Pluses Outrank Minuses

It’s considered morbid (I reckon) to think about death and when your check-out ticket might get stamped. And I don’t want this blog post to sound morbid, but I recently completed my 70th trip around the sun with relatively uneventful health issues.

Until now.

In my last blog post, I wrote about an unexpected companion. Since then, I’ve been analyzed inside a small tube that, once I was slid into it, reminded me of the rack I slept in aboard a submarine during my Navy days. They call what happens inside that contraption magnetic resonance imaging.

Suffice it to say, the images produced by all that magnetism showed there’s some “stuff goin’ on” within the confines of my flesh — mainly along the spinal column and discs. I won’t go into greater detail because, truthfully, I can’t explain all the medical mumbo jumbo anyway.

Turns out, 70 years of living comes with bonuses… and drawbacks.

Those drawbacks are ones I never really considered until now. I was informed that I’m more or less a case study because I have two conditions not commonly seen together. One involves my discs, and the other is known as lumbar spinal stenosis — which sounds terrifying until your chiropractor explains it in terms a regular ol’ Kentucky boy can understand.

The good news is this: it’s something I can learn to tolerate and manage with proper exercise and, perhaps most importantly, mindset.

Having the right attitude when facing the dilemmas life throws at ya is paramount. A positive mindset helps block the negativity that can sneak in and convince us to stop facing what we cannot immediately fix.

Now, I’m no psychoanalyst, but I don’t think you have to know much about the differences between positive and negative to understand that pluses outrank minuses by a pretty wide margin.

At least that’s what this 70-year-old fella intends to keep believing.