I’m sick of people giving me advice.  Yesterday, someone at work, after lecturing me naively about my low-sodium eating options as if I haven’t done 30 days of research already, advised me on getting my affairs in order.  In getting a will.

Now this person recently lost someone close to them, so they were thinking practically — what I needed to do to make things right for the people I leave behind.  And getting a will is on my list of things to do — but Christ, was it really any of their business to talk to me about it?  It’s one thing to be the survivor after a family member dies — God knows, I know what that means after losing my father — but it’s one thing to presumptuously counsel a person who actually might be dying.

Seriously, work colleagues should not be doing this.

Now here’s the thing, I don’t know if I’m dying.  All I know is that I have a weak heart and that I’m currently in fairly stable condition.  I had a right-side heart catherization a week ago, and the cardiologist told me it looked better than before.  Not normal, obviously — but better.  My gas levels and pressures were fine.  No one knows my risk level yet.  I may need an assist device, or I may not.  I may need a heart transplant, or I may not.  I may only need medication, or I may need more than that.  The point is, no one knows.  But this person treated me as if death was a forgone conclusion.  

Now, death is a foregone conclusion for every human being on earth.  But that doesn’t mean it’s happening tomorrow, this year, next year, ten years from now, etc.  Anyone can die at any time — shit happens.  Shit has happened to me.  I watched my father die of cancer for half a year, and I’ve recently quite suddenly lost a family member.  But I’m not dead yet.  And I’d prefer if people would stop treating me as if I’m going to die in the immediate future.  Because no one knows — I don’t know, my doctors don’t know.  I don’t even feel that bad.  

I have accepted that I may die, and I’ve also accepted that I may live.  I’ve come to terms with that — I’m not in denial.  But I believe very strongly that to get through this I have to fight death with everything I have.  And that means avoiding conversations with well-meaning douche bags who have no idea what it means to have been told things like “you may need a heart transplant” or “you may die.”  Until someone has said those words to you, keep your fucking advice to yourself.  I have enough advice from my top flight health care providers, thank you very much.  Nothing spoils morale more than someone treating you like you’re going to fail in the struggle you are now committed to.  

Even if this does eventually kill me, no one will be able to tell me that I just gave up or rolled over.  I am stubborn and driven.  As a boy, my father taught me how to suck it up and keep going despite pain and doubt.  I clawed my way out of a possible future of dead-end service industry jobs to work in the white collar professional world of Washington, D.C.  

I have modest goals — live to see my girls graduate from high school.  Get my master’s degree in communication.  Live as long as my dad — if I can make it to 50, then I will have succeeded.  That’s less than 20 years.  I can do this.

And if it means replacing my heart and a lifetime of immune-suppressing drugs then so be it.  I will do whatever it takes.

And anyone who wants to tell me otherwise, or focus on the worst possibilities over the best possibilities can go fuck themselves.

As John Darnielle once said, “I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me.”