Better financial news

In my SEP retirement fund is an industrial building which my SEP owns 25%. We built the building in the early nineties and have had all 50k square feet rented the entire time. I would get a cash payout each year which I used for my retirement. Well we were suppose to close this building on Friday as an investment group out of Beverly Hills wanted a 9 cap building with a great tenant. The problem was that we dropped the price six hundred thousand for an as is sale, but a week ago they killed the deal because we would not give another 250k credit for a new roof. We offered 100k and refused to lower the price.

So the balance of partners who are substantial decided that we would cut disbursements for two years and pay for the new roof. I am the only one with this in their retirement fund, so they could care less about disbursements. However, they know how sick I am, and decided to borrow 250k and we will still get our disbursements this year. I just received a check in the mail. I probably will not get one next year, but I will be dead and there is a buy sell agreement which will make my wife quite comfortable as it will roll over to her traditional IRA. I still had on my bucket list to play in the world series of poker. If the building had sold, I could have done that but now we will have to watch our budgets for next year because my sep pension is done for a couple years. I have to admit that my partners have been very considerate of my situation, as this now allows us to travel this winter if I am healthy enough.

Sometimes when you think you are down for the count, you somehow get back on your feet. I have been blessed with a beautiful family, good friends, and loyal partners. It does not get better.

Very nice story - glad it worked out for you this year, and hope you'll be able to do that traveling.

Good news.

We are trying to decide between Florida and Arizona. My son and his family are in Disneyworld for three days, and all the water parks were closed and it was snowing in Tally. Arizona is warm. It is just so much more driving to come back for my shot in three weeks. It is frigid here.

Driving may not be the best answer.

I am most comfortable in the leather seats of the Prius. It has these wonderful heated seats and I can lean back the passenger seat and sleep like a baby. There are times I have gotten into the car and have driven to relieve the pain. We love taking a road trip and making no reservations.....just bumping along and stopping at points of interest. The dog however does not like riding in the car. She curls up in a ball on the floor and does not enjoy looking out the window. I had wanted to visit Gettysburg for the third time, but this cold spell has taken that option off the table. We will probably visit Andersonville a second time. I would say this is a must see historical site. It is hard not to be brought to tears the inhumanity right here in America, and not in some forest in Poland during WWII.

I was referring to road conditions.

Just got my chromagrin levels. Normal is 200. My high was 4000, which is a short trip to death, but my levels before the Chemo embolization were 14000, which is very dire, and they did not tell me my test results until I insisted today for the same. I have another meeting with my surgeon on the 25th, but the pain and weakness are now objectively explained. It really has been a great journey, but there is absolutely no white knight who has a new procedure which will save me. My wife and I just laughed this morning. We wanted to let the kids know, but the son is in DisneyWorld, so we will inform them of the bad news this weekend before we leave to travel.

I have given the wife instructions to drive home and if I pass in the car to keep driving and call our local coroner when she gets back home. If asked when I last spoke to her, it will be the last gas stop. I was thinking about getting a body bag on line, and sitting in it when traveling, but that seems a little extreme, but it does make both of us smile. When you have beat the demon for so long, it is strange but dying does not seem like that big of a deal. Humor and time with the grandkids has been priceless.

uh oh.....final stage......light colored stools, liver sensitive to the touch, fatigue, itching, and yellow eyes. Have em all. I guess the energizer bunny is running out of battery. Now I am concerned about traveling.

Jaundice.....stay put, hopefully it will get better. My prayers are for you.

Joani's right, Sea. I'm glad you and the wife can still laugh, but it doesn't seem to make any practical sense to get on the road at this point, unless you are bound and determined to see Florida one more time for some reason. I know it's your decision, and you've never listened to us before, but FWIW I think staying put is the wise move for now.

I will go with the flow, but it is so bitter cold here and the danger that I will fall on the ice outweighs any concern we have for traveling as I am most comfortable sleeping in the Prius where the leather seats are heated and when turned back a bit is as close as I can get to my lazy boy.  This sucks.  You know how the age old question would pop up in a conversation about death.....would you want to know when you were going to die, or would you prefer ignorance.   I enjoyed the ignorance because in the absence of those hormone levels, the last ones are all I knew.  Today, I think I may have favored ignorance.

Do not get me wrong.  I would like to live a few more years, but that is a bit greedy.  I have been given almost four years since I should have been dead, so you kind of accept where I am now.  I will probably be increasing my dose of medical pot as the liver sensitivity and shoulder pain is increasingly becoming unpleasant.  I remember nine years ago beginning this journey and reporting the same on the PNJ.   My wife will update, but heck four months ago I was out of it for almost a month and today I am still here......just do not know when that train is coming to the station.  I guess the book is not going to happen, because the end stage will involve confusion as the toxins increase and my liver is unable to handle the same.  Some really good times with the grand kids over the holidays, and in my confusion I think I told my wife.......boy the President is making America great again........she went for the gun to put me out of my misery.

Take your medical pot...when I had my liver biopsy...the shoulder pain immediately after was an 8. My kidney stone pain was a 6.

My Kidney stones on the first attack was an 8, and my lung lob removal was an 8, but the liver pain and shoulder pain is usually about a 7 at the highest. I am probably now between four and six most of the day. For two months I was in the 2-4 range, but incrementally it has increased. No big deal so far.

The itching however is horrible.

You've never been the greatest at accepting expressions of sorrow, but I have to tell you I remain sorry you're having to suffer through this. Reduced pain in return for horrible itching doesn't seem like much of a bargain to me. Can anything relieve that?

I play poker. Sometimes you are dealt horrible cards, but as the game continues those horrible cards actually can come together for a great hand. The itching is simply an irritation which has been greatly relieved since my wife gave me this cool back scratcher. The simple fact remains. It just is not that bad. It will get worse, but if four years ago I had quit living because it was time, I would have not lived. I had a productive four years, and have never been happier. So as disappointed as I am in my test results, it was expected. I will simply adjust. Traveling may be difficult, but I will be living.

2seaoat wrote:I play poker.  Sometimes you are dealt horrible cards, but as the game continues those horrible cards actually can come together for a great hand.   The itching is simply an irritation which has been greatly relieved since my wife gave me this cool back scratcher.  The simple fact remains.  It just is not that bad.  It will get worse, but if four years ago I had quit living because it was time, I would have not lived.  I had a productive four years, and have never been happier.  So as disappointed as I am in my test results, it was expected.  I will simply adjust.  Traveling may be difficult, but I will be living.

I get all that, Sea, and, of course, one can only admire your amazingly positive attitude and perseverance in the business of living.  I have zero doubt that you're right you'd have been long gone had you not been acting as the "keep on going and be happy" person you are. And, as previously stated, all decisions about travel or anything else are entirely yours -- even though you can surely understand why some of us have a natural inclination to say, "Whoa," based on what you've just told us.

And maybe you can also understand why I very respectfully ask you the following question and hope for a frank and honest response.  Please give it some thought before responding, won't you?  OK, here it is:

What are we to say when you describe your symptoms and the discomfort you do suffer, even if it's "just not that bad" at present?  Shall we simply cheer you on, not feel nor certainly express any sympathy, as it will immediately be met with "Don't feel sorry for me" in one form or another, even though you just told us things that you surely know would make any normal human being feel sorry?  

This is a serious question, Sea, not a trick one, simply a request for instructions going forward.   Your path is arduous, but please understand that ours is somewhat difficult, too, at least for some of us, in terms of trying to navigate these somewhat confusing and inherently contradictory communications with your dying but (thank goodness) still very much alive self.

Please know I wouldn't be asking this if I didn't care.

I have for nine years given a narrative about cancer and how it impacts just one patient. Each person who is born into this world will die. My wife goes to a wake for one of her friends who had a massive heart attack and without warning she left for work and her husband, children, and grandchildren never knew she was sick. The question is what should other people feel when somebody among us is dying or had died. The immediate reaction of most people is sadness. However, if you celebrate life and understand that death is part of the same, one quickly understands that death is but the human condition which faith in something more greatly lessens the impact and sadness.

When I started reporting my illness, I certainly did not expect this to last this long and become so tedious for people who read. The details on pain are hopefully to alleviate folks fears that dying from cancer is all unbearable and horrible pain. In my case that has simply not been the case, and like Steve Jobs who died of endocrine cancer and worked until a week before his death, I am simply reporting on the decline as it happens. When this started I thought it would be short and sweet, but I am as happy as a pig in chit that my story has become tedious because that still means I am here. A person with cancer can live a full life and the pain can be managed. When it cannot, I will be silenced.

2seaoat wrote:I have for nine years given a narrative about cancer and how it impacts just one patient.  Each person who is born into this world will die.  My wife goes to a wake for one of her friends who had a massive heart attack and without warning she left for work and her husband, children, and grandchildren never knew she was sick.  The question is what should other people feel when somebody among us is dying or had died.  The immediate reaction of most people is sadness.  However, if you celebrate life and understand that death is part of the same, one quickly understands that death is but the human condition which faith in something more greatly lessens the impact and sadness.

When I started reporting my illness, I certainly did not expect this to last this long and become so tedious for people who read.  The details on pain are hopefully to alleviate folks fears that dying from cancer is all unbearable and horrible pain.  In my case that has simply not been the case, and like Steve Jobs who died of endocrine cancer and worked until a week before his death, I am simply reporting on the decline as it happens.  When this started I thought it would be short and sweet, but I am as happy as a pig in chit that my story has become tedious because that still means I am here.  A person with cancer can live a full life and the pain can be managed.  When it cannot, I will be silenced.

What tedious? If folks don't want to read it they can skip over it. I don't know anyone who hasn't been blighted by cancer in some way, shape or form if not personally then through family or friends. I find it interesting and as long as you keep posting it some folks will read it. So keep posting it.

Telstar wrote:

2seaoat wrote:I have for nine years given a narrative about cancer and how it impacts just one patient.  Each person who is born into this world will die.  My wife goes to a wake for one of her friends who had a massive heart attack and without warning she left for work and her husband, children, and grandchildren never knew she was sick.  The question is what should other people feel when somebody among us is dying or had died.  The immediate reaction of most people is sadness.  However, if you celebrate life and understand that death is part of the same, one quickly understands that death is but the human condition which faith in something more greatly lessens the impact and sadness.

When I started reporting my illness, I certainly did not expect this to last this long and become so tedious for people who read.  The details on pain are hopefully to alleviate folks fears that dying from cancer is all unbearable and horrible pain.  In my case that has simply not been the case, and like Steve Jobs who died of endocrine cancer and worked until a week before his death, I am simply reporting on the decline as it happens.  When this started I thought it would be short and sweet, but I am as happy as a pig in chit that my story has become tedious because that still means I am here.  A person with cancer can live a full life and the pain can be managed.  When it cannot, I will be silenced.

What tedious? If folks don't want to read it they can skip over it. I don't know anyone who hasn't been blighted by cancer in some way, shape or form if not personally then through family or friends. I find it interesting and as long as you keep posting it some folks will read it. So keep posting it.

Agreed. It's not tedious at all, and I hope the story goes on as long as possible, as long as the pain is manageable and you're still having fun. I'm glad for all the extra time you're getting, and that life is still full. Keep going!

I have always looked forward to your posts. Especially the ones in the general discussion forum. You have succeeded in making your stories very personal while remaining anonymous to our forum stalker. Quite a feat Mr. Oats. Well done.

Especially the ones in the general discussion forum

Ouch......my posts in the political section must be unpleasant.

You never heard the "tedious" word from my lips and never will, because it doesn't apply in the least.

Thank you for clarifying your thoughts about sharing your experience with us.

2seaoat wrote:Especially the ones in the general discussion forum

Ouch......my posts in the political section must be unpleasant.