03/14/2024
Ok, ready for this one?
I don't normally post updates strictly about myself. I only mention my personal life as far as it affects the business operation - day job schedule preventing me from getting to the post office,, typically, or a year ago when I was down with Covid for a week or so. This one is different.
Last Wednesday, 3/6, I was at work (deli dept in a supermarket, for those of you that don't know.) As usual, the assistant deli manager (main one was off that day) was giving me another round of nitpicking about how I need to say EXACTLY this or that to customers and how I need to do SPECIFICALLY this or that as I go about my day. 🙄 Basically, they're control freaks who can't deal with the idea that people put their own personalities into how they do their job.
Around 11am, I took my lunch break. As I headed upstairs to the break room, a large amount of phlem/mucus started building up in my nose and throat. Stopped in the bathroom to spit it out/blow my nose. No sooner did I get it out, but it re-accumulated. Then this weird tightness in my chest started - I had trouble breathing. After a few minutes of this not stopping/passing, I decided something wasn't right and I needed to leave. Went down the hall to the store manager on duty, told him what was happening and he said "OK, go." Got out to the car, calmed myself for a couple of minutes and drove home. Took some aspirin when I got home and that helped dissipate the chest pain, but only for a few hours. Took more later that night and I managed to get some sleep.
Thursday morning I felt more or less normal, so I went to work (evening shift, so I had the morning to wake up slowly and take my time getting ready). In talking with a co-worker about it, she said it sounded like an anxiety attack, which she admitted to getting from time to time when the managers come down on her for petty bu****it just like they eventually do with everyone on staff. She suggested a breathing exercise that I should do to help the anxiety pass, which it did, to some extent.
This continued on into Friday (worked in the morning), taking aspirin, doing the breathing exercises, but I was starting to get suspicious as it wasn't completely going away. Saturday - same thing.
Late Saturday night, around midnight, I came to the realization that something bigger was wrong - if this was just anxiety, it should have been gone by now. A friend who has been staying with me took me to the emergency room.
After the typical check-in, standard tests, some doctors coming and going, the diagnosis was clear - I was having my first heart attack.
By maybe 3 or 4AM, I was on my way to the operating room where I had a stent put in to one of the main arteries that connects to the heart - "the widowmaker". They told me later it was cholesterol buildup - 95%.
Spent all day Sunday and Monday in the hospital, they released me Tuesday around noon. Got a half-dozen medications I need to take - some are for the recovery process, others will be long term...blood thinners and such. Going to be away from the day job for at least the next week or two until I get past my first couple of follow-up appointments to see how things are going.
So, how does this affect the business? Luckily, not much. You all know I have a long lead time on orders due to having a day job in the first place, so this shouldn't slow me down much. Being at home all day, needing to relax, means I have all kinds of time to actually work on molding, casting and new parts development. Won't be doing it all day every day, but at least now I have the option of doing it when I feel like it, rather than having to squeeze it in during periods that I wasn't too tired or calculated that I had an hour or two to spare that day.
As far as how my day job is affected by all this, I'll have that discussion with them next week after I see what my status is after my first follow-up visit with the cardiologist. I'm guessing they'll move me to a less stressful department, which relatively speaking, is any other department in the entire store.
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"Can't you feel time gaining on you? It's like a predator - it's stalking you. Oh, you can try and outrun it with doctors, medicines, new technologies, but in the end, time is going to hunt you down and make the kill."
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey...reminds us to cherish every moment...because they'll never come again.
What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."
Soran and Picard, Star Trek: Generations
