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Black Hats and White Capes! #12
 

Welcome Hero!

Welcome to the twelfth of Black Hats and White Capes!

So... let's talk about the elephant in the room.  My heart attack.

I was at the restaurant, and for once I wasn't in the kitchen cooking.  Rather, I was out on the hotline, dishing out food.  (We're a cafeteria-service restaurant... if you've ever been to a Morrison's, you know what that is...)  In the middle of handing someone a cheeseburger or something, I suddenly found myself out of breath.  It ended quickly, so I thought nothing of it, but Debbie Welles (the prep chef who was assisting me), looks concerned.  "Jack, are you okay?  You're pale... like almost gray pale."  I waved her off and went about my business.  Two minutes later, only two minutes later, I mumble something to her about being right back, stumble into the kitchen, and collapse against a wall.

My chest at this point is hurting in a way I've never felt, my extremities are numb, and my vision went all tubular.  (You know, as in "It looks like I'm seeing everything through a...").  And all I can hear is Esperanza Varga, one of the bussers/dishwashers, screaming about "Oh my God Jack, he is dying someone help!" at the top of her lungs in that odd accent of hers that is one part Portuguese and one part Italian and all parts confusing if you're not used to it.

I have no idea how I ended up in the restaurant's office, but have been told since then that the grill chef on duty, Ramiro Asuega, literally picked me up and carried me there.  Ramiro's a big guy, I should point out.  No, wait... I'm a big guy, Ramiro is huge.  Like pro-wrestler huge.  Anyway, so by the time my chest lets up and I'm paying attention to the world around me, the paramedics have already arrived, I've got an oxygen tube in my nose, and I'm being limbered up onto a gurney.

During the next several days hospital stay, the doctor's determined that my heart attack wasn't caused by heart disease, or hypertension, or any of the other usual suspects.  Indeed, I got off lucky in that my heart, itself, suffered no lasting damage because of the attack, and that my cholesterol levels at least was fine.  My blood sugar, on the other hand, had spiked to levels where it was lucky I hadn't passed into a coma.  Instead of a coma, my body decided to simply pull the emergency brake and shut me down temporarily.

It seems my old diabetes medicine has stopped being effective, and I, not knowing, continued to take it.  My blood sugar levels kept climbing and climbing and climbing, artificially boosting my blood pressure levels to a point that my heart just couldn't pump the juice through the valves anymore.

I'm now on some new drugs, and a really interesting new diet that's already lost me 16 pounds.  I'm beginning a light exercise regimen, and am feeling better than I have in a long time.

And at work, they treat me like I'm made of spun glass.  Its a pain in the ass.

 

In this exciting issue of Black Hats And White Capes!

In addition, the Butlerverse Tmeline is being continually updated.

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Black Hats White Capes #11