My cold got worse and I ended up staying two nights in the hospital. I was supposed to get some rest at the hospital. Turns out, the hospital is the last place on earth for getting good rest. Every hour they bother you to take your blood and vitals.
no rest. 

Keep making prayer requests.
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This will be a very short post. It turns out I have caught a cold. Usually a simple situation to resolve. Stay in bed, load up with your favorite meds, and wait it out. Unfortunately when you have ALS your breathing is compromised. 

In other words, you can’t cough out the cold. Instead the cold may make its way into your lungs. Things become more difficult and may lead to pneumonia, so I am taking a break from my usual blog.

An idea formed in my mind. Although I have ALS, much to the surprise of my pulmonologist (my lung doctor), I’m still around. He thought I would have been gone in April of this year! Well here I am. I must have something I need to do before I go. Back to my idea.

I think I should be praying, praying for you! I must have a good connection with the big guy upstairs. I want to use my connection to help you. Please send me prayer requests. I will pray on them all week long. You can make requests about your health, finances, decisions, anything.

It reminds me of a story. A woman goes to her pastor and tells him about a small problem she is having. The pastor asked her if she prayed about it. The woman responded, “I only take big problems to God, this is too small.” The pastor smiled and said, “No problem is big for God!” Then he said, “Conversely, nothing is too small either.”

With that in mind make your requests be they small or large, God can handle it.

Imagine Him saying, “I got this. Consider it handled!” 

A leader of a weekly Bible class was known for his charitable work. One day during a Bible study, suddenly, an angel appeared. The Angel said, “All your work has been noticed in heaven. We are going to let you choose a wish. You can have power, money or wisdom.” Without a moments hesitation he chose wisdom.

The angel touched his head and disappeared. With great anticipation everyone in the Bible study waited for him to say something. After a moment someone said, “With your gift, say something wise.”

The man thought for a moment and said, “With the gift of great wisdom I now realize I should have taken the money!”

Wisdom.

It is something that you get as a result of something significant happening in your life, either to you or through you. I want to share something I have learned as a result of something happening to me. Of course, I’m talking about my challenge with ALS.

The last three years of my life have given me some points to think about. I thought I would share them with you in order to give you something to ponder.

Let me start off with what I miss: 
 I miss feeding myself
 I miss showering . . .  alone
 I miss dressing myself
 I miss crawling into my bed and burying my face into my pillow
 I miss putting my arms around my children and giving them a nice hug
 I miss taking a walk outside with my wife 
 I miss going to work (more on this later)
 I miss dancing
 I miss basically everything!

In a nutshell, I miss experiences.

“Alright, Akhil, I get it. You miss a bunch of things that you used to be able to do. So what?”  Here is the “So what.”

I have learned that all the joys in life are a collection of experiences that lift your mood and remind you of the good times. For example, let me share with you an experience at work.

It was my first week at my new job. I was busy trying to figure out which end was up. I had been studying our operation and protocol manuals. It was an intense time.

I remember it was Friday at 4:00 pm when my boss, the president of the company, walked into my office and said, “It’s time!” I said, “What?”  To my surprise,  he pulled out two beers and said it's time to quit working and spend some time with your team. He told me we have a tradition here every Friday at 4:00pm, we enjoy a beer with each other. It builds the team up and lets you unwind!

I remember this tradition fondly, it was quite an experience. In retrospect, I’m glad they didn’t have Cocaine Friday. It might have been great for productivity but the jail time would have been horrible!

How can you use this information for your benefit? You can do something amazing with it, especially with the Christmas season upon us. Let me ask you a question. What did you get for Christmas last year? How about the year before? No idea?  Yeah, me too.

What does that mean? Does that mean other people don’t remember what I got them either? What about all the time and money I spent on them? Doesn’t that matter? How can they not remember that perfect gift I got for them? I shopped and shopped, I fretted over the most ridiculous details, and you say they don’t remember it?!

I’m sorry to say they don’t. So what do I do, Akhil? That is why I am writing this post. This year make sure you give your loved ones an experience. An experience that is unforgettable. For example, if I could, I would give my wife a note saying “Get ready for a memorable evening.” (Not what you’re thinking!)

I would make up the dinner table with all the finest dinnerware we have, get dressed up in my tuxedo and serve the most memorable meal ever. How can I make it memorable? Simple, I do everything. My wife doesn’t do anything but enjoy the evening!

If I could, I would get dressed up like one of the Sesame Street characters and have a party for my daughters. I know they are much older now, but they would remember it because I am making the effort to make them laugh. This is something they would remember forever.

Make memorable experiences for your family this Christmas. In the future your family can say, “I miss Dad, I miss how fun he made everything!”

I hope you leave me some comments on what ideas you came up with.

Two  engineering students are walking in the quad. One of them has a new bicycle. The other one asks “Where did you get that bike?” The other one said, “It was the funniest thing. I was walking to class, minding my own business when a beautiful woman on a bike rides up to me, gets off her bike, takes off her clothes and says, ‘take what you want!’ so I took the bike.”

The other engineer said, “Good call, her clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you!”

I think that you will find that I started this post with a joke. I have a method to my madness.  I want to talk about choices. Life and death choices. It is not funny, but at the same time we have to lighten up and not take everything so seriously!

So let’s dive into it. You may have heard about Brittany Maynard.  If you have not, here is a brief summary. Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal brain cancer and given 6 months to live. This 29 year old woman moved to Portland, OR, to take advantage of the Death with Dignity Act.

Long story short, she ended her own life on Saturday, November 1st. I don’t know what side of the argument you are on to be able to end your own life or not, but that it is not the point of this post.  The point of this post is to ask the question, “Why do you want to live?”

Now I know that may seem like a trite question, but it is not if you really think about it. Look at Brittany. I am sure she spent a long time thinking about that question all the way to the end.  Obviously her answer led to her actions.

I have asked this question to many people, “Why do you want to live?” Here are some of the answers.

1.      I want to do what God wants me to do.
2.      Life has so much joy to offer, I don’t want to miss it.
3.      I am afraid of dying so I want to live.
4.      My favorite, I don’t know.

These are just some of the answers but they all follow the same theme,  faith based or pleasure based or fear based. That is not satisfactory.  It is important to have a strong reason to live. 

 Like Brittany, I am diagnosed with a terminal disease with a horrible end.  If you don’t know, in a short amount of time, my whole body will stop moving and I will become completely paralyzed. The last thing that will happen is my lungs will give out and I will suffocate to death. That is not the fairy tale ending that I wanted.  

But unlike Brittany, I have chosen to wait and see how the movie ends. I know what Doctors say but what if they are wrong? 

More importantly, I have formed a mission for my life. It was something I settled on about 10 years ago. It has become my guiding principle. Here it is, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” This is a quote from Mother Teresa and I use it to make my decisions on what direction I choose to go. Pretty simple statement.

You might be wondering how do I use this philosophy?  Let me give you a real example. As you know, I have ALS. When you visit me, you will not find me wallowing in self pity. Why? Because if I wallow in self pity, that would not encourage you. No, if you see me defeated, you will leave defeated.  That flies in the face of my mission. Instead, I want you to leave encouraged, therefore, I will discuss all the goodness in my life.  That is the opposite of a pity party.

You will see a smile on my face and ironically, you will smile too. That way we both will have a smile, mission accomplished. 

Somewhere along the line, I realized this life is not all about me. It is all about how I make other people feel. The better they feel, the better they act. That is how you improve the world, one person at a time. Pretty simple when you think about it.

Winning, everyone wants to be a winner. That is why I don’t like when people say, he lost his fight with ALS. I am no doctor, but when I die, I am pretty sure the ALS will die too!  So at worst, it was a draw. However, I did not lose, I actually won. I keep going, but the ALS does not.

Since I know how the story ends, I can remain very positive and leave an example for my children.  They will face difficulties in their lives, I want them to draw from my example and get the most out of the experience and not give in to defeat.  That is my hope for you as well. You are going to be faced with difficult situations,  I hope you will realize that how you behave will have a ripple effect through your community.

Perhaps you don’t understand how important your actions are to your children. I know that I did not appreciate this fact as a young father, however, as an older father, I am watching my children and seeing how my behavior has molded their personalities.  Extrapolating, how I die will mold their philosophy and consequently their lives.

How about, we wrap this up. The length of your life is not under your control; however, how you live your life is. More importantly, how you make other people feel while you are alive is the legacy that you leave behind.  By having your eye on the end will help you make adjustments right now.

I am reminded of a story. A philosopher, at the ripe old age of 86, found himself on his death bed. A horrible thought came to him. “What if my life was wrong?” Imagine you are about to die and you realize that you missed it.  What would you do? How would you feel?

Fortunately, you are not at death’s door. That means you have an opportunity to focus on how you will be remembered and start to take action.