<\/p>\n
Never Take Anything for Granted<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Life can change in a moment. Your wealth can disappear in the wink of an eye. You can go from poverty-stricken to wealthy in a flash. You can go from healthy to sick in an instant. I know. I found out the hard way that taking things for granted can have profound implications when things go awry.<\/span><\/p>\n I spent many happy hours walking through woods, down trails, exploring, and enjoying nature. Every day, almost without fail, I walked. And I enjoyed walking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I lived a pain-free life. I took it for granted, sorry to say, one of my best friends, who’s now passed on, was continually afflicted with chronic pain. I commiserated with him and empathized, but I never knew what chronic pain was or how much it could affect a life. It’s one thing to be sympathetic and empathic and another to experience chronic pain.<\/span><\/p>\n In that proverbial “twinkling of an eye”, my life changed. And when I look back on it, it didn’t happen in a flash; it took months of stupidly turning a blind eye to the symptoms that were creeping up on me. I thought I was being stoic. But there’s a huge difference between being stoic and being stupid.<\/span><\/p>\n Early in March, I fell on the trail. I just lost my balance and fell, and a young lady who was passing by, God bless her, stopped to help me get up. I pretended I wasn’t hurt, but my right knee, right leg, right hip, and the right side of my face were all bruised and scraped. After being helped to my feet, I walked on… through April and into May, I walked on. By June, the pain in my hip and leg was affecting how I walked. By the middle of June, the pain was so bad, I began dreading the walks that I loved so much. By July, the pain was so bad, I only walked intermittently.<\/span><\/p>\n I went to the doctor. He ordered X-rays and gave me steroids (Prednisone) to ease the swelling. I skipped the X-rays and took the Prednisone, and it temporarily eased the pain, and I walked again with little pain for a few days. But to keep going, I needed more Prednisone. I went through three rounds of it, and then I started feeling ill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Prednisone can and does weaken the immune system. And being an older guy, my immune system is struggling a bit anyway. Then I got an infection – they said it was a UTI – but I just felt sick. I lost my appetite; nothing tasted right. I lost 15 pounds in less than a month. Walking was no longer primary on my mind; getting well and feeling better, just staying alive, became paramount.<\/span><\/p>\n I didn’t get better; I got worse. One day, my oldest son came to visit me and took one look at me and said, “That’s it, Dad,\u00a0 you’re going to the hospital.” I was so sick and by then confused, I didn’t argue. The next thing I knew, I was in Intensive Care, and it was a new day. I was so confused the Friday night when he took me to the hospital, I thought it was Thursday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n Long story short. I was diagnosed with sepsis. I had a UTI and a kidney infection, which caused acute kidney injury. All that meant, I was terribly ill.<\/span><\/p>\n I survived, obviously, and when I got home, I was still taking things for granted. I assumed in a few days I’d be well and my damaged arthritic hip would heal, and I’d be back walking the trail.<\/span><\/p>\n But walking with a limp and walking in pain was my new reality. All the things, like my health, walking the trails, and taking the best things in life for granted, only made things worse in my mind. I got very depressed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then one day I woke up and realized I’m not ever going to be the person I was. I realize I was going to have to admit it to myself and get used to a new reality. So now I’m going to try to do the right things to be the best I can be. I got the CT scans and X-rays and found out my hip is in worse shape than I thought. Now my new adventure is with an orthopedic surgeon who will be treating me, and I will be going to physical therapy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And I am painfully aware I may never walk 4 or 5 miles a day. But I’m going to try to walk 2 or 3 as soon as I can. But it’s not going to happen overnight. I know that now, and instead of letting everything get me down and defeat me, I’m looking for to the challenge of a lifetime -walking the trails again and walking without pain is my goal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And never taking my health for granted and ignoring my body’s fervent warning won’t ever happen again. For the 10 things I cannot do, there are still many things I can do. The one thing I won’t do is feel sorry for myself.<\/span><\/p>\n Taking things for granted minimizes the value of the things and the people you love. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t take anyone for granted. Especially don’t take the people you love most for granted.\u00a0 Be vigilant and keep the things and people you love dear. Don’t be like me – treasure the things and the people you love and always remember you could lose the things and people most precious to you in a second.<\/span><\/p>\n Never take anything or anyone for granted.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Never Take Anything for Granted Life can change in a moment. Your wealth can disappear in the wink of an eye. You can go from poverty-stricken to wealthy in a flash. You can go from healthy to sick in an instant. I know. I found out the hard way that taking things for granted can have profound\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30756,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30754\/revisions\/30756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}