Longevity

It was my 52nd birthday on March 5th.  I am a bit surprised and quite pleased by the serenity I have finally achieved in my life.  It was a long time coming.  Blogging about gratitude has been a huge part of this new attitude of gratitude.

There is a sort of schadenfreude along with my increasing age.  I am outliving others near my age.  Having a spinal cord injury 30 years ago statistically implied that I was going to die sooner than later.   A few of my friends and stars such as Michael Jackson have died in the past year or two.

I am especially surprised by the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have cancer.  As a kid growing up on a farm with a father that was a fervent follower of Dow Chemical, my chances are almost insanely high for having cancer.   For examples:

    When brushing flies off our horses, I would use handfuls of DDT like pastry chef rubbing flour on a rolling pin.

    When weeding the blackberries, I would fill a 300 gallon tank with Banvel 2,4,D, water and a surfactant.  Banvel was also used by the US government in Vietnam in a infamous compound called Agent Orange used to defoliate the jungle.  You could literally watch the weeds melt on a hot day.  Spraying a couple of 300 gallon tanks per day with a 5-horsepower pump invariable resulted a all-over residue by the end of the day.

    We had an indoor pool that was kept quite warm.   There was a problem with mold growing on a painted wall.   Latex paint with a dose of Mercury strongly inhibits mold growth.  The big surprise is that I am not mad as a hatter—but I did not lick the brushes either!

    While adding extra insulation to the attic of our house, I used a semi-trucks worth of Zonolite aka vermiculite aka asbestos that came in paper bags about twice the size of a kitchen garbage bag.  It was a bit like gray lightweight Styrofoam cubes ranging in size from dust particles to ¼ inch cubes.  Since I did not have a mask, I could not help but breathe asbestos in the confined space of a poorly ventilated attic.  It was not until 25 years later that I realized vermiculite was asbestos—but after my childhood, I was not all that surprised.

For an overweight out-of-shape 52 year-old paraplegic, I am pretty healthy.  For that, I am extremely grateful.