A Personal Health Update

This is a more personal post with an update on some minor health changes that I am experiencing. Earlier this week, I shared some of this information as part of a post that I took down after two hours. It just didn’t feel right. I am grateful for the encouraging and supportive comments that some of you wrote. I am sorry that I needed to delete them with the post. Please feel free to share them again. Here is what I really want to say.

The good news is 1) I am not back to drinking again! Though it may look like it at times. 2) I am hard at work on the farm! Though with the amazing team we have, it is debatable what I do other than say “great job” and then ramble on through texts and social media. 3) I am not keeping my symptoms a secret. See 1) again!

I grew up in a family where we kept secrets as more calling and vocation than hobby. In my adulthood I brought Tanqueray and later Tito’s into the family business of secrets and the whole thing came crashing down. Nothing could ever make me as sick as drinking in secret.

If I tried to keep my current medical symptoms secret, that would eventually be much worse for my mental health than any diagnosis I might be given.

So, the symptoms that I am having more trouble with than usual are short-term memory, executive functioning, and balance. I am also experiencing a host of other random things like slight hearing loss and a change in sleep patterns. We believe that we have caught this very early. The symptoms are mild. You likely may not notice anything, but my family sure does, and I do too.

My memory and balance tests did not go as well as I’d hoped and so my current diagnosis is Mild Cognitive Impairment. It appears to be a holding pattern diagnosis. The word on the street is that a firm diagnosis to confirm what is really going on could take quite a while.

I am seeing all kinds of doctors, having all kinds of tests run, and following some very helpful practices in my daily life. It could be that I am on the way to early onset dementia but it could be a host of other things, many not near as serious, plenty of them reversible.

It has been scary and frustrating to finally come to terms with where I am currently, but I am also very at peace with whatever the diagnosis. I am at a period in my life where I know for a fact that I have caused a lot of people pain but I have helped an awful lot of people and planet too.

I have really no idea what my higher power that I know as God has planned, but I am very comfortable saying that my purpose in life is complete (more on that in a later post).

The only purpose I believe I really have now is to say thank you in word or action for life that is undeserved and unexpected.

The biggest thank you I offer up is for the close relationship that I have with my wife of thirty years and my adult children. If the symptoms do in fact keep progressing, and then maybe you might think about me, check on my family instead. That’s who will need the help.

So when I get to see you, I surely can’t control any outcomes of what you think, see, look for or wonder about. However, we can laugh together a lot as usual, take a deep dive into farming, food, theology, philosophy, and sports. I actually wouldn’t mind it if my symptoms were bad enough to forget about the Luka trade.

We can even talk about the symptoms that I am experiencing. They are not a secret.

And if the time is right, maybe we can tell each other about some action we have taken that says thank you or just share some of the many things that we are thankful for.

In the end, “thank you” might just be the only purpose any of has had anyway.