Being a burden!

[DALederle]

This is a very personal post. It's not about a subject that anyone else can really add to or help with. And I'm NOT looking for sympathy of any sort! But I have to get something off my chest for personal reason. So please bare with me. I know it will sound like a whine to some, but it's not! It's just...some of my own inner thoughts. I guess I get mushy this time of the year. A little SAD before the season begins. Post holiday blues before the holidays are "post".
Right now it is VERY hard for me to get out in the winter weather. Because of my breathing problems. The snow is bad enough but after just a little bit of snow this year we are suddenly in the deep freeze! Temps in the single digits. And just standing in the doorway and getting a blast of cold air makes me gasp for breath. Something that has gotten very hard to do. Basically, I'm housebound right now! And I feel a little stir crazy! Maybe that's why I'm writting this.
I feel like a burden to my wife. This isn't what either of us ever expected to happen! Me being so helpless. If anything happens outside I can only stand in the doorway and watch. My wife puts up the holiday ornaments and will have to be the one to take them down after the New Year. She has to shovel the snow. Cut the grass and trim the bushes. I do try and do inside chores, as much as my breathing lets me. I run the wash when the laundry hamper is full, empty the dishwasher and get dinner started. But standing up at the stove and cooking is a strain, so she usually finishes dinner after she gets home from work.
She also vacums the rugs since that really leaves me gasping for breath. I don't know why but it does.
Going out is complicated, with carrying around my oxygen bottles and all that. Just the other day we were talking about how we could travel. Flying is out. We would have to be able to take along my in the house oxygen concentrator. Those little walk around ones you see some people using, don't produce enough for me. So I need to refill my own bottles.
Our best guess is that we couldn't travel much further then my daughters place in Tenn. It's only an eight hour drive. Fla. or Tex. or Jersy is almost out of the question. Those locations are were my sister and my wife's sisters and our daughters live. And my wife's parents are way down in the keys. Boy would I love to go there right now!
But the worse part for me is just my personal feeling of being a burden. That just hurst!
So that's my whine or rant today. I'll probably find something else, maybe more amusing, to write tomorrow!

Dennis A. Lederle

Ho! Ho! Ho!

[Kirbstone]

Dennis,
I'm sorry to hear you are so incapacitated. I wonder if it is a degenerate lung condition that's responsible, or is it cardio-vascular?
Anyway, You are a thousand times better off than my 74 year-old eldest brother, who had a severe stroke while on holiday abroad last September, had to be air-ambulanced home, is house bound since and as yet cannot speak, read or write at all. He fills in his days looking at art and sketching with his left hand, but his wife now has to do everything around the house.

Such is life for him at present. Count your blessings & have a pleasant Season.
Tom K.

[JRMILLER]

Dennis,
First off, drag yourself out of the hole and focus on the positive. What *is* working? List that, don't dwell on what isn't working....


1. You are loosing weight and managing to workout. This will and is having a positive impact on your health and life
2. You mind seems to work just fine, you haven't stroked out, your not a vegetable in a nursing home.
3. Your wife loves you.
4. You have friends

What else can you add to this list?

[DALederle]

The biggest thing I can add to the positive side of my list is that I always manage to see or hear about people worse off then me.
And since my wife works for my pulmonologist I also hear about people worse then me when she gets home from work on an almost daily basis.
One of the bright sides for me is that I am hard at work every day on my new novel. It's the one I hoped to write since I was about six. A reversal of Tarzan of the Apes, with Jane being the one who lived amongst the apes. I'm actually still doing research on the history of Africa and the apes in Africa. Thank God for the internet! I couldn't get all the information I needed without it.
Jane rescues Tarzan in my version. BUt he's not Tarzan, just and English lord on safari. Women's Lib should love this idea. I hope Hollywood does too! So that keeps me going from day to day!
My post wasn't about giving up, by the way. Just venting a few sour grapes is all!
Live Long and Proper!

Dennis A. Lederle

Grok?