On 2016-12-15 10:50 AM, Gary wrote:
> Dave Smith wrote:

>> I new a guy who had a heart and lung transplant when he was in is 30s.
>> The poor guy never was right again after that. He was on medication
>> than made him so moon faced I hardly recognized him. I don't know
>> exactly what happened to him but I heard that he died a few years after
>> the transplant. A former member of my kayak club had a lung transplant
>> but that only bought him about a year and a half or a life that was not
>> much of a life for someone who had always been so active.
>
> I've made it to age 63.5 with no serious health problems so far.
> All this hospital crap freaks me out. I don't want to live longer
> if it means in a lousy way.

Consider yourself lucky. I had emergency heart surgery for my 60th
birthday. I was lucky and had a great recovery. I am more active now
than I was before the surgery.


> I have no urge to submit myself to nightmare surgery where you will
> never live normally again. I had a close friend that did that and
> 2 weeks before he died, he told me those extra NIGHTMARE years
> were not worth it.

After my surgery I felt like I had been hit by a truck and was not very
optimistic about making a recovery. It was months before I started
feeling better.


>
> Even if you go through nightmare surgery, you're still old and on the
> downhill slide and it only gets worse as you continue to age.
>
> oh man. I'm old now and even thinking this way. ;0
>

It's hard not to think about it when you see what has happened to
friends and relatives. I have been reading the local obitaries for
years. It is not something I just started, except that now I do it
online. I had a rude surprise this morning. I saw a surname that I
recognized because it was the last name of a man who have been the
janitor at a school where my wife had taught. He died years ago and had
two sons who were jazz musicians. This was the obit a 93 old woman. I
could not remember the husband's first name, but I scanned the notice
for the two sons. It listed a Randy, but not Warren, so I thought there
was no connection. I should have read the notice more thoroughly
because I missed the "predeceased by...". The very next obituary had the
same surname and it was Randy. I hate to imagine what the family has
been through in the last few weeks that they lost Randy on the 4th of
this month and the the mother/grandmother 4 days later.