41 Pounds of Irony (And Zero Regrets)

I’ve been dropping weight since November. Just grinding it out, watching the scale tick down from 374. I hit 333 and felt like I was finally getting a handle on my own skin.

Then, a few weeks ago, the doctors decided to drop the other shoe: COPD. They handed me a three to five year sentence like it was a piece of junk mail.

Talk about a cosmic joke. I quit smoking two years ago, and let me tell you, that was harder than fuck. If I’d gotten this diagnosis back then, I probably would’ve gone straight out and bought another pack just to spite the world. But I didn't. I stuck it out because I like not stinking of smoke, and I like not having one hand permanently occupied by a cigarette. Most of all, I like not having to haul my ass outside 40 to 60 times a day just to feed the beast.

I spent two years reclaiming my time and four months shedding 41 pounds of gravity, just to find out my lungs are trying to quit the team anyway.

Most people get a death sentence and head straight for the comfort food and the recliner. They start waiting to die. Not me.

If I am going to go out, it’s going to be on MY terms, and it’s going to be with no fucking regrets. That means I am busting my ass to get my health firmly in hand as best I can right now. It means keeping a positive attitude even when the air gets thin; it means absolutely not giving up until the lid is being nailed shut on my coffin. COPD is irreversible, but I can damn well work at keeping it from progressing very fast and maybe buy more time.

I’m already 41 pounds lighter and meaner than I was when the year started. I was winning this fight before I even knew what the stakes were, and I’m not stopping now. I’m 333 pounds of Boston grit, and I’m pretty fucking pleased with myself.

I'm pretty angry about the COPD, angry at myself for continuing to smoke even knowing the risks I was taking. Angry at the universe because absolute horror human beings smoke for fifty or more years and die in good health in old age. Angry at myself again, for saying many times "I am committing suicide on the installment plan. Hahaha!" - as if that was somehow a great joke. Well, the joke's on me.

But anger doesn't solve anything, so I will work my way through these feelings, and then I will put them in my past and focus on the NOW and the TOMORROWS I still have ahead of me, and spend my time loving people and fighting for what's good and righteous in this world.

I’m not done making a mess of things yet. And I sure as shit ain't dead yet.