I was going to rant about why my 2017 sucked, but ExTank definitely had a worse year than all of us. Sorry again for what happened, thats f*cking awful!
Amen.
I didn’t mean to “threadshit,” or otherwise make it all about me.
We all have our trial and tribulations in this thing we call Life, that we deal with, cope with, individually or collectively, as best we can.
Mine is…worse than some, but better than others.
The day after Dad’s death (when we, the family, were informed it was now a homicide), my brother-in-law made a comment, something along the lines of, “You hear about this kind of stuff on the news every day; but you never think it’s the kind of thing that happens to you or your family.”
That was a very healthy dose of perspective, even if it took a while to sink in.
Not threadshitting - you are totally, horribly on topic.
The thing about humans is we are insanely resilient. It never ceases to amaze me what we can endure. In times of hardship, I take comfort in learning about how other people have managed to muddle through horrific circumstances. I’m a big fan of Viktor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, and the like. And there are plenty of “ordinary people” who show heroic strength on the daily.
This year was one of my worst for PTSD symptoms in years, but overall was pretty good. My worst year in recent memory was 2014, the year we lost the baby and my marriage damn near fell apart, so everything by comparison is fine. As sad as I am about leaving my mother, life is so much easier without her in it. Things just started turning around immediately after I ended things last year.
Someday, your worst year won’t be the same one you’re living in. Hold on.
My wife’s father died of cancer in early December so for her 2017 was one of the worst years of her life.
Thank you, Spice Weasel, for reminding us. I know the internet is infamous for presenting things as sardonic. But we really needed reminding of how amazing things can be.
While not the catastrophic meteor impact that Ex-tank suffered, this year has sucked.
Late spring my 82 year old father had spinal fusion surgery despite all the risks. He’d been in a low level hell of chronic pain in the knee he’d had replaced around 70 with all the joys of opiod addiction from pain management. It helped but didn’t fix all the pain. He was finally getting back close to pre-surgery when his gall bladder failed.
It was around a week of him in ICU on a breathing tube dealing with almost dying from a septic infection to even figure out what caused his near death. All of the joyous family conversations about the letter of his DNR versus his stated intent followed while he was sedated. I spent about five weeks back with Mom while he was in the hospital helping her manage. He’s back home but still not where he was in his post-surgery recovery let alone pre-surgery. He seems to have plateaued, too. We might not be seeing much better That leaves “How long can he stay at home?” still firmly on the table for 2018.
I managed to go from a particularly nasty virus in early October to an even nastier secondary sinus infection that followed. A course of antibiotics helped. It only left the antibiotic-resistant residuals. They took up residence in my lungs. Yaaa antibiotic-resistant pneumonia and a couple more courses of antibiotics till something worked. It’s not like I preferred sleeping through the night to waking up hacking anyway.
After losing almost all of October and November to embracing my personal health misery, I finally completed bacteria genocide a little before Thanksgiving. Going to the store to just buy groceries was still tiring. At least I was on the right track to finish the year…or so I thought.
Then a couple days after Thanksgiving one of my former brothers in arms committed suicide. November is the month I’d lost a former Company Commander, who’d made a huge difference in my career and life, to suicide many years ago. I’d been flat on my back and miserable so my annual remembrance/grieving got delayed. So I was already a little emotionally raw about suicide when I got the news. As an added “bonus”, there was a strong parallel at the funeral, outside the military ceremony, that reminded me of burying one of my Soldiers during my second command. It was a shitty trifecta of loss, old and new, washing over me. The lone bright side was a lot of long walks to process. I could have done without the extra motivation for post-pneumonia fitness, though.
Fuck 2017. Fuck it right in the ear.
Peace to you ExTank. I’m so so sorry.
My Dad died in September and his health declined so fast that I didn’t get to have any important conversations with him. He and I had some problems, primarily that I am a lot like him. He put his life into his company, which we are in the process of folding up. He ran a machine shop and I’ve had shop dust in my nose since I was twelve. Our last operating day will be soon and it will be very hard.
My cousin died in October, the very next month. He was a rare person, easy going and a man of so many talents. You couldn’t find a person to say an unkind word about him.
My other cousin died just before Christmas from an overdose. To say I am not doing well would be an understatement. I have at least reached the point where I am functioning somewhat. I am currently avoiding people since I am not Miss Mary Sunshine and I don’t want feel like talking.
Please accept my condolences, Tank.
I don’t like the floors in my new house …
There have been a lot of personal and public issues and events in my life that have made me unhappy, but given that I still have time to be annoyed about those floors, I’m doing okay.
The hardest thing is how much respect I have lost for people in my life. I have been very careless and lazy to end up surrounded by them.
What kam said.
My complaints for personal stuff (you know, stuff other than Trump and Katalonia-with-a-K) boil down to the first project of the year being for a company which gave us the mushroom treatment accompanied by threats and insults, followed by one where my manager is a 3yo who expects me to be Our Lady of Mushrooms: kept in the dark, fed shit and doing miracles for free.
Oh thank Christ, a venting thread.
My Mom’s losing her mind, and I’m her sole caregiver. She needs to go into a home soon, and my sister and I don’t know how we’re going to find her a place that she can afford, even though she brings in good money from retirement and my Dad’s death benefits, along with the kind of health benefits I only ever dreamed of.
I’m looking at a complete colectomy and proctectomy soon as well, and SOMEHOW, that’s an improvement over 2017. The surgeon who saved me in 2014 doesn’t take my new insurance, and because reasons, I cannot get on something else, so it looks like I’ll have a new guy cutting on me. KIND of a big surgery for me. Wish I didn’t have to change now.
I’ll be in the hospital for a week if all goes well, and I’m at risk for complications. Mom can’t be alone for a week or more. She can barely be alone for a couple hours while I go to the doctors. We probably can’t get her into anything permanent in the next couple months. Gotta figure out where we can place Mom while I’m in the hospital, and probably for a week or so after I get home. I can’t deal with her until I recover a bit - it’s better to be alone after the surgery than to have her around. Someone will get hurt - either her doing something inadvisable, or me, trying to stop her.
Well, either this shit will kill me, or I might have a few years where I’m not constantly sick and in pain. Or, I guess I could hit a middle ground, which would give me much of the pain and sickness of the past with little or no benefits. Well, shit. That would suck.
I had a pretty bad 2017 but nothing to compare to the hellish experiences some of you have had, especially ExTank. I hope 2018 is kinder to everyone here.
Hmmm…been kind of a rough year for me. In January the orange shitstain assumed the office of POTUS. Depressed me quite a bit. Still. In April I drove myself to the hospital because I couldn’t catch my breath, walked into the ER, blacked out and woke up with a ventilator tube down my throat three days later. I felt great as soon as they pulled that thing out but I had high deductible insurance and the out of pocket expense hammered me pretty hard. Lots of job stress in late summer-early fall. Thought I might be cast back into the job market at age 60, after 14 years at my current job. Lots of stress but that situation seems to be working out. Early Dec. I hurt my back pretty bad, been working but dealing with agonizing pain every morning getting out of bed and getting to work. Once I get loosened up at work it subsides and overall it’s ever so slowly healing.
Yeah, feels good to vent a little!
Some good stuff happened too but I am definitely hoping for a better 2018.
My mother died of heart failure 5 days before my birthday. She had early-onset dementia and was a difficult patient. She didn’t know who I was at all. I miss my Mommy, but I’m glad she finally moved on.
I’m not speaking to my father because he is an idiot man-child. I now understand completely why my mother divorced him when I was 11. Fuck the Jehova’s Witnesses for convincing him that a mere woman doesn’t know anything about mental illness and refusing my help when it was offered. :mad: He’s the dangerous type of hoarder who lives (lived actually, my sainted sister and her family helped him move recently) in horribly filthy, unsanitary conditions and allowed the house he inherited from his father literally fall down around him. He refuses to understand that this is a mental health issue and claims that he is just lazy. I haven’t engaged with him since September, and I don’t regret it.
Mentioned in post #50 that my Mom’s mind is going. Had dementia since 2009 that we know of. We’ve kept her out of trouble, mostly, all that time, but it’s a full-time job for me. I’ve got Crohn’s, and after more than a decade of pain and inefective treatments, I’m heading for a colectomy and worse (to me) a proctectomy. Mom won’t survive alone while I recover, so my sister and I am putting her in home. She used to work in one for years, a bad, state-run facility from back in the 80’s. All she’s ever said was, “I’m not going in no home.” and now it looks like it’s going to happen. We thought we’d do it for 2-3 weeks while I recovered, but really, I think we know she needs full-time professional care now. It hurts like hell to think of doing this. We have to find a decent one, and one she/we can afford.
Now, one of my 2 remaining friends (we seem to lose a lot along the road of life as we get older, don’t we?), who had lung cancer last year, has learned it has returned. Lung, kidney, liver. He’s in the hospital now most of the time, TAKING CARE OF HIS WIFE, who just had her bone-marrow destroyed and new marrow transplanted. Something went wrong, and now she’s in an ice bath with a 105+ fever.
Between all the problems, and all the damn prednisone I’m taking, it’s all I can do to keep from crying all the time. I took 3 1mg Xanax today (spread out)to try to even out a bit, but AFAIC, Xanax doesn’t work for long, I build up a tolerance, and I really hate taking it. Not as much as the prednisone, but it’s up there.
I gotta deal with my own health issues and set up surgeries, but first I have to keep Mom from hurting herself and find a place for her to stay in a place she’s said for 30 years she’d never go. Along the way, I need to talk my friend into not ignoring his own, very-time-sensitive cancer issues in favor of sitting by is wife at the hospital (at least, keep him from doing it for too terribly long - his cancer is an aggressive sort.)
You’d think we’d get the occasional dull year, or even a decent one, just to make the bad ones seem all the worse, but no, the hits just keep on coming. Fuck 2017,and fuck 2016-2014 along with it, but 2018’s shaping up to be a hell of a year, too.
God damn, Intentionally Blank. It’s too much. You’re probably crying because your body needs to release the tension somehow.
This might sound really trite, but I wonder if meditation would help you deal with all this constant upheaval. With Chron’s I’m guessing exercise is not possible? The thing I like about meditation is I always have my breath, no matter where I am, a hospital bed, the car, work, or home, I can always come back to my breath. It helps to release the crisis moments when I’m not actually in the middle of them.
I should go take my own damned advice now.
Yeah, it all sucks, and the prednisone is worse than most ppl realize. My stepsister has Lupus and she’s my personal hero now. For so many years she took so much of it, and we thought she was a little, “off”. When I started taking it, I marveled that she wasn’t a full-on screaming maniac all these years. Dunno what I’m gonna do about that either. I’m supposed to cut back before my surgery (I’ve got a few months at least before Mom is settled and I can worry about that), but the dose I’m taking now isn’t doing a lot for my colon and bleeding, so it’s gonna be a real joy to cut back on that.
It sucks, but it can always be worse. You might be fully engulfed in flames, and turn to the guy next to you, also fully ablaze, and start complaining, and he might go, "Shut up whiner! You have no idea how much this HANGNAIL has been bothering me today, and now I got this flame thing. . . " No end of pain or problems on the mortal coil.
I never tried meditation. I wonder if I can calm myself, shut off my sensory inputs and go inward and slow down my thoughts at this point. My usual approach for situations like this is to use the pain to determine what needs fixed or addressed, and go about that, but layers and layers of things are just piling up that can’t easily, or at all, be fixed. All that remains is the pain, and no real way to make use of it.
It’s true things can always be worse, that’s the magical, horrible thing about life, but I want to drop kick anyone who says that when I’m venting about something. It doesn’t make me feel better. Has that ever made anyone feel better? All I hear when someone says that is “the capacity for human suffering is limitless.”
I am a big fan of Viktor Frankl, a trauma psychologist who survived the Holocaust and created a therapy based on his observations about how people endure unimaginable hardship. He lost his parents, wife and unborn child at Auschwitz. One thing I liked the most about him is that he never once minimized the suffering of others. People came to him depressed due to long - term unemployment or something you would think comparatively trivial, and he never said, “suck it up.”
He said,
Which isn’t to say the idea can’t help when it comes from within. The value of “it could be worse” is when you’re telling yourself that so you can survive another day. My spin on it is “people have thrived under worse conditions,” because it emphasizes my response to suffering rather than the suffering itself. I like the idea of using suffering as a catalyst for making things, whether it’s a therapeutic framework, a book, or a new friendship.
I’ve given this a lot of thought.
Oh, you might check out the meditation thread if you’re interested. I don’t think of the goal of meditation as being calm, but I guess it does have that effect when regularly practiced. The goal for me is acceptance of whatever bullshit happens to be coming along that day.
That’s. . .that’s just an amazing analogy. I’ll remember that one and use it in the future. I’ve always just said that, “Just because things CAN be worse doesn’t mean things don’t suck exactly as they are.” His is a little better. 