"My Way"

  My Way, much more than a song by Frank Sinatra, it also described how I dealt with this hard time in my life.  I was in my early 20's and a dialysis patient.  I hated everything and was jealous of everyone in my life.  I became what the doctors described as non-compliant.  Non-compliant meant that I did absolutely nothing to contribute to me getting and staying healthy.  I ignored the doctor's advice and orders.  I refused to take the pills.  I threw them in the trash can to give the appearance that I was taking them.  I hated the regiment I was on.  I refused to be controlled.  The only thing I did that had to do with my health was dialysis.  That's only cause I couldn't get arounnd not going.  Other than that, I ate, drank, and did what and as much as I wanted on a daily basis. Withoout caring.
  I depresssed, smiling during the day and crying at night.  I couldn't take it anymore.  The drinking wasn't doing the trick that it use to.  So, I moved on to marijuana.  I smoked like a chimney.  Whenever I was down, my happiness was a smoke away.  I think the drinking and the change over to smoking, and at some points both at the same time attributed to the a lot of the earlier hospitalizations.  Along with the emotional pain I had, there was physical pain.  There were days when I could hardly move.  Stairs were a challenge. I would have pain from my ankles from my ankles to my shoulders.  There were days when I collapsed when getting out of bed cause my knees were in so much pain.  Which is another way the weed served its purpose, as an on the spot pain killer.  But lets not kid ourselves here I knew what I was doing, it was just another excuse to get high.
  Once again I was out of control, and nothing exceeds like excess ( at least I think that's how that saying goes).  To get through four and a half hour treatments, I would show up at dialysis high.  I know your jaws are dropping, but yeah I would show up totally STONED.  It was amazing how fast the time went by when I was in a different state of mind.  There physically, but absent mentally.  But, this bad habit had to come to a head at some point.  That point for me was when I passed out after a treatment.  One thing about marijuana is that it drops your blood pressure. My BP was low already, so getting high made it even lower, which results in blurred vision and lightheadedness.  Mix that with a physical tolls of dialysis and you can see the danger.  So, that night I was walking to the scale, all of a sudden I remember waking up on the floor.  In hindsight, I'm glad I passed out inside the treatment center, because I had full intentions on driving home that night.  When I was coherent enough, I got an on the spot intervention.  Turned out I was only fooling myself.  They promised to keed this insedent a secret if I never came like that again.  I never did it again.  I didn't stop smoking, I just never went to dialysis high.  I guess I couldn't keep up doing it "my way".