hEaLiNg HaNDS

     Something I love doing more than pretty much anything is singing. I love music! It’s magical. Music has powers that can’t be found anywhere else. Music can bring you to the verge of tears, or the edge of rapture. I’m one of those people you see/hear as you drive around that is singing at the top of their lungs. Windows up or down. Songs from male singers or female. I love music! I’m sure that there will be more entries regarding music, but in reality, this one has almost nothing to do with music, and yet, it does. Confused?

     Back in 1998 I had started a new position at work. I had taken what would become the first of my sales routes. This one covered Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas, as well as south eastern Utah. I had been doing it for a few months. I liked it well enough. I was gone for 10-11 days at a time. This was before I was married and I really loved being out driving around. (I guess some things just never change) Anyway, I started having odd pains in my chest and abdomen. At first I chalked it up to my new lifestyle of sitting for long periods of time and greasy foods, but as time went on it got worse and worse.  Eventually I went to the doctor to find out what was going on. By now Ann and I were engaged. The doctors couldn’t seem to figure out what was going on. At first the thought it was probably my gal bladder, though that was quickly ruled out. Then strange growths we seen on my lungs.  I was terrified that it might be cancer, but after a couple of weeks the growths had doubled in size. The doctor told me that that was actually good news. WHAT? He said that it was growing far to fast to be cancer. That was good news. So what is it? Well, that part they still didn’t know. Test after test were run and everything came back negative. Meanwhile I was feeling worse and worse. I’d gone in for a biopsy on one lung and still nothing. Eventually it was determined that the doctors were going to have to go in and actually cut a piece or two of whatever it was off my lungs and have a better look. The day came and I went under the knife. They had to deflate my left lung to do what they needed. When the surgery was completed I was in the ICU for a day or two. I remember being told that my friend Justin had called or come to visit, but because I was in the ICU I didn’t get to see or talk to him. I was eventually moved to a regular room where I spent a little over a week. Ann and my family would come to visit. Crazy thing was that the doctors still didn’t know what the heck was growing in there. I actually started planning my funeral at one point. Morbid I know, but what else was I going to do all day in the hospital bed?

     I was finally release to go home, but my lung capacity was still not good so I was hooked up to oxygen. (My friends told me later that they thought they would be attending my funeral as well.) Then all of a sudden the things started shrinking in size! What the heck?! The main doctor told me that he was pretty sure it was Coccidioidomycosis, though tests were still coming up negative. (by the way, they never did figure out what it was. How crazy is that?) I was on oxygen for a little over a month. I had exercises to strengthen my lungs and I did them. I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t hold a note because I didn’t have the lung capacity. I was getting better though. Then one day I was driving up the street and I had a CD playing (of course) and a song began playing. This song was already a favorite of mine, but it was about to jump even higher on the list. I tentatively started singing and I wasn’t running out of breath. I was doing it. I was singing again! I raised my voice even louder as the song progressed. When the song finished, I had sung every word. I actually had to pull over I was so excited. It was the moment where I knew I was going to be fine. I could sing. My lungs were strong. To this day, “Healing Hands” by Elton John will cheer me up better than almost any song. See, totally not about music, and yet totally about music.

i kNow TherE's a JOKe in thErE SomewheRE

     I have decided that going on the road in November is something I may try to avoid as much as possible in the future.

     I wrote a little while ago about what happened to me last year right before Thanksgiving, well though not as bad in most ways, I had another crappy November business trip.

     This year I was doing my new truck stop route for work which I started back in January. It’s a big route that takes me across northern Nevada, down to central California, up through Oregon to Tacoma, Wa. then over to Spokane, Wa., down to Boise, Idado and then across I-84 to home. It takes me two weeks to complete. I love being out, but I really hate being away. (If you think those are the same things, you’re sorely mistaken.) 

     I had a new location to set up this trip and wanted to make sure I had plenty of time, so I’d done a couple of late nights and early mornings. I was running about 1 stop ahead of schedule. That may not seem like much, but moving one location up early in the trip can actually shave off a whole day by the end of the trip.  I was feeling very good and enjoying my favorite things to listen to while driving. Podcasts. (See my last post) I was just entering Oregon at about mile marker 6 when I felt a jolt and the car just stopped working. Some things worked, some didn’t. Luckily my brakes were among the working because I was coming down a pretty big hill. Really I had just come over a small mountain pass so the roads were not only steep, but curvey as well. The POWER part of my breaks was gone, but I was still able to stop without incident. (phew) I got out of the car and began to look it over. Everything seemed in place to my EXTREMELY untrained eye. I got back in and tried to start it up again, but all I got was a sound I had never heard before and it wouldn’t even turn over. To make matters worse, it was starting to snow. (wonderful)  I had no idea what to do. I didn’t want to call a tow truck just yet. I guess I was hoping that some Good Samaritan would stop and be able to say, “Oh just do this.” and get my car going again. I have to say that I got pretty peeved when not one, but TWO police drove right by me without even slowing down. (Must have been in a hurry to set up a speed trap or something.) I really didn’t even know which town I was closest to so I could start looking for a tow truck. Finally a Hwy Patrol stopped, but all she could do was tell me that Ashland, OR was 6 miles away. I found a towing company with my phone (ahh technology) and finally got towed into town. Once there the mechanic did some checking and told me that he was almost positive what had happened. Apparently my timing belt had slipped (or whatever it is that they do which is bad) and that most likely caused even more damage. He said that to just do what he needed to do to make sure would cost $2000 just in labor cost and then parts would be even more. I guess that at this point I should mention that we had just paid off this car ONE WEEK before and I’d put new back tires on it just 5 days earlier. It turns out that the car isn’t even worth $2000, although it was worth far more to me. You see, this was the very first car in my life that I had paid off completely.  All the other ones had been traded in (or totaled last November) before being paid off. After weighing all the options (of which there really weren’t a lot) I started making calls to try and sell my newly paid off car. I found a company who offered me a good price so, just like that, I had a buyer.

   Of course now I still had the problem of being in the middle of my route with no car. I looked into renting one, but a one way rental would have cost more than I just got for the car. My company then said they would use air points to fly me home and then I could get a car and drive back. (That was very nice of them.) So Saturday morning (Nov 5) I flew home and spent the rest of the day with my family which was a nice break. I then borrowed my mother-in-law’s car (she doesn’t drive so it was readily available) and on Sunday I drove the 18 hours back to where I was. Monday morning we finalized the deal on my old car and I was off. Leaving the old car behind was pretty emotional because that car is more my office than my space at our home office. I’ve driven that car to and through 11 western states and it’s always been good to me. I know its quirks and such. It was almost like a friend. In less than a year, BOTH of our cars were gone while I was using them on road trips.

   Anyway, now instead of being ahead of the game I was 2 days behind schedule. No way to really make it up, but there’s a part of me that says, “We can do this. Drive and work fast and we’ll make up the time.” (totally NOT possible by the way)  Well, I got to my first store and took care of things there and headed out. Things could only get better now, right?

I wasn’t 30 miles away when I got the flat.

Friends I've Never Met

     I think the internet is a wonderful thing. It’s made the world a much smaller place. It’s made it possible to make friends you never would have otherwise.  Let me give you a couple of examples. Once, while in the hotel in one of my many visits to Las Vegas, I was surfing for geeky related things and I found something called micro heroes.  These were small gif files of superheroes with heads too large for their bodies.  I was enthralled. These things seemed easy enough for me to make and there were entire web sights dedicated to these little guys. I’m a very visual person. I love looking and things and designing things and Micro Heroes gave me an outlet for both. I started making my own and “collecting” (a real habit of mine) ones that others had made.  It was then that I discovered that there was a group of people, a club if you will, who shared their creations with each other. I signed up for my first internet “group.” I would receive emails from Robert, Kat, Matthew, and a whole slew of others who were just as geeky as me and who just wanted to show off their latest Micro. We talked to each other through these emails and told each other how cool their latest work was. It was nice to have “friends” who were interested in similar things. On one trip to Phoenix I actually got together with Robert for lunch. I remember a coworker marveling that I would just go to lunch with a complete stranger. I told him that it wasn’t really a complete stranger. After all, we’ve shared Micro Heroes and we both liked comics. He still had trouble grasping.

     Anyway, that was my first foray into an online community of any kind, but it wouldn’t be my last. Set the time machine forward a few years and my wife bought me an MP3 player for Father’s day or our Anniversary (I forget which it was) and within a few weeks I had discovered these things called podcasts. I could find programs on the internet that talked about comic books??? That was crazy! I remember the first one I downloaded was a podcast called Raging Bullets. All DC comics! I was hooked. The hosts would talk about DC Comics, but the also talked about being part of the Comic Geek Speak (CGS) forums.  I had never joined any kind of online forums before and wasn’t sure what to expect. I started listening to CGS as well and they often spoke about their forum members like they were friends. I took the plunge and joined. I was very much a “lurker” for the first little bit.  The first thing I noticed was that a lot of the people there all had odd names. There were people like Peter, Bryan, Paul,and Shane, but there was also Dr Norge, Rainbow Cloak, and Filthy McMonkey and many, many others. I’ve done my share of chatting via AOL and Messenger so I was familiar with screen names. I picked the one I always use and finally started interacting. I started becoming familiar with the personalities behind the names. Little by little and bit by bit, these strangers became acquaintances and then friends. We discussed not only comics, but politics, family triumphs and tragedies, or the latest movie or TV show. We even have a yearly “Secret Santa” which is just a fantasticly fun thing every Christmas season.  We feel so much like friends and family that I felt and feel like I would be totally at home meeting them in real life. I actually would like nothing better than to meet Sean, Darren, or Scott. (Norge, Cloak, and McMonkey)  These are people from all over the globe and from many different walks of life. People I know I never would have met otherwise. And the internet brought us together.  One in particular has become one of my very best friends in the world. And we have never met.