Skip to main content

Day 3 - Family Day

It's Sunday -- Family Day -- and my uncle, aunts, and cousin are here in the province to visit my grandmother. I always loved family day because it gives me a chance to get back in touch with family.

Topic of the day is my diet and my illnesses. It's no secret that our family is very open with each other and that I'm very thankful that our family sticks together through thick and thin. I feel definitely lucky that I was born into this family even though almost everyone's got health problems among other problems in life.

One of my aunts also has heart ailments/abnormalities and she's now 50+ years old. We have the same congenital heart disease (mitral valve prolapse), hypertension, and high cholesterol levels. But she's very strong and has the brightest outlook in life. I definitely admire her and look up to her as far as being strong and sticking through it goes. I'd like to live up to 50 or even more (my grandpa lived up to 72, and was strong for most of the time except when cancer decided to bring him down once and for all).

So the lesson for the day is that I should stick with it -- I'm young and I've got my life still ahead of me.

Good thing I'm getting a hang of eating less now. This diet thing isn't so bad after all.

Until tomorrow.

Comments

  1. Hey there Dean,

    As a double heart valve replacement patient, I can relate to wanting to live a long life. Each day is a blessing.

    FYI, I had aortic stenosis not mitral valve prolapse.

    How are you doing these days?

    Cheers,
    Adam

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Adam!

    Thanks for leaving a comment. I'm doing alright now though, the diet is going strong -- being able to maintain the diet I started :).

    My BP's controlled now at 120 / 80 and I'm sticking to the medication -- it's doing wonders, and I do hope to be able to blog about my health again soon.

    Thanks again for dropping a line!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help wanted: writing resources

I'm currently fleshing out a fantasy setting for a series of short stories rattling in my head that I'd like to get out into the world. However, it's the first time I'm even trying to do this, so I need your help: are there any good resources for world-building and writing guides that have been helpful in your projects? So far I've been really enamoured by Brandon Sanderson's world building and Patrick Rothfuss' storytelling. I suspect those two are at the pinnacle of the trade and I'm probably not going to do myself any favours by trying to live up to what they're doing, but I'd still like to give it the good college try. Are there any resources (forums, books, guides, blogs, or courses) that I should be taking if I want to do a decent first take at this? This is probably better as an email to friends and maybe some random folks (or maybe even a tweet) but why not a blog as well?

Reconnecting with people

2021 started with a a good sense of connection for me, having spent time with friends and family in a simple celebration of the oncoming year. The transition from 2020 to 2021 and being able to look back at a good part of my recent history got me thinking about how life has been for me and the family for the past decade. There’ve been a lot of people that I’ve met and become friends with while there are those that I’ve left behind and lost touch with. There’s a saying about treating old friends different from new ones, which I do appreciate now that I’m a bit older. It also means that my relationships with people that I get to spend a good amount of time with take a different shape. This reflection has given me some time and space to think about what it means to reconnect with people. Friends are the family we choose ourselves. — Edna Buchman I have the privilege of having life-long friends that I don’t always stay in regular contact with. From my perspective, if I consider you a frien...

Six-hour workdays for focus and productivity

Sometime in 2018 I experimented with a strict 6-hour workday. I negotiated this with my manager who at the time said it was worth the experiment. The idea would be for me to be at the office by 10am and be out by 4pm. This didn't preclude me from continuing to work while I was in the train, or at home. It was an experiment where I can remember some good and bad parts and this is a post looking back at that time. Ruthless prioritisation The first thing I needed to do as an individual contributor was to ruthlessly prioritise all the tasks I have to accomplish. This meant I had to put a budget on the amount of time I'm spending doing certain things. Additionally this meant I needed to remove  all unnecessary meetings from my calendar. This was defined as whether it was something I was needed to make a decision on anything. Being an individual contributor at the time the answer it turns out for most meetings in my calendar was "no". Some examples of things I've stoppe...