Whatever Happened to Dee Ann?
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Moved to a new house that had install challenges for both satellite and OTA (it seemed mostly neighborhood push back). Slowly quit posting updates over time.
That's what happened to me for several years. Now I'm back in my tree-infested yard waiting for autumn to take away all the little beam stoppers on the branches. Thinking of COZI reminded me of Dee Ann. She liked her old shows.
That doesn’t surprise me...
That being said, perhaps she’s moved on to Internet streaming.
Since I’ve gotten FTTH, I hardly ever use a dish any more, FTA or DirecTV.
Why not send he a PM, and if her settings are normal then it should email her letting her know she got a PM. If that address is still working then perhaps she will come here to check. 
Oh hi there! 
Well, I'm still alive.. It's been crazy times...
The neighbor that was terrorizing me finally moved away, but only one street over. They live within a 60 second bicycle ride from here.
They (the wife was always yelling foul things at me too) aren't terrorizing me daily like they were before but sometimes we cross paths in local stores.
So now I have to carry. About two years ago he ran into me face to face in a store, I had my purse in my lap (I'm in a wheelchair now) so I slipped my hand
into the hidden holster and had my pistol in hand but fully concealed and ready to draw. He started cursing me instantly so I told him to get the F away from
me or I would put a bullet in his chest and I just stared at him. He cursed me some more, called me some really rotten things and I repeated my threat one last time.
He cursed at me some more but backed away. I reversed course and took off down an aisle leaving my groceries behind and I got out of there. When I got back into my van
I was nauseated, I felt like I was going to throw up, I was shaking for half and hour after that. He almost got killed that day. He got two warnings and that was one too many.
Next time he only gets one warning. Right now I feel like throwing up just recalling that.. I have PTSD now because of him.
The whole thing started because he rode a go-cart through my front yard on Christmas Eve and I went outside to tell him not to do that ever again.
He flipped out on me, threatened me, hollering at me calling me a wh***, a b**** and every other rotten thing..
Because of that I put up security cameras and that really made him insanely mad. Things just went from bad to very, very bad after that..
Him and his wife have terrorized me since December 2015.. Anyway, now I carry but I do everything possible to avoid them.
So anyway, after I moved I brought my dishes with me but I haven't been able to put them up because I will have to put them very close to the house due to my now much smaller yard.
And that's a problem because I'm waiting to get the siding replaced on the second story. My house is French Provincial with a Mansard roof. The second story was originally clad in
cedar shakes. But over the years they were replaced several times and then the last time they were replaced with standard roofing shingles, though they have a bit of fancy design to them.
And now they are falling off the side. Also it makes the second story unbearably hot because the sides are black just like the roof. So I found a fancy aluminum roof shingle thingy that looks
just like cedar shakes! And it's got two layers of styrofoam insulation in it, lifetime warranty, category 3 guaranteed, etc.. It's perfect, it's what I want and I won't accept any other options.
But I'm having h*ll getting it scheduled as they are in high demand and have a long waiting list.
Because of that I have to wait until the siding is finished before I can put my dishes up. Sigh...... I miss all that. It was fun and cool doing nerdy things.
I liked learning and I liked doing stuff for myself, it gave me a great sense of accomplishment when I would get it working and I could watch cool stuff for free!
There was one channel, I thing it was called White Springs or something like that, it was really old movies, the video quality was awful but it was just like
the 70's and 80's when cable TV was brand new, we had 12 channels available (total!) and at night they ran those same old movies from the 30's and 40's.
I'm a night-owl, I used to sit around at night watching those old movies (in the 70's and 80's) sipping beer and studying. I was always reading, everything
I could find to fill my brain with knowledge but I always had those old movies on in the background. Now you can't even find channels like that anymore.
I do have one small Ku dish up which I really only use for PBS when I want to record something. I still use that wee tiny little Ghost Pro Micro HD tuner. It still works perfectly!
Never once had any problem at all with it. On the other hand, I had that Alien 3 thing which was a massive DUD. I gave up on it after only a few months. It was a true POS.
But the little Micro HD still works perfectly. Best tuner I ever had.
I gave up on Dish Network, I subscribed to PS Vue, HBO NOW, Netflix, HULU+, Sling, Prime, Tablo OTA, Showtime, AMC Premiere, Curiosity Stream, CBS AA, Starz, SiriusXM All Access, and I dunno, probably a few others.
Pretty much everything. Streaming is so fragmented now and it's about to get really screwed up now that Disney bought up pretty much everything.
I wish I could put my 10 foot C band dish up. Still waiting to get the siding done..
But, after they do finish it and I could safely put it up, well, now I can't really work on it because I'm wheelchair dependent now.
I can get around on foot with my cane but only for very short distances. I can only stand, with assistance for a few minutes on a good day before I collapse in agony.
On bad days which is most of the time, I can't stand or walk.
I'm dying.
It's crazy how it all came to be. After my mom died I found out she was taking some experimental breast cancer drug, she was part of some research group.
She never told me. So I took one of those DNA tests and it came back that I'm highly susceptible to several cancers, breast, uterine, etc..
So I talked it out with a few docs and I opted to have all those things that I could get cancer in, removed. I figured that would put me in the clear.
But then my back problem got much, much worse, putting me permanently in a wheelchair.
Then last year I began having trouble swallowing. I didn't think a lot about it, I just dealt with it, I would have to eat something and wash it down to make
pills go down. And it got worse, now there is a tumor in my throat. It's my thyroids. It feels like there is a marble size lump of broken glass in my throat.
It hurts, a lot now. It's really difficult and painful to swallow anything. And it's taking my voice away. It comes and goes, several times throughout the day
my voice will go from normal to a raspy whisper that sounds like something from some undead creature in Game of Thrones. But an hour later and it's back to normal.
Back and forth, all day, every day. My doctor told me that I *WILL* lose my voice completely and that's not too far off. Eventually I would have to have a feeding tube
put in as my throat closes off.
But then there is my back. ALL of the discs in my spine have disintegrated, crushed and absorbed so that every vertebrae is sitting one against the other, bone on bone.
And since they are now collapsed into compact stack of bones, they are crushing the nerves that radiate out from my spinal cord. Like a cat whose tail is under a rocking chair.
Every time I move the bones grind on the nerves which not only causes them grievous damage, it causes me severe pain and all sorts of bizarre phantom pains and phantom sensations.
There is a long list of messed up things happening to me because of the nerve damage, too long to list here. Anyway, the constant damage being done to them, every time I move is causing
the nerves, ALL of the nerves in my body, to die. In the most simple description it's best described as degenerative myelopathy. It starts at the extremities and works it's way to the core.
I've already got a few toes that are 'dead', like when you go to the dentist and they make your face numb. But it's toes and it's permanent and spreading. The numbness will spread to all of my body
and that will be followed by paralysis. IF I would live long enough I would end up like, Stephen Hawking. My problem isn't because of disease it's because of ongoing, physical damage.
There is disc replacement surgery but it's brutal and traumatic. And I would need new discs for my entire spine. I could never afford it and I'm too old to take such a severe surgery.
It's rough on young people, I couldn't take it. Another option would be to go in from the back and cut me open all the way from my tailbone to the base of my skull and put rods and bolts
to spread my vertebrae apart and hold them apart so they can't crush the nerves anymore. But I've already got permanent nerve damage and spinal cord damage. Also that would make my entire
spine totally rigid, I wouldn't be able to bend my body at all. I don't know how someone could live like that. And of course there is also the fact that this type surgery is BRUTAL as well.
They drill holes in each vertebrae and use power tools to drive BOLTS into the bones. I've already had a small bit of that very thing in my lumbar region because my L3 was broken.
That surgery was horribly painful, I was paralyzed from the sheer pain afterwards and it never gave me one second of relief. I don't want to go through that again. I won't.
It's also very expensive. And I don't have insurance. I can't afford any of those torturous surgeries.
Another fun fact is that I have severe arthritis of the spine. All the edges of my vertebrae are bristling with bone spurs. With the discs being gone the vertebrae are all sitting bone on bone and the spurs
are interlocked like little fingers. When I have to bend or move or twist and my vertebrae need to move, the bone spurs GRIND and the pain is extreme. It makes me scream out in pain when I move.
I'm trying hard to learn how to scream out in pain without using the F word. My entire spine is complete garbage, it's conspiring to kill me and it's winning.
But the good thing is that I'll die because of my throat long before my back will get the chance to kill me. My grandson is losing his hearing so we decided that we would both learn sign language.
He's only 9yrs old but he'll be deaf before he gets to high school. I'm trying but it's really hard for me, I'm old and it's hard to teach and old dog new tricks and I've got arthritis in my hands.
I get frustrated and resort to screaming curse words. I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to learn. Other signers go waaaaaaaaaaay too fast for me. I do pretty good at reading lips but my hearing isn't going out,
I need to learn sign. But honestly that won't help me much because most people don't know it. So I have an app on my iPhone and iPad called "Speak for Me" which has virtual buttons that have preassigned
sentences such as "Could you please direct me to the restroom?" or "Could I have a To-Go box please?" or whatever I want it to say. It comes with several very common things already set up but you can
program your own and it has something like predictive typing so you can have it rapidly blurt out sentences from scratch by just typing and few letters. It's OK at that but not perfect.
But people don't mind when it doesn't say the right thing, we just giggle and keep trying and they can guess what I'm trying to say anyway so it's all good.
It will probably be 6 to 9 months before I lose my voice completely. When that happens we'll know that it will be soon that my throat closes off completely.
So it's very likely that before the end of next year my condition will be very bad.
I can't afford any of this. I can't. The costs are astronomical and with no insurance, well I have no chance.
So I'm not going to try to do anything about it. My throat cancer is going to spare me the suffering of my spinal issues.
My throat problem is moving along at a much faster pace than the dying nerves.
I won't have to be a potato on wheels.
When my throat shuts off on me, or actually when it's very close to that, I'm going to opt out.
I hope it's winter. I want it to be a bright, sunny day but a cold day. I'll go out in the backyard and lean the seat of my wheelchair way back so I can lay and look up at the sky.
I'll have my earbuds and my iPhone so I can listen to 70's Rock via SiriusXM on my iPhone. Maybe I'll just make a playlist so I can listen to my favorites.
I've got to at least hear "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. That's my go-to blues song.
So sometime during the day I'll take out a junker throwaway .38 and it will be over.
I won't use any of my good guns because the cops would keep it and I want them all to go to my son.
And the backyard because I don't want to mess up the house, I'm leaving it to my daughter.
I've discussed this with everyone in my family, my son and daughter, my grandkids (the ones old enough to talk about this to), my dad, my doctor, etc..
Everyone is 100% OK with my decision, not one of them has tried to talk me out of it.
I refuse to be a burden. I refuse to be a lump of flesh in a wheelchair in even more severe pain than I am now but not even have the ability to communicate that fact to anyone.
I wanted to live long enough to see the first woman to set foot on Mars. Sorry guys, it's gonna be a woman to get there first. I just feel it in my bones..
I wanted to live long enough to see NASA announce that they have confirmed beyond all doubt that they have found life on another planet or moon of a planet.
Even if it's just bacteria I would be so thrilled! I really, really wanted to see that happen.
When I was a little girl I dreamed of being an astronaut! I was born a month before Yuri Gagarin went to space. But it was the Gemini program that I first remember, it was the BIG THING
happening about the time I start to have memories. I wanted to go to space so bad! Then I wanted to go on the shuttle. Until it blew up. Then, not so much..
But now there is the ISS and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to go live there for the rest of my life. My spine would decompress and I would get pain relief!
I would just float there in the cupola staring at earth and marveling in passing through the Northern Lights..
But that just ain't happening. Just another stupid fantasy of mine. I never got to do anything in life or go anywhere. I will live and die in a circle of less than 20 miles.
But at least there were two good things in my life, my kids. Oh and my grandkids of course. Duh.. I hate that I won't be around to see them grow up, to be there when they graduate and have their own kids.
I wish I could live long enough to be a great grandmother.
I'll miss my kids and grandkids. Well, actually I won't, I'll be dead. But you know what I mean.
I'll miss 70's Rock. And shooting. I love target shooting. I'll miss climbing. I use to free climb when I was much younger then I started using gear.
I'll leave my climbing gear to my granddaughters. Girls should climb things. Any and everything. Funny thing is, when I was young I had no fear of heights.
Anyway.. I'll miss German Shepherds! OMG I could live with 50 of them! I learned a long time ago that with dogs you're either pack leader or you're not.
Being pack leader when you have German Shepherds is a must. OMG I love those dogs so much!
I'll miss winter! I HATE HATE HATE summer! I can't stand the heat and humidity. It's unbearable! I prefer to sleep all day in the summer so I don't have to go out in the heat
but then in the winter I like to be up in the daytime because winter is awesome! I don't even use the heater unless it's below freezing.
There's a lot of other things I'll miss. But well, that's just talk and means nothing because I'll be dead and unable to miss anything.
And to put it in the nicest way possible, I am not a religious person, at all. So my atoms will be recycled and that will be the absolute end, I cease to exist.
It all sounds awful, some people have said I shouldn't be so negative. I'm a realist. I know my future and I accept it. I don't like it but I accept it.
Wishes and dreams do not come true and are a waste of time. I've spent most of my life torturing myself over wishes and dreams.
I don't have any anymore. I just try to adjust and adapt to my deteriorating life as it happens. I'm not certain of when I need to start wrapping things up
but I have a loose plan in my head of what to do. Honestly I think about it all day, every day. There is no such thing as enjoying what's left because what's left
is just an increasing amount of pain and suffering. So I just spoil my dogs and bask in the love they return to me. And I spend more time with my kids and grandkids,
I'm so proud of them all, my kids have done really well for themselves, my son has done exceptionally well. My daughter has her own business now. Her boys are A honor roll and have always been A honor roll.
Her oldest boy is only 14 but he's going to start taking college classes alongside his high school classes. They will do really well in life too.
My son's children are younger, his oldest daughter is just going to first grade this year but she's super smart. His son is starting pre-K this year and their youngest daughter is still a toddler, she just learned to walk a few months ago
and she's hell on wheels! I still owe my granddaughter a doll house, I promised her I would build one for her and I will. I just wish they lived closer, I would like it a lot better if she could work on it with me.
My house is FULL of doll houses and when they come to stay (every year they come stay here for a week) the two of us have a lot of fun! She loves to play in my cave, the room where I keep and build doll houses.
Actually we call them 'Miniatures', that's what us grown up ladies call doll houses. Oh and they are very, very much more expensive than the little girl versions. You would be shocked to learn how much that hobby costs!
I want her to have all my miniatures, they are worth a lot. FYI, us grown up girls just build them and admire them, we don't play with them. We aim for extreme realism.
My grandsons can have my PS4. I tried to play a really easy game on it once and all I could do was scream at it "WTF IS THING THING DOING? HOW DO I MOVE???!!!"
So I gave up on it, it sits here gathering dust until my daughter comes to visit then the boys can play some stupid game on it while my daughter and I visit.
The boys like to come visit and sometimes spend the night, they think I'm cool as all get out. I dunno why but I'm not complaining..
So........ That's what's been happening. It may sound awful to some people but you know, it's life.
In that box of chocolates, sometimes you get a nice chocolate and sometimes you get a turd.
Either way, you deal with it.
And lastly, to be honest, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get to put my dishes back up. I'm physically unable to do that stuff anymore.
It was a lot of fun when I could do it. It felt so awesome to conquer that stuff when I had zero background in such things.
I was learning on the fly and it was really rough going for a long time. But I fully immersed myself in the hobby and it was really rewarding.
I miss it all.
You guys were so awesome and so helpful and I'm so grateful for all you guys!
Best wishes to all!
~Namaste~
Well, I'm still alive.. It's been crazy times...
The neighbor that was terrorizing me finally moved away, but only one street over. They live within a 60 second bicycle ride from here.
They (the wife was always yelling foul things at me too) aren't terrorizing me daily like they were before but sometimes we cross paths in local stores.
So now I have to carry. About two years ago he ran into me face to face in a store, I had my purse in my lap (I'm in a wheelchair now) so I slipped my hand
into the hidden holster and had my pistol in hand but fully concealed and ready to draw. He started cursing me instantly so I told him to get the F away from
me or I would put a bullet in his chest and I just stared at him. He cursed me some more, called me some really rotten things and I repeated my threat one last time.
He cursed at me some more but backed away. I reversed course and took off down an aisle leaving my groceries behind and I got out of there. When I got back into my van
I was nauseated, I felt like I was going to throw up, I was shaking for half and hour after that. He almost got killed that day. He got two warnings and that was one too many.
Next time he only gets one warning. Right now I feel like throwing up just recalling that.. I have PTSD now because of him.
The whole thing started because he rode a go-cart through my front yard on Christmas Eve and I went outside to tell him not to do that ever again.
He flipped out on me, threatened me, hollering at me calling me a wh***, a b**** and every other rotten thing..
Because of that I put up security cameras and that really made him insanely mad. Things just went from bad to very, very bad after that..
Him and his wife have terrorized me since December 2015.. Anyway, now I carry but I do everything possible to avoid them.
So anyway, after I moved I brought my dishes with me but I haven't been able to put them up because I will have to put them very close to the house due to my now much smaller yard.
And that's a problem because I'm waiting to get the siding replaced on the second story. My house is French Provincial with a Mansard roof. The second story was originally clad in
cedar shakes. But over the years they were replaced several times and then the last time they were replaced with standard roofing shingles, though they have a bit of fancy design to them.
And now they are falling off the side. Also it makes the second story unbearably hot because the sides are black just like the roof. So I found a fancy aluminum roof shingle thingy that looks
just like cedar shakes! And it's got two layers of styrofoam insulation in it, lifetime warranty, category 3 guaranteed, etc.. It's perfect, it's what I want and I won't accept any other options.
But I'm having h*ll getting it scheduled as they are in high demand and have a long waiting list.
Because of that I have to wait until the siding is finished before I can put my dishes up. Sigh...... I miss all that. It was fun and cool doing nerdy things.
I liked learning and I liked doing stuff for myself, it gave me a great sense of accomplishment when I would get it working and I could watch cool stuff for free!
There was one channel, I thing it was called White Springs or something like that, it was really old movies, the video quality was awful but it was just like
the 70's and 80's when cable TV was brand new, we had 12 channels available (total!) and at night they ran those same old movies from the 30's and 40's.
I'm a night-owl, I used to sit around at night watching those old movies (in the 70's and 80's) sipping beer and studying. I was always reading, everything
I could find to fill my brain with knowledge but I always had those old movies on in the background. Now you can't even find channels like that anymore.
I do have one small Ku dish up which I really only use for PBS when I want to record something. I still use that wee tiny little Ghost Pro Micro HD tuner. It still works perfectly!
Never once had any problem at all with it. On the other hand, I had that Alien 3 thing which was a massive DUD. I gave up on it after only a few months. It was a true POS.
But the little Micro HD still works perfectly. Best tuner I ever had.
I gave up on Dish Network, I subscribed to PS Vue, HBO NOW, Netflix, HULU+, Sling, Prime, Tablo OTA, Showtime, AMC Premiere, Curiosity Stream, CBS AA, Starz, SiriusXM All Access, and I dunno, probably a few others.
Pretty much everything. Streaming is so fragmented now and it's about to get really screwed up now that Disney bought up pretty much everything.
I wish I could put my 10 foot C band dish up. Still waiting to get the siding done..
But, after they do finish it and I could safely put it up, well, now I can't really work on it because I'm wheelchair dependent now.
I can get around on foot with my cane but only for very short distances. I can only stand, with assistance for a few minutes on a good day before I collapse in agony.
On bad days which is most of the time, I can't stand or walk.
I'm dying.
It's crazy how it all came to be. After my mom died I found out she was taking some experimental breast cancer drug, she was part of some research group. She never told me. So I took one of those DNA tests and it came back that I'm highly susceptible to several cancers, breast, uterine, etc..
So I talked it out with a few docs and I opted to have all those things that I could get cancer in, removed. I figured that would put me in the clear.
But then my back problem got much, much worse, putting me permanently in a wheelchair.
Then last year I began having trouble swallowing. I didn't think a lot about it, I just dealt with it, I would have to eat something and wash it down to make
pills go down. And it got worse, now there is a tumor in my throat. It's my thyroids. It feels like there is a marble size lump of broken glass in my throat.
It hurts, a lot now. It's really difficult and painful to swallow anything. And it's taking my voice away. It comes and goes, several times throughout the day
my voice will go from normal to a raspy whisper that sounds like something from some undead creature in Game of Thrones. But an hour later and it's back to normal.
Back and forth, all day, every day. My doctor told me that I *WILL* lose my voice completely and that's not too far off. Eventually I would have to have a feeding tube
put in as my throat closes off.
But then there is my back. ALL of the discs in my spine have disintegrated, crushed and absorbed so that every vertebrae is sitting one against the other, bone on bone.
And since they are now collapsed into compact stack of bones, they are crushing the nerves that radiate out from my spinal cord. Like a cat whose tail is under a rocking chair.
Every time I move the bones grind on the nerves which not only causes them grievous damage, it causes me severe pain and all sorts of bizarre phantom pains and phantom sensations.
There is a long list of messed up things happening to me because of the nerve damage, too long to list here. Anyway, the constant damage being done to them, every time I move is causing
the nerves, ALL of the nerves in my body, to die. In the most simple description it's best described as degenerative myelopathy. It starts at the extremities and works it's way to the core.
I've already got a few toes that are 'dead', like when you go to the dentist and they make your face numb. But it's toes and it's permanent and spreading. The numbness will spread to all of my body
and that will be followed by paralysis. IF I would live long enough I would end up like, Stephen Hawking. My problem isn't because of disease it's because of ongoing, physical damage.
There is disc replacement surgery but it's brutal and traumatic. And I would need new discs for my entire spine. I could never afford it and I'm too old to take such a severe surgery.
It's rough on young people, I couldn't take it. Another option would be to go in from the back and cut me open all the way from my tailbone to the base of my skull and put rods and bolts
to spread my vertebrae apart and hold them apart so they can't crush the nerves anymore. But I've already got permanent nerve damage and spinal cord damage. Also that would make my entire
spine totally rigid, I wouldn't be able to bend my body at all. I don't know how someone could live like that. And of course there is also the fact that this type surgery is BRUTAL as well.
They drill holes in each vertebrae and use power tools to drive BOLTS into the bones. I've already had a small bit of that very thing in my lumbar region because my L3 was broken.
That surgery was horribly painful, I was paralyzed from the sheer pain afterwards and it never gave me one second of relief. I don't want to go through that again. I won't.
It's also very expensive. And I don't have insurance. I can't afford any of those torturous surgeries.
Another fun fact is that I have severe arthritis of the spine. All the edges of my vertebrae are bristling with bone spurs. With the discs being gone the vertebrae are all sitting bone on bone and the spurs
are interlocked like little fingers. When I have to bend or move or twist and my vertebrae need to move, the bone spurs GRIND and the pain is extreme. It makes me scream out in pain when I move.
I'm trying hard to learn how to scream out in pain without using the F word. My entire spine is complete garbage, it's conspiring to kill me and it's winning.
But the good thing is that I'll die because of my throat long before my back will get the chance to kill me. My grandson is losing his hearing so we decided that we would both learn sign language.
He's only 9yrs old but he'll be deaf before he gets to high school. I'm trying but it's really hard for me, I'm old and it's hard to teach and old dog new tricks and I've got arthritis in my hands.
I get frustrated and resort to screaming curse words. I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to learn. Other signers go waaaaaaaaaaay too fast for me. I do pretty good at reading lips but my hearing isn't going out,
I need to learn sign. But honestly that won't help me much because most people don't know it. So I have an app on my iPhone and iPad called "Speak for Me" which has virtual buttons that have preassigned
sentences such as "Could you please direct me to the restroom?" or "Could I have a To-Go box please?" or whatever I want it to say. It comes with several very common things already set up but you can
program your own and it has something like predictive typing so you can have it rapidly blurt out sentences from scratch by just typing and few letters. It's OK at that but not perfect.
But people don't mind when it doesn't say the right thing, we just giggle and keep trying and they can guess what I'm trying to say anyway so it's all good.
It will probably be 6 to 9 months before I lose my voice completely. When that happens we'll know that it will be soon that my throat closes off completely.
So it's very likely that before the end of next year my condition will be very bad.
I can't afford any of this. I can't. The costs are astronomical and with no insurance, well I have no chance.
So I'm not going to try to do anything about it. My throat cancer is going to spare me the suffering of my spinal issues.
My throat problem is moving along at a much faster pace than the dying nerves.
I won't have to be a potato on wheels.
When my throat shuts off on me, or actually when it's very close to that, I'm going to opt out.
I hope it's winter. I want it to be a bright, sunny day but a cold day. I'll go out in the backyard and lean the seat of my wheelchair way back so I can lay and look up at the sky.
I'll have my earbuds and my iPhone so I can listen to 70's Rock via SiriusXM on my iPhone. Maybe I'll just make a playlist so I can listen to my favorites.
I've got to at least hear "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. That's my go-to blues song.
So sometime during the day I'll take out a junker throwaway .38 and it will be over.
I won't use any of my good guns because the cops would keep it and I want them all to go to my son.
And the backyard because I don't want to mess up the house, I'm leaving it to my daughter.
I've discussed this with everyone in my family, my son and daughter, my grandkids (the ones old enough to talk about this to), my dad, my doctor, etc..
Everyone is 100% OK with my decision, not one of them has tried to talk me out of it.
I refuse to be a burden. I refuse to be a lump of flesh in a wheelchair in even more severe pain than I am now but not even have the ability to communicate that fact to anyone.
I wanted to live long enough to see the first woman to set foot on Mars. Sorry guys, it's gonna be a woman to get there first. I just feel it in my bones..
I wanted to live long enough to see NASA announce that they have confirmed beyond all doubt that they have found life on another planet or moon of a planet.
Even if it's just bacteria I would be so thrilled! I really, really wanted to see that happen.
When I was a little girl I dreamed of being an astronaut! I was born a month before Yuri Gagarin went to space. But it was the Gemini program that I first remember, it was the BIG THING
happening about the time I start to have memories. I wanted to go to space so bad! Then I wanted to go on the shuttle. Until it blew up. Then, not so much..
But now there is the ISS and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to go live there for the rest of my life. My spine would decompress and I would get pain relief!
I would just float there in the cupola staring at earth and marveling in passing through the Northern Lights..
But that just ain't happening. Just another stupid fantasy of mine. I never got to do anything in life or go anywhere. I will live and die in a circle of less than 20 miles.
But at least there were two good things in my life, my kids. Oh and my grandkids of course. Duh.. I hate that I won't be around to see them grow up, to be there when they graduate and have their own kids.
I wish I could live long enough to be a great grandmother.
I'll miss my kids and grandkids. Well, actually I won't, I'll be dead. But you know what I mean.
I'll miss 70's Rock. And shooting. I love target shooting. I'll miss climbing. I use to free climb when I was much younger then I started using gear.
I'll leave my climbing gear to my granddaughters. Girls should climb things. Any and everything. Funny thing is, when I was young I had no fear of heights.
Anyway.. I'll miss German Shepherds! OMG I could live with 50 of them! I learned a long time ago that with dogs you're either pack leader or you're not.
Being pack leader when you have German Shepherds is a must. OMG I love those dogs so much!
I'll miss winter! I HATE HATE HATE summer! I can't stand the heat and humidity. It's unbearable! I prefer to sleep all day in the summer so I don't have to go out in the heat
but then in the winter I like to be up in the daytime because winter is awesome! I don't even use the heater unless it's below freezing.
There's a lot of other things I'll miss. But well, that's just talk and means nothing because I'll be dead and unable to miss anything.
And to put it in the nicest way possible, I am not a religious person, at all. So my atoms will be recycled and that will be the absolute end, I cease to exist.
It all sounds awful, some people have said I shouldn't be so negative. I'm a realist. I know my future and I accept it. I don't like it but I accept it.
Wishes and dreams do not come true and are a waste of time. I've spent most of my life torturing myself over wishes and dreams.
I don't have any anymore. I just try to adjust and adapt to my deteriorating life as it happens. I'm not certain of when I need to start wrapping things up
but I have a loose plan in my head of what to do. Honestly I think about it all day, every day. There is no such thing as enjoying what's left because what's left
is just an increasing amount of pain and suffering. So I just spoil my dogs and bask in the love they return to me. And I spend more time with my kids and grandkids,
I'm so proud of them all, my kids have done really well for themselves, my son has done exceptionally well. My daughter has her own business now. Her boys are A honor roll and have always been A honor roll.
Her oldest boy is only 14 but he's going to start taking college classes alongside his high school classes. They will do really well in life too.
My son's children are younger, his oldest daughter is just going to first grade this year but she's super smart. His son is starting pre-K this year and their youngest daughter is still a toddler, she just learned to walk a few months ago
and she's hell on wheels!
I still owe my granddaughter a doll house, I promised her I would build one for her and I will. I just wish they lived closer, I would like it a lot better if she could work on it with me.My house is FULL of doll houses and when they come to stay (every year they come stay here for a week) the two of us have a lot of fun! She loves to play in my cave, the room where I keep and build doll houses.
Actually we call them 'Miniatures', that's what us grown up ladies call doll houses. Oh and they are very, very much more expensive than the little girl versions. You would be shocked to learn how much that hobby costs!
I want her to have all my miniatures, they are worth a lot. FYI, us grown up girls just build them and admire them, we don't play with them. We aim for extreme realism.
My grandsons can have my PS4. I tried to play a really easy game on it once and all I could do was scream at it "WTF IS THING THING DOING? HOW DO I MOVE???!!!"
So I gave up on it, it sits here gathering dust until my daughter comes to visit then the boys can play some stupid game on it while my daughter and I visit.
The boys like to come visit and sometimes spend the night, they think I'm cool as all get out. I dunno why but I'm not complaining..
So........ That's what's been happening. It may sound awful to some people but you know, it's life.
In that box of chocolates, sometimes you get a nice chocolate and sometimes you get a turd.
Either way, you deal with it.
And lastly, to be honest, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get to put my dishes back up. I'm physically unable to do that stuff anymore.
It was a lot of fun when I could do it. It felt so awesome to conquer that stuff when I had zero background in such things.
I was learning on the fly and it was really rough going for a long time. But I fully immersed myself in the hobby and it was really rewarding.
I miss it all.
You guys were so awesome and so helpful and I'm so grateful for all you guys!
Best wishes to all!
~Namaste~
Thank you for sharing.
This is really minor, but will be a comfort to you, making a little something much easier. Have your family install a bidet for you. I highly recommend the Brondell 1400. I had a cheap one. Get this good one. Easy to install.
I know, a tiny aspirin for all your problems. But get it out of the way, you will come to appreciate it, especially with arthritis in the hands.
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys App. For now.
This is really minor, but will be a comfort to you, making a little something much easier. Have your family install a bidet for you. I highly recommend the Brondell 1400. I had a cheap one. Get this good one. Easy to install.
I know, a tiny aspirin for all your problems. But get it out of the way, you will come to appreciate it, especially with arthritis in the hands.
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys App. For now.
This is a very sad update. I'm really at loss for words to express my sympathy. Sorry for all that you've been going through.Oh hi there!
Well, I'm still alive.. It's been crazy times...
The neighbor that was terrorizing me finally moved away, but only one street over. They live within a 60 second bicycle ride from here.
They (the wife was always yelling foul things at me too) aren't terrorizing me daily like they were before but sometimes we cross paths in local stores.
So now I have to carry. About two years ago he ran into me face to face in a store, I had my purse in my lap (I'm in a wheelchair now) so I slipped my hand
into the hidden holster and had my pistol in hand but fully concealed and ready to draw. He started cursing me instantly so I told him to get the F away from
me or I would put a bullet in his chest and I just stared at him. He cursed me some more, called me some really rotten things and I repeated my threat one last time.
He cursed at me some more but backed away. I reversed course and took off down an aisle leaving my groceries behind and I got out of there. When I got back into my van
I was nauseated, I felt like I was going to throw up, I was shaking for half and hour after that. He almost got killed that day. He got two warnings and that was one too many.
Next time he only gets one warning. Right now I feel like throwing up just recalling that.. I have PTSD now because of him.
The whole thing started because he rode a go-cart through my front yard on Christmas Eve and I went outside to tell him not to do that ever again.
He flipped out on me, threatened me, hollering at me calling me a wh***, a b**** and every other rotten thing..
Because of that I put up security cameras and that really made him insanely mad. Things just went from bad to very, very bad after that..
Him and his wife have terrorized me since December 2015.. Anyway, now I carry but I do everything possible to avoid them.
So anyway, after I moved I brought my dishes with me but I haven't been able to put them up because I will have to put them very close to the house due to my now much smaller yard.
And that's a problem because I'm waiting to get the siding replaced on the second story. My house is French Provincial with a Mansard roof. The second story was originally clad in
cedar shakes. But over the years they were replaced several times and then the last time they were replaced with standard roofing shingles, though they have a bit of fancy design to them.
And now they are falling off the side. Also it makes the second story unbearably hot because the sides are black just like the roof. So I found a fancy aluminum roof shingle thingy that looks
just like cedar shakes! And it's got two layers of styrofoam insulation in it, lifetime warranty, category 3 guaranteed, etc.. It's perfect, it's what I want and I won't accept any other options.
But I'm having h*ll getting it scheduled as they are in high demand and have a long waiting list.
Because of that I have to wait until the siding is finished before I can put my dishes up. Sigh...... I miss all that. It was fun and cool doing nerdy things.
I liked learning and I liked doing stuff for myself, it gave me a great sense of accomplishment when I would get it working and I could watch cool stuff for free!
There was one channel, I thing it was called White Springs or something like that, it was really old movies, the video quality was awful but it was just like
the 70's and 80's when cable TV was brand new, we had 12 channels available (total!) and at night they ran those same old movies from the 30's and 40's.
I'm a night-owl, I used to sit around at night watching those old movies (in the 70's and 80's) sipping beer and studying. I was always reading, everything
I could find to fill my brain with knowledge but I always had those old movies on in the background. Now you can't even find channels like that anymore.
I do have one small Ku dish up which I really only use for PBS when I want to record something. I still use that wee tiny little Ghost Pro Micro HD tuner. It still works perfectly!
Never once had any problem at all with it. On the other hand, I had that Alien 3 thing which was a massive DUD. I gave up on it after only a few months. It was a true POS.
But the little Micro HD still works perfectly. Best tuner I ever had.
I gave up on Dish Network, I subscribed to PS Vue, HBO NOW, Netflix, HULU+, Sling, Prime, Tablo OTA, Showtime, AMC Premiere, Curiosity Stream, CBS AA, Starz, SiriusXM All Access, and I dunno, probably a few others.
Pretty much everything. Streaming is so fragmented now and it's about to get really screwed up now that Disney bought up pretty much everything.
I wish I could put my 10 foot C band dish up. Still waiting to get the siding done..
But, after they do finish it and I could safely put it up, well, now I can't really work on it because I'm wheelchair dependent now.
I can get around on foot with my cane but only for very short distances. I can only stand, with assistance for a few minutes on a good day before I collapse in agony.
On bad days which is most of the time, I can't stand or walk.
I'm dying.
She never told me. So I took one of those DNA tests and it came back that I'm highly susceptible to several cancers, breast, uterine, etc..
So I talked it out with a few docs and I opted to have all those things that I could get cancer in, removed. I figured that would put me in the clear.
But then my back problem got much, much worse, putting me permanently in a wheelchair.
Then last year I began having trouble swallowing. I didn't think a lot about it, I just dealt with it, I would have to eat something and wash it down to make
pills go down. And it got worse, now there is a tumor in my throat. It's my thyroids. It feels like there is a marble size lump of broken glass in my throat.
It hurts, a lot now. It's really difficult and painful to swallow anything. And it's taking my voice away. It comes and goes, several times throughout the day
my voice will go from normal to a raspy whisper that sounds like something from some undead creature in Game of Thrones. But an hour later and it's back to normal.
Back and forth, all day, every day. My doctor told me that I *WILL* lose my voice completely and that's not too far off. Eventually I would have to have a feeding tube
put in as my throat closes off.
But then there is my back. ALL of the discs in my spine have disintegrated, crushed and absorbed so that every vertebrae is sitting one against the other, bone on bone.
And since they are now collapsed into compact stack of bones, they are crushing the nerves that radiate out from my spinal cord. Like a cat whose tail is under a rocking chair.
Every time I move the bones grind on the nerves which not only causes them grievous damage, it causes me severe pain and all sorts of bizarre phantom pains and phantom sensations.
There is a long list of messed up things happening to me because of the nerve damage, too long to list here. Anyway, the constant damage being done to them, every time I move is causing
the nerves, ALL of the nerves in my body, to die. In the most simple description it's best described as degenerative myelopathy. It starts at the extremities and works it's way to the core.
I've already got a few toes that are 'dead', like when you go to the dentist and they make your face numb. But it's toes and it's permanent and spreading. The numbness will spread to all of my body
and that will be followed by paralysis. IF I would live long enough I would end up like, Stephen Hawking. My problem isn't because of disease it's because of ongoing, physical damage.
There is disc replacement surgery but it's brutal and traumatic. And I would need new discs for my entire spine. I could never afford it and I'm too old to take such a severe surgery.
It's rough on young people, I couldn't take it. Another option would be to go in from the back and cut me open all the way from my tailbone to the base of my skull and put rods and bolts
to spread my vertebrae apart and hold them apart so they can't crush the nerves anymore. But I've already got permanent nerve damage and spinal cord damage. Also that would make my entire
spine totally rigid, I wouldn't be able to bend my body at all. I don't know how someone could live like that. And of course there is also the fact that this type surgery is BRUTAL as well.
They drill holes in each vertebrae and use power tools to drive BOLTS into the bones. I've already had a small bit of that very thing in my lumbar region because my L3 was broken.
That surgery was horribly painful, I was paralyzed from the sheer pain afterwards and it never gave me one second of relief. I don't want to go through that again. I won't.
It's also very expensive. And I don't have insurance. I can't afford any of those torturous surgeries.
Another fun fact is that I have severe arthritis of the spine. All the edges of my vertebrae are bristling with bone spurs. With the discs being gone the vertebrae are all sitting bone on bone and the spurs
are interlocked like little fingers. When I have to bend or move or twist and my vertebrae need to move, the bone spurs GRIND and the pain is extreme. It makes me scream out in pain when I move.
I'm trying hard to learn how to scream out in pain without using the F word. My entire spine is complete garbage, it's conspiring to kill me and it's winning.
But the good thing is that I'll die because of my throat long before my back will get the chance to kill me. My grandson is losing his hearing so we decided that we would both learn sign language.
He's only 9yrs old but he'll be deaf before he gets to high school. I'm trying but it's really hard for me, I'm old and it's hard to teach and old dog new tricks and I've got arthritis in my hands.
I get frustrated and resort to screaming curse words. I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to learn. Other signers go waaaaaaaaaaay too fast for me. I do pretty good at reading lips but my hearing isn't going out,
I need to learn sign. But honestly that won't help me much because most people don't know it. So I have an app on my iPhone and iPad called "Speak for Me" which has virtual buttons that have preassigned
sentences such as "Could you please direct me to the restroom?" or "Could I have a To-Go box please?" or whatever I want it to say. It comes with several very common things already set up but you can
program your own and it has something like predictive typing so you can have it rapidly blurt out sentences from scratch by just typing and few letters. It's OK at that but not perfect.
But people don't mind when it doesn't say the right thing, we just giggle and keep trying and they can guess what I'm trying to say anyway so it's all good.
It will probably be 6 to 9 months before I lose my voice completely. When that happens we'll know that it will be soon that my throat closes off completely.
So it's very likely that before the end of next year my condition will be very bad.
I can't afford any of this. I can't. The costs are astronomical and with no insurance, well I have no chance.
So I'm not going to try to do anything about it. My throat cancer is going to spare me the suffering of my spinal issues.
My throat problem is moving along at a much faster pace than the dying nerves.
I won't have to be a potato on wheels.
When my throat shuts off on me, or actually when it's very close to that, I'm going to opt out.
I hope it's winter. I want it to be a bright, sunny day but a cold day. I'll go out in the backyard and lean the seat of my wheelchair way back so I can lay and look up at the sky.
I'll have my earbuds and my iPhone so I can listen to 70's Rock via SiriusXM on my iPhone. Maybe I'll just make a playlist so I can listen to my favorites.
I've got to at least hear "House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals. That's my go-to blues song.
So sometime during the day I'll take out a junker throwaway .38 and it will be over.
I won't use any of my good guns because the cops would keep it and I want them all to go to my son.
And the backyard because I don't want to mess up the house, I'm leaving it to my daughter.
I've discussed this with everyone in my family, my son and daughter, my grandkids (the ones old enough to talk about this to), my dad, my doctor, etc..
Everyone is 100% OK with my decision, not one of them has tried to talk me out of it.
I refuse to be a burden. I refuse to be a lump of flesh in a wheelchair in even more severe pain than I am now but not even have the ability to communicate that fact to anyone.
I wanted to live long enough to see the first woman to set foot on Mars. Sorry guys, it's gonna be a woman to get there first. I just feel it in my bones..
I wanted to live long enough to see NASA announce that they have confirmed beyond all doubt that they have found life on another planet or moon of a planet.
Even if it's just bacteria I would be so thrilled! I really, really wanted to see that happen.
When I was a little girl I dreamed of being an astronaut! I was born a month before Yuri Gagarin went to space. But it was the Gemini program that I first remember, it was the BIG THING
happening about the time I start to have memories. I wanted to go to space so bad! Then I wanted to go on the shuttle. Until it blew up. Then, not so much..
But now there is the ISS and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to go live there for the rest of my life. My spine would decompress and I would get pain relief!
I would just float there in the cupola staring at earth and marveling in passing through the Northern Lights..
But that just ain't happening. Just another stupid fantasy of mine. I never got to do anything in life or go anywhere. I will live and die in a circle of less than 20 miles.
But at least there were two good things in my life, my kids. Oh and my grandkids of course. Duh.. I hate that I won't be around to see them grow up, to be there when they graduate and have their own kids.
I wish I could live long enough to be a great grandmother.
I'll miss my kids and grandkids. Well, actually I won't, I'll be dead. But you know what I mean.
I'll miss 70's Rock. And shooting. I love target shooting. I'll miss climbing. I use to free climb when I was much younger then I started using gear.
I'll leave my climbing gear to my granddaughters. Girls should climb things. Any and everything. Funny thing is, when I was young I had no fear of heights.
Anyway.. I'll miss German Shepherds! OMG I could live with 50 of them! I learned a long time ago that with dogs you're either pack leader or you're not.
Being pack leader when you have German Shepherds is a must. OMG I love those dogs so much!
I'll miss winter! I HATE HATE HATE summer! I can't stand the heat and humidity. It's unbearable! I prefer to sleep all day in the summer so I don't have to go out in the heat
but then in the winter I like to be up in the daytime because winter is awesome! I don't even use the heater unless it's below freezing.
There's a lot of other things I'll miss. But well, that's just talk and means nothing because I'll be dead and unable to miss anything.
And to put it in the nicest way possible, I am not a religious person, at all. So my atoms will be recycled and that will be the absolute end, I cease to exist.
It all sounds awful, some people have said I shouldn't be so negative. I'm a realist. I know my future and I accept it. I don't like it but I accept it.
Wishes and dreams do not come true and are a waste of time. I've spent most of my life torturing myself over wishes and dreams.
I don't have any anymore. I just try to adjust and adapt to my deteriorating life as it happens. I'm not certain of when I need to start wrapping things up
but I have a loose plan in my head of what to do. Honestly I think about it all day, every day. There is no such thing as enjoying what's left because what's left
is just an increasing amount of pain and suffering. So I just spoil my dogs and bask in the love they return to me. And I spend more time with my kids and grandkids,
I'm so proud of them all, my kids have done really well for themselves, my son has done exceptionally well. My daughter has her own business now. Her boys are A honor roll and have always been A honor roll.
Her oldest boy is only 14 but he's going to start taking college classes alongside his high school classes. They will do really well in life too.
My son's children are younger, his oldest daughter is just going to first grade this year but she's super smart. His son is starting pre-K this year and their youngest daughter is still a toddler, she just learned to walk a few months ago
and she's hell on wheels!
My house is FULL of doll houses and when they come to stay (every year they come stay here for a week) the two of us have a lot of fun! She loves to play in my cave, the room where I keep and build doll houses.
Actually we call them 'Miniatures', that's what us grown up ladies call doll houses. Oh and they are very, very much more expensive than the little girl versions. You would be shocked to learn how much that hobby costs!
I want her to have all my miniatures, they are worth a lot. FYI, us grown up girls just build them and admire them, we don't play with them. We aim for extreme realism.
My grandsons can have my PS4. I tried to play a really easy game on it once and all I could do was scream at it "WTF IS THING THING DOING? HOW DO I MOVE???!!!"
So I gave up on it, it sits here gathering dust until my daughter comes to visit then the boys can play some stupid game on it while my daughter and I visit.
The boys like to come visit and sometimes spend the night, they think I'm cool as all get out. I dunno why but I'm not complaining..
So........ That's what's been happening. It may sound awful to some people but you know, it's life.
In that box of chocolates, sometimes you get a nice chocolate and sometimes you get a turd.
Either way, you deal with it.
And lastly, to be honest, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get to put my dishes back up. I'm physically unable to do that stuff anymore.
It was a lot of fun when I could do it. It felt so awesome to conquer that stuff when I had zero background in such things.
I was learning on the fly and it was really rough going for a long time. But I fully immersed myself in the hobby and it was really rewarding.
I miss it all.
You guys were so awesome and so helpful and I'm so grateful for all you guys!
Best wishes to all!
~Namaste~
No one could ever impersonate you Dee_Ann it's like old times reading your posts. I certainly hope somehow things get better for you. If you want to keep posting we will keep reading.
We have a couple things in common. The microHD. Best unit I've come across and it still works perfectly for me too. And I am worried I won't be around when they land on Mars or discover first exoplanet life.
I've been lots of places and that's good. But you've experienced a lot more important stuff like all your family memories. Summer is totally overrated, I agree. Give me autumn anytime.
We expect you to report in regularly. Even if you have to type it through a tube like Stephen did. Looking forward to the next update.
I've been lots of places and that's good. But you've experienced a lot more important stuff like all your family memories. Summer is totally overrated, I agree. Give me autumn anytime.
We expect you to report in regularly. Even if you have to type it through a tube like Stephen did. Looking forward to the next update.
Dee ann, you do have Medicaid, don’t you? To help with expenses?
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