It was in January 2010. I had a migraine going on then. The migraines lasted between three and five days. I had them ever since they started around the high school years. It was the third day of the migraine (Wednesday) when the CEO of the company we merged with had an evening presentation in our largest location. He introduced himself and his company and we were merging in less than six months. I didn’t know then that I was going to take a different direction in 24 hours than we all thought!
It went smoothly. I went home and went to bed. The next morning it happened. I fell down for no reason I could imagine. I got up, got ready, and hurried to drive to our company’s second location. I was late for an eight o’clock meeting, so I went into a sandwich shop to get on the meeting. That was before Zoom or Google Meet. A meeting that involved two or three locations needed a computer and a phone. Meetings were my life as the Hospital Administrator of a large, multisite specialty and emergency veterinary hospital. Though I am a veterinarian, my passion was running the company like a Chief Operating Officer. I loved my job. If I didn’t get paid or was forced to retire, I would still love to work full-time.
This one was a department meeting which we every month. I usually led or was very active in the meetings, but I let one of our managers lead the meeting. The hour went quickly. When it was done, I told the manager that I was going to go home and rest because I felt ill. She was surprised because veterinarians do not miss work because of illness!
I got home and never told my wife (she worked at the office) or our nanny who was coming later in the day to meet our oldest boy when he got off the school bus. I slept about three hours but I still had the migraine. It was better, but that was relative.
I will continue my story in a later blog. Please leave your comments!
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