Check-In: The Last Few Weeks(Vacation, Illness, And Even A heart Attack)

No, I didn’t have a heart attack.

Let me go back a bit. The last time I checked in I was on vacation, sick with Covid. Yeah, I’ve had some stinkers when it comes to vacations. And honestly I’ve had worse than one where Covid was involved, but it still didn’t make for a great time. The week before where I basically started my vacation early since I was sick wasn’t the best. Damn fever stuck around for three days. Once it broke things got considerably better, but I still was pretty stuffed up. Throw on top of that I gave my dad Covid(his first time!), and then he gave it to my mom. So that was great. They’re both “nearly” over it. Still dealing with that annoying cough but pretty much back to their normal selves.

Despite the unplanned virus visiting I was happy to be home. Work is burning me out and I needed to get the hell out of there. I never looked at days as “one step closer to retirement!”. I never pined to be 65-years old so I can retire. Wishing time would fly by like that really isn’t in my wiring. Don’t get me wrong, I like being older. Once I hit 40 it was like slipping on a pair of shoes and finding absolute peace and comfort, like I’d been wearing pairs that never fit my whole life. Once I became “over the hill” as they say, I thought holy shit this is what they mean by comfortable in your own skin.

My 40s were a great decade, at least for me. Of course there were tough times. Mother-in-law passing, wife working away from home, our bed bug nightmare, and Trump getting elected. But for the most of it it felt like I was really opening my eyes to the world and finally getting to understand me, and balance all the aspects of what made me, me. I felt like I became a better husband, father, and even son to my parents. I stopped obsessing over wanting to be a musician and songwriter, and just enjoyed the act of playing and recording in my own time. My son and I really got into graphic novels, superhero movies, and our shared love of music. I got to watch him get into bands that I loved in high school, and I began taking him to drum lessons in 2019. I just felt that the roots of parenthood and family finally took root for me.

But I never got excited about the thought of being retirement age. That meant that everyone else was that much older; my kids, my dog(RIP), my parents, my brother and my friends. I’m not rushing to the finish line.

My job has gone from an annoyance, a responsibility, and something I just have to do to something slightly menacing. I have 14 more years before I can officially retire and feel like my wife and I will be okay. That feels like a lifetime at 51. The announcement last summer that we were staying open was at first a blessing. But nearly a year later and it feels like a double-edged sword. I’m thankful I can keep working, building up our savings, my retirement, and have health insurance for us and the kids. That’s great in itself. But the demands are getting more outrageous here, and when the upper management act like they didn’t put us through 5 years of Hell by telling us we’d lose our jobs by June of 2024, it feels like a slap in the face with a chainmail glove. It doesn’t make me want to give a shit.

So now I’ve got maybe 14 years left to see what this place has in store for us. I say maybe because, well, I work for a billion dollar corporation and when they said we’d be open for the foreseeable future, that doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy. That just basically means until a new money saving scheme comes up. Maybe I’ll retire here. Maybe they’ll close shop in 5 years. I don’t know.

While my family and personal life are going great, work just feels like a massive black hole waiting to pull me into it’s lightless, cavernous void.

And about that heart attack…

So on Thursday of my vacation week my wife and I decided to get out of the house. We wanted to go up to New Buffalo, MI for some burgers at Redamak’s(great burger joint) and to go look out onto Lake Michigan and get lost in its grey horizon for a bit. The weather was shit, so we didn’t want to go do that in rain and overcast skies. We decided to just head up to Fort Wayne, hit Tequila’s for some great Mexican food for lunch then hit the Botanical Gardens. Just to get out of town and our house. Try and do something other than stay home.

We were finishing lunch when I get a call on my phone. It’s my friend John that I work with. I answer and he tells me he doesn’t feel good and wanted to know if I could come pick him up and take him home. John lives in Fort Wayne. I told him I wasn’t home and asked what didn’t feel good. He said he was throwing up and had the chills and hurt all over. I told him to hang on and I’d call my dad to see if he could pick him up and take him home. My parents think the world of John, like he’s the lost son they never had. I called my dad and he said he could.

We finished our lunch and skipped the botanical gardens and drove to John’s house to wait for them to show up. They arrived and John could barely get out of my dad’s truck. I had to help him up to the house. And once we got in he began shaking he was so cold. I got him on the couch and we put some blankets on him. My wife ran to the pharmacy and picked up a Covid test. We had him take it and it was negative for Covid and Influenza A and B. John was acting like he had food poisoning, vomiting and freezing cold. His wife got home and I filled her in on what was going on. She said they both ate the same thing the night before, so food poisoning seemed unlikely.

We ended up leaving and heading back home. A couple hours later John’s wife called me and said she took him to the ER. He’d had a heart attack. In fact, the docs think he had a heart attack over the previous weekend. So he was taken to another hospital the next morning to their Cardiology Center and last Wednesday he had open heart surgery. Triple bypass. It went as well as it could. He ended up going home this last Sunday evening and he’s doing great.

John will be off work until at least August, depending on how quickly he heals. So I’ll be the Lone Ranger at work until then. Oh well, we’re not super busy at the moment and I did this two years ago when John was off dealing with cancer. If anything, the days should go by quickly.

Seeing John going through all this stuff has definitely made me and my wife open our eyes to our own health and personal choices. We don’t eat bad, and we do exercise, but the consistency sometimes isn’t there. So we’re changing things up and are going to do our best to lock into some healthy habits. Exercising consistently and branching out dinner time to more healthier choices. More veggie only meals and all that jazz. Like I said we eat pretty well. We just need to fine tune when we eat and how much we eat.

That’s it, guys. I think you’re caught up. What I’ve learned is that no matter how bad it may be, it can always be a hell of a lot worse. And no matter how well you think you’re doing, you can always do just a little bit better.

For your health.