Prelude To Recovery

This first chapter will cover the last year or so to give you an understanding of the recent time before my Heart Attack.

After moving to Atlanta for what was to be the Summer of 1998 at most, I began looking for a position in the flourishing economy. Finding myself still there in August, it was time to get more serious about staying. Following a few close calls in the next few months, a position selling web services was started by me on November 17th, 1998.

Physically, there was deterioration from my peak conditioning of only two years earlier when gymnastics was practiced. That experience culminated in my sub-second handstand on the rings in a gym in Pittsburgh, PA. My chest had expanded to a dramatic condition and my waist had shrunk to 30". It felt great then although there is recognition of some subtle early warning signs of the trouble that would be faced just three and a half years later in Atlanta.

So in late 1998, at 46 years of age and physically just a few years off peak, this guy started a new job selling web sites to small businesses primarily in Cobb County, Georgia. My initial prospecting (cold calling door to door 100 times a day as required) found me out of breath sooner than usual and for the first time in my life coming to grips with a new and changing landscape from which to view the world. There was a sense of getting older precisely at a time when my competitors seemed to be getting younger. Most web site folks seemed like kids to me, barely out of high school. Nonetheless, with my usual enthusiasm and focused work ethic for what was defined to me as as an opportunity of the ages, work began. After a sustained effort of the last quarter of 1998 and early first quarter of 1999, things began to pay off. While it's reasonable to expect it to take 90 days for a good salesman to develop a new territory,  given the adjustment for the Christmas Holiday, I was right on track.

Or was I. Simultaneous with this new effort, things were slipping. Eating poorly (fast and fatty foods, sweets, irregular eating hours, between meal snacks), drinking a little more beer, exercising less (push-ups maybe only once a week or so) and to seek additional relief from the enormous stress of the environment at work, smoking was creeping into my life. Not smoking more than a pack a week, if that much; but smoking nonetheless. Only in the evening, but some weeks half the pack was easily gone in one evening. My waist had swollen to 34+ inches and my chest while not deflated was not near what it had been only two years before.

That trend leveled off  but continued until one Friday evening in late February, 2000.  A little more than a year later than November, 1998 found me helping a good friend install a new printer in his office. We were working after hours and each had a couple beers and some cigarettes and after about four frustrating hours, we finished the installation and left for home.

Atlanta traffic always throws some curves but that night, things seemed particularly on edge. Not far from my house, something happened to me that would change my life forever.