I have to admit that I was quite pleased to be able to get to bed early last evening ─ I don't think that it was much after 9:40 p.m.
My younger brother had not yet arrived home from wherever it was that he was doing his drinking, and I had no interest in being up when he did show up.
The three previous evenings, he somehow managed to present a reasonable state of consciousness all evening after he was home, so I was unable to betake myself to bed. Instead, I sat up into the midnight hour operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to bring us the episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow.
He doesn't understand how to operate the Android TV Box, so when he is watching T.V. on his own, he must settle for the limited fare offered through the basic cable package that we subscribe to.
Anyway, I eventually got to sleep last evening, but not for too long. Around 11:30 p.m. I found myself awake enough to consider getting up in order to start work on today's content assignment at the post I have in progress at one of my six hosted websites.
But what were the odds that my brother had gone to bed? Not good at all.
I quietly opened my bedroom door and saw that the T.V. was indeed on downstairs ─ I was thwarted.
I returned to bed and may actually have lapsed back into a short bout of sleep, for in no time it was about an hour later.
Upon checking, this time I found my brother had shut himself up into his bedroom. Only my youngest stepson was probably still resisting bed downstairs.
And so I was quickly enough here to my computer in the small room immediately next to my bedroom, and busy with the website post content assignment.
Maybe 20 minutes later at most, I heard my wife coming through the front door. She and her youngest had some chatter, and then he took off with her car to probably buy some trash at a fast food outlet.
When she came upstairs, she uttered some surprise at finding me still up ─ she must have thought that I had yet to go to bed. However, I didn't make her wise.
She hadn't been home since the latter morning when she left for work at her friend's Thai restaurant on Tuesday, incidentally.
While she was shut up in the bathroom, readying herself for bed, her youngest son returned. And anon, she went to bed. She left the bedroom door ajar, probably expecting that I would soon be coming to bed, too.
Unfortunately, I had much work yet ahead of me, and it was not to be until after 4:00 a.m. that I was at last able to return to bed and seek more sleep.
I had taken a break around midway through my work, and while my youngest stepson was annoyingly having a shower here upstairs in the bathroom. I went downstairs and performed a three-minute and 15-second plank, and then capped that off with 51 flat-footed partial squats.
This serves to revitalize me for some while, for I don't drink coffee at that hour ─ I should be in bed sleeping, not wired with caffeine.
My wife stirred when I carefully got into bed; but she must have done so in her sleep, for soon enough she was very gently snoring.
I cannot recall ever before hearing her breathing with that effect in her sleep, and it filled me with such endearment for her that it was almost painful to experience. The oxytocin must have been flooding throughout me ─ I seldom have occasion to bask in that sensation, for there is no intimacy in my marriage nor my life anymore.
I was to sleep more; and around 8:30 a.m. decided to get up and get an early start on this blog post ─ right now, it is 9:22 a.m.
My brother was not yet up when I quietly emerged from my bedroom. He didn't have his shower and then emerge from his own bedroom until after 9:00 a.m.
My wife is still in bed, and likely will not rise until around 10:00 a.m. in order to begin readying for her 11:00 a.m. start at her friend's Thai restaurant ─ she has a bit of a drive to get there. By 10:00 a.m. I will have joined my brother in order to put the Android TV Box to use until into the noon hour at which time he generally returns to bed to rest up before taking off for the afternoon to eventually get back into his drinking.
It is an overcast morning, as it was yesterday. But also like yesterday, the afternoon is supposed to see clearing and considerable sunshine.
Yesterday I was unable to do any sunning because I had become involved in the creation of a very long blog post in my private blog, but that will not get in my way today.
oooooooooooooo
I have enough evidence at 69 years of age that I likely have an ailing prostate gland, but I have never had myself checked out medically.
I have read so many articles in recent years that roundly caution against invasive tests such as those which attend the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test ─ let alone prostate cancer treatments ─ that I honestly believe that I would prefer death over the lifelong consequences and side-effects that commonly attend these tests and treatments.
Here is yet another of those cautionary articles men ought to read before willingly undergoing these procedures:
DrMicozzi.com
If you were not compelled enough to refer to the article, perhaps this snippet will spark sufficient interest ─ Dr. Marc S. Micozzi referred to a recent published piece of research involving several nations and 700,000 men who had gotten PSA tests, along with the recommended further procedures if the PSA tests indicated any problems.
According to the research findings, at best one man out of 1,000 might be saved from a life-taking prostate cancer.
However, of those same 1,000 men who got the PSA test and then any follow-up procedure as may have been medically recommended due to the test results:
- 1 man will require hospitalization due to sepsis (a potentially fatal blood infection) as a result of prostate biopsy or surgery in the genito-urinary area.
- 3 men will suffer such extreme urinary continence, they’ll have to wear absorbent pads (i.e. “adult diapers”).
- 25 men will experience erectile dysfunction (ED), leading to more dangerous—and useless—treatments.
Wouldn't you agree that those side-effect hazards outweigh any possible benefit of the PSA test and the recommended follow-up procedures when the usually wrong (75% of the time) PSA test threw up an alert?
I am 69 years old, but I would rather choose death than spend the remainder of my clearly limited physical life wearing an adult diaper.
Remember, refusing the surgery and its risks is by no means a death sentence. That's what "watchful waiting" is all about!
However, we all have to each decide what truly matters and make those decisions, don't we? I certainly would not put too much credence into the opinion of a surgeon who makes a living from performing prostate surgeries. Ultimately, he has definitely not gone into the prostate surgical field so that he can try to talk men out of such surgeries.
One other health-related topic I want to bring some attention to relates to yet further research into why a diminishing sense of smell can indicate the imminence of cognitive decline and even death.
I've never been one who has had a particularly keen sense of smell. For example, even back when I was a young man, if someone queried aloud, "Do you smell something burning?"
Well, I was usually not the person anyone should be asking that question. The same went for other faint odours someone might have felt he or she was detecting. If the odour was not pronounced, then I likely was not going to be any sort of useful source of confirmation.
Oddly, a fart has never been much of a problem for me to detect!
This association with a reduced sense of smell and the approach of failing cognition and perhaps even death has been known for some years ─ the idea is not at all new.
But some recent research has found much more reason to have the fading sense of smell as a symptom of something much more dire.
These articles tell of the research:
JacksDailyDose.com
GentSide.co.uk
Guardian.ng
ScienceMediaCentre.org
Fortunately, I don't feel that my ability to detect the odour of lemons or onions has diminished one whit over the years.
oooooooooooooo
I am going to bring this post to a close ─ my afternoon is already extinguished and my evening upon me.
My wife did rise in time enough this morning to ready herself and leave for her drive to work. And I watched T.V. with my younger brother via our Android TV Box from 10:00 a.m. deep into the latter half of the noon-hour.
When he sought his bed rest, I had some exercise with my 43½-pound dumbbell, and then fixed up my first meal of the day. I had essentially finished eating when my brother was back out of his bedroom and prepared to ready himself to leave for the afternoon.
As too often happens, my meal bogged me down, and I had to seek a nap. I wanted to get some Sun thereafter, but it was already 3:27 p.m. by the time I was slouched low in a deckchair or lawn-chair out in the backyard while facing directly into the Sun and wearing just cutoffs.
I put in just over 40 minutes.
With that done, I resumed work on this blog post. I should not, however, have allowed myself to be sidetracked by making a lengthy response to an E-mail I had received.
I want to have a bath before my brother returns home for an evening of T.V. (should he do so early).
I will finish this post with a few further photos that my wife took in early June of last year when she flew to Italy to visit a sister of hers who has made that country her home.
The photos' metadata indicates that these photos were taken on June 6, 2018 ─ that is possible. However, the digital camera's date setting had not been adjusted for the trip, so even if the date is correct, the times of day would all be amiss.
I lead off with a selfie of my wife:
No comments:
Post a Comment