This is something some agencies and beauacrates cannot understand. After so long your quality of life sucks so bad it is time to let it go. Yes, the alternative is not good to most people. But to the one going through it, sometimes it is better than continuing the torture, pain, and side effects that they don't talk about.
I've had my chest opened twice, once to repair a lung, then for a heart bypass. Never again, the third time they wanted to open it, when the bypass failed, I refused. The doctors were in a tissy. One wanted the wife to get a court order to force me to have it, she refused. They told her without it I could go anytime. Two years later they discovered the drugs I was taking dissolved the blood clots. It's been five years and I am still hanging in there. I will never relent to having my chest opened again, it's not worth the pain and extended recovery. And the side effects, some of them are that they break your ribs when they open you up. Not up front but in the back where they attatch to your spine. When they cut your sternum, they lose some of it, carpenters call that the kurf. Then when they pull it back togeather the ribs work as a hinge and everything moves up. The top of my sternum now intrudes against my esophagus and I can easily choke when eating or drinking. Doctors say my chest is no longer strong enough to really protect my orgens. A sudden impact (ie automotive air bag, dump my motorcycle, roll my 4-wheeler, hit something hidden in the snow with the snowmachine) can cause it to break and damage internal organs, resulting in death. Oh well, such is life. Life is too short to sit in a rocking chair and let it pass you by. You folks be good, going to the White mountains for four days on a snow machine. Talk to you when I get back. Rog.
