Just curious,

For a few minutes, Thought I might be meeting the devil yesterday
Randomly recurring heart issue. Spent the few minutes trying to get a few business issues taken care of and coaching ' spouse ' on what to do
bring aspirin, etc...

I have a cyst in my head. Apparently been there since birth but no one knew that. Had some headaches and went in for a check up. They took a head scan and saw the cyst. No one knew if it was growing or not. Had to wait 6 months for a second scan for them to tell if it was getting bigger. It was not. Longest 6 months of my life. I was more pissed than anything. Thought it was really unfair. Doc called me at work and told me not to worry about getting my affairs in order anytime soon. Broke down and cried like a baby for a good minute or two.

Id does change ones perspective on how random life can be. Here today, gone tomorrow.

__________________
Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

I have had 3 near death experiences. One was a motorcycle accident and the another was when I almost fell off a 200' communication tower. When I was a kid I swam into a water discharge duct in an irrigation canal to see where it went. I eventually got to a dead end and had to swim back out. Very nearly did not make it. The irrigation canals had steep concrete moss covered sides and were impossible to climb out with swiftly running water but we swam in them all the time.

__________________
Tony H
W111 280SE 3.5 Coupe
Manual transmission

Past cars:
Porsche 914 2.0
'64 Jaguar XKE Roadster
'57 Oval Window VW
'71 Toyota Hilux Pickup Truck-Dad bought new
'73 Toyota Celica GT

Also I fell through thin ice when I was a kid in Michigan. I was taking a shortcut and no one was near. I managed to get myself out.

__________________
Tony H
W111 280SE 3.5 Coupe
Manual transmission

Past cars:
Porsche 914 2.0
'64 Jaguar XKE Roadster
'57 Oval Window VW
'71 Toyota Hilux Pickup Truck-Dad bought new
'73 Toyota Celica GT

suicide attempt 1980, love caused, thought I saw hell. Bypass surgery before going under I said been fun.

__________________
1999 w140, quit voting to old, and to old to fight, a god damned veteran,you are a citizen of the world, all peoples are
cousin's, love all life, your love is enternal

Nine times and counting.

1. Navy C-9 Skytrain (DC-9), NAS Alameda, CA:

We'd originated at NAS Fallon, NV (elevation 3935 feet). Before departing, they came on and removed passengers and their luggage due to the plane being overweight. The plane took off with light fuel due to the elevation, with a refueling stop at NAS Alameda, CA (elevation 14 feet) before going to Salina, KS (elevation 1227 feet) for refueling, and then to NAS Norfolk, VA (elevation 15 feet).

The weather at Alameda was hot and humid, making the take-off distance longer. The pilot taxied the plane back into the "stripes" at the very beginning of the runway at Alameda, turned the plane around (facing down the runway), put on the landing gear brakes, and spun up the engines before letting go of the brakes.

The take-off role was really long. When the plane finally rotated (nose gear lifting off the runway) my thought was "Well, at least we'll skip when we hit the water." Looking out the window, the main gear lifted just before we got to the end of the runway.

The Salina FBO's ramp attendant (directing the plane to its parking spot) was a pretty young woman in a short yellow dress. That was SOP back then.

2. Runway incursion during take-off, ATL. The pilot reversed the props and steered the plane to the edge of the runway. My thought was "This will either be really bad or nothing at all." I had maybe three seconds of thinking this.

3. Four-lane, divided highway: I had an 18-wheeler come across the median in front of me, and passed me on my right (on the shoulder). He was swerving to avoid hitting a car that blew a stop sign and pulled in front of him. I saw him coming and moved from the right lane to the left lane.

4. I had a similar incident happen on a two-lane road with a pick-up truck. The driver was passing somebody. Luckily, this happened in front of a new subdivision. When they built the subdivision, they widened the road in front of it. So, there was about 30 feet of asphalt to my right between me and the curb. The pick-up truck swerved into that area and passed me on my right.

5. Somebody in a Nissan Pathfinder took a shot at me on a congested interstate. I was in the left lane, following the line of cars in front of me at a safe distance. The Pathfinder's driver was behind me, tailgating, and flashing his headlights at me (to move over and give him my place in the line of cars in the left lane). When he got an opening, he tried to pass me on the right. When that didn't work, he took a shot at me. I heard the shot, but there was no damage to my car.

6. The entrance to the east-bound tunnel of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel is a blind curve. At 2 a.m., a Porsche 928 was backing out of the tunnel and around the blind curve. I was far enough behind him to see him coming. If he'd been doing that a few seconds sooner, I might have hit him. My only theory is that he had a claustrophobia panic attack, stopped, and started backing up. WTF?

7. and 8. Two bear encounters: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, NC, and rural Virginia Beach, VA.

The VaB encounter happened in the woods on an antebellum plantation that still had the manor house, belonging to friends of my parents. There were still CSA uniforms in chests in the attic. The last time I drove by the plantation, the manor house was gone. My guess would be either it fell down or was struck by lightning and burned down. Wood that has been drying out for 150+ years burns really good.

9. I stopped at a gas station/convenience store to buy lottery tickets in the early evening. There was just one car parked in front of store, but it was parked sideways (parallel to the curb). When I pulled up, somebody very quickly walked out of the store, got in the passenger side of the car, and the car took off. He was probably going to rob the store and called it off when I drove up. This incident is why I now have a rule of not going to gas stations/convenience stores after dark.

Or just maybe he finished his transaction and left? Pretty low bar for 'near death'

Him not carrying anything (beer, cigarettes, lottery tickets, pork rinds, condoms, corndogs, etc., etc.), and the car parked sideways (able to leave without using reverse) made me think otherwise.

Childhood friends were caught in the middle of an armed robbery where a hotel clerk was shot. They were in the game room off of the hotel lobby. When the shooting started, they dove under the pool table.

The C-9 and runway incursion were also low bars, since nothing happened. But, both of those could have gone the other way really quick.

Talk to any convenience store clerk who works the night shift at convenience stores located in the bad/worse part of town. The stories they tell will make you think twice about going into any convenience store after dark. Most convenience stores have a policy prohibiting any of their clerks carrying or having any type of firearm on the job which means they are naked as a jaybird.

I know of one clerk who worked the night shift at one of these C-stores located in the bad part of town. Around 3:00 AM he was instructed to close the store for approximately twenty minutes to restock the shelves. Quite a few people would literally beat on the windows demanding to be let in during this twenty minutes time frame. He began to carry a gun to work and then ultimately decided the job was not worth the risk and quit.

LOL @ your lack of evidence not being proof of anything. Perhaps since there was plenty of room they pulled up and he went in to pay for the gas? or ask for directions? or buy a lottery ticket. Use the terlit. How do you know what was or was not on his person?

Educated guess. You know, the "quack, quack... must be a duck" thing.

Which is a huge problem in our society especially among LEO and wanna be types.

statistically, certain businesses have a far higher risk of getting robbed than others. convenience stores fall in this category. did anyone here follow the 7/11 robberies/killings that occurred in California recently?

six 7/11 stores, two killed, five injured. Clerk's had no means to defend themselves or the people in the store therefore were "sitting ducks".

https://abc7.com/7-eleven-stores-shootings-southern-california-brea/12045912/

I imagine convenience store insurance rates are sky high.

In October 2020 I began feeling weak, progressively more and more weak. Then I started getting drenching night sweats. Not something you want to experience, let me assure you. I’d wake up 2 to 3 maybe 4 times a night with my bed clothes drenched and the sheets and part of the mattress as well. I started putting a big sheet of 2 mil plastic under my sheets. Cheaper than buying what was on the market for that.

My PCP of course checked me for Covid, I frequently had a temperature of around 100, was coughing some. No Covid. For a while, she thought it might be tuberculosis. There had been some of that going around the Bay Area. I thought “gasp, not that!”

Turns out that would’ve been less trouble to recover from than what I was eventually diagnosed with: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Same thing that killed my father, it was caught much later with him. My oncologist said strictly coincidental, there is no hereditary connection. During his illness, I had read that a macabre joke about that was to call it “non-favorable diagnosis lymphoma.”

The diagnosis was made in part by taking a bone marrow sample, she said I had fibrosis of the marrow. I asked her, I’ve heard that word fibrosis, I’m really not sure what it means.

“Scarring.” Yikes.

The commonality between my dad and I am might have been too much junk food. He had a little bit of a belly, I a little less than him. I looked pretty fit. Everybody said, you look in great shape but I knew my limitations.

My oncologist said no way did diet/junk food play a part. I politely disagreed, I still do. At the same time I was doing a partial remodel on a cottage. The tenant was a fitness buff, late 20s. He told me to start taking magnesium and other electrolyte supplements. He also said sugar and dairy were the two worst things you could eat. He was pretty goddamn fit, had run a 1500 m equivalent of a 4:06 mile while at USC.

I had been binging on ice cream during the heat wave of August, and September, couldn’t go swimming at 24 Hour Fitness because of Covid. I found a statistical correlation between high saturated fat consumption, and lymphoma.

I also decided to go with chemo. Andrew Weil, a hip and groovy nutritionist plus medical doctor years ago was in favor of diet modification only, but he says chemo has gotten a lot better and recommends doing both.

The chemo was not fun, not quite as bad as I thought it would be however. Just from changing diet I felt remarkably better after two weeks.

I am now in full remission, since approx August 2021. I will see my oncologist in a week. She’s a smoking hot Indian woman, probably late 30s/early 40s.

As for my mental state, I was struck by how much time I had wasted in my life. The thought of dying after realizing that so clearly was hard to take. I am now 72, healthier than I’ve been in years. Ice cream is a virtual thing of the past, maybe once or twice a year. Sugar is way down. The only dairy I indulge in semi regularly is grass fed butter. They all say that is the one dairy product that is not a negative.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K