Happy New Year!

Here we go again…

I must say that 2023 was kind to me. For 2024, I just want to build on it, I want to put out a more earnest effort and enjoy more.

I don’t believe that is too much to ask for.

As I writing this I realize I need to relearn this software!!! I’m at a lost.

I’ll manage.

Back to 2023 being kind to me. It was major kind to me in so many ways, but there was one bit of good news that really set me in the right direction. I’ll have to go back to March 31, 2020 briefly.

I had a really bad accident that got my attention and while in the Emergency Room I received the interpretation of a scan before the doctor made his way to my room to discuss his findings. The discovery was something he wasn’t looking for and I didn’t expect nor would he discuss with me because it wasn’t what he was looking for and come to find out nothing he could do anything about nor any other doctors.

That discovery was a supposed bilateral scarring of my lungs known as ‘Pulmonary Fibrosis’. That was my death sentence. I had at best 3 to 5 years to live. I was symptomatic with 3 symptoms…so I was pretty much convinced that I was on my death watch.

Needless to say I was upset. I cried on occasions. But I never asked why. I did ask how. I have no history that would indicate that I was in for that diagnosis.

I’m gonna speed things up for you here.

I accepted that was my exit for this dusty old planet and decided to make the best of every day. Besides, no doctor I visited would discuss it past the mention of ‘there’s nothing that can be done’.

Having been in the healthcare profession auditing and coding charts, I was familiar with the disease. I was also familiar with misdiagnosis. And I started pushing each doctor I came in contact with…I imagine I was very annoying. But…there was something no one was paying attention to.

In 2014 I had abdominal surgery for the repair of 7 ventral hernias…that’s right 7. My doctor remarked what my muscle tissue looked like Swiss cheese! A double mesh screen was placed in my abdomen as a repair and ran from just below my sternum to just below my belly button and left to right approaching my rib cage.

I thought just perhaps that this mesh was what the radiologist was viewing.

It just so happen that this mesh encroached the lower part of my lungs on the scan.

I finally bother a doctor enough for them to agree to a scan and as I thought…the ‘Pulmonary Fibrosis’ was a misdiagnosis.

In 2023 I was freed from that diagnosis and the prison I found my self in.

So, 2023 was a pretty darn good year for me!

Now, it’s on to some GREAT THINGS in 2024.

I learned a lot under that life sentence diagnosis…gratitude being the biggest! I grateful for everything I encounter. Someone’s smile means a lot to me, and someone’s means something to me in the form of me encouraging them. I love mornings, I love afternoons, I love evenings, I love breathing….I love!!!

I write, I write music, I do photography…and it’s these things that have come to life to me and will be my 2024 along with some traveling.

I love to travel.

I love the geography, I love the languages, the cultures, the foods, and mostly the people.

Now…

I’m rather healthy overall and I look a hell of a lot younger than I am. I like that.

Well…Happy New Year. Let’s all make it the BEST! As we become our BEST!

Peace, love, and beaches,

John