Woke up Sunday morning to snow covering the fallen leaves and pine needles I still need to clean up off the lawn. I knew snow was a possibility, but that possibility turned into reality between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
My wife and daughter stayed up pretty late Saturday night, while I fell asleep rewatching Succession for the third time(what can I say, I loved the show.) I was snoring by 9:30pm on the couch, so I was awake a little after 7am Sunday morning. Between getting 10 hours of sleep and my back telling me it was time to get in an upright position, I grabbed my laptop and went out to the living room to get some album reviews written up. The best time for writing(for me) is early in the morning before anybody is up. The calm and quiet gives me the proper headspace to dig into albums and concentrate. I used to be up at 4am during the week so I could get a solid hour to write before work. I don’t know if it’s just getting older or what, but I find it harder and harder to get up that early anymore. I value my sleep.
I may have a clunky back at times – as well as other joint issues – but sleep has never been an issue for me. Sure, I’ll have that once in a while bout of insomnia. But most of those bouts are caused because I took meds too late in the night, or because of alcohol. Alcohol has caused me more insomnia than anything else in my life. I’m getting to the point where I’m asking myself if having those couple pints are worth a possible shite night of sleep. The answer I’m coming up with is probably not.
I did have a couple nights where I found it hard to sleep, mainly from worry. My brother went into the ER a few weeks ago with really bad stomach pain. This happened to him a year ago and he was admitted and diagnosed with Diverticulitis. Well, he woke up early on a Monday morning with similar pain so my sister-in-law drove him into the ER where they did a scan and gave him pain meds. While doing the scan they noticed two spots, one on each kidney. Apparently one of the spots was there a year ago at the last hospital visit but they neglected to even tell him. So, he went to his doc who got him into a urologist. That was last Monday. The urologist recommended removing the renal masses(what they’re officially called), and that he should get a chest x-ray to make sure his lungs are clear. Apparently if this were to be cancer it usually starts in the lungs and then spreads throughout the body. The urologist got him an appointment with an oncologist for this past Saturday morning, and the chest x-ray was the Friday before.
These masses have suddenly become a major problem.
I’m wired to worry. It’s in my DNA. So all this week I was just going through awful scenario after awful scenario in my head. All the worst thoughts I could think were popping up, not leaving me alone. I was trying to stay positive, but panic and anxiety were winning out. Finally, Saturday morning my brother texts and tells me he saw the oncologist and it went great. The doc put him and my sister-in-law at ease. The lung x-ray came back clear, so nothing going on other than the two spots. He said they’re working on setting up the appointment to get the spots removed and biopsied.
So for now, we can relax. There’s still the matter of the two spots, but what I’ve read about renal masses they usually are not cancer. It all depends on the size of them. But we know there’s nothing else going on so that’s a good thing.
Has there been kidney issues in our family? Well my grandpa had kidney problems. He had one kidney that wasn’t working very well, while the other hardly worked at all. And I think he ended up with kidney cancer. My dad is at stage 3 renal failure, but his numbers haven’t changed in years. He’s also 79, so I think part of his is age. It doesn’t affect his life in any way, they just monitor his numbers to make sure nothing changes. My grandpa was nearly 80 when his problems started. A lot of kidney problems can be attributed to OTC pain meds, which my dad took a lot due to back and joint issues. He told me my grandpa would literally chew up Anacin and Bufferin tablets at work when he was at Bremen Bearing back in the late 50s/early 60s.
I’ve decided to stop using Ibuprofen, unless I’m having a bad back day. I’ll stick to Acetaminophen. But for the most part I’m going to just take as little as possible. I drink close to 3 liters of water a day at work, and just the occasional Ginger Ale at home. There is the pint or two of beer I drink, but I’m seriously pulling back on alcohol as well. As someone more important than me once said, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
The cold weather takes me back to almost a year ago. December 5th is when we had to say goodbye to our miniature schnauzer Otto. He’d been on a gradual decline starting in the summer, and it all came to a head the weekend after Thanksgiving 2024. He’d started wheezing, as well as panting. I knew his heart was starting to give out. We made the hard choice to say goodbye to him on my 51st birthday, December 2nd. On a sub-zero Thursday morning I met my wife, son, his girlfriend, and our good boy Otto at the vet’s office and we gave him some much deserved peace. He was just over 14 years old. He’d had a great life, and he did more for us as a family than he’d ever know. I’d told my wife it felt like he was already a ghost, walking around the house not being able to see or hear much anymore. He seemed restless, and that was not our Otto. He couldn’t enjoy life like he had. It was time.
So I guess a lot has been happening the last couple of weeks. Some good, some scary, and some just bittersweet. Though, that’s life isn’t it?
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