One Over X News

Every Day's a Great Day

Today my store received a visit from the Regional Manager, my boss's boss. Needless for me to say, my boss has been acting like the proverbial hen sitting on a hot rock for the past few days. It is not that the store was a mess but just there were some projects that we needed to completed andeverything else needed to be fine tuned. Even so, a Regional manager will find a few things that need focus. The RM likes our store and the visits are constructive and beneficial to growing the business.

The previous RM was very different. I had the distinct feeling that he would have preferred the company not having a store in Melbourne or at least it belonging to another RM - which is probably why he gave the store up to the new RM when the company split the state of Florida into two regions. It always seemed like a great inconvenience for him to come to our store. He was inconsistent too. That drives me nuts in a superior. I can deal with a hard ass as long as they are an unwavering hard ass and the standards and rules that govern their behavior never change.

I state this on his behalf, though. He was managing nearly 20 stores between Florida and Puerto Rico so he didn't have the opportunity to come to Melbourne that often. It was just as well that he stayed away.

Melbourne is a small store with some unique challenges. The space coast has perhaps the most unusual demographic. On the one hand it boasts the largest concentration of serious geek types in the nation except for possibly Silicon Valley in California. Add to that the native Floridians (yes there are a few still here), the assorted rednecks (crackers or whatever you perfer), African, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Jamaican, Dominican, Mexican, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, the transplanted Yankees from the northeast and midwest who have moved here permanently in retirement, the 'snowbirds' who winter in Florida and those like myself that have to raise a family here and this seemed as good a place as any to accomplish that.

So my store will sell a rather weird assortment of high tech products, quite the contrary of what those in the ivory tower at corporate might think.

Anyway the walk of the store and our meeting with the RM went very well and we all felt like we have been given some direction to improve upon what we were doing to be more successful.

Despite all the positive things that happened at work I have a lot of negatives going on in my life. In the past the negatives have very often driven me to rise to the occasion and triumph. Lately the challenges are just bringing me down. I'm afraid to start writing another book. The last time I felt anywhere near this this way it was after I had moved into my apartment in Wallingford, CT and Jina had moved the children here to the Melbourne, FL area. I was writing the material that eventually became Book 5- "And We All Fall Down".

When it came time to go through that material and assemble it into a book, I glossed over much of it. I did not want to revisit and rehash what I was going through in my personal life when I wrote it. I worried that it was dark and all sorts of evil things lurked hidden within the words. More so than anything I had ever written, I dreaded even reading it.

It is funny, when I was editing all the books in the series that yet remain to be published I purposely avoided Book 5. I even came up with a pretty good reason to leapfrog over it. I knew that Book 6 needed an ending and so I skipped from Book 4 - "Sunglass Syndrome" directly to Book 6 - "Sages and Lesser Fools" and wrote the last third of it and even experimented with different endings. The one that I decided upon kind of necessitated the creation of the second series.

When I told my publisher that I needed to write another three or so books to finish things off he laughed. He has been telling me for years that I have trouble writing endings.

I even started to write Book 7 - "Small Change" that is a part of the second series before I went back into Book 5 to edit and revise it. When I did I was astonished. Not only was it pretty good as far as plot but it is remarkably sensitive to the human element of the plights of the characters.

Another reason that I am down is that I have been wrestling with mortality a lot lately. Friends and people that I felt were personally important to me have been passing away, a few of them were near my age. May 5th of this year will be the 10th anniversary of the first seven times that I died. Yeah, I know may need to explain that one again. I mentioned it in a previous rant about health insurance. If you haven't read that one I'll explain briefly a little later.

You see the conditions of my illness almost ten years ago were somewhat unusual. I am relatively certain that I would have died had it not been for Jina and her stubborn insistance that I go see my doctor. I hate doctors. Doctors tell you bad things about your body that you don't want to hear.

My doctor happened to be a cardiologist. I had a heart murmur that he was monitoring, a condition that had been identified while I was in the Air Force. I was barred from becoming an officer because of my heart murmur. I was barred from flight duty. Even though I hate flying, I felt useless on the ground. I left the service.

In April 1995, my son and I went to Florida to visit my father and mother. It was my mother's birthday. She had Alzheimers and was a danger to herself. Even though she had lived in trepidation of the eventuality it was best for her to go to a nursing home where she could be monitored. Dad went over to the home everyday and stayed with her as much as he could and fed her and talked to her. My son and I went to visit her.

Dad had Parkinson's even then although it had yet to be diagnosed.

My son and I did the tourist thing while we were in Florida. If he was going to miss some school we were going to at least make it worthwhile. We went to Disney MGM Studios and Universal Studios.

It is funny that we lived in Florida for many years but the kids were really too youing to do the parks. Only after we were in Connecticut did we ever go to Disney, Universal and Sea World. When we lived in Florida in the late 1980's we had taken the kids to Bush Gardens in Tampa and Weekee Wachee/Buccaneer Bay in Hernando County a few times.

The only other things that we did while we were in Florida was go to the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs and the Fred Howard Park near Tarpon Springs, which had one of the nicest beaches in the Tampa Bay area.

Somewhere along the way I did something that introduced a couple of bacteria into my blood stream, one a staph infection and the other a strep infection. It is surmised that it came through a small cut on my foot. I have no idea how it happened because I never noticed even having a small cut.

Five days after I returned home to Connecticut from Florida, on a Friday night I felt kinda tired, more so than usual. I mentioned it to my general manager and he told me to get a good night's sleep. I had areas on my hands that felt as if I had slinters under my skin. As I worked in a home improvments store it was pretty likely that I had picked up splinters so I thought nothing of it, just wanted to get them, out.

I heated the end of a pin with a cigarette lighter (I used to smoke back then) and dug into my skin for the errant splinter.

The next day I was very tired, almost physically exhausted even when I woke up. I didn't know that I was running a low grade fever. I had to work a middle shift so I was not really critical to store staffing. Whenever I worked the middle shift I was in charge of walking the floor and making sure people were taking care of customers and not taking care of personal things or socializing in general.

Maureen was the Assistant Manager that had opened the store that day. She was someone that I had hired as a cashier years before and had mentored through being an assisatnt head cashier, head cashier, department supervisor and finally some time shortly after I had moved on to another store she was promoted to Assistant Store Manager. Maureen was the best.

The general manager and I came in around 8 am then around noon the two closing managers came in. Aroung 11 AM I was feeling so bad that I could not really focus on anything at all. I was watching the front-end of the store at the time and I actually paged Maureen upto the front because I was having trouble standing up. She looked at me and said that I looked pale. I think her exact words were more along the lines of 'death warmed over'. She felt my forehead and as a mother herself she confirmed that I had a fever. She paged the general manager and told him that I was very sick and she was sending me home which he had not problem with.

The drive home was interesting. I had a problem that I needed to fix on my computer and I felt strong enough to stop at Staples and get some blank floppies that I needed to work the issue. As sick as I was I was that big a geek.

By the time that I got home, I could barely walk. I told Jina that I was going to go lie down for a while. That was when everything went haywire in my life.

Before that even if I was spending an inordinate amount of time at work, I was special dad. Bills were paid. We lived in an incredible home and we looked forward to retiring comfortably. Jina had a karate school that was fledgling but it was beginning to get some customers. Everything seemed to be on course in my life at that time. Beneath the surface things were quite different but I was oblivious to the reality.

Sven so, I knew that things were not entirely as they seemed. My income had never always kept pace with the expenses. Still, I loved Jina and I really believe - based on what she did for me in the following weeks - that she still loved me. There were problems in paradise that only escalated and were exacerbated by the illness that befell me and the financial fiasco that ensued.

I could tell you that I was unconscious for two days and that I remember nothing from that time. That might even satisfy you completely. It would not be true. I had delusions that to this very day I remember vividly. I have no idea where they came from but they were connected with me and I felt that I had some reason for perceiving them. I was engaged in a war on some level that I barely understood. There were dark creatures with thick black leathery wings that persisted in their attacking me and my friends. Some of my friends were a sort of fortified human, while others were large cats with human attributes. Others were Wolves or Dogs with the ability to stand on their hind legs and brandish weapons. There were even friends that were strange combinations of Wolf, Cat and human.

Having since purused my notes from as far back as college I know the source of the creatures and I suspect that the elevated fevor that was above 103 for a long time had brought the delusions of my creative mind to the forefront in a way that lingers as too real to ever forget.

For two days I lay in a pool of sweat and teetering on the brink of a coma, lapsing in and out of a dreamstate that was somehow connecting to the events of a world unlike any that I had ever encountered except in the course of my writing. Even so things were happening that I had never written about or even imagined. I was embroiled in a battle between good and evil. I had worked out some of the parameters of a fantasy world in some of my journals but I had never written anything about a besieged city, only about the ruins of a city that Andy Hunter happened upon.

My overall take on all this is that I had all this going on in my head and the fever just served to bring portions of it together for me so that I could assemble it into a sensible mix that would have evolved into the books regardless. That is probably the official line of crap That I will swear to going forward. All the while I was certain that I was there.

I barely survived those two days. I was physically there and certain of what I was sensing in a way that I cannot deny. If the illness made me insane for that time well maybe I can be excused but I tell you that I affected change in that fantastic environment and it all seemed very rational, purpose driven and real.

When Jina had convinced me to see my doctor I went in for tests on a Monday. I was so weak that they had to bring a wheel chair down to the van for me to use to get to the doctor's office. They drew blood, did an EKG and did x-rays. Afterwards they sent us home. On Tuesday morning, my doctor called my wife and told her to take me to the hospital and meet him there.

I had no idea what was going on. He had given me som antibiotics that I had taken and I was actually feeling a little better because my fever was down. I had more energy anyway. In my momentary hubris I thought that I was well on my way to recovery.

Then the realization set in. We were sent to admitting and they were ready for me to appear and assign me a room. The admissions clerk told me, "Mr. Williams. You are a very sick man. You need our help."

For about two weeks I lived in the hospital. I was one of the ambulatory patients. I could walk to where I needed to be and I could take a daily shower. My fever was in check, albeit mysteriously holding between 100 and 102. I was on antibiotic therapy but I was healthy otherwise. Imagine that someone can be accustomed to having a body temperature of 100 to 102 degrees.

Within the first few days of my 'incarceration' in the hospital, an immunologist stopped by to explain bacterial infections in the blood and the treatments. He was the first person that warned me that since I had a heart murmur that I would be very lucky if I did not need a heart valve replacement after my ordeal.

After about two weeks of antibacterial IV treatment I was responding very well. My temperature was around 99 degrees and thus far every test was signalling that there was no damage to my mitral valve. If my condition continued to improve for another couple of days I was promised that I could go back home. As an unauthorized celebration my district social director smuggled in a pizza for me to share with him and a couple of people from my store that wanted to deliver a huge get well card.

You have to realize that the only thing to watch on TV at that time was the OJ trial or the news coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing. The impromptu pizza party was welcomed and raised my morale. They also delivered all sorts of computer magazines for me to read.

When the next week came around I persisted that I was normal and wanted to be released. My cardiologist was concerned that my temperature was still above 99 and at night rose to 100. He wanted to monitor me further I forced the issue with an I want to go home. Hospitals are for the sick and people die in hospitals.

"Let me do another test but you have to go to Hartford for it. If that comes out clean, fine you can go home."

What he sent me to Hartford Hospital for was a scan of the interior chest from within the esophagus. Imagine having an apparatus that is about two inches thick forced down your throat almost to your stomach. Yes they numbed my throat to suspend the gag reflex but even so it was an awful experience. I could barely breathe.

All the time I had foreigners looking at me, the scopes and monitors connected to me while commenting to one another in non-English languages. One I recognized as Russian from my military training.

Finally a staff doctor showed up, a surgeon in fact. To me he looked far too young, like Dougy Houser. He looked at my chart, my scans and commented to the others briefly before he looked at me and said, "I am having you admitted here. You will need surgery. I want to run some more tests so we can fix everything at once if necessary but you will need surgery to fix your major problem."

I had expected to receive the seal of approval to depart. I felt fine, absolutely fine. But all of a sudden a doctor is finally explaining my condition in terms that clearly settle with some gravity around me. I need open heart surgery.

I was admited given a room and scheduled for surgery on May 3, my dead brother Baris's birthday.

One of the people that worked for me was an ordained minister and one of the most positive people I had ever met. Even though I was not fervent in the faith he was there at my bedside to offer a prayer for me in the wee hours of the morning before I went under the knife. I remember telling him that we are all already where we need to be. In response I drew a frown of consternation. I then looked him in the eye and said, "I think I will be around for a while longer."

When the execution was complete, 'Brent' and 'Elgon' were still alive. The issue was that he might not have been as fully qualified as if he had played the game. Even so he was alive. He had survived death but was alive.

It was only after I had to access the medical records for proving to the health insurance that such procedures as jump-starting my heart seven times was medicially necessary that I learned that I had died. clinically not once but 7 times.

It still leaves me speechless that the health insurance company felt that that was an unnecessary procedure. Hmmmm, they would have preferred that I died. It would have cost them less money in the long run, I suppose.

E

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posted by Unknown @ 10:44 PM