Health

Somewhere I have a picture of myself taken when I was about seven years old.  I looked like an ordinary kid.  However it had to be just about this time I started gaining weight.  I remember that I weighed 215 pounds when I graduated from high school.  I joined the Navy and really started ballooning up. Four years later I weighed in at 275 pounds.  I carried all this lard around, and more, for all my adult life.  I always considered myself to be in good health and never realized I was just fooling myself.  The body is an amazing machine, adapting and compensating for the shortcomings of its stupid owner.  At first the signs of change were nearly imperceptible.  It became harder for me to get down on my hands and knees and get back up again.  The solution?  Don't get down anymore!  Then walking some distance became harder and harder to do.  The solution?  Don't do it!  If at this time I had seen what was happening to me I could have done something about it.  I didn't.  I never checked my weight.  I never tested my blood pressure.  Exercise was something other people did.  I didn't see a doctor for YEARS. I had no idea I was becoming diabetic.  Finally things began to happen to me.
Lack of exercise caused blood to pool in my legs and I developed clots in my veins.  I finally saw a doctor about this.  Alarmed that a clot might break loose, lodge in my heart and kill me, he hospitalized me.  I recovered from this but didn't learn a thing.  Still refusing to keep the blood moving by doing a little exercise, the mext thing that happened was blood clotting in my small intestine.  This time I nearly died.  To keep me alive I had to have six feet of rotting small intestine removed.  I began to take notice of my health.  By this time I took enough interest to get a decent checkup.  That is when I realized how uncontrolled diabetes and weight (I was up to 375 lbs) over an extended period of time can ravage a body.  Carrying all that weight for many years has taken a toll on my right knee which was injured in an accident.  I started losing weight and soon I was down to 350 lbs.  Then one morning I woke up and had a great deal of trouble breathing.  Back in the hospital I found out how serious this was.  I had congestive heart failure.  My heart was so weak it couldn't evacuate water from my body.  All that water was pressing in on my lungs making it hard to breathe.  Blood clotting continued to be a problem.  I had a Greeenfield filter put into a major vein leading to my heart to prevent a clot from reaching my heart.  Then my heart went into atrial fibrillation.  Finally the only way this could be controlled was to install a defibrillating pacemaker.  Uncontrolled diabetes over the years have begun to destroy my kidneys.  What a mess!  Although it is way too late for me do anything to repair my body, but at least I can try to slow down the deterioration.  I have lost another 50 lbs. and am committed to continue losing weight.  I am following an exercise program.  I like to think I have finally seen the light.  I know for sure that I have used up eight of my nine lives.