The Voyage: Experiencing Our World Through the Voices on the Web...

With the social media tools of today, we can explore the voices of our world which never had a way to be heard. Today, we are listening ...

  • Home
  • Be a Part of My Voyage, Please
  • Quotes! Be Brave, Add Your Favorites
  • Contact & Privacy Page
    • 1
      16 May 2010

      When exactly is one considered to be too "old" to have a blog; or, in my case two blogs, with a third not far off?

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost

      I am on disability, which most likely has a number of years ahead of me, though, I plan on working hard and learning. I just need to get rid of these horrible pains and the many side affects of what I had done to me.   I do this not to score points with my all too many doctors, but I have found a true "calling," if you will.  My company is in a stasis mode. Clients are asking us to do the work we always done, and I have had to be very honest.  It will be some time before I get back to work, and I don't know what I will be doing at that point.  I love the company I created with the help of so many people.  We had a true "Major League" opening, a post cards sent out in the weeks before our officical launch, a lot of press directly before the opening, and setting the company up as still having me as the primary creative entity to help our clients to tell their stories to their audineces. I look forward to the day when the surgeries and the never ending pain is at a point to where I can work once again.

      Before I ended up in disability, my own long term disability insurance and my Social Security Disabilty, I tried, to the detriment of my health, to be as involved as I always had been.  I worked the same hours, once we were on site for the program, that I had always worked. Our work was good and our clients always got the best possible production, bar none.  The issue was that my health, more, by body, could not take the six years of the worst  the pain imaginable and the never ending lines of surgeries and procedures.  Finally, it got so that when I would fly home from a major project, which meant almost a week of 19 hour days, my body just would give out.  It was funny, in an odd way, I always managed to be alert and talkitive with the flight attendants on the red-eye flights, which I preferred.

      Working as I was, doing more damage to my body than I should have or that was warrented, the work effort most likely caused me to heal more slowly and the pain that I still live with, to never have a chance for some recovery.  After one particular program and as we were laying out our production schedule, my mind finally heard what my doctors, clients, team members, and my partner had been telling me, I had to stop.  Just stop and work in getting healthy or most likely I would die or, worse, stay in the pain that I was living with and, actually, still do.  However, now I am having things treated and not undoing them by my crazy idea of what I needed to do to give my clients the best possible conference, video, and/or major leage concert.

      Even now, I still push myself, wanting to be back at work do someething, but not really being able to articulate what it is, or, in the next moment even know what I was thinking.  That, sad to say, happens all too often.  I will find myslef telling a friend something, then stop and have to ask them what I was speaking about.  Pain, left untreated, can do a number on one's mind.

      That brings me to the first line on this post, when is it too old to have blogs or to care about some of the social networking?  I don't know, but, I also worked out, that the only limit would be one of ability and/or desire.  Those would be my call.  For, now, keep moving forward where ever that may take me.

      • views
      • Tweet
    • 1
      19 Mar 2010

      A gift itself not truly known, given to a dying friend ...

      • Edit
      • Delete
      • Tags
      • Autopost
      It was but 3 months ago when a very good friend of mine mentioned in his cancer ward hospital room that he didn't really have anyplace to go to pass away.  Sure, I guess he could have gone to a long term hospice to wait out the end; and we, his friends would follow.  Though, it takes no discussion, no real thought, to understand that this would still be a lonely death and one that the community of friends he had would be less involved with.

      In the room that night was a woman of immense character and she knew that she and her husband had to take him in and they would have him in hospice at their home.  She mentioned it to her husband that night.  By morning they were making plans, still not aware of everything they were getting into, from giving medications to cleaning him after accidents to seeing him go way down and then bounce way up.  Her husband, a man who has shown me what a true man is, was all for this and it was a joint decision.

      They went and told our friend, he broke down, damn, who wouldn't.  He trusted in their love of humanity and of him and he would pass, at some later date, in a safe place with family and friends literally holding his hands, touching his feet, kneeling to be able to get a hand on him.  Let's jump back a bit, for I was not part of the very beginning.

      At the beginning I was fighting my cancer and its very effects on me.  So, I didn't know that the husband of this couple had taken apart a wonderful computer room - a nice sized computer room - and put everything into a bedroom.  Then he painted the room to a more soothing color.  Together they learned with the local hospice how to do this at home.  There would be nurses and doctors to help them learn and to help keep our friend as comfortable as possible.  That last phrase, "as comfortable as possible" is tricky.  For there are times when that comfort comes with a screaming voice as a clogged catheter is pulled out or the pain from the legions on organs of the body can not be managed by pain killers.

      The local hospice gave them all of the equipment, including a bed, and supplies they would need, yet the couple went out and bought a small refrigerator and other items to make our friends life a bit easier, for he could no longer walk. 

      This very ill friend had helped me many times as I had been fighting my cancer.  I was not going to just pretend it wasn't happening.  I did have some limits.  After some medication it was very tough for me to drive, my stamina was/is very low, and I was getting ready for a major surgery.  I began visiting each day at about 10:00 a.m.  - not every day, but many.  Then my surgery and a four week bed rest.  I was very happy that my friend had hung in there - I realize it is selfish, but I felt that way.

      As soon as I could I was there each day, and during the day and night so many other friends were there, to visit, to help, to just be present for their friend.

      I was their when my friend's mother and other son (my friend had lost a sister a few years ago to cancer).  It was an honor to meet them.

      So, life kind of goes on.  He would be fine one day and not make any sense the next day.  The pain levels, despite an excellent system of delivery still fluctuated as I can assert for myself, they just do.
      .
      I was slowly saying goodbye to the man whom I loved so much and who had taught me more than I could have imagined based on some of the most unusual circuitous conversations. Yet, something else was going on. I was becoming extremely close to the couple who were doing all of the work, with the nurses, of course.  But, they fed him, they cleaned him after  bowel movements, and all of that which comes with helping a person die a dignified death.

      Let's take a tangent on this sentence - dignified death - have you ever wondered what it was?  Would it have been the same in the hospice itself?  Would all of us have been there so often?  I hope so, but I doubt it.  It it too easy to get caught up in our own lives and issues.  I think the dignity, in this case, came from having his three grown daughters holding him, his loving ex-wife, keeping him cool with a wash cloth, and then the other 4 to 8 people surrounding him, letting him know that the journey he was going on, we felt, would be a safe one.  That was a dignified death, and it happened at 3:39 p.m. today (March 19, 2010).

      Backing up, what was happening as I would visit for hours is that I would also talk with this great couple.  And, through the weeks, we became very special friends.  Each of us in our own way, I believe.  Certainly with them as a couple and for them to meet my other half, but also, one on one with each of them.  It has become a gift which I was not seeking, could not have predicted, but am not surprised that my friend who left us today left for me.

      • views
      • Tweet
    • Search

    • Tags

      • barter
      • control information
      • cookies
      • fear
      • hate
      • Vice-President Biden
      • villas relax
      • Amazon
      • America
      • Biden
      • Blink Communications
      • Canada
      • Christian
      • Cosst Rica zip lines
      • Costa Rica
      • Facebook
      • First Amendment
      • Fox News
      • Haite Limbaugh poor earthquake giving charities love self
      • Kindle
      • Mexico
      • North America
      • O'Rielly
      • Obama
      • President Obama
      • Social Security Number
      • Target
      • Target Stores
      • Target products
      • Texas
      • United States
      • You Tube
      • address
      • advertising
      • age
      • anonymous
      • blame
      • blog
      • blogs
      • books
      • business of the Web
      • children
      • comedians
      • corporate greed
      • corporte greed evil First Amendment Constution Dred Scott case
      • daughter
      • death
      • dignity
      • disability
      • dissappointment
      • dying
      • evit hate crime experience pleasant criminal mind
      • fags
      • family
      • father
      • friends
      • gadgets
      • gay
      • gay hating
      • gender
      • gift
      • home
      • hospice
      • identification
      • ignorance
      • information
      • jobs
      • lesbian
      • love
      • military
      • minors
      • mother
      • pain
      • parental control
      • policy
      • politics
      • privacy
      • private
      • reading
      • relax got for it www.atriptoparadise.com costa rica vacation honeymoons
      • revenue
      • sad
      • saddnes
      • shopping Target
      • side-effects
      • son
      • subscription
      • surfing
      • trying hard
      • unpatriotic
      • vacatioin
      • voices
    • Archive

      • 2012 (3)
        • April (3)
      • 2011 (6)
        • November (1)
        • October (1)
        • July (1)
        • February (3)
      • 2010 (40)
        • November (1)
        • September (2)
        • August (2)
        • July (1)
        • June (7)
        • May (2)
        • April (1)
        • March (2)
        • February (4)
        • January (18)
    • Contributors

      Stephen Carey
    • Obox Design
  • The Voyage: Experiencing Our World Through the Voices on the Web...

    A bit more about me ...

    First, this is not an ego trip via a blog, or two blogs in this case.

    If you are at www.stephencarey.com, you will find some of the lessons I have learned and am still learning, as I first faced a six year battle with cancer, and now continue to deal with the severe chronic pain, plus the various operations to repair things damaged by the treatments I chose.

    In this six year battle with cancer, which is only now considered in remission, I was on a rough chemo drug, meaning I gave myself an injection every day for a year, then, four months on, three months off. Now, I take a less physically draining chemo drug, but in pill form. One that I will be on for as long as I live. The amazing thing about this drug is that the bald head in the picture (which was there), is now out of date. It seems this drug grows baby hair on the top of the head. Then, the baby hair seems to give way to normal adult hair, which matches what was there a decade ago. Kind of cool, but not earth shattering, for I would give up the drug if I thought I could keep the cancer away.

    If you happen to be on www.stephencarey.net, you will see that, first, it needs work, a direction. At this time it is really a series of random posts, they are good and noteworthy, but they do not tell a story,

    Finally, I have found the direction I want to take with www.stephencarey.net, which is a voyage, via the Internet, to experience the many voices from around the world which now have a platform on which to be heard.

    The TRUTH about this blog:

    It is not meant as a pathway to let my ego and id run rampant.

    Yet, we (me) seem to want to share a bit about ourselves to the world. Actually, that statement is silly. There is no "world" to see this.

    It may be seen by a few friends and others as they sift through all of the silliness and seriousness which can be found on the Web. But, it is not the world. The many tribes in the Amazon region don't give one thought about any of this. Those not fortunate enough to even put food on the table do not care about this. Somehow, it seems to be a way to belong; and, for me, a way to stay connected to technology, which I do love to learn about. But, more, I want to learn about the issues of this planet's citizens. I just like learning, and, with the Internet I am afforded a path to learn all I dare to take on.

    Plus, just discuss some of the issues I see us wrestling with and my perspective, not always popular, on them.

    One last site:

    Let's start at where we go to recharge after physical therapy, chemo, work, or just because we need to leave our home for our taste of heaven. Our place to relax is in Costa Rica. It is a very special country, with amazing citizens, from whom I continue my education of how we all live.

    For us, this is perfection. Take a look:
    http://www.atriptoparadise.com Yes, there can be heaven on Earth.
    Please take the time, read a bit and feel free to make an honest comment.

    All the best, and as you travel the Web, I wish you traveling mercies.

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    31980 Views
  • Get Updates

    Subscribe via RSS
    TwitterLaconi.ca/Identi.caJaikuBuzzVimeoDeliciousScribd