Best Posts in Forum: Expat Section

EDIT: Post Header should say Four Year Stroke Update
I post periodic updates on my stroke recovery to offer a heads up on hopeful prevention and warning signs for others to ponder.
To repeat earlier updates, you should have your blood pressure checked regularly as well as your cholesterol level. If you feel stressed, headaches, dizziness, or numbness in your arms or legs, do not ignore those signs like I did.
So four years later it appears like I have recovered about all that is probable (but I tell myself not impossible to get better). I am about 2/3 the man I used to be; paralysis in the right arm and leg and numbness in the left arm and leg. I have had to learn to be one-handed left-handed. My balance and control is about half normal and I had to learn how to walk again, with assistance. I require a driver and need him by my side while walking (not nearly a normal walk). I need a cane for steps and getting up.
The good news is last month we celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary and this Thursday is my son's 6th birthday party. I feel blessed to be alive and able to participate. I am also blessed to have a great wife to take care of me and an extended family to look after me. I am able to go to the gym 5 times a week and walk the harbor walkway.
Other than coffee and talking with guys at Sans Rival at the mall, I am a home body and happy to help my boy with his homework and my wife with her college studies.p, and watch sports.
Once again I will close by saying take care, having a stroke has a catastrophic impact on your life, if you survive it.

 

Not sure if you have so many 'Likes' Dave because you said you are leaving or the other content!

But you have done wonders - which most of us could not even start on. You built a house here without previous experience (although I know you are a very good craftsman in general and quite a perfectionist) and tackled every problem by research and deep thinking. You have developed methods which the rest of us have learned from.

You have experienced the problems of working with locals who, mostly through no fault of their own, have not had opportunities to develop the necessary skills. As you have pointed out, cheap rates of pay are illusory when you add in the time factor and the need for remedial work (perhaps costing in new materials as well as further labour).

Now you made a decision based on the best needs of your family here - to be able to provide for them but from a distance. A brave decision to make and one which can be done only by a person who really cares. Anyone who knows you has not the slightest doubt about your devotion to your son - this is the case, I must add, with many other expats parents (I won't name the ones I know of as it would seem I am excluding others - but you all know who you are). I often reflect on what expats bring to this country and how the government really has not grasped it in its underlying dislike of foreigners. Perhaps things will change.

A pity you are going as your advice to house builders here would be very valuable - but you have offered to give advice to anyone who contacts you and I hope people take you up on that as you are a goldmine of information and technique.

For anyone thinking the same way, you all know almost everything in life is reversible and so over time it is fine to change the mind and come back. I am sure the RT in Valencia would be pleased to have your money (oops! I forgot that you are a Scotsman - but that is a joke as one thing I know about you very well is your generosity). You are always so willing to spend time giving advice, offering direct help and providing things people need - this is done without hesitation.

So, whatever you do in the future is obviously the best decision you made - as you are a thinker - and so we all wish you the best. You will be a loss but fortunately that marvellous creation - the internet - means you will always be in touch.

 

No-one can read what you have written without feeling the most real, true and deepest sympathy for you, your wife and other family members.

We cannot imagine what you have gone through and are still suffering now.

The most important thing in your quest for answers and more, is to take care of yourselves. This is a very stressful time for you and you have to protect your feelings as you proceed.

We can only give you our very best wishes and hope you find some form of satisfaction in your quest but understand why that will never be any real compensation to you.

 

This is incredible. The green dots on this Google Earth map represent radio stations all over the world.
Click on anyone of them and you will immediately hear that station with very good reception. For example, halfway up Ireland’s east coast, there is a station playing Irish pub music.
If you click on a city with more than one station it will list the stations on the side.
Zoom in, the Google Earth graphics are great.

http://radio.garden/listen/680news/B3DfRJRH

 

I have this place selling veggies that I regularly use in Dumaguete.
It's a shack like most others.

They always have stray dogs and sometimes cats.

Today I heard a kitten crying for help, I responded and he came out after some time.

His face and ears was full of infections and fungi. I fed him some sardines that I had bought and told him I will come back.

After instructing the veggie seller to give him a bowl of water, I went to buy some remedies and soap/gloves.

He was sleeping when I returned, must have been full of sardines.

I put on disposable nitrile gloves and prepared the Safeguard. Unscrewed the fungus balm and started to clean him.

No cat likes water they say, so to no surprise he tried to resist. I changed grip to the neck skin as their mothers do and he calmed down.

Oh my god, his ears was packed with this thick dry layer, inside and out. Around his nose and eyes.

After Safeguard I started rubbing in the balm, he now started to purrr. I think being touched and me massaging and scrubbing off this layer on the skin made him feel loved.

He seems like a nice little guy and I would take him in if it was not for my landlord.

I am going to follow him up with applying more balm and feed him, but is there anyone in here that has room for him in their lives?

Here is two photos of him, one before my treatment and the other after.

Thanks for reading

 

here is the latest update. Lisa has graduated from junior high and is currently staying with a child services employee. Right now she seems very happy. child services will interview here again and give there recomendations to the american embassy. After talking to the embassy they said they take the recomendations very serious. I have spoken to both agencies and recommended she be placed in foster care in Hawaii. The hawaiian people have similiar views on family that the filipinos do also she will look like all the rest of the kids there. the weather is the same and it is an island culture like here. I told Lisa to look up 5 American cities in the U.S. and google the ten best and worst things about those cities. She agreed with me that she thinks she would be the happiest in Hawaii. Now we will have to wait and see what will become of her. I will post when I know something I figure they will pick her up sometime in the next month.

 

I ended up in the Philippines in 2009 with my Filipino husband and our 10 year old daughter. My husband was very ill with COPD and wanted to come "home" to live out the rest of his life surrounded by his family and friends in the Philippines. He loved it there. It was also one of the only ways for us to be able to afford for me to quit my 25 year career as a surgical nurse to care for him. While my daughter forged many new friendships and family relationships and feels the Philippines is as much home as the USA, we were forced to return to Oklahoma so that I could go back to work. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to have lived there and was treated, for the most part, wonderfully, and will always have fond memories.

 

Hey Dude, That was quite an admission you made about drinking. I have always enjoyed your post and consider you one of the guys that has some clear judgement and thinking here.. still do. I was involved in addiction counseling for over 13 years in the US on a voluntary basis. It was a faith based program, so although I believe in it, I would never push it on anyone. One of the secrets regarding any addition is that the real issue is CONTROL, not alchol or some other form of self-medication. People drink, have high risk sex, spend extra money, and do other crazy things because they are trying to gain control over their life. Start at that point of understanding and you can save yourself years of search for answers on your journey to get where you want to be. Admitting you have a drinking issue does not necessary mean you have to stop drinking. Just control your drinking and not let drinking control you (unles you have a chemical addition). If you ever need one to talk to someone I am willing to talk. I am not a hardliner, and do not think the taking a drink will mean you use your “Sobriety” as some do. Go ahead and attend AA, but do not stop thinking, or buy all their beliefs. You are a smart man who can make up his mine. Like all of us, you have some character defeats, but that does not mean you are weak. Life is a journey and everyday is a step on the path of that journey…. Somedays we are not on the path, sometimes we chose to be lost for a while. You history of facing reality seems to indicate you are honest with yourself and will be able to solve you issues. Do not allow guilt or embarrassment to alter you course to get where you want to go. Good Luck.