2015. Not a good year for my family. Lot of stress, lot of sadness. Much tied together in a web of interrelated negatives.
Specifics: 1. Health continued to ratchet down. 2. The job went from great a few years ago to good to now being tolerable. 3. Finances took a hit when taxes went up, endangering plans to retire; the five year plan that seemed to be achievable early last year has been turned into a minimum six year plan starting this year. The kids, except for Kristi, continue to struggle to get good jobs. 4. Vivian's death, and Travis after her, took more of our family members. The loss of friends Bill "BA" Andrews and Chris Anzalone hit me hard. I have few enough friends and these two were fine men and good friends. Chris was my oldest friend.
All interrelated. Most of my health issues probably started back in March of '82, when a soccer injury while playing for the Mountain Home AFB club was misdiagnosed by an incompetent Air Force Physicians Assistant (PA) as a sprain instead of the ACL tear that it really was. To compound her failure each of the next 4 or 5 PAs that saw me, being just as wretchedly incompetent as she was, apparently looked at her diagnosis and "treatment" plan and, as simple minds will, copied what she prescribed. I became convinced that I was somehow at fault and spent the next 7 years learning how to run and walk without an ACL in the left knee. I met another incompetent Air Force "medical" member who should have realized that there was something significant wrong instead of rushing to diagnose and simply removing cartilage from that same knee after a subsequent injury. A couple of years later I finally ran into a Doctor with a functioning brain who recognized what the problem was and treated it. Despite a well meaning but apparently also incompetent nurse nearly killing me after that surgery, it was a success. Of course by then a lot of damage had been done so years later the knees are going bad, but at least I had a few more years of walking and even running without pain. But in the last few years problems not only with the knee but other associated issues keep popping up and I feel like I'm in a downward spiral with no way to stop.
9 Jan. 37 years ago I returned home from taking a military physical, to find that after a 9+ month battle with cancer my Dad was dead. He was a great man, who endured unimaginable hardship in WW II and came out of it to found this family. I loved him, respected and honored him. For several years after, I held a private ceremony grieving for him on this day. This year I am following that path again; as I type this I listen to his favorite piece of music (Beethoven's 3rd) and mourn him.
10 Jan. 2 years ago I returned home from an out of office meeting to find that my Mom-in-Law had died from a heart attack. She had been living with us for almost 20 years after her other daughter died, and despite a few rough periods during that time she was well liked by us all. She resisted the urge to try and get us to change how we raised the kids or in other ways lived our life, which I greatly respected and liked. Always helpful, quick to help in many ways from taking care of the kids to shopping to loaning money for education. And most always nice. If I had a hard day she would listen to my grumbling and soon I was feeling better.
Well, enough whining about things that cannot be changed. Back at it!
