Have you heard of Harry Houdini” He died in 1926. Before that, he called himself The Greatest Magician the World has Ever Known. Other people called him that, too. This guy was good! He was celebrated all over the world, not only for slight-of-hand magic, but for his death-defying stunts as well. He was a confident, some said cocky, showman who developed a consuming interest in the theory of a life after death or as he called it, “the Afterlife”. He talked openly about the possibility of a soul returning here in some form after death. Wow. That would be some trick. Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking that the events of the past couple of days are the beginning to my end. I went into see a nurse about a self-diagnosed hernia, was run through a series of scans and blood tests and Poof! Today I’m leaving a cancer specialist’s office in the Oncology department of a hospital. My beautiful wife, Jennifer, and I have just learned that I most likely have some kind of Leukemia.

To offset aging, they say that a person should exercise regularly, take some vitamins, don’t smoke, watch their diet, and other common sense stuff like that, and I do. I’m in the gym 4 to 6 days a week for resistance exercise and I have a treadmill at home that I use regularly. I take a multi-vitamin, Fish Oil, a Protein Supplement and even a Testosterone Builder, So, I just don’t think that this should have happened. Not to me. Continue reading →

Did you ever think about dying and being buried? I have.  I asked myself why would I want that?  I think it’s less fun for survivors and the burial lets them off the hook. They plant the corpse, brush their hands, and walk away. They can’t do that when they’re handed an 8-pound box of bone and ash. They’re stuck.

I can picture them circled around the dining room table asking one another, “What should we do with Dad?”  If the roles were reversed, I would certainly be saying that. What you don’t want after a funeral is that box in your home. Where ya’ gonna put it? Freezer, maybe but it’s gonna take up room and there’s never enough room in a person’s freezer. Continue reading →

I lifted my grandson off a carousel with one arm while at the zoo. He’s a fifty pound four-year old.  It was easy until I twisted my body to set him on the ground. I felt pain in my side immediately, but nothing that a few Ibuprofen wouldn’t cure. So I vowed to take it easy for a few days and heal.

After two weeks the pain had seemed to move. It was still on my left side only lower. While lying on my back, I felt a lump below my ribs near my abdomen and asked my wife, Jennifer, to inspect me.  She went to work on me after I assured her that this wasn’t just another sexual come-on, and she confirmed my findings. So I made an appointment with a nurse.

Call me disrespectful if you need to, but I view medical people – doctors, nurses, and technicians as auto mechanics.  So, I guess you can say that I view my body as an auto. I’m like an old Cadillac with a little rust and a need for a muffler. After the customary smile and handshake, the nurse got right down to business by measuring my vitals and questioning me regarding my side pain. I spoke to her in unemotional flat tones and explained that, because of past and recent nightmares, I was pretty sure that I had an alien baby growing inside of me. She gave me that bored humorless look, that I’ve seen so often in my life, then asked me to unbutton my shirt and lay back on the exam table. After kneading my flesh like a bowl of bread dough, she shook her head and sent me down to the X-ray department where I asked the technician if the X-Rays would harm my baby. The Techie played along by saying she didn’t think so. She assured me that she would only take a few shots with a low dose of the ray. On the way out of her area I had the final word and told her that I thought her careless use of the powerful beam had sent my alien baby into a growth mode, and if something dire happened to the Earth, it was on her shoulders. Continue reading →