About Me.
Life is not easy, but we just keep on going.
Hi,
Welcome to my first writing on Medium. In this, I would like to tell more about me and how I ended up here on Medium.
My name is Pierre and live in The Netherlands. Born in 1966. Married with Marites in 1994 in the Philippines. Why the Philippines? Because my wife comes from the Philippines.
We have one son.
After finishing school, I worked for almost 12 years in a computer company. Installing, maintaining, and programming computer cash registers in mainly Chinese restaurants. After this, I worked for almost 6 years in a bank as a helpdesk employee. We serviced around bank 360 locations. After this, I worked for one year as a system admin for schools, in a local city. Due to economical reasons, the company had to fire several people.
I was unemployed for almost one and a half years. During that time, I had a heart operation. I had a leaking heart valve. This was discovered when I was 9 months old. But the older I got, the more it started to leak. So in 2005, they decided that it was time to replace the heart valve. They replaced it with a mechanical heart valve.
In 2006 started to work for an IT company, again for almost 6 years. We did the service and repairs for HP, IBM, Canon, and some local companies. I did the service desk/support work. And again due to economic reasons, they had to fire several people. After that, my life took a big turn and things changed.
My Life Changed and it Would Never Be as Before.
What follows now, is a long list of health issues. But I will try to keep it as short as possible and in future stories, I will tell more about it.
From December 22, 2012, until March 16, 2013, I stayed in the hospital. There were bacteria in my blood. During that time, I got 2 times a cerebral hemorrhage. January 1, 2013, and January 16, 2013. The hemorrhage gave me, what they called, hemianopsia. (Half sight blindness in both eyes, on the right side). On February 18 I had my second open-heart operation during which they had replaced the heart valve that was damaged by the bacteria. On March 1, I got a pacemaker.
In 2014 it was discovered that I had a reduced kidney function. After several tests and different kinds of medication, it was stable. Until in December 2014, while on holiday in the Philippines, I had stayed in a hospital for three days, because of a kidney infection on both kidneys. Once back home, they had rechecked everything again, and things were stable.
In 2015 they discovered the start of a kidney stone but because it was still small, nothing was done about it. This was also the year that my wife and I, joined a Christian church.
Things were going okay and were stable until August 2018. After a regular heart checkup, it was discovered that I had heart failure. My heart pump function was only 15%. Normally this should be 60%. So in November 2018, my pacemaker was upgraded/replaced with a pacemaker with an ICD functionality.
In 2019 during my kidney checkup, they saw that my kidney stone had grown and it was time to remove it. This should take place somewhere in the first quarter of 2020, but COVID-19 delayed things. But more about this in an upcoming story.
My Life at This Moment.
I hope you can imagine that things were not that easy. Right now I have no work and don’t need to work anymore. In my situation, it is also difficult to find work. So I am a “Houseman”. I am taking things easy. I also have my own blog where I write about my life and my health. If you are interested in it, you can find it at www.pierredeman.nl.
How did I come here? Well, for my blog, I was doing some research and by accident, I stumbled on Medium. After looking around a bit and read some stories, I was hooked. So as of November 2020, I became a member of Medium.
I think many of my stories will be about what had happened to me since 2013. And who knows, maybe now and then, I will step out of my comfort zone and write about something else.
For now, I hope you will read my future stories and please take care.
Till we meet again.
