December changes you

These past 14 months battling my untreatable Squamous Cell Carcinoma has been a Nantucket Sleigh Ride emotionally and physically.

I am not suppose to be alive. I was dead twice this year. Brings my recorded deaths and resuciations to nine now.

Hence my placing a “Do Not Resuscitate” or “DNR” on my medical record. I have a good reason for doing so.

The radical radiation treatments, combined with the 62 hard life years I have lived and with my previous heart attacks, insure ninety percent that if I suffer one more heart or lung failure I will definitely not recover, but rather lapse into a coma.

This according to my complete treatment team at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. I totally agree with their diagnosis.

I also have a “Medically Assisted In Dying” or “M.A.I.D.”, as it is known here in Ontario, Canada. I cannot see me invoking that right, though. I see it as a cowards way out. My lifestyle since childhoid has always been that of my genetic Irish streetlife toughness and instilled survival tatics – I am one of the “Original Urban Vikings”.

I will not ascend in a hospital or hospice.

I will not beg for Death. Nor will I decide to legally overdose and choose to give up after having fought so adamantly for the complete opposite.

I thought I wanted that “easy way out” when I was going through the “suicidal stage“, early in my battle.

Thankfully, I did not act upon my dark thoughts. Rather, I sought help from my oncologist- psych team.

Now, as I am clear thinking, there is no possible way I would do such a thing as oppose my Fate and my Faith and choose when to end my life.

Nor could I do such for my loved ones to have to witness and forever remember.

I will die when the Creator decides.

I will die free – as free as my spirit has been these past six decades.

I will die watching the waters of the Great Lake Ontario.

Or perhaps in my favourite chair.

I expect and Pray that it shall be in a simplistic but an intimate manner.

Hopefully, with my wife of 40 years, Jennifer, my three sons, my legacies in life, Randy, Jordan and Dakota, by my side to witness my ascension.

To know I ascended not in sorrows tears.

Rather with tears of the joy of knowing I knew of love, fatherhood, marriage and of life's negatives and positives “

My ascension could just as easily be sudden and unexpected.

As simple as not waking up one day.

Only the Creators know when we are to rise to Valhalla or descend to Helheim.

Deaths are “sad”. Yes. But, they also are a “joy”.

For from our birth we are taught that the better life is when we ascend.

That, yes, even though birth and it’s following “life” are wonderful, a better life awaits beyond our “Death”

“Go figure??? In short, we live these beautiful 7 lives just so we can ascend to a far better life. Almost makes sense – not to my realist brain, but to a theological believer, for sure.

In realty, we live seven lives, or if you prefer “walk 7 paths“,in seven multiverses.

(All holy scriptures of recorded history mention 7 paths or 7 lives.)

I have personally experienced seven of mine in my well documented “After Death Experiences“.

You can read about this in my 4 volume autobiography, “Walk With Dann Collection” available on Amazon books – also in my WordPress and Google Blogger.

I have wrote a few blogs detailing my experience in Deaths.

One detailed blog is titled “I Committed Suicide Once“

December changes you as you age. From the holly, jolly vibe of childhood’s excitement, the greediness of teenage yuletide’s “I want that” to the sadness of growing in age and reflections of days long gone.

For with your older age come the memories of all your “losses” and the emotions of missing the dearest who are no longer. Each and every loved one who has ascended dance through your mind and strum a blues song upon your heart strings.

December, 2019 changed me.

I lost my longest life long friend – my one true brother, Donnie LeBreton, to cancer, last week.

His ascension has saddened me more than any of the numerous loved ones I have outlived.

I could not travel the 1100 kilometres to bid farewell, due to my own battle.

This will haunt me always.

It has changed me.

December changes you upon each and every new year’s arrival.

It is definitely the most emotional month of every year.

Just a little more change each time.

These little changes then compound into a singular life regret.

Do not focus on that regret – focus on the opposite. “gratefulness”.

For – and remember I tell you this – “

To be grateful for each sunrise your eyes have witnessed is the number one step to knowing you have lived a true “meaningful life.”

I am grateful I awoke this morning, for I live each day knowing that it easily could be my last.

December, 2019 changed my family and myself.

I still find a way to laugh and share love and joy each and every chance I can.

There is always as much a reason to “rejoice” as there is reason to “despair“.

Choose to find that reason to shine as a Lighthouse in the storm of your life. All storms must pass.

I will not beat my cancer. No one beats it’s demonic ravaging attacks.

Cancer does not cause your death. The damage it leaves in it’s wake does.

Majority of treatments do great damage. This is why it is a necessity to have numerous diagnosis and opinions – as well as lengthy discussions with your immediate family.

Then “you” decide if whichever treatment is before you is worth the risk.

For example:

I will never consent to chemotherapy.

In my many months and weeks as an in-patient, I saw far too many souls suffer through ungodly pain and torture.

Only to have their heart or other organ succumb to the relentless battle and then they pass in a horrible way.

Even though it was offered I refused.

Why suffer such a treatment knowing I am “Terminal“?

Why waste resources and doctors skills much needed elsewhere?

To gain perhaps a few extra weeks or to put your already damaged body through too great an ordeal and thus cause a premature death?

Not I.

I live my life as a “Realist“.

Life is what you see before your eyes.

Life is black and white. Usually reality bites, but it is stark truth.

Logic allows you to dechiper the real from the gray areas that fuel “Doubt.

Doubt is beatable with real common sense.

With a positive attitude, Faith and my realist personality, I have retaliated as a Viking does and beat this demonic disease into a much needed remission.

For how long only it knows.

I do know that I will not be able to beat it into remission again.

I have sacrificed my major organs and now they lay scarred and damaged beyond repair.

Not to mention the organs I have lost.

Or that I weigh a mere 109 pounds. Far from my usual average of 165 to 180 range.

Yet, I shall keep it at bay for as long as this Urban Viking can.

After all, I am also the Last Canadian Cosmonaut.

Till we speak again, I shall remain – Dann, just as I am.

The past year’s battle I have fought with my cancer is now chronicled in my latest works, “Old Man With The ‘C’ ” “A Cancerous Walk With Dann”. Available worldwide in all formats at Amazon and Kindle.

Old Man With The ‘C’ – Link