What is there after life?

So - is there anything left when you die? Is there a soul and heaven and afterlife... or even just ghosts or spirits? I mean seriously - everybody talks about stuff - religeous people obviously believe in god and heaven and hell (yea- guess those probably should be capitalized - mab that is a subtle hint to my feelings). People that are not religeous at all will go on and on about ghosts and spirits .. and I guess everybody has had some spooky or strange experience that would lend some small credibility to the possibility of there being SOMETHING after you die... I now believe I am convinced that there probably is nothing after you die. Kinda disapointing - it would be nice to think that if I were to die I could still look in on the kids from some ethereal spirit world and guide them in some unexplainable way through out their lives.... but no - I don't think so. So far as religeon - for something that is supposed to be good and filled with love it is responsible for more death and misery and war than every other possible reason for those things combined. I do not believe if there was a all powerful being or higher power that was in any way benevolent or good that there would be starvation, plagues, wars, babies and children dieing horrible deaths every day - nope - can't buy into the "it is not for us to understand the ways the lord works..." If that is the way he/she/it/ works then I feel no real urge to worship or glorify them whatsoever. I think within minutes after the body stops breathing and the heart stops beating all the little chemicals and electric charges in the brain quit firing and decomposition begins with nothing more to come except ashes or dirt.
     I did not always believe this - it is relatively recent that I have become convinced of that - but I think I know exactly what it feels like to be dead. I believe it will be like when I have a seizure - there is just nothingness - no sense of a passage of time or awareness - not like sleeping at all - just nothingness - except it goes on forever instead of for an hour or so. When a seaizure happens the brain sort of misfires and goes kaput until it reboots - I think death means the little electrical signals stop and there is nothing more - no reincarnation - no spirit or ghostly ethereal form, no afterlife- just worm food.   Before I experienced the seizures I was never sure but for some reason that convinced. Nothing to worry about on my part at all - just done. Now obviously there are ramifications for your family and people that know you or love you - but for the person doing the dieing it is all done and over - no need to worry - your worries are done. That is not to say that I do not put a great deal of thought into how my death might effect others - but I am sure how it will effect me - not at all-... because for me I will be gone and all problems and all pain will be gone. No more migraines or illness or feeling useless. So the only question to be determined is would dieing willfully be a selfish unforgiveable act based on the effect it had on my family and children or would it be my right since it is my life and my decision?

Some days are worse than others.......

Today is not a great day. Very tired and no energy at all. One of my older daughters is visiting and so far I have not felt like doing anything. She wants to buy a four wheeler to ride around in the coal mines near where her mother lives in PA. I can't say I am real excited about that but I know I would have thought it was really cool when I was 16 so I am helping her shop a little. I don't know if she will end up getting one or not - I will worry a little if she gets one I suppose but if she wants it I hope her mother lets her get it. She has a small tom boy streak in her - and she is so full of life and excitement... has a beautiful smile and a warm kind heart. I miss her terribly when she is gone a few weeks ( we live about 250 miles apart so it is not easy to make regular trips for an afternoon - typically she comes up for a week or two at a time as school and activities allow).  Hopefully I will feel a little better this afternoon and be able to go do a little something with her.

Defining Pain

Every time you go to the hospital or a Dr's office they ask you to quantify pain. " On a scale of 0 - 10 what level pain do you feel right now?" There is even a chart with cute little smiley /sad faces to help you decide. So if the chart is the key to it why cant they look at your face and match up the expression for themselves? Some people I am certain believe their pain always qualifies as a 9 or 10. I having had the benefit of several years of near constant pain at some level or another find it relatively simple to assign a "number" to physical pain - how is it compared to yesterday or last week - better or worse? How is it compared to the last visit to the emergency room - better or worse? Then it becomes lie the guessing game you do at the eye Doctors as they switch from lens to lens and ask "better or worse?" At first it is easy to answer bit as you go on suddenly you are not sure if it is really better or worse. That is where I find myself most days now. The wife asks how I am feeling and I try to decide if it is better or worse. And then I have another set of questions of my own - which is better or worse - 48 hours of a "5" on the pain scale or 4 hours of a "9" on the pay scale? If I had the option of choosing which would I choose? Well- since I do not have the option of choosing it is not really a valid question but it does bring up a valid idea - does 3 days at a 5 or 6 still qualify as a 5 or 6 or can you justify calling it a 7 or 8 based on the long term wear down effect of the pain? I think every 12 hours of continuous discomfort should automatically add 1 or 2 to the pain scale actually felt at a given time due to the nature of it wearing down your tolerance. So maybe my pain is not "worse" today then it was yesterday or the day before but I feel worse because it is the third day of it.

Then the truly abstact and subjective begins - the pain is actually a 6 but it prevents me from doing something I enjoy making me feel worse then I already did. If I am home alone in bed with a migraine but the family is all out doing something like a picnic then I no longer feel like a 6 - it is much worse. The physical pain can be dealt with - mental pain and anguish are not so easy to deal with - the demerol does not have a pronounced effect on it whatsoever. So when you are asked "how much pain relief did you get from the demerol?" it is hard to accurately determine - I no longer wanted to drill a whole in my head with a power drill to try to resolve the headache but I still could not do most activities outside the home........If I still can not do the things I want to do is it really much relief at all?

Now more to the point of this blog - quality of life. At what point do you get to decide that your quality of life is being so adversely affected by pain or illness that it is no longer of a sufficient quality to continue? At what point is it ok to to start contemplating the call to Dr Kevorkian? Well - he is also dead now so that would be a pointless call to make but you get the idea I presume. I certainly am not in worse pain mentally or physically than somebody with stage 4 cancer... I am not yet reduced to depending on physical supports to remain alive - so some may think this is really silly. I do not presume to be "worse" or "better" than anybody else - but the point remains that I am not always certain that my life contains enough joy, pleasure, happiness, or relief from pain to bother continuing at all. Three years is a long time to not feel well. Though life still has the occasional moment of happiness or pleasure - the majority of the time I feel pain and discomfort and unable to control my own destiny or not in control of my own life. I ask myself - if tomorrow is the same as today do I want to have a tomorrow? And the answer is "no" an alarmingly high percentage of the time.

It has been a long time

I sometimes wondor - is it just me or does everybody feel like this sometimes or all of the time? Well, maybe not everybody but most people in my situation.... It is funny- I do not think there are many people in my situation but maybe there are thousands - that would be a little depressing - just one more thing that makes me not as special as I would like to think I am.

I am a pretty average 43 year old male ( I like the way it is written on medical reports 43 year old male that presents with.... sounds very brainy and knowledgable without anybody noticing they do not even pretend to know who it is they are talking about - as a quasi anonymous blog it really is very tempting to write in that pseudo jargon to convince everybody I am much smarter and more special than I am in reality but would be difficult to do so I will pass thank you any ways...)I have been single, married, divorced, a single parent, and current status is remarried for the last 13 years. I have four kids - 18 and just finished first year of college, 11th grade, 7th grade, and just finishing first grade. I am reasonably happily married - after 13 years I don't do cart wheels anymore thinking about being married but I don't go to sleep most nights wondoring what I am doing being married anymore either. I am a long way from rich - but a long way from poor also in all fairness - I am not concerned about where food or clothes will come from but I am concerned about overspending for a an upcoming family vacation and think maybe we should not have done that right now...  My kids are all reasonably happy - or at least as happy as moody teenage girls can be at any given time. I have a house full of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and a couple turtles just to keep things from getting boring. The mortgage is up to date and bill collectors are not calling 10 times a day ... any more- that is a rather new change and a very nice one I might add.
I have not worked in 3 years (well 2 years and 10 months but lets not be too picky). I was making nearly $100k a year in the last few years I was working - now I live on 2300/month disability and my wifes income as a public school teacher. I used to work 70 hours a week - now I am home alone most of the time. I do not stay in touch with any of my "friends" that I used to work with and it is really rare for me to speak to anybody but my immediate family and on occasion the next door neighbors. I do not have a cool "sexy" disease like cancer or anything with a long cool scientific name - as a matter of fact I am not even sure "what" I have and I do not think the doctors really know. I have really bad migraines about 20 days a month that I take large quantities of pain relievers for (mostly demerol  and ultram for those who really like details). I have aphasia (word loss) which means I start talking and then can not think of the word I am trying to say (incidentally it happens when I type also but you don't notice the long pauses when you are reading). I have chronic random pain, light headedness, and numbness. Most recently (a week ago) I was diagnosed as having congestive heart failure - but when they did a test they could not find anything wrong with my heart so who figures. What I do know is I do not feel well most of the time- rarely have a full day without feeling truly ill or suffering from incredible pain, and generally am more of a drag than inspiration to my wife and children. Oh - and a few months ago I started having seizures so now I am not supposed to drive anymore either (though I have not had a seizure in like 6 weeks).
    Well that brings me to the topic of this blog - if it really has a topic - quality of life. How many "good days" do you need to have to make life worth living? Does a single heartfelt smile at something my 6 year old says or does enough to make it all worth it for the day - or a week - or a month? I figure at 43 and a smoker I am over 1/2 done with my life anyway - regardless of any current medical questions. It is certainly long enough to know that I will never do anything truly earthshaking or dramatic in my life that will effect hundreds or even thousands of other people. Most decisions I make at this point barely even effect my own family. So what reason do I find any more to bother at all and how do you continue to justify your own excistence ?