TO MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES AND OTHERS

FEATURED POSTS

August 7, 2015

TO MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES AND OTHERS

Thanks everybody for the well wishes sent my way over the last week. For the folks who haven’t heard, I suffered two minor strokes late last month. I stupidly ignored the first one – there was no pain – and dismissed it as a case of being overly tired. The second one was impossible to ignore. At lunch at the Belmont Brewery in Long Beach, the conversation became disjointed, and although I could understand words and even phrases, I had no comprehension of what people were saying. I also had trouble seeing them. I did not tell anybody this information.

I have fought in a war, I have been in fist fights, I have lived by the male code – if you’re not dead, shake it off and move on. I drove home, not my best decision considering my limited vision, and fell into bed. Within seconds, I was asleep and slept until the next morning.

When I awoke, I was still having vision problems, although I still did not tell anyone. Finally, my wife, Carmela, nagged that information out of me. Unburdened by male pride and stubbornness, Carmela rushed me to Kaiser for an emergency eye exam, where they discovered I have glaucoma. They also discovered I had limited to no vision in the upper right quadrant of both eyes. That is not an eye problem – that is a brain problem.

By that evening, I was lying in a hospital room in one of those little backless gowns with an IV in my arm and peeing into a little plastic container with the help of my wife.

When I was in Vietnam, Carmela was 9 years old. Too bad. We could have used somebody like her when the bullets started flying. This whole experience was much worse for her than for me, but she did not once fall apart, at least not until it was all over.

So I’m back. Not quite as strong as I was, but a lot smarter. I remain at high risk for yet another stroke until I can start taking a blood thinner – something I cannot do until the doctors are sure that any blood clot remaining in my brain has dissolved. Otherwise it could cause any remaining clot to break loose and trigger yet another stroke.

We hope to be able to start treatment in another week or so and to be in a better place by September.

Promises and advice to my friends – and even my enemies:

Take care of yourself. If you experience any confusion or other such symptoms, go immediately to the emergency room and tell them you think you may have had a stroke. There is a four-hour window in which they can mitigate the damage

Unless I regain full vision, I will not drive. Your children are safe from me

This final promise is to my loyal and loving wife. I plan to live forever. I go into this battle understanding, I probably will most certainly lose. But when that time does come I plan to go down fighting.

And finally, because of my eye problems, I will not be posting on Facebook or Twitter for the next month to give my eyes a chance to recover. If you want to contact me, my email address is: cunham@aol.com. I won’t be checking it, but Carmela will.

Thank you for your well wishes, and I will be back in touch – hopefully thinner, healthier, and better looking.

Love to everybody and kisses to all the girls.

George Cunningham

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News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.

George Lee Cunningham

FEATURED POSTS

TO MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES AND OTHERS