Today is our 20th Celebrate Life Day. Thats something some people do who have had a near fatal brain insult. 20 years ago, this morning, these was a series of fabulous incidents. The general manager of Richmond Mitsubishi loaned me a just off the dock, first in Richmond, 1994 3000GT VR4. After nearly 5 years of battling with the IRS over taxes never owed, I got a refund check. We were days away from a two week New York City to Boston trade show/seminar tour. The move out of the Richmond studio was going well. And, then I came through the back door of the studio and the 40 wide by 155 deep building with 14 tall ceilings appeared very skewed and wobbling all over the place. A steel beam had fallen on my head. Janet called 911 and they got me to MCV (now VCU) where even their brilliant team gave me a less than 25% chance of survival. 20 years later, the funniest stuff is at the forefront of my mind: 1.) After two surgeries and forty-some hours I opened my eyes and theres Janet and my parents leaning over the bed. I have no idea where I am or whats going on and my mother says, Okay, Brian, were going, now. It was one of those, ...HUH? ...well that explains everything. kind of moments. 2.) After my very swollen head and face was being fed by tubes, my first solid food arrived, a gorgeous roast beef sandwich on a hard Kaiser roll. The trick was getting it into my mouth which could hardly open. Janet went to get soup. 3.) People kept coming into the room, every hour, asking me my name, address, the days date, etc. After that happened twice I could get a laugh out of them by rattling off all the answers before they opened their mouths. 4.) Since our studio was the daily spot to visit for free advise on all things digital, I was forever disappointing people by telling them that the Mac laptops couldnt do much with PageMaker, Photoshop, or Illustrator, so they were not worth the exorbitant price tag. But, by day four in the hospital, I knew something was terribly wrong with my brain. I was starting to think, Maybe $4500 for a Mac PowerBook 145B with only 8MB of RAM and a 120MB hard drive, at best, wasnt THAT bad. :-D
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 11:37:54 +0000