you threaten us. Sure china will be pissed, does anyone really believe they are going to go to all out war over their little fat boy that they have lost all control over? Again not really that complex of a situtation until we make it complex.

    So yep I am getting old, have been really sick, and now really tired of the fringe idiocy that has became mainstream and is looking like it will dominate this Nation sooner rather than later.
     
    sotol, nathan, RightHand and 19 others like this.
  2. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    Not to worry... You are capable, and the fringe that is causing so much turmoil is doing so because they feer their free ride might come to an end.

    You're not alone. take care...
     
  3. sarawolf

    sarawolf Monkey+++

    You did very well Thunder, my hats off to you and pray you can keep plugging away.
     
  4. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    There are not many like you left. I wish we were friends, you sound like the only kind of people that I would care to know. I have been fortunate to have always been surrounded by quality people as well and can understand the debt you owe your grandfather. God Bless you, whatever you conceive it to be.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2017
  5. Ura-Ki

    Ura-Ki Grampa Monkey

    Just remember, no matter how bad things get, tomorrow could always be worse! A feller can only do his level best to try and make tomorrow better then today! Getting old sukz, the things I was used to doing every day for a living would likely get me killed today! The body fails us while the mind remains strong! Hope you can get better! I know of the affliction you suffer from, I have similar only it's my pain receptors. A simple injection is excruciating, and real pain can be debilitating! Lucky there is medication I am taking that limits much of this, but it still sucks! I hope you can recover from this, or at least find relief! I will pray for you! Your Grand Dad must have been an awesome guy, he sure passed on some good life lessons, and even better, they stuck!
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2017
    3M-TA3, Tully Mars, GOG and 3 others like this.
  6. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    50 is not old, Social security is yours, Your money,You paid into it.
     
  7. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    i will take it when I am old enough or can't provide for myself. Beyond those I don't want it or need it.
     
    Ura-Ki, GOG and oldman11 like this.
  8. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    Hang in there and fight the good fight. Life tends to in the long run give you lots of lemons, you have two choices, feel sorry for yourself and get despondent or make lemon aid. Sounds as if you did the best you could and it is now mostly in God's hands. Enjoy what you can in life, there is still a lot out there that is well worth doing and enjoying..
     
    Ura-Ki, 3M-TA3, Tully Mars and 3 others like this.
  9. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Sepsis (AKA Septic Shock, Septic Infection) is a deadly disease. Mine started out as bacterial pneumonia simple enough to cure........ Unless it is a bacteria of a resistant nature that does not respond to antibiotics. Dokters told me at best I had a 10%-20% chance of surviving. I actually have a good general practice Doc. that is not afraid to cut or stitch in the office and does not sugar coat anything and I actually trust him. So when my fever spiked at 112 degrees in the hospital after a week of intense treatments that were doing nothing and he says "Mike odds are you are going to die, nothing is working." I took his word for it and checked out AMA and went home. Figured I would try some alternative treatments as there was nothing to lose. And going back to Grandpa......... Anytime he would get sick he would put cayenne peppers, garlic, sage, bear root and thyme and some tomato juice in the blender and turn it into the most foul smelling concoction and drink a pint of it every day until he was not sick.

    Had my wife go out and pick a bunch of Cayennes, sage and thyme and a couple of tomatoes and dug the bag of dried bear root out of my medicine bag, ground some to powder and mixed up Grandpas concoction as best I could remember.......... After drinking a pint of this quite hot, stinky and foul flavored mixture, the stomachs first instinct is to reject and eject it. Particularly after the stomach has not had anything in it for 3 weeks. On a side note the first deuce out after that was no more pleasant than drinking it :) After a week of drinking that crap twice a day and as much water as I could and sleeping 22 hours a day, the fever finally broke. If you have never had a fever that ran a fairly constant 105-106 and spiked on at off at 110-112 you have not enjoyed pure delirious misery. The wife swears I died a time or two during that week and whether a fever dream or I did die I can't say. But whether dream or dead I had some good conversations with relatives and my dog that had gone before me at the edge of the spirit world. Conversations that always ended with, go home it is not time for you to come here. Funny thing is last winter my pitbull who was scheduled to get spayed and never made the appointment got pregnant by my lab/aussie shep mix, that was scheduled to get castrated but didn't make his appointment (Both are fixed now). The first puppy born from that pairing as soon as she was born and out of the bag, instead of going for a teat clawed her way across the floor straight to me (I tend to keep a distance and leave things giving birth alone unless there is a problem) It did not take long to note this pup had the exact same marking as Dizzy Lizzy my dog and constant companion that had died a month before I got sick. After putting her back with mom a dozen times she finally settled on a teat and stayed put. At a week old, she was climbing over a 2' pressure gate and clawing here way up into bed with me every night and doing the same to get under my desk and snuggle up against my feet. She is around 8 months old now and is always in a position that she can see me and when we go out she always walks 20 feet out on point looking for anything wrong... And is identical to Lizzy in everyway except size. Liz was a Jack Russel and on a good day weighed 22 pounds. Izzapoo despite looking just like Lizzy is considerably bigger at 68 pounds and still growing. No training at all was required as soon as she could get in and out the door she was doing her business outside and sitting at the door letting me know she had business to do outside. Her 8 siblings not so much :) 7 of them went to new homes and I get calls and FB messages fairly regular about how great these dogs are and if I would ever have more from that pairing. The two big Males in the litter are right at 75 pounds now , while the others are about the same size as Izzapoo give or take a few pounds. One exception was a quirky little jet black girl with a bright white star on her chest that I also kept. She is stuck at 30 pounds and just does not grow much. To be blunt she is a bit retarded and it would have been very hard to find her a good home that she would not end up as a dump or in a shelter. They all got the pit bull muscle and crushing bite, the Aussie intelligence and herding instinct, and some of them got the lab size/height. And no one will ever convince me that Izzapoo is not Lizzy returned, just bigger, stronger and far more intimidating when riled up.

    Back to the Sepsis lol I got sick in early June 2016 and was declared resistant bacteria free in October 2016. It played hell on my liver, kidneys, lungs and heart, that has been the focus of the doctor in monitory those and making sure they are regenerating and getting better particulary the kidneys which seemed to be hit the hardest next to the lungs. Have spent the last year feeling like a mule is kicking me in the lower back everytime I walk and sounding like Darth Vader when I breath LOL. The Kidneys have gone from a mule kicking to a miniature pony kicking me in that time and the less than pleasant test show the kidneys are slowly regenerating and that the infection left remarkably little scarring of them. The liver healed fast, the heart is Ok but not great, the lungs I can breath and don't get winded for the most part. So we started looking at secondary issues like the hot/cold problem. Saw a brain specialist that did all kinds of scans and test, guess with enough test and money they can get a image of the brain that shows any damaged areas that are not working as intended :) The part of my brain that deals with hot/cold and pain/pleasure is all screwed up. Instead of feeling garden variety pain I pretty much feel no pain outside of the most intense (The kidneys rank up there as intense, if you have ever been rabbit punched you know this :) ) Hey I will take lack of pain over intense pain from a pin prick! The hot and cold problem is more serious as it puts a lot of strain on my heart in its attempt to cool and warm at the same time. There is no way to cure or fix the brain problem, just adapt and adjust to compensate for it and use other metrics to know when it is time to call it a day and not end up passed out face down ass up in the dirt.

    Last Christmas eve I got a call from my brother who is younger than me by 20 years telling me his wife had just died from Sepsis. No she did not get it from me, I had not seen them in 5 years and about once or twice a year we talk on the phone. Damn shame that such a healthy and strong young woman of 29 years old was killed by this disease that took her from strong and healthy to dead in less than two months. The bacteria like mine was resistant and the antibiotics she got during her two months in ICU were as effective as peeing against the wind. My Doctor is also my friend and on occasion we drink some beer together or take his boat out on the lake for some fishing (TG he hates golf) So I aksed him on one of our fishing trips if sepsis was just more noticed or if it was becoming more common. He said it is becoming more common and the resistant strains are starting to dominate the sepsis scene with no effective treatment. It can be a pneumonia type or a simple cut that gets infected, but once it hits the bloodstream and becomes a body wide infection the odds of survival range from 5%-50% depending on which bacteria it is. Also told me when I showed back up in his office after I left ICU AMA he figured I was as good as dead and shocked to see me alive and walking let alone being relatively healthy considering. He was also quite interested in my cure for it, and while he won't prescribe it, he tells me he suggest it (Minus the bear root) as a dietary change some folks might consider. LOL guess it would not take long for him to be considered a quack if he started prescribing a jar of burning hot, foul smelling liquid twice a day until cured. Anyway with the rise of the resistant bacterias he believes it is not so much becoming more common but more noticed as a lot more people are dying from it, that otherwise would have been cured with basic antibiotics early on before it became a major problem.

    But seriously if you ever get Sepsis don't play with it and hope you will get better. And make sure the lab cultures it and checks for resistant strains of the bacteria. If the Goober Snatcher hospital Doctor treats is like a non resistant bacteria odds are very high you will die, and your odds are much better the earlier treatment starts. Seems most people that die from it do so from two weeks to two months depending on their immune system. I was/am fortunate to have a very strong immune system and the fortitude to withstand the fever, that by all rights should have killed me itself and I suspect did kill me a time or two, or maybe those were just fever dreams, but Lizzy told me she was coming back to help and well I sure can't tell the difference between Lizzy and Izzapoo :)
     
    RightHand, GOG, Motomom34 and 4 others like this.
  10. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    Prayers are with you, brother. Bless your spirit guide Lzzapoo, (Lizzy)...
     
    Thunder5Ranch likes this.
  11. Cruisin Sloth

    Cruisin Sloth Special & Slow

    Good Read
     
    Thunder5Ranch likes this.
  12. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    Just as soon start now, B***ards think its their money to hand out, You'll end up before a Judge requesting YOUR funds you've paid in, Don't ask me how I know, My case is pending in 6 months to a year!
     
    Thunder5Ranch likes this.
  13. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    That is the other reason seen so many friends with legit disabilities spend 1-3 years going through the judge and appeal side of it. One friend inparticular, total freak accident, walked out his back door with some brats to toss on the grill and one big ass tree limb fell right on top of his head. Crushed his skull and really messed him up. That was 3 years ago, he lived but is in and out of reality, has a nice steel plate were there used to be skull and is for all pravtical purposes dysfunctional. First time he did the mountain of paper work, denied.......see judge, 8 months later sees judge, denied "This is not the unemployment office" Said the judge. Appeal 9 Months later denied. Refiled with a lawyerand currently waiting to see a judge again. In the meantime I see a 23 year old perfectly healthy young man with a snapped tendon in his thumb get it without even having to go before a judgeand got payments 2 years back from the time he snapped the tendon........ The little goober snatcher worked for me 18 months of that time and came in one day and said he was retiring and had gotten SSD for his thumb. Guess on top of his $470 per month disability he gets another $500per month for each of his kids from 7 different girls............... $$3970 per month until all of those 2-4 year olds turn 24 I think he said and then he doesn't know how he is going to make it after that. And I thought the kid was decent until that.......... Nope just another leech hanging off the ass of society. Toss in all of babies mommas are on the welfare, medical card, food stamps and public housing.............. Yeah I am getting damn tired of supporting pricks like that. While the folks really disabled have to jump through every hoop and beg for money they actually paid in.
     
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  14. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    She may not be a legit service dog but she is the best service dog I have ever seen.............. not that I have seen many service dogs :)
     
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