Pretty bummed out...

[Phebus]

Dave, take him in, embrace him, and listen to his stories from days gone by. Then, see if he will bring you cheap cigarettes and booze back from his Mexico trip.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[3queens]

Sorry to hear about your neighbor. You should invite them over for a BBQ. I'm sure he would appreciate it and I dont think you would feel weird about it.

This would be nice
And get him to tell story's of.....back when I was
Just shoot the shit with him :drink

 

[POWERCATDON]

Sorry To Hear About this Dave, In your Heart you will know what to do. It will not Happen Over Night. Just Be their if you Can. He has a Reason and Trust's you.

 

[RiverDave]

You guys really need to lay off the smoking thing.. Smokers quit when they quit.. Posts on the internet don't do anything but irritate said smoker and make them go smoke everytime they read it.

RD

 

[Hammer]

RD smoxes . Lol

 

[SummitKarl]

Hey Dave,
First let me say I am sorry to hear of your neighbors troubles and I wish him the best. Now lets get to the meat of your reaction as this is going to be a major turning point in your life at least it was in mine. This is one of those kind of not spoken about Havasu secrets (death). When I moved here and made new (Havasu resident) friends through the car stuff and boating stuff, most were/are 20+ years my senior, I made several good friends and one so close as to unofficially adopt me as his son, The old guys here have "been there and done that" to just about everything in life you can imagine and they do have a message if you listen. My outlook on life has changed immensely in the last decade and it's mostly due to listening to what my elders have to say and the lessons contained in those stories. This stuff is going to change you as much as fatherhood has and in a really good way, now don't get me wrong that it's going to be all peaches and cream because it's not, In fact it's going to get damn depressing. There was about a 6 month stretch there a couple years back that every Saturday I knew just to get up get dressed and head to the Funeral parlor because someone or another had passed for what ever reason, The best thing you can do is support, help and listen the man. To attend his funeral share the stories, learn the lessons and remember it's your job to pass those onto others now.

like I said Dave Havasu's little secret is Death and allot of it in many forms, some more difficult to deal with then others but all with a lesson to be taught and that is the best way to validate ones life, learn what you can from them and pass it on

 

[boatnam2]

Lung surgery is THE most painful recovery.
It's brutal. It just sux.

I've worked around Asbestos my whole life and every time I cough the wife's eyes light up like Coors Light beer cans.

My mom had lung cancer along with 3-4 other ones and had 50% of one lung removed, she fired up a smoke as we left the hospital and i wheelchaired her the the car...She was a hardcore lady...

 

[Mr. C]

:rolleyes Duty free = $57 for two cartoons.

Then, see if he will bring you cheap cigarettes and booze back from his Mexico trip.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ain't that the Fn truth, they weren't even talking to me RD and now now I want one. Or should I say going to have one.:grumble:

You guys really need to lay off the smoking thing.. Smokers quit when they quit.. Posts on the internet don't do anything but irritate said smoker and make them go smoke everytime they read it.

RD

 

[SBMech]

RD,

You've always stuck me as a no bullshit, pretty smart guy. Don't be afraid to extend your friendship and love to someone deserving of it. Fuck anyone who tells you otherwise.:thumbsup

Invite them over and just listen. If he asks you to take care and look out for his family, feel honored.

 

[rivermobster]

I'd say try to cater to his interests, something he might not get to do much anymore. A bbq could be nice, but I envision people sitting around with something on their mind that they don't want to talk about.

Is he a boating guy, off-road, fuck around in the garage kind of guy? Maybe take him out on the lake for an afternoon? There's something he likes about Havasu, that he will probably never do again. I would try to cater to that, oh.. and without a cig.

this ^^^

and dont ask him, TELL him you need help launching your boat or some stupid shit like that. take him on a midweek cruise through topak, and just float through the canyon on your way back.

that would be a hell of a gift im sure anyone would appreciate greatly. :thumbsup

 

[rivrrts429]

RD

Any update on this guy? Whatever came of it?

 

[RiverDave]

RD

Any update on this guy? Whatever came of it?

He came back and his demeanor had changed quite a bit. I will post up here in an hour (gotta go inside and help with the kids / take a shower etc..)

RD

 

[rivrrts429]

He came back and his demeanor had changed quite a bit. I will post up here in an hour (gotta go inside and help with the kids / take a shower etc..)

RD

2 weeks...

 

[Magic34]

Dave,

It isn't the lung cancer you should worry about, but the heart disease the smoking causes. My father in law was a smoker for years. He was not a pound overweight and didn't eat horrible. On the morning of sept 14, 2011, he had a massive heart attack. My wife was at their house and watched him go down. My mother in law started CPR immediately and continued for 5-7 minutes until paramedics arrived. After calling 911, I got the hysterical call from her. I heard screaming, sirens... Which scared the hell out of me... then The only words I understood were "heart attack" and I just knew. My office is 2 miles away so I got in my car and hauled butt to the house, only a fire truck was there. Thinking it couldn't be all that bad since an ambulance was not present, I run inside thinking he'd be sitting up. Nope.

I walk in to find him blue with paramedics doing chest compressions and using the paddles to bring him back. I remember it like it was yesterday. All we could do was stand in the kitchen and watch as they tried to bring him back. When we hear of someone who died of a heart attack, I can visualize exactly what it is like, I have seen exactly how life ends.

They were able to get a faint heartbeat as the ambulance was rolling the stretcher in. They load him up and we heard for the heart hospital. We get to emergency and go immediately to the back where a social worker puts us in a room to describe what is about to happen. We were numb and my wife and mother in law probably heard 10% of what she said. In the middle of the discussion, the code blue alarms sound through the entire hospital. It was the code that announces to all staff that someone has stopped breathing and they Are preparing hypothermia treatment to preserve the organs of the body. The alarm was for him. As the lady was describing this to us, the entire emergency team was working on him. They prepped him for emergency surgery with the cardiologist.

We go see him before he heads to surgery. Machines were doing the breathing, on life support. He looked like a body on life support, it's the only way I could describe it. His body was doing what the machine made him do.

As we are walking down the hall with the social worker to the waiting room, we pass the cardiologist that will be performing the surgery and he spends about 90 seconds with us before rushing in the room. He let us know he would try the best he could.

About 2 hours go by, which in the waiting room felt like 2 days, and the doctor comes out. In the movies, they say all is good and a story ends happy. He gave us nothing. His first words were, he is a very sick man. There is a lot of disease in his heart. We were expecting news much more positive. Nope, doesn't work like that. He said his main artery had been closed off for a long time and the secondary artery took over as the main until it got clogged so bad, it caused a massive heart attack. He said this wasn't the first one he had, that he must have had some minor heart attacks months prior. Looking back, we knew exactly when they were but thought it was extreme heartburn. In addition to the stints, they put a balloon pump in his heart to regulate the heart beating.

He is now in intensive care hooked up to 13 different life support machines. He is labeled the most critical patient in the entire campus (2 hospitals). His body temp is 92 degrees and they will maintain that for 24 hours before warming him up and he is in a coma so that he doesn't shiver or move. They give him a 3% chance of survival.

For 3 days he remained on life support, each day trying to lower the medication and removing machines doing the life support. By the morning of the 4th day they were finally able to bring him out of the coma and eventually remove the ventilator. By 3 pm that afternoon we were talking with him again.

He spent 6 days in ICU and another 2 days in the normal room. The doctors would do their rounds and every time, they'd shake their head and say it is a miracle. While we were in ICU, 3 other families had the same thing happen. We were the only one that moved out of ICU without planning a funeral.

He had a small stroke 2 weeks later and then soon after had a pace maker and defibrillator installed. His heart functions at a fraction of what a normal persons does, but he is alive today.

The traumatic experience has taken a toll on my wife. It took about a year before she started to do better from the emotional experience. I can't explain what it was like, it changed a few lives.

My daughter is very close to her papa. I had to pick her up from school that day and try to act like nothing happend. Telling my little girl that her best friend was in the hospital was so incredibly difficult. Her face killed me.

There are a lot of things out there that can kill, you, I get it. Much of it, you cannot control, it just happens. In this case, he could have controlled it. He could have quit smoking years prior when he was younger, but he didn't.

Quit smoking brother. It is really hard for those who love you to go through the pain of something like I described above. For your wife to kids, if there is 1 thing that you could do to spare them extreme pain in 10, 20 years, would you do it? Accidents happen, i get it. This wasn't one and could have been avoided.

 

[Lunatic Fringe]

Well said Magic34.
When things like this happen to us and the ones we love, it drives home how far reaching our personal choices are.
We want to believe that our bad habits only effect ourselves but it's not the case.
The people left behind do the suffering for us.

 

[Rickybobby]

RD
What ever happened to this guy ??? Did he fight back and is now chasin hoties down in the channel??? Please tell us so.

 

[RiverDave]

He died about three months after this was posted. When he came back from MX he looked great and they had made significant improvements. Then one day he was in an electric powered scooter and it seemed like the next he was gone.

 

[Rickybobby]

 

[RiverDave]

I had posted a couple of different threads with regard to Dave the neighbor. I think one of them had some pics of him in my garage when he got back from MX etc.. That's why this thread wasn't updated back when it happened.

RD

 

[Wombat]

Very sad