I was recently talking with a patient who is in his early 70’s. He goes to dialysis 3 days/week and has had a below-knee amputation recently revised to an above-knee amputation because of a traumatic injury that occurred when he fell out of his wheelchair. We were chatting about his history and what interventions we wanted to take at this time. Then he said, “you know, I never listened when everyone warned me to watch my blood sugar and blood pressure. I just always said ‘somethings gonna kill me anyway’ and went about doing what I wanted. I knew the death part would eventually happen, but what I never thought about was the 10-20 years that I was going to have to go through this because I didn’t want to make the effort.”

Enjoy your life, but live your life so you can continue to enjoy it for as long as you have it.