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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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