Spiral Path's Blog

I mean should I or shouldn't I write my life's story?

Many things have happened since I wrote my last entry in 2007. I am pleasantly surprised that I am still around, even though lately it's getting to be quite a struggle to get up every morning. The first thing I always have to do is to reach for the walker, try to make it to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom without falling and take a pain killer with a glass of water. Ibuprofen seems to be so far the only one that doesn't make me deathly sick as some of the other over-the-counter drugs do. I know it's not good for me either, but I just have to take it or I simply wouldn't be able to set one foot in front of the other. Actually, first I have to crawl back into bed for another hour or so until the pain slowly subsides and listening to the news distracts my thinking enough so that I can finally get up and limp around without a walker. Sometimes, when I am not too sleepy during that hour, I even tackle a paragraph in the book I am trying to digest as bedtime reading. Currently it is a very interesting treatise on Number Theory. It perks up my mind and even speeds up the morning's recovery, so that I eventually even want to get up and go in spite of the residual pain. Then I remember Pete Seeger's ? famous song about getting old ("The reason I know my youth has been spent is because my get-up-and-go has got up and went") and have to smile. What a privilege it is to be able to have the blessing of another day in this life and even the capacity to savour all one's past experiences!

It wasn't always as bad as this, of course, even though my arthritic left knee has been hurting me since quite a few years as I had shattered my knee cap three times after falls when both my ankles suddenly gave out. After the first fall the emergency doctor at the local hospital didn't think any treatment or even bandage was necessary and so I haven't sought any medical help since. I think I coped well with this one "bum" knee quite well - at least until a couple of months ago when I put too much pressure on my right heel bone while lifting the walker with all the heavy grocery bags from the bus and it (the heel) apparently got a hairline crack. Well, it's quite a challenge to look after a house, a garden, a cat and oneself with two "bum" legs! But what's the alternative? Being deposited in a bare nursing home, to sit in a wheelchair all day long, staring blankly into thin air because of overmedication to suit the staff's demand and be expected to die soon so one wouldn't cost the government too much money?

Anyway, I rather choose the challenge of living independently, at home, with my books and cat and wonderful memories for company. Being able to think about how the universe works, science in general and earthquake prediction in particular, is a great gift I received from fate - and is literally keeping me alive!

To answer my own question, "Should I or shouldn't I" write this blog: Yes! Yes! Yes! - I want to be selfish for a change and do it as a therapy for all the traumas I had to go through in my life - even if nobody is going to read it anyway.