The Rambling Road: So, what’s this all about?

It’s sometimes hard to know where to begin an explanation of something that has been coming my whole adult life, so I will start with the event that triggered the birth of this blog.

A couple of weeks ago, I ended up in the hospital for almost a week as the result of acute pancreatitis brought on by a dangerous elevation of my blood-borne triglycerides. The condition was serious enough the doctors opted to reduce my triglyceride levels by removing them using a process called plasmapheresis. The whole experience was the most intense and painful thing I have ever experienced in my entire life, and I realized that I am willing to do extreme things to never have to experience it again.

That brings me to the reality of how I ended up in that state. The circumstances that lead to my hospitalization were not just the result of some unexplained biological malfunction, although there is also that element to the story. Instead, a large part of how I ended up in that state began decades ago when I, for a variety of reasons I suppose I may get into over the life of this blog, chose to stop taking care of my body.

In fact, over the past decade, I had pretty much given up on taking care of myself at all, most often with the excuse I had more important things to do. I didn’t. Instead, that excuse was worse than an excuse: it was a lie.

This blog will be my documentation of the refutation of that lie. Over the course of the next weeks and months and, perhaps, even years, I plan to document my journey away from the lie of not taking care of myself toward the truth of taking care of myself so I can do all the things I do better. I want to share this journey with anyone who cares to follow along for the accountability of it, for mutual encouragement, and to provide a place to document the things I discover along the way.

As to the name of the blog, once upon a time, I considered myself to be a rambler, or as the Irish call it, a rover. I tend to wander without being lost, and have long believed that the journey is more important than the destination. I suspect my journey back to health will follow the same meandering but purposeful path so many other parts of my life have.

So, this is all about finding my way back to a place I should have never left: healthy and productive. I invite you to join me on that road.

DLH

Read more at my The Rambling Road weblog…

Aftermath

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The picture you see here is me a day after spending six days in the hospital as a result of acute pancreatitis brought on by hypertriglyceridemia of such severity that I had to have the triglycerides removed from my blood by plasmapheresis. Left unchecked, the condition could have killed me. I’m only 43.

I’m posting this picture here as both a warning and a reminder. I want to make sure I remember how much I suffered during that period, and I never want there to be any doubt in my mind that I helped do this to myself.

Whether we like it or not, we are all very good at lying to ourselves. I’ve spent the last decade or more lying to myself about my health. This outcome has been coming for a long while, but somehow, I thought I would get away with it. Somehow, I thought I could ignore what I knew was happening because it wasn’t going to happen to me.

It did.

As it turns out, I have a long road ahead of me. My body is broken, and part of fixing it is going to mean giving up on the lies. It’s time to face the truth, and the truth is as bruised and ugly as this picture.

If anyone else can learn anything from my experience, it is that it will happen. Take care of yourself now. Stop making excuses. Stop lying to yourself. Do what needs done.

DLH