Fergie
Expedition Leader
Don't get your hopes up for some sort of moving or motivational prose, as this may be somewhat prosaic. I figured I'd share here, due mainly to the fact that I would call most that frequent this board a Kindred Spirit. This post is long, not too terribly entertaining, full of cliché, and our personal/internal struggles, but if you do make it through, I thank you for reading.
As a caveat, when I began writing this morning, I had no intention of my story being this long, but the more I thought about everything, the longer it got. I know that others have been through worse, and in no way am I trying to marginalize your individual experiences, but this is what has shaped me, and I’d love to hear your stories as well.
Close to a year ago now, what started out as an act of resignation, my wife and I got rid of all the clothes we could not fit in to anymore. By no means were we fat, simply unhappy with our physicality, and we had tried to change this, albeit unsuccessfully. What we didn’t completely realize is that we were going about things in the wrong manner, both in regards to our health, and our lives.
A few days after the mass evacuation of our tight fitting duds, we were sitting on our couch, mindlessly watching TV. For some odd reason, we were compelled to stop on a diet show of all things; the show focused on helping pre-diabetics get their weight in check, become non-reliant on their medications, and to provide a stable platform for their future dietary needs. We watched the show, actually taking notes at some points, and were awestruck by the follow-up segment that was aired in the last ten minutes of the show. All of the featured individuals in the show were still on the diet after a year, had been taken off most, if not all of their medications, and were leading healthier, happier lives. With nothing but pounds to lose, and better health to gain, the next day the wife and I bought the diet book the show was based on.
Without going into too many details on the diet itself, one of the requirements was to purge your pantry of “bad” items. Like good little readers, we readily complied, and ended up giving away about 90% of our food in the house. We then went to the local organic/natural foods store and replenished our food stuffs.
More than just a dietary change, this two day event was to be the beginning of a new lifestyle, and for us, specifically me, a new way of thinking, and a new prioritization of life. This was our symbolic purge of the “Old Ways.”
Within a few weeks of beginning the diet, our mood swings had all but disappeared, and we were shedding the pounds as we were supposed to. For perspective, I began the diet at 235 pounds, and I am 6’0” tall; my wife began at 150 pounds, and she is 5’-9” tall. As of today, I have been steady at 185 for the past six months, and she at 125 pounds. Oddly enough, we haven’t bought new clothes. We wear the same clothes as before, loose fitting, saggy butts, and cinched around our waists with too large belts. What started out as a way to change our outward attractiveness has lead to an even more wonderful inner beauty and appreciation for life, cliché.
As we shed the weight, the various layers of our old selves were shed as well, getting rid of the societal bounds and stigmas that had governed our existence for too long. There were other motivating factors during this time as well; the diet was simply the culmination point of our struggles. I said earlier, that we have changed our priorities in life; this goes hand in hand with one of the motivating factors I just mentioned; my parents are one very large factor.
In his own bid to better himself, my father had begun to ride his bike to work. He had stopped smoking close to 5 years ago, gained the weight associated with the removal of nicotine, and subsequently lost all of it, plus a few more pounds. He had his hip replaced after 30 years of pain, and was basically a new man. He was in better shape at 56 than I was at 22; and so he began to ride his bike to work. I credit a bike of all things, with saving my father’s life. You must understand this bike to appreciate the levity of it all. This bike is the classic Wal-Mart special Huffy 18 speed. It does not shift well, has no suspension, and is adorned with two very large, wire baskets; yet this bike saved my father’s life. After two days of riding the ten mile round trip, my father began to pee blood. Not one to “let it pass”, he went to a doctor at his earliest convenience. Had he known what was in store, he may have been a bit more expeditious. Tests showed nothing too out of the ordinary, the typical slightly higher than wanted blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the positive TB test, the titanium hip, nothing spectacular. It was not until they decided to run an endoscope up his urethra that they discovered the tumors. Now for those that haven’t had the pleasure of an endoscopy, think of a woman giving birth; small passage, large object, copious amount of discomfort. The diagnosis was cancer; highly aggressive, invasive cancer. The good news was that it was operable, either by tumor removal, or bladder removal, and that the specific cancer he had responded well to chemotherapy.
The operation was straightforward. The tumors were removed, and localized chemotherapy was applied to the bladder. Six months later, he was good to go, and seven months later my parents were off to a Gaelic language school in the Isle of Skye. The cancer had motivated my parents to retire early, and pursue their dreams before they died, or were bed-ridden, they were partially right. The school lasted two months, and they had intended to stay an extra month to check out the areas of Scotland they had never seen. During the last month of the trip, a pain developed in my father’s leg, so severe that he was wheel-chair ridden, and required a pain killer prescription. As soon as he returned to the states, he was at the doctor’s office for x-rays and another endoscopy. Tumors on his ribs, his liver, more in his bladder, and a golf ball sized tumor eating through his good leg were what the doctor found. What was that about pursuing your dream before you died?
The tumor in his leg was removed, along with 90% of his femur. He now has a titanium alloy femur to compliment his titanium alloy hip in his other leg. While going through one chemo treatment, he joked with me that if he survived for another twenty years, he’d be a new man. If he survived?? Not something you want to hear your father talking about. The tumors in his bladder were removed without incident, but the tumors on his ribs and liver were determined inoperable, and had to be treated with radiation and chemotherapy. Not caring too much for the alternative, my father went through all the necessary treatments.
My father is one of a small group of people that are allergic to the specific chemotherapy treatment used on this type of cancer. He experienced a cellular level rejection of the medicine, causing his joints to swell to the point of immobility, and an intense, accompanying pain. Whiskey and Vicodin were his friends for a good year, and being a good Scotsman, whiskey still is.
Now, all this has been my father’s situation. My situation was odd at the time as well. I had been married for a little over a year, and due to life, my wife was living in Tucson, while I had moved back in with my parents in Flagstaff so I could complete my undergrad degree, humbling to say the least. With my father’s decline in health, school became less and less a priority; I’d be damned if I wasn’t by his side during all of this. I missed enough classes that I failed out of some, and passed others. I didn’t much care at the time. Instead of studying, I was helping my father dress, and I don’t mean merely picking out shirts, and helping him ties his shoes. If you want an experience, help your sick, scarred father undress and hold him upright while he showers, and then dry him off, dress him from his briefs to his jacket, all the while knowing that this tears him apart inside. My last semester of school was a roller coaster of emotions. During all of this, my mother had returned to work to cover medical bills and such, all the more difficult for her, as she wanted to be at my father’s side as well. Life, at its best.
My father was the reason I didn’t graduate college; I didn’t care though. He never knew this, and never will. I lied to him, and my mother, only telling my wife the truth. I walked on stage and received my diploma in December 2005, making my Dad one of the happiest guys on Earth. He had dropped out of high school at 17 to fight in Vietnam, barely had a GED, with very little collegiate schooling, so my college graduation was a dream come true for him, even if it was all a sham. College wasn’t the priority to me, my father was. I did end up receiving a degree from NAU though. I spent the next year taking on-line and correspondence courses, and now I have a framed diploma on my wall.
I had to move on after that graduation day. I packed a small U-haul trailer, and headed to Tucson to join my wife, and went to work for a large, multi-billion dollar construction company. I worked my 75 hour weeks, we bought a house, brought home a puppy; The American Dream, right?
I couldn’t get my parent’s last year and a half out of my head. They had worked and sacrificed so much, so they could retire, relax, and pursue their dreams. And when they were so close to that realization, they were struck down, damn near losing it all. I was bound and determined to not let this happen to me, but how could I break out of the mould? At work, I was surrounded by people so caught up in keeping up that I was drowning.
“Work hard for 25 years, and you’ll be a multi-millionaire with us,” I was told.
Did I want the money that bad?
Did I want two failed marriages, no time with my kids, and constant stress?
No, my priorities were shifting, but how could I shed the constraints of the only society I knew? This all had me thinking, and I realized that I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, what career I wanted, and I was freaked out. I was supposed to have a plan, and be a good little worker bee.
During my struggles, my wife was taking her GREs for grad school admissions, and applying to various different grad schools. We had no clue where we wanted to go, and she didn’t really know what exact field to pursue. At the time, we decided to take the safe and easy route of staying in Tucson. We had home, good jobs, and were complacent. This was all pre-dietary purge though.
To get this back on track, and to re-cap: I’ve been on a diet for a year and lost a lot of weight. This weight loss has been a symbolic purge, promulgated by the events during the last 2 years of my life. Now during this past year, my wife and I have accomplished some pretty neat things. I left the large company I worked for, and work at a small firm, and am much happier. She was accepted in to a Social Welfare PhD program at UCLA, and is happier than ever. We have left our comfort zone and come to California, and are living on one salary. We just recently decided to start a family, but she has also made the decision to only pursue an MSW, as the notoriety of alphabet soup doesn’t mean a thing when you’re in a coffin.
This whole thing was brought about, in part, by this website, and the postings of you all here. It is good to know that my wife and I aren’t the only “lost” ones out there, and that there is a port, somewhere. I am now actively trying to get out of the corporate world, not to make more money, but to appreciate life more.
All in all, I guess I just want to say thanks, and that I look forward to meeting more of you here, enjoying life, and living it, rather than just existing.
Time to start Living Life in Reverse!
As a caveat, when I began writing this morning, I had no intention of my story being this long, but the more I thought about everything, the longer it got. I know that others have been through worse, and in no way am I trying to marginalize your individual experiences, but this is what has shaped me, and I’d love to hear your stories as well.
Close to a year ago now, what started out as an act of resignation, my wife and I got rid of all the clothes we could not fit in to anymore. By no means were we fat, simply unhappy with our physicality, and we had tried to change this, albeit unsuccessfully. What we didn’t completely realize is that we were going about things in the wrong manner, both in regards to our health, and our lives.
A few days after the mass evacuation of our tight fitting duds, we were sitting on our couch, mindlessly watching TV. For some odd reason, we were compelled to stop on a diet show of all things; the show focused on helping pre-diabetics get their weight in check, become non-reliant on their medications, and to provide a stable platform for their future dietary needs. We watched the show, actually taking notes at some points, and were awestruck by the follow-up segment that was aired in the last ten minutes of the show. All of the featured individuals in the show were still on the diet after a year, had been taken off most, if not all of their medications, and were leading healthier, happier lives. With nothing but pounds to lose, and better health to gain, the next day the wife and I bought the diet book the show was based on.
Without going into too many details on the diet itself, one of the requirements was to purge your pantry of “bad” items. Like good little readers, we readily complied, and ended up giving away about 90% of our food in the house. We then went to the local organic/natural foods store and replenished our food stuffs.
More than just a dietary change, this two day event was to be the beginning of a new lifestyle, and for us, specifically me, a new way of thinking, and a new prioritization of life. This was our symbolic purge of the “Old Ways.”
Within a few weeks of beginning the diet, our mood swings had all but disappeared, and we were shedding the pounds as we were supposed to. For perspective, I began the diet at 235 pounds, and I am 6’0” tall; my wife began at 150 pounds, and she is 5’-9” tall. As of today, I have been steady at 185 for the past six months, and she at 125 pounds. Oddly enough, we haven’t bought new clothes. We wear the same clothes as before, loose fitting, saggy butts, and cinched around our waists with too large belts. What started out as a way to change our outward attractiveness has lead to an even more wonderful inner beauty and appreciation for life, cliché.
As we shed the weight, the various layers of our old selves were shed as well, getting rid of the societal bounds and stigmas that had governed our existence for too long. There were other motivating factors during this time as well; the diet was simply the culmination point of our struggles. I said earlier, that we have changed our priorities in life; this goes hand in hand with one of the motivating factors I just mentioned; my parents are one very large factor.
In his own bid to better himself, my father had begun to ride his bike to work. He had stopped smoking close to 5 years ago, gained the weight associated with the removal of nicotine, and subsequently lost all of it, plus a few more pounds. He had his hip replaced after 30 years of pain, and was basically a new man. He was in better shape at 56 than I was at 22; and so he began to ride his bike to work. I credit a bike of all things, with saving my father’s life. You must understand this bike to appreciate the levity of it all. This bike is the classic Wal-Mart special Huffy 18 speed. It does not shift well, has no suspension, and is adorned with two very large, wire baskets; yet this bike saved my father’s life. After two days of riding the ten mile round trip, my father began to pee blood. Not one to “let it pass”, he went to a doctor at his earliest convenience. Had he known what was in store, he may have been a bit more expeditious. Tests showed nothing too out of the ordinary, the typical slightly higher than wanted blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the positive TB test, the titanium hip, nothing spectacular. It was not until they decided to run an endoscope up his urethra that they discovered the tumors. Now for those that haven’t had the pleasure of an endoscopy, think of a woman giving birth; small passage, large object, copious amount of discomfort. The diagnosis was cancer; highly aggressive, invasive cancer. The good news was that it was operable, either by tumor removal, or bladder removal, and that the specific cancer he had responded well to chemotherapy.
The operation was straightforward. The tumors were removed, and localized chemotherapy was applied to the bladder. Six months later, he was good to go, and seven months later my parents were off to a Gaelic language school in the Isle of Skye. The cancer had motivated my parents to retire early, and pursue their dreams before they died, or were bed-ridden, they were partially right. The school lasted two months, and they had intended to stay an extra month to check out the areas of Scotland they had never seen. During the last month of the trip, a pain developed in my father’s leg, so severe that he was wheel-chair ridden, and required a pain killer prescription. As soon as he returned to the states, he was at the doctor’s office for x-rays and another endoscopy. Tumors on his ribs, his liver, more in his bladder, and a golf ball sized tumor eating through his good leg were what the doctor found. What was that about pursuing your dream before you died?
The tumor in his leg was removed, along with 90% of his femur. He now has a titanium alloy femur to compliment his titanium alloy hip in his other leg. While going through one chemo treatment, he joked with me that if he survived for another twenty years, he’d be a new man. If he survived?? Not something you want to hear your father talking about. The tumors in his bladder were removed without incident, but the tumors on his ribs and liver were determined inoperable, and had to be treated with radiation and chemotherapy. Not caring too much for the alternative, my father went through all the necessary treatments.
My father is one of a small group of people that are allergic to the specific chemotherapy treatment used on this type of cancer. He experienced a cellular level rejection of the medicine, causing his joints to swell to the point of immobility, and an intense, accompanying pain. Whiskey and Vicodin were his friends for a good year, and being a good Scotsman, whiskey still is.
Now, all this has been my father’s situation. My situation was odd at the time as well. I had been married for a little over a year, and due to life, my wife was living in Tucson, while I had moved back in with my parents in Flagstaff so I could complete my undergrad degree, humbling to say the least. With my father’s decline in health, school became less and less a priority; I’d be damned if I wasn’t by his side during all of this. I missed enough classes that I failed out of some, and passed others. I didn’t much care at the time. Instead of studying, I was helping my father dress, and I don’t mean merely picking out shirts, and helping him ties his shoes. If you want an experience, help your sick, scarred father undress and hold him upright while he showers, and then dry him off, dress him from his briefs to his jacket, all the while knowing that this tears him apart inside. My last semester of school was a roller coaster of emotions. During all of this, my mother had returned to work to cover medical bills and such, all the more difficult for her, as she wanted to be at my father’s side as well. Life, at its best.
My father was the reason I didn’t graduate college; I didn’t care though. He never knew this, and never will. I lied to him, and my mother, only telling my wife the truth. I walked on stage and received my diploma in December 2005, making my Dad one of the happiest guys on Earth. He had dropped out of high school at 17 to fight in Vietnam, barely had a GED, with very little collegiate schooling, so my college graduation was a dream come true for him, even if it was all a sham. College wasn’t the priority to me, my father was. I did end up receiving a degree from NAU though. I spent the next year taking on-line and correspondence courses, and now I have a framed diploma on my wall.
I had to move on after that graduation day. I packed a small U-haul trailer, and headed to Tucson to join my wife, and went to work for a large, multi-billion dollar construction company. I worked my 75 hour weeks, we bought a house, brought home a puppy; The American Dream, right?
I couldn’t get my parent’s last year and a half out of my head. They had worked and sacrificed so much, so they could retire, relax, and pursue their dreams. And when they were so close to that realization, they were struck down, damn near losing it all. I was bound and determined to not let this happen to me, but how could I break out of the mould? At work, I was surrounded by people so caught up in keeping up that I was drowning.
“Work hard for 25 years, and you’ll be a multi-millionaire with us,” I was told.
Did I want the money that bad?
Did I want two failed marriages, no time with my kids, and constant stress?
No, my priorities were shifting, but how could I shed the constraints of the only society I knew? This all had me thinking, and I realized that I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, what career I wanted, and I was freaked out. I was supposed to have a plan, and be a good little worker bee.
During my struggles, my wife was taking her GREs for grad school admissions, and applying to various different grad schools. We had no clue where we wanted to go, and she didn’t really know what exact field to pursue. At the time, we decided to take the safe and easy route of staying in Tucson. We had home, good jobs, and were complacent. This was all pre-dietary purge though.
To get this back on track, and to re-cap: I’ve been on a diet for a year and lost a lot of weight. This weight loss has been a symbolic purge, promulgated by the events during the last 2 years of my life. Now during this past year, my wife and I have accomplished some pretty neat things. I left the large company I worked for, and work at a small firm, and am much happier. She was accepted in to a Social Welfare PhD program at UCLA, and is happier than ever. We have left our comfort zone and come to California, and are living on one salary. We just recently decided to start a family, but she has also made the decision to only pursue an MSW, as the notoriety of alphabet soup doesn’t mean a thing when you’re in a coffin.
This whole thing was brought about, in part, by this website, and the postings of you all here. It is good to know that my wife and I aren’t the only “lost” ones out there, and that there is a port, somewhere. I am now actively trying to get out of the corporate world, not to make more money, but to appreciate life more.
All in all, I guess I just want to say thanks, and that I look forward to meeting more of you here, enjoying life, and living it, rather than just existing.
Time to start Living Life in Reverse!
