How does one write about the near death experience?

I think that I am near the point of being able to write about the near death experience.

I'm about ready to make an attempt and I'll try to not be boring about it.

OMMAG

Personal Sharing and Blogs

I've never been a fan of unnecessary or very private information sharing on Web Logs.

It seems to me that the way to do it is to pick a topic or theme and just build on it. If it is a personal chronicle of some sort just stick to logging pertinent stuff. If you are serious that is.

In my own case ... I find that I get pretty bored with limitations of any sort and so I never tried to contain or restrict the topics I post on. As time goes on my interests evolve and change so it follows that the content and topics in this blog change. It's all pretty random and unstructured, but I like it that way.

In the matter of personal life events I've never been too keen on talking about myself because it just shouldn't matter. In my personal life I treat a lot of things as either "category=my business" or "category=something I want you to know". In the blogging world my approach is basically that there are things I see that deserve some commentary and I want people to know about them.

This does not mean that I expect everyone to care or even anyone for that matter.

So it follows that with my low (non existent) expectations on anyone who chooses to read my thoughts or share the materials I link to, I never had any inclination to share much in the way of personal stories.

Until now. For some reason I've gotten the urge to offer some things that have made a profound difference in my own life.

So ...

It has been about two years since I found out that I had cancer. There are two pertinent things about this. First, that I had to have surgery as soon as possible to assess the nature and extent of the cancer and subsequently that I had little hope of a happy outcome.

The surgery I had nearly killed me. Without going into gory detail, the plan was that I would go under four hours to have my abdomen opened and my liver exposed for biopsy and possible hepatectomy at the site of the tumor. As it turned out the cancer could not be safely removed. I did however get the benefit of having my moribund gallbladder removed. The story of that could consume pages and I don't see any point at this time of going down that road.

My post surgery expectations were that I'd be in post surgery ICU recovery about 24 hours and then 10 days or so of observation before going home. The reality was something quite different.

What happened was that I woke up later in the evening apparently feeling pretty good, reading some magazines and watching TV. I had visitors that night and slept until the next morning. In the morning I had the TV on and then I passed out and stopped breathing. Apparently I had about ten minutes to live before my heart started pumping properly and I stabilized. At that point I was wheeled into emergency surgery where they opened me up to check for bleeds or other damage. There was nothing found and  they stitched me up inside and shot another 40 staples into my abdomen.

This is where things got weird.

I went into a coma. There was no waking me out of it and everyone was (so I was told) having a fit about what to do. There were several attempts to wake me up that were aborted because I was reacting almost violently with extremely high blood pressure and heart rate. This scared the staff and they put me back under to prevent me from possibly having a stroke. Personally I've felt this was a CYA action because I remember when I was waking up and hearing the instructions, first to me to open my eyes then to the nurse to shut down the stimulant and shoot me with sedative.

Over the course of seven days this was repeated 3 times and each time it was the same thing. I was told later by a doctor that I had clocked him in the jaw during the second effort to bring me out of the comma. I guess that was why I was in restraints when I eventually did come out. At the end of the week the plan had changed to keeping me under (or simply not bothering to wake me up) and to wait out the coma or let me vegetate.

Lucky for me, my wife had other ideas.

To be continued...

OMMAG

Dilema

As things go in life there always are cycles of convergence and divergence.
Sometimes there is just nothing to capture a guy's interest and then those wheels turn another just enough to put a few too many objects of potential fun and mayhem into view!

And so it is that one of my favorite things from the past has been resurrected and thrown in front  of my brain's impulse center of lust for materialistic gratification.

Thanks Ducati:

2015 Ducati Scrambler Classic

Of course while I've been thinking of a light weight cruiser type bike, American motorcycle manufacturer Indian MCs ... came up with this:

2015 Indian Scout

I'm stuck wondering not only which way to go! With the state of my health can  even expect to ride by next season?
To do either of these bikes justice and give them enough use and care takes a fair bit of time and energy. Do I have it?


And what about my current rocket?

Dilema

OMMAG

Trust Scientists?

If you are scientifically illiterate perhaps. If you are so naive as to believe what media morons write about science. If you think politicians and bureaucrats actually know what they are talking about or care when they begin using "science" as an excuse to interfere in your life.

But beyond these circumstances there is the fundamental question of whether scientific researchers are more interested in promoting their work for funding and personal agendas than they are in actually learning and developing fields of knowledge.

However, it seems that chickens are coming home to roost:

From:   Borepatch   

Study: American public doesn't trust scientists

Excerpt .... So a Psychologist and Public Affairs Professor says that the way to address mistrust caused by the perception of agenda-driven science and featherbedding is by pushing an environmentalist agenda and slick talking. Riiiight. Good idea. Maybe the public's concern about the monomaniacal thirst for grant funding is right, and warps how science is done? From an old post of mine, Make Big Money doing climate research from home: Well, I don't know about the "work from home" part, and whether you need to stuff envelopes, but the money's sweet: $79B since 1989, just from the US Fed.Gov. Add in the fellow traveler Euro.Govs and you've maybe doubled that. Note that's "B" as in "Billion". Skim a lot off the top for Department of Energy and other bureaucrats, and there's plenty of cold hard cash, as long as you toe the line Or perhaps it's an awareness that scientists are not playing straight with the public?

Thanks BP ...

Strongly Related:  Sultan Knish ... Science is for Stupid People (not what you may think!)

OMMAG

Van T. Barfoot ... The Story NOBODY in the Media Bothered to Tell

This Story was found on Small Dead Animals Blog
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/reader-tips-2908.html#comment-925496  
Posted in Comments By commentor  Ken (Kulak) .... Well Done K.

Van T. Barfoot died
Remember the guy who wouldn't take the flag pole down on his Virginia property a while back? You might remember the news story several months ago about a crotchety old man in Virginia who defied his local Homeowners Association, and refused to take down the flag pole on his property along with the large American flag he flew on it. Now we learn who that old man was.
On June 15, 1919, Van T. Barfoot was born in
Edinburg , Texas . That probably didn't make news back then.
But twenty-five years later, on May 23, 1944, near Carano , Italy , that same Van T. Barfoot, who had in 1940 enlisted in the U.S. Army, set out alone to flank German machine gun positions from which gunfire was raining down on his fellow soldiers. His advance took him through a minefield but having done so, he proceeded to single-handedly take out three enemy machine gun positions,
returning with 17 prisoners of war.
And if that weren't enough for a day's work, he later took on and destroyed three German tanks sent to retake the machine gun positions.
That probably didn't make much news either, given the scope of the war, but it did earn Van T. Barfoot, who retired as a Colonel after also serving in Korea and Vietnam , a well deserved Congressional Medal of Honor.
What did make news...Was his Neighborhood Association's quibble with how the 90-year-old veteran chose to fly the American flag outside his suburban Virginia home. Seems the HOA rules said it was OK to fly a flag on a house-mounted bracket, but, for decorum, items such as Barfoot's 21-foot flagpole was "unsuitable". Van Barfoot had been denied a permit for the pole, but erected it anyway and was facing court action unless he agreed to take it down.
Then the HOA story made national TV, and the Neighborhood Association rethought
its position and agreed to indulge this aging hero who dwelt among them.
"In the time I have left", he said to the Associated Press, "I plan to continue
to fly the American flag without interference."
As well he should.

And if any of his neighbors had taken a notion to contest him further, they might have done well to read his Medal of Honor citation first. Seems it
indicates Mr. Van Barfoot wasn't particularly good at backing down.
This 1944 Medal of Honor citation, listed with the National Medal of Honor Society, is for Second Lieutenant Van T. Barfoot,157th Infantry, 45th Infantry.

It's a Simple Plan

One that has played out time and again ....

OMMAG

Third World Politics Courtesy ... Of Course ... Liberals

I've been saying for decades that the sort of immigration promoted and forced on Canadians would lead to the inevitable import of the sort of third world social and political disruption and fraud that those same immigrants practiced at home.

The Liberals and the NDP have been howling for years that opposition to their policies (belief system) is tantamount to a racist conspiracy.

Fuck 'em! It is part and parcel of the lie that all cultures are equal. There are consequences to believing lies,

Liberal Nomination Fraud Results in Brawl ...

Every last social problem we have seen grow and mutate to the detriment of our society is the direct result of these Liberal belief systems being forced onto our our nation.

OMMAG

Road Trips

Well .... Junior (Russ) and me just got back from about 5 thousand km of driving. We got to spend about four days visiting family and friends in south western Ontario and the trip was book ended by two marathons at the wheel.

The first stint was taken out of Winnipeg and across the north side of the Great Lakes. Thanks to road construction on hwy 17 that part of the trip took at least 4 hours longer than planned and also took a toll on our energy levels. Poor Russ got a cold and suffered his way through the week. It also affected his chances to meet cousins and get to know them a bit. Russ missed out on some very good visits with my old friends and especially a surprise 60th birthday bash with some guitar pickin' boys from Nova Scotia and a few Newfs to spice up the story telling.

As for me it was all pretty good once we got there. Dragging my butt around jut a bit but still managed to see most of the people I had hoped to see.

The stretch back was a bit better thanks to US roads being better cared for and even the construction zones being less of an impediment. A few encounters with deer at night with deer in Michigan and WI were had but we managed to avoid collisions and getting too close to them. While Minnesota managed to do a damned poor job of marking one road diversion so even locals were completely caught out by the F&ck Up. Nothing like going to work at 6am and getting trapped in a dead end road closure eh? A little palaver with two young fellows led to an improvised detour route on back roads and eventually put us all back on US hwy 2 into Grand Forks.

 All things considered, I would avoid doing any more of those marathon drives but there are still a couple trips I'd like to take.

OMMAG