I know this is a late reply and I haven't been around in a long time. Combination of the Covid era, real life and other issues.
Gregg, am not aware of your current status. Hope you're doing better, or at least carrying on. Wanted to give you some encouragement:
How many times have you sent me some lovely landscaping item on Kitely, free of charge, just because you're generous?
Keep that part of your personality foremost in mind. We all wear out as we get older, but "O'im not dead yet!" *
A friend of mine many years ago had cancer. She required 27 operations. Not many people I know would put up with that, but she did. Not only that, but she was cheerful and upbuilding to everyone around her. Whenever she walked into a room it just lit up with her presence. Her positive outlook helped many people. She kept going well past 70 and in the end, I'm not sure whether it was the cancer or simply age that got her. She surely did not give in willingly.
Not all of us can be like her. I certainly can't. But she taught me to keep trying.
A very good friend of mine was there when I was going through a very rough time in my life. He gave me one piece of advice: "No matter how difficult things get, no matter what you have to go through, never give up. Never quit." It was a simple statement, but one that I've remembered for almost three decades. I got through that bad time in my life. His brief encouragement helped me do so.
True story: One day I laid down to take a nap. When I woke up an hour later, I was permanently deaf in one ear. My doctor told me an odd virus had destroyed the sensory hairs just beyond the eardrum... the hairs that send the sound vibrations to the nerve center in the brain. While I didn't appreciate that one bit, a single thought has remained in my mind for years: it could have taken out my hearing entirely. I consider myself blessed to still have hearing in one ear.
So I'll pass these things forward not only to you Gregg, but to everyone: never give up, never quit. We only "fail" if we quit trying. Sickness or death can take any of us at any time-- today, tomorrow, next week, next year, any time. I will admit there are some forms of sickness in which one may decide to "let nature run its course". Each one of us has to make that personal decision. Short of that, we can be glad that "I still have one left"... and that we haven't had to go through 27 surgeries.
And as a wise person said back there, we don't have to have legs to walk on Kitely, or fly, or breathe underwater, or teleport to totally new worlds... or race our car across the entire Hypergrid.
* An old Monty Python quote for the one or two people who haven't seen it.
