I was not supposed to be where I was..I went on a whim when I shoudl have been somewhere else..somewhere very important. I went to th e place I shouldnt have went anyways and things happened and as I was leaving I ran into a colleague

I asked wtf are u doing here of all places (a hospital)? ..going on the elevator \..they told me they were going to take tests etc for an operation next week. She told me she had colon cancer and was supposed ot go in for an operation immediately but is waiting till next wek for her family to be there...lawd. What in the fuck? We sposed to be takin clases etc this week. I thank God or my maker etc for gving me relatively good health as well as my family and friends...I mean shit--a lot of silly bs my people etc go thru and bother me with..but we are all lucky to have our health, those of us who do. I couldnt fathom someting so awful. Everything else is cake now and in perspective.

Everybody needs wake up calls.
They make you grow as a person.

We should all be thankful for what we got, we might argue with friends over petty things that we think are important at the time but were just acting like fools, we should all learn to appreciate each other cause who knows, we could all be gone tomorrow.
[This message was edited Thu Oct 2 23:20:26 PDT 2003 by Paisley]

Paisley said:

Let's write a song called just that.

Oh wait! There IS a song just like that!

Paisley said:

I'm thankful I've got more than Paisley.

gooeythehamster said:

Yes--every now and then I get these wake up calls that tell me just how good I have it and not to forget that.

great reminder, rdhull. every day is precious, one doesnt know from one day to the next what fate might befall us, so its best to always live life to the fullest and stay thankful for the things we have. live in the now, kos its all we have, no future, no past, only now.

Anyways, I SO understand where you are right now. Humans just always look at things from their own perspective, that's what humans do best, actually.

But when these things happen, you realise there is more than what happens in your own world. It can be quite a shocker, that...

gooeythehamster said:

Th e perosn I was visiiting when I should not have been but at a later date was 70 with a replaced knee...he has it good! &0 and in relatively good health...bad knees aint shit compared ot cancer etc...not sayin one persons pain etc is worse but u know what I mean. I wanted to vomit when she told me because we both sort of knew-know what this means

althom said:

Hey I dont know if I should take that as a compliment or not!

rdhull said:

I have lost too many people not to know what you mean. It's horrid, but the pain other people suffer through makes you aware of the fact that YOU are alive and healthy.

Life can be shit so you've got to make the most of it (in a good way).

We tend to all think that we've got it bad but others have nearly always got it far worse. It's a funny thing, but we never really appreciate it.

you know, i had my own wake-up call like this in 1994 when i was diagnosed with an extremely rare blood disorder that, had i contracted it 10 years earlier, i would have died.


Oct 19th marks the 9 year anniversary of the end of 6 months of anxiety, trama, turmoil, illness, etc. They removed my spleen, and I've been fine ever since.


but it was a wakeup call then, and when i think about it now, it still is. but sometimes in between i forget.


thank you for reminding me, rdhull. and i hope all goes well for your friend.
[This message was edited Thu Oct 2 23:34:50 PDT 2003 by AaronMaximus]

bkw said:

This si no lie..every now and then I get on my knees and pary that I have it easy and good...because compared to wehat Ive known and see on th e daily..I do! Only recent;y like th e past ten years have I done that.

AaronMaximus said:

I remember this from before you said this almost a year ago...u said u had to take some weird medicine that made u gain etc to treat it etc..I thought whern I read that again that "damn Im lucky" etc...eff havin money etc..health is everything

rdhull said:

We mature.

Shit, but we still need reminding...

rdhull said:

i had to have a daily pheresis (sp?), where the people from the red cross would cleanse my blood of its plasma and replace it. every day, on and off, for several months as out-patient surgery about 30 miles from where i live.

i was on a lot of blood-clotting and steroids at the time, including prednisone. it is an evil, evil drug, but it is commonly prescribed. my skin, body hair, and weight have never been the same since.

that said, i'm glad i lived (most of the time ), so i can deal with the occasional flare-ups of odd acne, back hair, and weight fluctuation.

i try to remind myself when i'm bitching about it that it could be worse. could be dead. it makes everything else bearable.

AaronMaximus said:

Will this ever go away for you? Are you still taking drugs?

AaronMaximus said:

This is true..I think Im nto that strong to go thrpough sometng like that etc..on th e freeway Im always thinking "please dont let me get ina crash" because I couldnt deal with the metal etc and if I got cut up etc...and I see the resliency in small children who go thru hell when they have certain illnesses..a colleague of mine just got news that a 19 yr old client ihas 3 months to live due to cancer on his brian stem etc...and his family isnt going to tell him etc..and he's asking how to talk to girls etc notknowing etc...damn we all lucky mnuthafuckas wasting our time with bullshit 90% of th e time

rdhull said:

Yes...life has a way of putting things into perspective.
RdHull, now U can sorta see what I have been saying to you.
You know?

Someone smarter than I am once said:

Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's ALL small stuff.

Realizing how short our time is here on the planet (even if we live what
people consider a full long life) helps us prioritize our affairs and pick
our battles.

There is nothing wrong with having fun, so to speak, but one scripture says
We need to strike our blows so as not to be striking at the wind
Another says... Make sure of the more important things.

So wherever we can help, whomever we can make happy, whatever worthwhile
endeavor we can attempt; these are the things that will enrich our lives (in my opinion).

Loving U always...
Melody

AaronMaximus said:

Very sorry to hear of your trials...U seem to have a great outlook.
See...the people we talk to here are real people.
The fact that we do not know what others may be going through is one reason
that we should check ourselves when speaking to one another...
not that we have to always be marhsmallow sweet, but just keep in mind
that we are all family on this planet and we all have our "situations".

Melody

rdhull said:

actually, the way that i dealt with it at the time was near-complete detachment. there were only a few times during the entire ordeal that i got emotional about it, or let the weight of it get to me. people around me were very stressed, anxious, or what have you, especially my parents, and my grandmother and my aunt. my mom, my aunt, and grandma are the ones that spent the most time with me every day in the hopspital during the treatments.

the emotional impact didn't hit me until after the fact. after the fall semester of my senior year, i went back to school, and had that as a distraction. then that next summer, i developed a social life. actually, when i think about it now, it seems like a LOT of time passed between the fall of 1994 and the summer of 1995. even at the time, i never even thought about it. it actually didn't hit me until the spring of 1996, about a year and a half later. coming out of the closet to my friends probably also added to it. i was pretty fucked up mentally and emotionally from about the spring of 1996 through to the same time of year in 1999. i was self-diagnosing myself with just about every mental disorder in the book (or any one that i heard about in magazines, tv, or radio).

in retrospect, though, i think most of it stemmed from the heaviness of what i'd been through in 1994, and i delayed the reaction to it. i didn't deal with properly at the time, and put it off for a long time, and it finally caught up to me.

SensualMelody said:

that's difficult for me about 50% of the time on here, but even at the end of it all, the people that i've argued with here (Nep2nes, FACE, rdhull, theC, oceana)... i have no ill will toward any of them. i even genuinely like a couple of them (i'll let you decide which ones )

but what you say is true. we should remember that we all go through our shit, and it makes us all human. when we interact with each other here, we shouldn't come down so hard on each other so much.

that said, i think that perhaps when we're here, it often becomes a vehicle for us to vent our bile and our frustrations about either personal matters or social issues, that we can't get out of our system in the real world.

in that respect, i do hope that i haven't been so vile to certain people here that i've caused additional turmoil for them. when i leave this place, i rarely think about the org, but occasionally i do. that's usually when someone has confronted me with a different angle from what i myself look at things.

and i think that that's a good thing actually, despite the flaminess and bitter debate over certain subjects. i think that a lot of people use this place to vent anger, frustration, or what have you, but 9 times out of 10, there's someone to vent back at you, and sometimes you actually come away with a more informed or enlightened perspective, and even if you don't change your mind, it gets you thinking about your own point of view, and it may reinforce what you think, or give you a different way of thinking about it, or framing your own opinion.

that's why i don't worry about the flames or the ugly debates here. in the short run, it seems like it ruins the site, but in the long run, i think it only makes us closer, and helps us help each other to think and grow. there are a lot of things i've learned about the world, myself, and others, right in the thick of an ugly flame war with people.

*knocks on wood*

Peace and Love to everyone here.