Day + 104

Saturday has come and gone and all I can say is the service for Van and following events were just perfect. It was a true reflection of the life he lived and the impact Van had on the people he touched. For those of you who couldn't attend the funeral service, let me try to paint a quick picture for you. The church, which was no small church, had a capacity of roughly 200 people sitting. In addition to those 200 seats, they added folding chairs, put seating up on the stage by the altar, opened up the choir seating and then allowed people to stand in any open spot they could find. The service started at 2:00pm and the church with all of the seating and standing room I just described was full at 1:45. While the church was at full capacity on the inside, there was a line of about 100 yards long on the outside of 3 people wide still waiting to get in. On the sidewalk leading up the church you could still see people filing in from wherever they parked which was probably miles away somewhere. I guess what I am trying to say is a lot of people showed up to pay their respects to Van. It was the ultimate testament to show how much of an impact Van had on the lives he touched. If you knew him for a day, a week, a month, a year or if you were luckily enough to have known him for many years, you were his friend…and his friends showed up. The service commenced with about 150 people standing outside the church by the open windows so they could hear what was being said. The party afterwards was quite a time and badly needed by all. I’d like to thank Cindy and the rest of Van’s family for having us there. Evey and I were so happy to be able to be a part of that so thank you very much.

On the medical side I hit a bit of a speed bump early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, speed bumps in my situation could turn out to be a very bad thing so it got kind of scary. I must have picked up something from food in the prior few days leading up to Sunday because what I experienced that morning I never want to go through again. I was awake at 2:00am Sunday morning with the worst abdominal pain I have ever felt and just could not get rid of it. As you could image, every thing that goes along with that came, but normally those things ease the pain. Not in this case. After writhing around in agony until about 7am, I woke up Evey and had her rush me to the ER…an hour away in San Diego. I just couldn’t take the pain anymore and I started to get scared. Well, as luck would have it, the ER was full of people. It must have been quite a sight for those poor people in the ER waiting room to see me sitting there in a wheelchair doubled over in agony begging for some sort of pain relief. Luckily I got pushed up in line due to my AML but it took a good hour to finally make the pain go away. I think the doctor had to administer 4 doses of pain killers to finally give me some relief which pretty much meant knocking me out. Then I woke up and the pain was still there, so he would hit me again and out I would go. That went on until about 5pm or so on Sunday when I finally got comfortable. They took x-rays, did a catscan, drew every kind of blood culture you could imagine and took the typical samples. We’re still waiting for some of the results but what really scared them was the fact that I spiked a fever. In the situation I am in you can’t risk anything when it comes to fevers, infections, etc so they instantly admitted me. I was feeling better at that point but I knew it was a good idea to stay the night there so I didn’t put up a fight. I just felt bad for Evey and my Dad for having to watch the Superbowl from the damn hospital. At least Evey got to have some more of that hospital food she loves so much. I just don’t get it, but I love it. We had a great Superbowl Sunday planned as well. Beers and Brats with family and friends over at my Uncle Hans’ house. Well that all came to a crashing halt. Sorry Evey and Dad, but thanks for being there with me. I woke up Monday morning feeling pretty good but obviously really weak as well. But I’ll tell you this, nothing was going to keep me in that hospital for another night. From the minute I woke up I was on the doctors and nurses about discharging me. They didn’t seem too high on it at first but as the day went on and I showed no signs of fever, things got easier and they kicked me out of there at about 6pm.

So there you have it…my day + 101 speed bump. I’m home now and things are getting back to normal, but it was a healthy reminder for me that I am in the thick of things with this battle. Yes, this was an extraordinary week with the stress of everything that happened, the number of people I came in contact with, the hand shakes, the tears, food, my body just completely worn down, whatever it may have been that caused this. It doesn’t really matter because when it comes to my immune system, something like this could come from anywhere. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I were alone. Can you say ambulance ride? I’m not going to beat myself up over this for being careless because I do believe that based on this weeks circumstances this was unavoidable. But again, it’s a good healthy reminder that I still have a very long way to go before I can get out there like you lucky folks and not have to worry about this stuff. What a great day that will be when it comes, and it will come.

So as you can see it has been a hell of a week. I keep shaking my head saying how could things get any worse. Things have to turn around and start to get better sometime. But you can’t do that. This is life and all you can do is deal with it the best you can. No doubt this will go down in my history as one of the worst weeks of my life, and I can already look back and say I could have handled things differently, but no sense in that. My mindset right now is simply, this is life, deal with it as best you can, be optimistic that things WILL get better and learn from the things you could have done differently. Easier said than done would be the best thing I could say to close out this message. Thanks for reading everyone and take care.