Have you ever accidentally hit the emergency button while your phone is locked and your phone stars to call 911? What do you do in that situation? Most people hang up quickly. Did you know that sometimes, even though you think you hung up in time, the call goes through to a 911 dispatcher and…
I Need Some Clarity
A couple of weeks ago I woke up with my vision really wonky. My left eye seemed out of focus and I had flashes of lights. When I looked at anything digital straight on like my clock or phone, there was a spot just to the left that was just blank. I called my eye…
The Weekend Revisit Of “The Power Of The Mind (Or When Excuses Become Reality)”
I always write about the power of positive thinking and the fact that I have not left this astral plane is solely due to the power of thought and a few drugs thrown in here and there. But I know it’s mostly being positive. The other day I was on a business trip and was…
Becoming A Listener
I don’t talk about my conditions to anyone. There are very few people that do know about my conditions. When I do tell someone about my stuff I have come to realize that most people really don’t want to hear another’s problems. They may sympathize, but they really don’t want to hear about your problems….
The Weekend Revisit Of “Weight A Minute”
Last week I got my certificate from massage school, and although it is just a piece of paper, it was the mark of a major accomplishment for me. I did it. It took three attempts, but I never gave up on my dream to graduate from massage school. And to celebrate, my wife and did…
Finding And Letting Go Of An Old Friend
Just one last time. I decided to just do one more search. And there, after five or six years of random failed attempts to see if my best friend from culinary school was on Facebook, suddenly, there he was, out of the blue, at the top of the list. For the two years that we…
I Have A New, Additional Blog!
Today I start my new blog in addition to this one. It’s called “A Chef Talks Food”. It will be a blog about, as the name implies, everything food related. If you are a follower of this blog you might remember that I am a classically trained, professional chef with 32 years experience, so I…
Can We Clear The Air About Sarcoidosis And Depression?
Sarcoidosis DOES NOT cause depression. Reading different posts at different sites, it is becoming a common misconception that sarcoidosis of itself causes depression and the two go hand in hand. This is entirely not true. On a blog post I read recently, a person was recently diagnosed with sarcoidosis and their main concern was that…
The Weekend Revisit Of “It’s Just One Of Those Days”
Today, I am away from home for work and I drive back home this afternoon, a two and a half hour drive that could take as long as four hours with Sunday afternoon traffic. Normally, it does not bother me, but today is one of those days. My postherpatic neuralgia is in full force. My…
Learn To Use Your Smartphone To Enjoy Better Health
I started using a smartphone before there was even an Apple iPhone. Remember the Palm Treo? The world’s first smartphone? As a matter of fact I started to use PDAs, Personal Digital Assistants, the precursor to the smartphone way back in 1990. I had a Toshiba PDA and believe it or not, I still have…
I Have Become Thin Skinned (My 1,000th Post!)
(This is my 1,000th post to this blog!) I scratched my cheek after closing the door behind the repair man and I could feel it running across my palm, down my wrist and onto my fore arm. The warm, wet, red liquid that is the lifeline of every human. The liquid, bright red and thin…
I’m Back, Again
Seems like I keep disappearing and reappearing from posting to this blog. Over the past year my posts have been minimal at least. The past few months were stressful with my own health and then my mum’s and then my mum’s passing, so I had no zeal to write about anything or even read other…
The Weekend Revisit Of “The Wisdom Of Children”
Yesterday I was feeling bloated, and I looked in the mirror at myself, and my face was bloated a bit and I felt old. Yes, it happens even to the best of us, a day when you feel like crap and you look at yourself in the mirror and that mirror reflects how you feel….
Catching My Breath
Today, like every day since I gave my mum a smartphone three years ago, I picked up my phone to send her a text. Every day I would text her to see how she was doing, send a pic of the snow or the rain so she could appreciate the warm tropical climate she lived…
What Next? Not Even My Defibrillator Is Safe From Hackers?
I saw this unbelievable article about hacking of Defibrillators and both my device and transmitters are on the list. By Alex Johnson @ NBC News The world’s largest medical device company has acknowledged that many of its implanted cardiac defibrillators use an unencrypted wireless protocol that could allow an attacker to change the settings of…
Another Of Life’s Little Battles
What a roller coaster ride the past couple of months have been with my journey with sarcoidosis. Last year, after twelve years of constantly being on prednisone, I was finally weaning off the drug slowly. In November I had my usual echocardiogram which came back having my heart function ejection fraction at 35%. To say…
Taking Care Of Me
It’s been a while since my last post, almost six weeks. A lot has happened health wise with me since then. Lots of testing and fighting with insurance to pay for the major part of the testing and just saying “F**k it!”, and paying for it myself. It has been a small journey, and one…
When A Discount Is Not A Good Thing
5% isn’t that much of a discount if you go to store, but it is a lot when you are talking about ejection fractions and heart functions. It’s something you don’t want a discount on. It’s something you hope for an increase. I had my annual echo cardiogram last week and met with my cardiologist…
And Then There Was One
1 mg of Prednisone. That is what I am down to. I haven’t been this low on a dose since starting the drug in 2006. The lowest I was ever able to get to was 3 mg and all hell would break loose, prompting me to go back up prednisone. Now I made it to…
The Weekend Revisit Of “When The Universe Slaps You In The Face”
Sometimes, when you complain about the little things, the Universe takes it upon it self to remind you why you should just shut up and stride on. I am not one to complain, and I find complaining and complainers irritating, but here I am complaining about complainers! Anyhow, I recently wrote a post about An…
Pushing Through The Wall
Twelve years, five months and thirty days. That’s a hell of a long time to be on Prednisone constantly, without a break. I wrote about this drug so many times on this blog and its horrendous side effects that I am not going to list them here again. If you are familiar with pred, you…
Avoiding The Purity Sales Pitch
Sitting on the over stuffed, over sized grey leather sofa, I face him, amazed by his frizzed out hair and his 70s sense of fashion. He asks me a million and one questions about my health history, going even deeper into my emotional history. No other doctor had done that before. He studies me intently,…
Try To See The Good In Everything
Change is inevitable. No matter how much we want things to stay or go back to how they were, they never are. So why grieve over the past that can never return. Yes, you were healthy and vibrant a year ago and now you have a chronic illness where you feel like crap most of…
The Weekend Revisit Of “Making It Through On Love”
I am a very, very blessed man, and I know it. I get a few emails in response to “My Story” where I give a brief synopsis of my journey with sarcoidosis and heart failure, and I get at least one email a week commenting on how “hard” my experience has been, or asking for…
Want To Know Why You Lost All Your Friends When You Became Sick? It’s Because You Also Became An Ass!
In emails from chronic illness sufferers and blog posts from the same, there is a common thread. “All my friends have abandoned me”. Admittedly, there are some real jerks out there that split the moment the going gets rough, but there are those that stick around. And then “all of a sudden”, they disappear. Then…
