Reminders

I have a horrible memory. I *should* put those yellow sticky notes all over everything. But this isn't about those types of reminders, nor the ones where you leave a message on your answering machine reminding you to do something, or tell your wife to remind you to do something.

I got the biggest reminder you can imagine over the last 2 days. The reminder that we're all mortal beings with finite amounts of time on this earth, and that in fact, no, we are not invincible. That day put the fear of God back into me. That's for sure.

It was just an ordinary day at work, and I was stressing about trying to get taxes done given that it was the 14th. I was staring at my computer screen, and all of a sudden, my vision started to get blurry. I didn't think much of it, because it's happened before and gone away on its own. Today it didn't. Instead, my right hand started to get numb. Then that hand came back, and my other hand went numb. What the heck was going on. Then it got really scary. I was having labored breathing. At that point it really started to get serious because I knew something really bad was wrong. I rushed down to Lake Norman Regional Hospital, and by the time I pulled up to the front door, I'd lost a bunch of motor skills, though luckily still able to walk. It's a miracle I made it there driving. They put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me back to their ER immediately seeing that I was having trouble breathing. I must say Lake Norman Regional Hospital did a wonderful job. I had 4 people all over me as soon as I walked through the door. They gave me a bunch of potassium which was low, and ran a full gambit of tests.

My breathing slowly returned to normal, and there was more blood drawn and more tests. I got a CT and MRI. I saw the neurologist the next thing Thursday morning, and he told me both the CT and MRI looked clean. Instead of something like a brain tumor or a stroke (thank God!), he told me I had, had a "complex migraine". See, a "classic migraine" by itself is bad enough, and typically amounts to a really, really bad headache. The "complex migraine" doesn't want the body to feel left out. So, like I did, you can lose vision, the ability to speak coherently, motor skills, and other kooky stuff.

The one good thing about the complex migraine is that you can see them coming on hours ahead of time, and typically prevent them going beyond a headache and a little blurry vision. Another good thing is this is only the 2nd time in my life I've experienced anything beyond blurry vision, so they are extremely rare (and I hope they stay that way!)

I have to admit during the worst parts of this whole experience, there was about 30 minutes there where I really thought, "This is it." While that's about the most terrified I've been in, well, I guess my whole life, I think coming out on the other side of something like that is a true eye opening experience.

I've vowed to change many of the negative aspects in my life. I used to have an occasional cigar, those are pretty much gone. I used to take adderral for A.D.D., I'm getting rid of that because it would mess with my heart and might have helped cause this whole fiasco. I'm going to focus on eating better (well, at least most of the time - I can't give up pizza after all!) I'm going to try to cut back on drinking. I plan on trying to treat people in general better, and spend more time with the friends and family I care the most about without worrying about the petty stuff. I'm going to start focusing on the juice in life, and stop wasting time. You never know when your time's up, and when mine is, I want to look back and say, "I had a great life". I encourage everyone else out there to do the same.

A big thanks to my family & definitely my wife for being a rock throughout this ordeal. Love you guys!

Hoser couldn't wait for me to come home!