My blog entry tonight is not a lighthearted rant about the weather, or hockey or my ridiculous career choice. No humorous pictures, or other set dressing for this one.
It is exactly what the title implies: a dose of reality.
Tonight my friend James is lying in the ICU of a Tulsa hospital after suffering a stroke last night at about 11:30pm. He had a blood pressure of 210/137 when he was transported to the emergency room and he has spent the day heavily sedated and on a ventilator. He is alive, and stable, but by no means out of the woods.
Still, he was lucky for a few things. I am not a religious man, but in spite of all the uncertainty there were a few miracles that hopefully will work in James favor. Most notably, that this occurred and not while he was at the wheel of the bobtail truck he drives at his job. Moreover, he was not home by himself.
I gave a lot of credit to his wife Julie who was at home, which is no small miracle in and of itself because her job rarely sees here home before midnight. She got James to the hospital within the golden hour that is critical to a stroke victim's survival. That along with my friends youth tips the scale toward his recovery. Still, seeing my best friend lying in a bed in the hospital, with tubes in his arm and in his mouth and under heavy sedation was a sobering one indeed. True enough, I had my own time staring eye-to-eye with my own mortality a few years ago with my infection, but I was the lucky one...I only came away minus a limb and a life sentence with diabetes.
Poor James is facing so much more than that, and that scares the shit out of me.
It all makes me remember when my dad was informed that one of his friends from when he was a bigwig in the recreational soccer club had passed away. My dad was always the stiff upper lip type but that hit home with him. It bothered him that he had lost a good friend, sure but he got the same dose of reality I am struggling with now, adn that is that I am not going to live forever and that the smallest enemy can bring you down to reality in an instant.
As I write this I am thankful that he is alive, and hopeful for his recovery. That's all I can do. I am honored to be James' friend.
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