David Downie's Journey From HIV Nurse to End of Life Patient Part 1

This episode is the first part of a two part episode where I had a deeply personal conversation with my friend David Downie, a former nurse who worked during the early days of the HIV pandemic. As someone who grew up in the 80s, I was aware of the epidemic but didn’t understand the full scope of what it was like for those on the frontlines. A few weeks ago, while on a phone call with David, I learned more about his powerful story, and I knew I had to invite him to share his experiences on the show.

David began by recounting his time as a nurse, starting in Colorado, when the HIV crisis began to unfold. In the early days, the disease seemed far away, affecting mostly communities in New York and Los Angeles. However, it soon reached Colorado, and David found himself caring for friends and patients affected by the epidemic. He worked in the ER and eventually at HIV clinics in Denver, witnessing the devastating toll the illness took on individuals and communities.

David shared the emotional burden of those early years when there was no test for HIV and people lived in constant fear of contracting the virus. When testing became available, the fear of a positive result weighed heavily on those waiting for answers. Later, when he moved to Los Angeles—one of the epicenters of the crisis—he worked at an HIV clinic and saw the early effects of treatments like AZT, which, despite offering hope, came with harsh side effects.

As our conversation progressed, David opened up about his current health struggles. Nearing the end of his life, he spoke candidly about his experience with heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis. He shared how his meditation practice, rooted in our shared connection at a meditation center in Philadelphia, has helped him cope with physical pain and navigate his final months with greater peace. David’s reflections on the inevitability of pain and death, and how meditation has shifted his perspective, offer a powerful message on finding acceptance and serenity in the face of life’s greatest challenges.

You can follow David's personal journey on his YouTube page. https://www.youtube.com/@daviddownie5594

Transcript

[00:00:00] David: The cocktail came along and people were no longer dying. I actually had people say like, what am I going to do now? Because I'm not going to die. I don't know what I'm going to do. So it was like you're on a trajectory to die. And then suddenly that's not what's going to happen. What are you going to do with your life?

[00:00:18] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach here on my show. I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying grief and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects.

[00:00:37] I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, I have a conversation with my friend, David Downie, a former nurse who worked during the early days of the HIV pandemic. As someone who grew up in the 80s, I was aware of the epidemic but didn't understand the full scope of what it was like for those on the front lines.

[00:01:00] A few weeks ago, while on a phone call with David, I learned more about his personal story and I invited him to share his experiences on the show. David shares his memories of working in Denver and Los Angeles, where the crisis hit hard, and his personal experience in HIV clinics. He reflects on the fear, uncertainty, and emotional toll of the epidemic, as well as the challenges posed by early treatments.

[00:01:26] As David faces his own end of life, he opens up about his declining health, sharing how his meditation practice has transformed his relationship with pain and illness. David has been sharing his end-of-life journey on YouTube. And I'm putting a link in the show notes for you to be able to watch some of his videos where he shares what he is experiencing. https://www.youtube.com/@daviddownie5594

[00:01:47] Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, David. I'm really happy that you agreed to come on and talk with me. We've known each other now for. For seven years or so, so we know each other in real life and I had known that you were a nurse, but I recently found out something that I thought was really interesting.

[00:02:09] I asked you to come on the podcast to talk to me about it. Thank you so much. 

[00:02:13] David: You're welcome. It's good to be here. 

[00:02:15] Jill: And if you want to tell us a little bit about you, about where you're from, anything to give us a little background about who you are as a person. 

[00:02:23] David: David Downey. I'm from Philadelphia and grew up here and I moved away to go into the Catholic seminary back in the early seventies and was there for three years and decided this was not going to work for me.

[00:02:38] Left and finished school and then wandered around for a bit trying to figure out what's next. School was in Boston. And then came back to Philadelphia and wandered around some more and then ended up moving to Colorado for love. Couldn't do that again, but I did. I was young and in love. While I was in Colorado, I still didn't know what to do to make a living.

[00:02:59] My friend that I was in a relationship with, he was going to go to nursing school. And I thought, Hmm, not to, I didn't have ideas in my mind of being a nurse, but I thought there'll always be a job. 

[00:03:12] Jill: Yes, 

[00:03:13] David: for sure. So why don't I do that? So that's what I did. I went to nursing school in Colorado. While that was all going on, the HIV epidemic started.

[00:03:23] It wasn't even an epidemic at that point. You'd hear stories about these gay guys getting sick and dying. It was mostly in New York and Los Angeles at the time. It hadn't really come to It was there, but you didn't hear a lot about it in Colorado. While I was in nursing school, you started hearing more and more about it.

[00:03:43] So I started going to this, at that time in Colorado, it was very popular, like new age sort of stuff. I don't know if you've ever heard of Louise Hay and those sort of people. She became very popular partly because people got AIDS and there was nothing else to do. There was nothing you could do about it.

[00:04:03] She said, yes, there is. You can use your mind to heal yourself, was her thing. So I was like, well, if it works, let's try it. I joined this group in Denver run by someone who was a protege of Louise Hay. It was a group for people with HIV and their friends. I started going to that being a lot of my friends were getting sick.

[00:04:25] And I wanted to be supportive in any way I could. Then I finished nursing school and worked in the ER for a while. Then things started really picking up in Colorado with HIV. So many of my friends were getting it and getting sick. Denver had a city hospital, Denver General Hospital, and they started a clinic specifically for HIV.

[00:04:45] So I started doing some work there. They also started a clinic at the University of Colorado in Denver. That clinic was nurse run. It was just nurses working there and it was more of a holistic approach to it all. I was working there full time at that point. A lot of the people were coming from the VA hospital.

[00:05:06] A lot of the men, which was very interesting back in those days. Because the military didn't have gay people, if you remember. But we had a lot of men who were in the military, who were getting treatment at the VA, who were HIV positive and had AIDS. And so it was kind of an interesting experience.

[00:05:26] Although I have to say that The VA in Denver did a very good job, I'll have to give them that, despite what the government in general was doing, which was nothing. So I worked there for a long time and then these were my friends, these were people maybe I even went out on a date with, and then people just started dying.

[00:05:42] I remember this was around 84, 85, and everybody just assumed, we all assumed that we're going to get this, because they had no idea yet what it was. And we all assumed we were going to get it and die. So I thought, well, I'll help as many people as I can until then. And it wasn't until like, I think it was 86, that there was a test.

[00:06:03] It took a while for people to take the test because nobody wanted to get their death sentence. I do remember getting a test the first time. Back then, you went and got your blood drawn. You were anonymous. You didn't have to give your real name or anything. You had to wait two weeks to get your results.

[00:06:20] That was like planning your funeral. Without question, you knew you were going to die. Those two weeks were figuring out what you're going to do. Are you going to deal with this? You're going to die and so on and so forth. When I went back to get the results, scared to death, and they said, yeah, you know, you're negative.

[00:06:37] And I was like, what? What does that mean? Because that language hadn't even really been started. Does negative mean that's a bad thing? No, no, no. It means you don't have it. Or, you know, at this point, you don't have any antibodies. So I was like, how is that possible? I mean, everybody just felt like It just didn't seem like it was going to be possible.

[00:06:58] So then it was, now I'm not going to die. What am I going to do now? I mean, you know, I was still working as a, as a nurse and stuff. So anyway, that's what I threw myself into, working with HIV. Then I moved from Denver to California, LA, which is one of the epicenters, and was working at an HIV clinic there.

[00:07:17] The very strange thing I think a lot of people don't understand is, you go to a doctor, they don't know you at all. You have a doctor patient relationship. This was not like that back then. All the people who were coming to your clinic, many of them, you knew socially. Some of them, you knew more than socially.

[00:07:34] From the past, you know, like I said, you might have been dating them or whatever. And so it was like, there was no, I'm going to go to work now and deal with this. And then I'm going to come home and have my life. That was life. So there was no separation whatsoever. And I guess now if you work that way, you get burned out.

[00:07:54] You couldn't get burned out because there was too much to do. And if you were getting burned out, well, you know what? People are dying. So get over yourself. We were in a war and the government was doing absolutely nothing. Reagan was president at that point and he didn't even mention it. He was eight years in office.

[00:08:13] And he didn't mention it till the end of his eighth year at all, ever. There wasn't research money, much research money behind things. We were on our own. We were literally on our own. So people were doing all kinds of, now you look back and say crazy stuff, but it wasn't crazy at the time. Because there was nothing else.

[00:08:31] They started using AZT, some antiviral medicine that the government had developed some years earlier. It was something to do with something people were getting a virus like soldiers and stuff. I can't remember all the details, but it was a medication that existed far prior to HIV. So they just discovered when they finally found out HIV was a virus.

[00:08:53] And they discovered that this medication can kill the virus. That was the only medication they had, and they were using it in massive dosages, which they quickly found out was going to kill you as well. So people were literally dying of AZT poisoning. A lot of people just didn't want to take it, which I couldn't blame them because it gave you terrible anemia, it's bone marrow, and had all kinds of awful side effects.

[00:09:20] It was really a dreary time in a lot of ways, going to funerals, because you're not going to go to the funeral of your patient, but you're going to go to the funeral of your friend, for I'd say maybe 10 years, it was like that. It was just put your head, you know, going at it. So then after that, some research, well, after Bregman was gone, some money started coming in and I H and all that stuff, and they started finding new other drugs.

[00:09:45] And again, a lot of those drugs had terrible side effects. And so they just didn't, they're really still try this, try that. But people themselves were trying all kinds of stuff. I remember helping people get this stuff from China that came in a vial, a glass vial, and it said it was this which had Chinese writing on.

[00:10:04] You didn't know what that was. 

[00:10:06] Jill: Yeah. 

[00:10:06] David: And the word was that this is curing people with AIDS. And so they wanted to take it. And so I'm glad I no longer am a nurse with a license because I was helping people to do that and to get IV and again, it was either that or do nothing. So of course it didn't work.

[00:10:25] People were going to Mexico for, I forget it was something came from a peach stone that they were getting. People were using peroxide enemas. Wow. Kinds of just wild stuff. And none of it worked. And of course there was, you know, you can heal it with your mind. Stuff was popular for a while. When people started dying.

[00:10:46] left and right. People were like, what's the matter, Louise? Why isn't this working? And somehow it ends up being, well, you're not healing yourself quite right. So that's when I started, I was like, that's bullshit. You can't heal HIV with just your mind. Then eventually around 1996, they came out with what they called the cocktail.

[00:11:04] which was three or four different medications used at the same time. They were much lower doses than they were using individually. And it was attacking HIV at different points of the reproductive thing of HIV. It made the absolute world of difference. It was amazing. It was like the miracle everybody was hoping for, you know, and people who are near on death's door started getting better and people just won't say they stopped dying, but certainly not in the numbers prior to this.

[00:11:41] Jill: This is all really interesting, because I was a child when this was all happening, so I know of it, but it's nothing like you being in it. 

[00:11:54] David: Wow, that amazes me. At that time, when people found out back then, before there was really any to do about it, people found out they had HIV, and what a lot of people did was decide, well, I'm going to die.

[00:12:07] So I'm going to go out having a good time. They would spend all their money, rack up credit cards to tens of thousands of dollars, and just have a good time, travel all over the world and do this and do that. Not everybody did that, but a fair number of people did. And then the cocktail came along and people were no longer dying.

[00:12:25] I actually, had people say, like, what am I going to do now? 

[00:12:29] Jill: Oh, no. 

[00:12:31] David: Because I'm not going to die, and I owe all this money. I don't know what I'm going to do. So it was like, you know, you're on a trajectory to die, and you decide that you're going to do it in a big way. And then suddenly, that's not what's going to happen.

[00:12:44] What are you going to do with your life? So it was a big deal, in a lot of ways. People had to really rethink everything, their whole lives. The more people that were getting the medication, people who were literally dying, turned around completely. Not completely, because you still have HIV, but at least back then, it was, it's even better now than it was then.

[00:13:03] So everybody had to have a shift in awareness, consciousness, whatever you want to call it, about how to live with this. Sort of like we're living with COVID now. We're with HIV now. And so it changed everything in terms of people living and medical care. Although there were still quite a few people who didn't believe, first of all, that HIV was the cause of AIDS or that it was a government conspiracy.

[00:13:28] It was all these, as there always are. I literally know people who decided it was not real. And they're no longer here because they were like, I'm not taking that medicine, it's poison, and they died. And then there were what were called long term survivors, which were people who were HIV positive but never developed AIDS.

[00:13:47] Very few in number, but there were actually people and they've had studies on them and who knows exactly why. If it will last your whole life, but there are those people who didn't get sick. So that was more like, Oh, see, he's not getting sick and he's HIV positive. So I don't want to take that medicine.

[00:14:03] And I had people who were frequent users of street drugs say, I'm not taking that poison, meaning the HIV medicine. So there'd be the conversation, but you'll take. cocaine and crack and, well, that's different. And I was like, okay, it's your body, you do what you want to do. That was, well, that was in Birmingham up to around 2000.

[00:14:23] Even during that time, I had my own, I was born with a heart condition. When I was 10, I had a surgery. When I was, I had another surgery for my heart around 1998. I was off work for almost a year because I had a lot of problems after the surgery and I couldn't really go back for a while working in a clinic or anything, so I taught nursing.

[00:14:46] So it was a bit of a break from me working in HIV, which by that time I needed. So then after that, I did continue to work in HIV after kind of breaking here and there. I worked in LA at the Gay and Lesbian Center, had their own clinic. Then I moved to New York. Also, during this time, I decided I wanted to pursue an acting career.

[00:15:06] Jill: Oh yeah? 

[00:15:07] David: Yeah, when I was in LA. I didn't go there for that reason, but when I was there, I got kind of interested in it. In fact, a social worker who worked at the clinic I was working at, was in the acting class. She invited me and it was a gay teacher and it was a fun, it was a, it was a hoot. We could do scenes from two men doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and it's crazy.

[00:15:27] It was fun. So I really like, Oh, I like this a lot better than being a nurse. And so I pursued it for about 15 years. And in that I moved to New York because I really liked theater more than anything. But I still had to work. So, you know, worked as a nurse part time and in the beginning, not in HIV at all.

[00:15:45] But then I returned to that. An amazing clinic in New York called Counterlord. It's an HIV clinic, but they do a lot of other things now because all HIV clinics now have had to do other things because now people were leaving kind of almost all normal length of time. So now you're getting people who started out coming to the HIV clinic.

[00:16:06] and now they have diseases of aging and diabetes and blood pressure and cancer not related to HIV and all this stuff. A lot of clinics now, HIV clinics treat people who don't even have HIV, some of them, because they're now kind of general medicine. And you would have, hopefully, anybody listening to this who has HIV, hopefully you have an infectious disease specialist in it, because you still do need that, in my opinion.

[00:16:33] But a lot of clinics now, they have all that at a particular clinic. Then, about 12 years ago, 12 14 years ago, I started getting sick. Not from HIV, but My heart and I developed heart failure that was a whole other dealing with the medical field and being a nurse. It was rough because I learned it now from the other side big time as an adult how difficult it is to deal with the medical field as a patient.

[00:16:59] And how you're not believed, just literally not believed about what you're telling them. Now I had to go through two years of saying, this is going on, this is going on, this is going on. And them saying to me, well, you're just aging. That started coming in. I'm just getting older, and this is what happens when you're older.

[00:17:20] I was gaining weight, like a lot of weight, and I was getting short of breath, and it would be, well, you need to exercise. I'm like, I work full time. I go to the gym five to six days a week. I walk, this is back, I'm back in Philadelphia now. I'm walking everywhere. I don't own a car, so everywhere I go, I have to walk, go shopping, carry my groceries, but I'm deconditioned.

[00:17:43] Uh, no, I'm not. Well, your diet, I'm like, I eat better than almost anybody I know. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I eat a very good diet and they wouldn't believe me. Well, maybe it's your lungs. Let's send you to the lung doctor. And I went to the lung doctor. Well, you do have some lung disease. Maybe related to my heart stuff, but it was longstanding.

[00:18:04] And they'd say, the symptoms you're having is not from your lungs. It's from your heart. So I go back to my heart doctor. Well, we don't think it's that. 

[00:18:12] Jill: Oh, geez. 

[00:18:13] David: For two years, I was in limbo, absolute limbo, trying this doctor, that doctor. Can you help me? I'm getting sicker and sicker to the point where I literally, I couldn't work.

[00:18:23] And I was having heart arrhythmias. And then, so finally, the pulmonologist allowed me to go on disability. My heart doctor would not sign off on it. So then finally the heart doctor said we can do a catheterization and sort of her issue was to prove to you that it's not your heart. I had the catheterization before I was even home.

[00:18:46] I was in the recovery room and I got a message on my phone from my pharmacy that you have a prescription ready and I'm like no I don't. I didn't go to the doctor recently to get a prescription. So I called the pharmacy and I said, who sent that in? Well, it was the heart doctor who hadn't even spoken to me yet.

[00:19:02] It was for LASIX, which is a diuretic. I'm like, well, why are you ordering me LASIX? So when I finally did talk to her, Oh, Mr. Downey, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. You didn't seem to me like you had heart failure. And then it came to, well, we don't really like calling it heart failure. I'm, you're talking to a nerve.

[00:19:21] I know this stuff. It's not scaring me stuff because they don't want to scare you. You have heart failure. People are like, Oh my God, I know what heart failure is. But he kept trying to make it not a big deal. I'm like, well, it's a big deal when you can't work and you can't walk upstairs and you can't do half the things you used to do.

[00:19:39] So then came the 12 year odyssey of dealing with heart failure and getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And I changed doctors clearly. He said, of course you have a heart failure specialist. You said, of course you have heart failure. He couldn't believe the way that I was being treated. And he treated me very aggressively, which I was glad to do.

[00:19:57] And it got me to a point where I wasn't going downhill quickly. I sort of evened out for a while and it started going down and down and down slowly but surely over the last years to where I'm at now, which is dealing with, um, on the way out. My life is like 2 percent of what it used to be. I can be, when I say active, I don't mean like running around doing this or that.

[00:20:21] I mean, I can get myself to the store to go food shopping and home. in a given day, and that's it. That's the extent of my activity level. So, you know, you know, we're talking about death and dying, my own, and so it's a whole different experience. Do you want to continue on talking? 

[00:20:38] Jill: Yeah, whatever you want to talk about.

[00:20:41] I'm just here for the conversation. So you share. I'm not giving you a chance 

[00:20:44] David: at all. 

[00:20:45] Jill: Oh, I don't care. Honestly. They hear me talk enough. They don't need to hear me. So share whatever you want. 

[00:20:51] David: Okay. So, well, as you know, is this okay where we know each other? Yeah, of course. Okay. So I know you from the Shambhala Center, which is a Buddhist meditation center in Philadelphia here.

[00:21:02] I started going there, I think it was five, six, seven years ago. I can't remember exactly when it was pre COVID. I know that for sure. The reason I ended up there is I was having problems with a lot, a lot of pain. Joint pain and stuff. Not being believed and having to go to this doctor and that doctor. And you're in pain and they don't want to hear about that at all.

[00:21:25] They think what you want is You know, opioids, that's first thing in their mind. I don't understand kind of why, but 

[00:21:32] Jill: yeah, 

[00:21:32] David: take an individual as they come at you, you know what I mean? I could go on about that subject for a long time. But anyway, I, I just was having a hard time dealing with pain. I did find a doctor who would give me a small amount of Oxycontin and it helped so much.

[00:21:48] I started being able to have some mode of a life again, but not just the heart stuff, but the pain stuff was really keeping me from doing stuff. And I went to Scotland twice back then, uh, so glad I did because I couldn't do it now. Then I started with this other doctor who wanted to get me off the medicine.

[00:22:08] And she was, she was again, much more holistic in her approach. And I liked her. I really liked her. And she suggested that I get off the medicine to try getting off of it. I was very resistant to it. And I said, well, I'm not in a whole lot of pain. Well. While you're on the medicine, you know, I'm like, well, of course, but anyway, her idea thought was, of course, when you get on that medicine, you do need more and more and more as time goes by, she just didn't want that trajectory and things were getting tighter and tighter.

[00:22:39] That's when all this stuff was in the news about the company, the Oxycontin and how they were buying doctors basically, whining and dining doc, and they did all that stuff. So I was caught up in that and I thought, you know what? When I would go to get my prescriptions filled, the way I would be treated was atrocious.

[00:22:56] By the people in the pharmacy, they would look at you like you are a drug addict, period. It was humiliating, it really was. And so anyway, I thought, okay, you know what, this is getting to be a bigger pain in the ass than the pain. So she introduced me, while I was in her office, she put on the computer a YouTube video of Pema Chodron talking about pain and how You can deal with how pain is and how it works, not so much medically, but not in a medical terms, more in the psychological, spiritual aspects and stuff.

[00:23:29] And she talked about being able to use meditation to help deal with pain. And I was like, okay, so started weaning off of it. And in the meantime, I started looking at her videos online and got her books, started meditating at home. My goal was to get rid of the pain by meditating. So I meditated, meditated, meditated.

[00:23:50] Found Shambhala in the Yellow Pages, which don't even exist anymore. A meditation place where I can go and learn. So I found Shambhala, started going there, and developed a very regular practice of meditation every day. What I was learning, or feeling, I was still in pain. By this time, I'm now off the medicine, and I'm still in a lot of pain.

[00:24:10] So I was like, okay, keep meditating, meditating. I'm done. And slowly, but surely, I began to understand, it's not taking the pain away. That's not what meditation is going to take, the pain away. It is going to give you a different relationship to the pain. And it did. It actually did do that because I felt when I had all the pain and I was just like, why, you know, why me?

[00:24:36] Why am I having so much pain and why will nobody help me? And I felt that way. Nobody will help me and I'm on my own. Why can't I get help? I need help. I just felt so alone in it and disbelieved and trivialized. As I began to meditate more and more, I began to separate the pain from me. Like, it's not somebody doing something to me.

[00:24:59] It's not God punishing me. Considering I'm Catholic, there was part of that was in there. I wasn't practicing Catholic at all for years, but that stays with you a long time. Yes, it does. Even though I didn't believe in God at that point, it was still there. This is happening to me for something I did, which I didn't know what it was.

[00:25:17] So then I started challenging those kinds of thoughts. And it seemed like it was happening just to me. Like, why is this happening to me? And I think when you're in a lot of pain, that's a normal thought. But then I was beginning to understand that it's not just happening to me. It's a lot of people.

[00:25:36] Everybody has pain at some point in time. Some people have pain a lot and some people don't. But it's what happens when you're a human being. You get pain. You get sick. And you even die. Everybody gets those things. You know, you're born, you have aging, sickness, and death. That's what the Buddha said. And I was like, Oh, well, that's true.

[00:25:57] Jill: Yeah. 

[00:25:58] David: And when I started studying that stuff, I was like, well, can't deny that stuff. So my relationship with the pain really did start changing a lot. The separation of it from being my fault. If I only was trying harder, I could get rid of it. I meditated more. Now, if I meditated more, I could get rid of it.

[00:26:16] So now I got meditation as a whip. And, but slowly but surely, I came to understand that meditation is not going to heal the pain. It just isn't. And it's okay. That's the way it is. That's my life. And it's a lot of other people's lives. And a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do. And one little exercise Pema Chodron had, that I read about, was she talks about, think about something, whatever issue you're dealing with, think about it, just like me, other people are having the exact same experience, or worse.

[00:26:50] Just like me, people are in the hospital, just like me, and I know a lot of people with congenital heart disease. Just like me, other people have gone through all the stuff I've been through my whole life, with my heart, and it really helped me so much to just, it just decreased that anxiety, like, tremendously.

[00:27:10] So, though I still have pain, it just wasn't as big a deal, if that makes sense, and I wasn't looking for somebody to fix me, which made a big difference. I could relax a little bit, and I didn't see the pain as a bad thing, but it's just part of life. And you can use it as a learning tool. That took about three or four years to understand.

[00:27:32] This isn't going to fix my pain. This isn't going to fix my heart failure. This isn't going to fix anything like that in my life. Because I'm a human being. This is what I was dealt. It pretty much fixed my anxiety. It really is amazing. You know, I get anxious like anybody else now, but I'm not carrying this consistent, ongoing, horrifying anxiety that I carried a lot of my life.

[00:27:56] So now, moving on, I have developed rheumatoid arthritis, and pretty badly, and now I'm on the medications for that. I don't have, now, ongoing Continuous flaring up of it does happen occasionally, but the pain had the damage is there and the pain is pretty bad. So I see a rheumatologist and I came to the point where I realized I kept not being able to do things even more getting more and more short of breath.

[00:28:26] And I was getting anemic and things just kept progressing more and more. I'd say maybe about a year, a little over a year ago, I realized I'm not going to get better. And now, you know, I was turned 70, which is, considering my heart condition, it's unthinkable. To me, when I turned 70, when I was born, my parents said he might live till he's 12.

[00:28:47] Wow. And without the surgeries I had, I wouldn't have lived past 12. I always thought in my life, I'm going to die any minute. And then when I didn't, and I didn't because of the surgeries. And, and I did take care of myself in between those times. I've had two valves changed, like a car, I had two valves and that's kind of what it's like.

[00:29:06] You're like a machine now. 

[00:29:08] Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. In my next episode, I finish my conversation with David Downey, as he shares more about his journey of living with a serious heart condition and facing the reality of nearing the end of his life. We discuss his decision to stop pursuing aggressive treatments.

[00:29:28] Choosing instead to focus on comfort and quality of life through palliative care. David opens up about how meditation helps him manage physical pain and emotional fears, and he reflects on the role of doctors who often struggle when patients can no longer be cured. He also talks about the power of accepting death and how his Buddhist beliefs guide him in the process.

[00:29:51] David's story offers a candid look at life, death, and what it means to face the inevitable grace and awareness. And if you want to hear more about his experience, check out his YouTube channel, which is linked in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting.

[00:30:10] Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free.

[00:30:30] Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution.

[00:30:46] Thank you and I look forward to seeing you In next week's episode of seeing death clearly.