Just a bit of an update. I spent the last 2+ months down in South Texas, looking for a place to settle. Finally found a small place (only 40 acres), and I’ll likely be paying for it the rest of my life! Though it’s a tiny property it does have a good well, electricity, and a tiny, 12 feet x 20 feet (but nice) cabin, and it has pigs, whitetails, axis deer, turkeys and the occasional other free range exotic. However, there’s no phone, no cell phone signal, no TV and no internet access … but no close neighbors either! 😀 The entire county has a population only slightly over 2000 folks. There’s not a single McDonalds, Burger King or KFC in the county. Nor is there a WallMart! The closest supermarkets are also 75 miles away.
The long search was not without its problems though. On May 23 I came down with an attack of appendicitis, accompanied by pretty heavy bleeding, and had to call for an ambulance (it was 75 miles from Rocksprings, where I was staying while looking at properties, to the nearest medical care, at Kerrville). 🙁 The appendix ruptured before they got me to the hospital. 😥 I had emergency surgery and spent the next 8 days in the hospital. I was pretty ill and my stomach swelled up until I could hardly breathe and they had to keep a tube down my throat for five days, pumping out an average of 2 liters a day of the most putrid looking, thick, greenish-black ‘goo’ I’ve ever seen. 😯 I got out of the Kerrville hospital on the 31st, and completed closing on the selected property on the 5th of April, then headed to my friend John’s, in New Mexico, because I had a scheduled cardiology follow-up there. Shortly after I got to John’s I started to pass blood heavily again (lower GI bleeding) and had to go back into the hospital on the 13th of April; in Las Cruces. 🙁 The gastroenterologist took a look (from both ends – not much fun at all) :shock:. Seems the blood vessels in the lower colon were fragile from the radiation treatments I had for the prostate cancer and were bleeding profusely. They sealed off all the bleeders they could locate, using a laser. There was also gastritis of the entire stomach lining and one small ulcer. (That might be from all the vile material that accumulated in my stomach after the appendix ruptured.) They kept me a week in the hospital at Las Cruces because I was pretty anemic after all the blood loss, my blood pressure was way, way low and I was still bleeding some. At any rate, I’m finally out of the hospital. I’m still bleeding a tiny amount, but it is greatly diminished from what it had been. I have to see the gastroenterologist in 3 weeks for a follow-up. If there is still bleeding they will have to try to find those bleeders and seal them off too. In the mean time I have to see the cardiologist next week. Meanwhile I am on the most boring diet one can imagine; a no ruffage diet that eliminates almost every food or drink I like (nothing to irritate those fragile lower GI blood vessels) … including my morning coffee and Wild Turkey Sundowner! 😥 :cry:.
When everything is finished with the medical stuff I’ll be heading off to my new property :D, so I won’t have much way to keep in contact with anyone after I head off, at least for a while. I hope to get a phone, and perhaps internet, whenever it’s in the budget. I’ll try to get to a library and check emails at least every few weeks. – Ed
p.s. I know that it’s way overdue :roll:, but I AM trying to get the next Study Update completed, and will try my very best to have that done and forwarded before I depart from John’s :wink:.
