3 comments

Thoughts?

Jul 19, 2024, 10:29 PM

Apologies if this is a bit rambling and disjointed but I have so much going on and so much going through my head about so many things that it can be difficult to sort out. In short, this particular post is about old age and the ever-approaching end and what, if anything to do about it.

So similar to the thread about when is the right time to give up clubbing, I’m faced with the question of when is the right time to call it an adventurous life and settle into a safe place to live out my days with pre-arranged care.

I’ve been thinking about and preparing for this possibility for sometime and have two nurses in Thailand on retainer (lol) and a number of other options ready to go. In the meantime, I have been trying to cram in as much travel and adventure as I’m able while I’m alive and I’m still very much interested in continuing but the fact is I’m old.

If I just dropped dead that would be fine with me but it’s much more likely I’ll suffer a stroke or succumb to dementia and be stranded somewhere. I know dementia doesn’t usually come on just like that but I do have to question some of my recent risky behavior and decisions.

This issue has become all the more urgent in my mind because of what happened to Ed Sweeny. Ed is a long-time international monger, author and popular YouTuber. He fully retired from his life in England this past January and traveled to South East Asia intending to vlog full time and live in Cambodia. Short story is that while in Thailand he ended up with what turned out to be debilitating brain cancer. He was fortunate to have a friend like Nick Dean who got him to hospital and coordinated everything to get him back to England where he got brain surgery. I doubt that he will ever be able to travel again.

That is my nightmare scenario and I’ll be honest, I have no one like Nick Dean to take an interest in me should I become incapacitated somewhere far, far from everywhere. I suspect that few of us do.

So, my dilemma is should I end my mongering, traveling, drinking and did I say mongering ways, put on my jammies and preposition myself where if something happens, I’ll will be taken care of? Or should I say fuck it and risk it all to the bitter end? I like the latter option but I’ve been advised against it.

Here’s a link to Ed’s channel (Steady Eddy’s Travels on Youtube) and his most recent post.

youtube.com

Nick Dean also has a channel (NDtvi). If you’re ever in Thailand drop in on Nick and shake his hand. IMO you won’t meet a better guy.

comments (3)

Rightfieldlast year

When my time comes I hope I handle it as well as that one good dog I had. When he realized he could no longer stand up, he just looked at me, and gave me a virtual shrug. He was apparently out of ideas.

He did not struggle as I cradled him up and loaded him into the truck for that last trip to the vet.

I still feel bad I ate that leftover hamburger myself that last day instead of giving it to him. I did cook him a few fresh ones in the days preceding, though, when it was all he was interested in eating. Obviously, I did not know when I ate the leftover it was his last day. That is the way to go. I don't like the idea of doing anything "for the last time".

I guess I am saying that planning for a comfy nursing home isn't much of a strategy.

Book Guylast year

Yeah being alone at the exact time that something debilitating happens can be a very bad situation. I knew an older guy around here who never really had any health problems, but he had no kids, his wife had died a long time ago and he had lived alone for a few decades. He was active in his church but, knowing him and his attitude, he was also probably mongering with the best of us PLs. Never spotted him at a local strip club but I wouldn't have been surprised. I would run into him when we both used to do live-model figure-drawing whenever someone in the arts scene organized a model. He used to regularly announce that he had never taken medication and he hoped never to have to. I hadn't seen him in a while, his church checked in on him because he was missing, turns out he choked to death in his own kitchen. Just having dinner probably, though there were some reports that he had also had a stroke. It seems like a damn stupid, very frustrating way to go.

So like the OP in this thread, I worry a bit about that sort of thing too. I don't really think that having a wife is an adequate trade-off, given all the other ancillary implications of that kind of relationship, but having a help-mate in the old-folks' house when you're ageing is certainly one of the advantages.

I've wondered if it would be possible to build up an Epicurean center of some sort. Eight or ten like-minded people who all own a small bungalow-house, and then nearby in the center there's a group-sized dining hall and communal living center. If you get to pick all your friends to be at this location, it sounds great. If you are stuck in this location by your family and you don't get to pick your cell-mates, it sounds like prison. Or like a typical senior citizens' rest home. In my Epicurean imagination, we'd gather to watch the Euros and the World Cup, we could go off on monger trips either together or on our own ("gone fucking" placard left on the front doorknob), and we'd cook interesting meals and sit around and shoot the shit in the pleasant moonlit evenings by the pool. I would like to be able to organize it but I don't have the money to build the whole damn thing, and the only people I know who would want to be part of it happen, damn my luck, to all be older women. Like, High School or College classmates, they're OK people, but the constant mongering that I intend to insert into my retirement would put them off I'm sure. Or even if it didn't, I don't think I would want to share the details with them anyway.

mogul1985last year

Live your life as you want. No one can sort it out for, really, only do what you want to do. If you like mongering and traveling, do it! If you'd rather hang home, do it!

Right now, I'm trying to do things I couldn't for the past 18 years. My wife passed away 6 months ago this coming 21-Jul. She had MS for 23+ years, and the last 18 years were a slow decline to dementia with deep white matter collapse to the point involuntary stuff your brain manages started to shutdown. She had lung and breast cancer, sepsis at least 6-7 times. Parathyroid surgery that went side-ways on the way home from outpatient. Two broken legs, couldn't stand the past 6 years.

I'm not complaining as this fell under the "In sickness and health, til death do us part" clause to make with God, and I took care of her. Now, I have the last third of my life to work with. I know what I'm doing, and a big part is adjusting to a new future,