deuceorama

My Near Death Experience (NDE)

Don’t worry. Old news. I survived.

Need to make two admissions before continuing with today’s blog.  Number one, I am often moved to write when I come across a profound quote, such as the one above.  Like you, I’m sure, a meme or quote will come across one of my socials and it resonates on a personal level.  This is usually followed by hours or even days of thought, culminating in a compulsion to put some words to paper.  Eloquently worded quotes are one of my inspirations to write.  I’m often moved by philosophers and poets, past presidents and war generals, RM Drake, Churchill, Mark Twain and Hunter S. Thompson. The second admission is that I’ve written about my near death experience once or twice previously.  Apologies for my ego.  The reality is my readership has turned over significantly since starting this blog 15 years ago.  Blog themes from 2011 that blossomed in Brazil fresh off my divorce during my 40s have morphed (ok, ok – aged and matured) into themes more centric to a geezer now going through his 60s.  The DeuceOrama blog was an early red pill, manosphere collection of pics and thoughts, whereas of late it’s more of a diary, rant and thinkers’ place.  Correspondingly my readership has turned over from a group of like-minded degenerates to upstanders such as former students, family and my few enduring friendships.  Not to mention the journey from living a few years in Rio, to a few years back in the US, and then more than a few years in Mexico.  These are some very diverse cultures.  Whoever said “change is constant,” nailed it (Google credits Greek philosopher Heraclitus in 500 BC but I’ve never heard of him, so he doesn’t matter)

Turns out that “You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died” was adopted by our brave soldiers serving in combat, referring to their battlefield experiences. And with that, this quote takes on some significance.  I, by no means wish to take away from their heroism or suggest that natural, civilian misfortunes can remotely compare.  I’m merely borrowing the 100s years old quote as starter fluid for an insignificant blog post about a routine medical NDE.  But a NDE nonetheless.

Today I scheduled a minor surgery in Tucson for June 26^th.  I will be getting my third Pacemaker/ICD implanted due to yet another drained battery.  These little buggers cost around $100k to install and they’ve got the same battery as an iPhone – WTF?! So with that news announced, please indulge me as I take us back 16 years to my NDE.  Only a half-dozen of you were in my life at that time.  

January 11, 2010 was a Monday like any other Monday.  I was at the gym for my modest weightlifting routine. I was never a buff, gym-rat dude, but I have been known to make New Year’s resolutions and do a light workout on a M-W-F schedule.  Such was the case 01/11/10.  I’m pretty sure that from 2008-2010 I was at the gym a lot because I was un/under-employed and escaping being at home with an unemployed spouse while we suffered an unfulfilling, unhappy, unloving marriage. I had a couple of “un” years after the 2008 financial crash.  The morning of the 11th I probably had a coffee date before the workout and scheduled a lunch date after.  Anything to get out of the house, alone.  Anyway, under the bench press on the tenth rep of the third set, I felt the classic left arm pain, tingle, dizziness. I walked myself to the parking lot and tried to wait it out in my truck.  But the sensations didn’t subside, they got worse. I called my ex to come get me.  She was just a mile away and arrived in 15 minutes.  Hey… that is a very long time to drive just one mile? Quite possible she intentionally dragged her feet. She finally arrived and we proceeded driving another 5 minutes to Scottsdale Shea Hospital. I walked into the ER under my own power.  

I cut the line and asked to be seen immediately.  Taken back to private exam room, I went into shock.  I remember them cutting off my gym clothes as I started to get cold.  For me, maybe not for everyone, but going into shock was a fully conscious event marked by unbearable, complete body coldness.  Chattering teeth and shaking limbs.  Wrapped in blankets I was wheeled to a surgical room.  It was at this point I did lose consciousness and don’t remember anything until waking up in the ICU – just 55 minutes later.  I’m told that I coded/flat lined and was paddled back from the brink.  Disappointingly, I did not see a bright light, tunnel or any kind of a pearly gate.  However, on a bright note, I also did not see a pitchforked horned beast or feel any intense heat.

Honestly, I don’t know anymore details on the resuscitation except that while unconscious, they found three blockages and stented them via the femoral artery.  The type of Cardiologist that implants stents is known as “the plumber” and mine was a really sweet, but ironically a really overweight guy called Dr. Ramy Doss.  Even stented however, my heart rhythm would not normalize and now they would need to call “the electrician.”  The electrophysiologist, Dr. Thomas Mattioni, put me on an Amiodarone drip and scheduled me for an immediate Pacemaker/ICD implant.  What followed was an 8-day stay in ICU where my heartbeat finally normalized without Amiodarone.  The most lasting memory from the week was the compression cup on my left thigh that was used to close the femoral artery; that hurt like a MFr! 

Life after the heart attack involved a brief period of monitored cardiac rehab, a strict fat-free and no alcohol diet, daily walks and mountain hikes and inevitable weight re-gain.  Living with an ICD implant isn’t the worst thing.  The scar is ugly and noticeable.  I’m self-conscious around my younger dates and they sometimes inquire about it.  Kind of hard to sell them on the ride of their life when they’re staring squarely at a baseball sized geriatric prosthetic device. But as you’d imagine, many of my dates are on the naïve side and I just tell them it’s a penis pump and I’d be happy to demonstrate the different settings if they’d like. “It was elective surgery same as Elon Musk,” I tell them convincingly.  Shut your pie hole, face down, ass up! Surely I jest. Or am I ??

Other than a bit of self-consciousness, the only restrictions are just nuisances like no welding, no leaning over a running engine, and asking for a manual wand inspection at airports.  Sadly, sometimes the TSA pat down is the highlight of the trip. Defiantly, I still work on cars and walk through the magnetic body scanners with no problem.  And somehow I still manage to have romantic relations with attractive women despite my disfigurement.  Besides, I’ve got much worse facial scars to get them past before they see my bare chest!

Just one more Pacemaker story to share.  Every year or so I go in for what’s called an ICD interrogation where they extract the year’s pacemaker activity via Bluetooth.  One time this young male tech was reviewing the annual history and asked me if I remember where I was or what happened on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  That’s a day most can recollect as it’s Black Friday for the American women-folk.  I was already living abroad and remembered vividly having some extraordinary and aggressive copulation that day and night.  We both had a good laugh as he advised that we move the upper limit a tad higher before the internal, automatic defibrillator kicks in.  I think it’s now set around 220 BPM, a threshold no man should exceed whilst in bed. It’s kinda telling that my resting pulse is 60 and while hiking Camelback I only hit 180 BPM 🤔

Ok ok. Since you asked politely, one final story. Back in 2018 I was teaching ESL in Mexico when one of the students asked if anyone else heard a beeping tone.  No one else did and we moved on.  That night while falling asleep, I heard the aforementioned beeping tone.  I searched high and low for the damn tone.  Was it a dying cellphone abandoned in a drawer?…was it some gadget buried in a hidden backpack pocket?…was it a retail theft tag sewn into the hem of a recently purchased clothing garment?  No lie, only after a few days of intermittent beeping alarm tones was I able to discern it was coming from deep inside my chest.  No one told me that my ICD had a low battery alert that triggers about 6 months before needing a swap.  Note: sounds that emanate from your core tend to travel within your core and are heard and processed internally. They’re super difficult to source.

Well enough of the background story.  Let me get to the point – that a NDE changes everything.  It changes things spiritually well beyond the physically.  I haven’t researched this topic much and I won’t be regurgitating someone else’s book or writings.  This is just my own experience, anecdotally.  The changes I went through as a result of my NDE were profound.  I can tie the NDE to my divorce decision, my career path, my obscure ex-pat domiciles – really, my overall journey in life for the last 16 years.  

A NDE forces you to reflect, reassess and alter course.  You’ve faced your mortality, been given a reprieve, and given a second chance to extend and finish the race on new terms.  It’s a huge gift, if you choose to accept it as such.  I did.  

EVERYTHING CHANGES – from relationships (preferences and tolerances), to ambitions (money and career), to activities (exercise and risk), to fears (living abroad, retirement).  Everything changes.  For me, I live a bachelor’s life, not responsible to carry deadweights or suffer relationship toxicity; I escaped the American rat race that had me facing career extinction through age discrimination and artificial intelligence; I said FU to the banks and ex wife and her lawyers, and carry $0 debt now, including alimony; and I took early retirement and moved to a tiny, tropical paradise on a Mexican Riviera.  Since the NDE my no fear crazy ass has lived in ghettos and favelas, survived crime ridden Portland and Tucson, Carnival-ed and Burningman-ed, paraglided in Medellin and I ride a motorcycle every day – fast and far – sometimes helmet-less in flip flops 🫢 I even date Liberals now. I spend my days tweaking my Tinder profile, exchanging dollars into pesos, sipping coffee and tequila while discussing the cost of coconuts.  I credit all these positive lifestyle changes to my NDE.  I’m beating the odds and there’s no end in sight. Ha! Jinx. Watch me kick the bucket tomorrow 🤦🏼‍♂️

What happened to me is what’s called a Widowmaker attack.  Don’t quote me but the survival rate of such a powerful heart attack is like 10%.  Maybe around 30% if you include those who survived, but with residual stroke afflictions – slurred speech, the dead arm, paralyzed cheek, crooked lip or droopy eye.  Further, a man’s lifespan after being stented and ICD implanted is cut way back to around an average of ten years or something.  Not ten years less than the average 75-80. No. Just 10 more years beyond surviving the event!  Well, my event was at age 47 and I’m on year 17 and have never felt better.  Vital signs are in range. Diet, drink, weight, all under control and all stressors have been eliminated. Fill in the blanks on what those were 😉

I’ll close with this.  NDEs are a real thing.  There’s a ton of books and articles validating the impacts.  Outcomes can be positive or negative, but surely significant and permanent. There are both virtual and physical groups where survivors meet and share experiences.  Probably they shed tears and drink bad coffee from little styrofoam cups. Of course I don’t have time for, or need, such tomfoolery.  But you, dear reader, know me, and you might know others with NDEs.  Just know that we are special people and thusly you should treat us special.

Now fuck off mere mortals

Deuce 

10 Things I Hate About You, Latino Culture!

So I’ve been living among Latinos for almost 20 years now.  I can’t keep track of the exact dates anymore, but I’ve spent the better part of five years in Brazil and 15 years in Mexico.  And of course the last two years solidly living here in retirement.  At some point one’s experiences and opinions can be expressed with a degree of credibility, don’t you think?  Well, I think you can take what I’m about to say as the truth – at the very least, my truth. 

Most ex-pat bloggers chose to ramble on about the food, or the weather, or the lower cost of living, or the warmness of the people in the exotic locale they live. That’s fine. And those positives all apply to my delightful life here in the Riviera Nayarit, that’s a given. However today, I’m going to make a cultural comparison – Latino vs. White American. Make no mistake, overall I love Latino culture, chose to live here and don’t have a racist bone in my body.  Consider this: if I were a native Mexican blogger living in the United States and writing a blog about the negatives of American culture, the low hanging fruit would be the high cost of living, the political divide, drug addicts and homeless, serial killers and school shootings.  These blights are uniquely American.  Journalistically, I think it’s fair game to discuss a culture’s negatives along with its positives.  What follows is slightly negative on Latino culture, and I freely plead guilty of generalizing and stereotyping.  To be clear, references to “they, them and their” are references to Latinos.  Here we go: 10 things I hate about Latino culture. 

1) Broken promises.  Basically, their word is worthless. Promises to attend your event, promises to hold an event, to return a borrowed item, to follow-up on anything really, are more often than not, promises broken.  They have no sense of honor when it comes to honoring their word.  This has been especially challenging for me as a permanent resident trying to fit in, make new friends, to host a house party, to be a good neighbor.  Have you ever had to give away 10 lbs of cooked ribs and 5 lbs of pasta salad after the confirmed RSVPs failed to show?

2) Tomorrow is actually next week.  No sense of time commitment.  Again, as I built my home over the last year, my frustration was pushed to the limit with contractor tardiness and no shows.  It’s not just minutes and hours, although you can assume that an 8am appointment will commence at 9am or 10am.  The standing joke is to define the word “mañana,” which literally means tomorrow, but in practicality means anytime in the near future.  Worse in Brazil than in Mexico, but mañana is usually NOT tomorrow.  Amusing huh?  Not so much.

3) Loan = gift.  As a policy, I try to not loan money.  But sometimes I have.  When I have, I’d say that 80% of the time I have not been paid back.  And when I have been paid back, it was not easy.  I had to call, ask, beg, drive to them, take payments, etc., etc.  I have been surprised and disappointed how many times a borrowing “friend” has “sold” my friendship by not paying me back and permanently ghosting me.  And for as little as $50.  Is that all I was worth!?

4) Lie, Cheat & Steal (LC&S).  Look, if you are, or ever have been, involved in international business, you know that many other cultures LC&S more than the American culture.  As I learned in business school, Asian cultures in particular are infamous for LC&S as a normal, not immoral, acceptable business practice.  The Chinese do not admonish cheating in their educational system. As early as kindergarten they accept it and encourage students to do it well enough to not get caught.  They believe this “skill” will serve their people well later in life in the competitive international arena.  As an American with some international experience, I’ve had to acknowledge this cultural moral difference and deal with it.  I will also say this about Latinos – they don’t discriminate in their LC&S – they do it to their friends and family equally! But as one who doesn’t LC&S, I usually come out on the short end of the deal and I do not like it.

5) Ungratefulness. I have never known a people so overtly ungrateful for others’ generosity.  In all fairness, they may be internally grateful, but the culture difference is that they don’t express gratitude. They don’t say “thank you” enough or sincerely enough. Maybe Americans are the odd ones on this pet peeve of mine? Nevertheless it’s a very noticeable difference that’s hard to accept. I first experienced this with my girlfriend, Gaby #1.  Over the seven years we were a couple, I can count on one hand the times she thanked me for my generosity, the list of which included significant money and time for her, her child and her extended family and friends.  One of the earliest Spanish words I learned was “desagradecida,” or ungrateful. Aside from girlfriends, it seems quite common in Latino culture for someone, anyone, to give generously and not receive a word of thanks.

6) Gringo = ATM.  I just cannot get used to being hit-up for a hand-out, constantly.  And it’s not just young women hitting me up for money; it’s everyone from my best friends to complete strangers. True, most gringos are wealthier than most Latinos.  a) that doesn’t mean the wealthier wants to give his money away, b) this particular fixed-income gringo IS NOT wealthier than any other gringo nor wealthier than the average Latino, and c) I wish the Latino culture had more pride and more shame in begging and borrowing.

7) Mandilón not Macho.  I need to explain what is Mandilón to my American readers. This is the Mexican equivalent of being “whipped” in a relationship.  My experience with Mexican men in who are in relationships, is that the woman (wife or girlfriend, the same) runs the household.  She controls the money and the free-time of her man.  My amigos can’t spend or commit without the approval of their significant other.  Forget about meeting for Happy Hour. The Macho Mexican Man is a myth.

8) Needless jealousy and drama.  I am mostly referring to Latinas here.  What makes them awesome is what makes them difficult.  They are a passionate species who feed on spicy Telenovelas and Netflix narco culture.  They know they’re famously desirable and preferable to gringas so they aren’t afraid to push the limits of toxicity.  Finding a hot, one night stand is easy.  Finding a stable, non-bipolar, long-term companion, nearly impossible.  Quite the paradox and the material for many memes!

9) Spanish is an inferior language.  Teaching ESL for the last 10 years, I can say that I know 100% of my own language and half of theirs.  English is a roughly 4X larger language than Spanish with literally a million words in its dictionary.  This allows us to be crystal clear in our communication.  When English is mastered, there is no ambiguity.  In contrast, with Spanish I am fighting up to 15 meanings for the same word.  Que pedo? Ahorita? Learning Spanish takes more time, more Q&A, understanding intonation and localization.  I could argue that it’s harder to learn a condensed, contextually nuanced language such as Spanish, than an extensive, precise and formulaic language such as English. Lastly, I do not live in metro area such as Mexico City, Monterey or Guadalajara.  I live in rural Nayarit.  It’s been called the Alabama of Mexico where even the Spanish language mastery is below average.  I’m immersed in a less-educated area that too often uses street slang and regional words.  

10) Horrible communicators.  This criticism maybe conflated with a generational criticism as I see this problem among our American youth as well.  But comparatively speaking, Latinos are horrible communicators.  Let’s start with websites, which are not updated with accurate information (e.g. hours, contact info).  Websites are not relied on by customers so website owners are lazily neglectful.  Next is email – no one has it and/or no one use it.  They kind of leapfrogged this particular communication channel.  Mexico is a WhatsApp culture, which is the texting platform of choice.  WhatsApp is preferred because it’s a Wifi-first platform that doesn’t rely on a cellular phone plan.  So not only did the United States invent the internet, email and cellular technologies… not only did we create Facebook, Instagram, Tinder and WhatsApp, but we set the gold standard for how to use them all.  We simply respond quicker, we type clearer, and we spell better.  We actually dialogue where a question begets an answer. Not here. Here you will be left wondering??? Here, unlimited monthly cell plans are rare and some people buy data packets of just 10 minutes to carry the day; here Telcel is the monopolistic provider and cell coverage is unreliable and spotty; here they frequently change phone numbers without updating contacts. It’s like a burner phone culture. And Latinos ignore, block and ghost at an unbelievable, unacceptable level.  Don’t even get me started on how a Facebook Marketplace convo usually goes. Pure insanity. I hate communications here!

Yes, a bit of a rant. But while living in paradise checks most of the important boxes, I felt you needed to know the mixed reality.  There are a few downsides and deficiencies.  I’ll be curious how my non-American readers respond to my observations.  Was I unfair?

Salud