June 23, 2004: How could anyone feel more overwhelmed than when catastrophic disease strikes down your parents and you have to deal with two separated families?

Click Here to read Ralph and Janet's updated story about how he is dealing with his dad's recent stroke on May 23, 2004.

Read the other chapters of our Baby Boomer  Saga concerning our aging parents by Clicking Here.

Physical and emotional pain are hard to beat, especially when they are slugging you upside the head all at one time.

It is 5 AM Dallas time and feels like 3 AM with the two hour difference from San Diego. I am exhausted beyond recognition, even after sleeping for 5 hours. With all that is going on, deep restful sleep seems only a dream from the past. After working from 7 AM to midnight for the past four days at the "Internet Marketing Super Conference" by Carl Galletti, in Las Vegas, exhaustion is reality, hopefully not my permanent fate.

Few people realize just how much work goes into creating a successful conference.

When you are responsible for the computer, software, remote pointer, wireless connection and LCD projector, the responsibility is huge. Almost every speaker is dependent on their PowerPoint presentation running smoothly. This is critical since their performance is being video and audio recorded. Any glitch has huge impact on the entire event and the educational product being created by the seminar creators.

The computer geek arrives before anyone arrives and is the last to leave.

Setting up the computer, LCD projector, electronic pointer and connections to the cameras is a mind-boggling exercise in frustration. Every cord and wire is critical. The amount of mental concentration is awesome. When you take into consideration I am also taking digital and 35 mm photos of the speakers and attendees, the complexity rises to a level beyond imagining.

Optimal nutrition is the only way to compensate for massive doses of coffee, Diet Coke, beef jerky, Snickers bars and chocolate.

Yes, you guessed it...cottage cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner with junk food breaks. To compensate for all the caffeine and junk food, I chug down liquid vitamins with Mangosteen and essential minerals from New Vision International.

Everyone is astounded that I can drink a green mixture that looks like slime composed of SuperFood from Right Solutions and SuperGreens from New Vision mixed in a large-mouthed water bottle.

Instead of popping drugs, my new addiction is 2 grams of Vitamin C in the form of Super Gram IIIs by Alacer Corporation every hour. To chase the green slime and honking big Vitamin C pills, I power down water laced with Alacer's Emergen-C powdered Vitamin C mixed with ascorbates and MSN.

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Did I hear you say "Yuck!" through my computer speakers?

I know, I know. How could any intelligent person gag down these weird concoctions? After 40 years of health research, I have found what really works well during times requiring maximum mental and physical performance. When the pressure is on and it is time to perform, it is critical to know how to mix your poisons with compensating elements.

I used to be a health purist, but that preoccupation with the fiction of a pure mind and body was slaughtered by the reality of living in the real world.

When youth was my ally and middle age only a nightmare in the future, the cares of the world were not as overwhelming.

The new reality is do whatever it takes to keep going, do my job and take care of my family.

Since drugs are no longer an option, optimal health is the only way to survive and triumph over the trials and tribulations of life. Failure is not an option. Heart attack, stoke and cancer are not the type of friendly neighbors you want to come visit.

An entire day was wasted in travel from Las Vegas to Dallas and you wonder why I am behind in everything, including this blog.

Vice President Cheney put flights behind two hours when he flew into Las Vegas. I was hoping to get on an earlier flight to Dallas, to start packing. My mind was so fragmented, all I could do was read magazines about computer technologies.

Don't laugh...reading about computers and gadgets is relaxing and exciting for a true Geekhead for 50 years.

Oh, if only I had a cup of strong coffee, my laptop humming away and some Babyboomer music playing in the background I would be in heaven. What a dream of happiness...time to surf the web and pound away at my keyboard. Leisure time is only a brilliant memory.

Janet was so furious with me, death or torture would have been my lot in life if I had been in her presence when I told her it was easier to sell off all the furniture and wall-hangings than put it in storage.

Wow! I had no clue how much different women feel about material possessions than men. When I arrived home at 10 PM Monday night, it was over 90 degrees in the apartment. Air conditioning...Ah, the bliss of air conditioning...what a luxury. I quickly turned it on to maximum freezing power, only to find out it produced hot air. While we were gone, the air conditioner crapped out.

It was like a hurricane in the tropics had hit the apartment, as possessions lay all over the floor roasting in the warm, humid heat.

I was sweating like a pig in a barbecue pit. Can I say it too loudly..."Material possessions are a pain!!!!!" I called Janet and said, "I am selling all the furniture and everything anyone will buy. I don't want to move anything one foot further than I have to." Silence, pure unadulterated silence came from the other side of the the continent. Had I said something politically incorrect or emotionally insensitive?

Janet was speechless, shocked and furious at my lack of emotional involvement with possessions gained in the last 5 years of turmoil, toil and trouble.

How could I be so unemotional while dealing with our beloved possessions accumulated over the life of our 8 year marriage. Of course, all our precious possessions were now a gigantic headache to me but not to her. Every item was precious in her sight...stimulating memories of events, reliving them as if they were today...invoking so many special thought and emotions.

My only thought was "How could I pack and move all this junk in a few days."

My heart ached from missing my dad! I am so concerned he is still paralyzed on the left side and cannot swallow...still trapped in the conventional medical hospital by a system that is phenomenal at crisis care but slow in restoring health. I wanted to be with him, praying he will still be alive when I return to San Diego.

My entire focus will be to share with you what I have learned through intensive study and massive amounts of trial and error on how to compensate for the pleasures and stresses of life.

When I get home and after I see how my dad is doing and visit with him I will get to work on my step-by-step guide on what I do to stay alive and well. After all, do you want to be a vegetable, trapped in a hospital bed penetrated by tubes. The answer is simple. No! NO! NO! Neither do I. Now that my dad is suffering through the sheer agony of catastrophic disease, I am experiencing it first-hand through him. Definitely, this is not the trail of my desire.

I guess this is how you write when exhaustion is you best pal.

Sorry I am all over the page with this blog and don't have time to keep you updated every day. A tired body and exhausted mind wanders. The light is filling the room and it is time to battle with possessions.

To Be Continued...