thejaxx.net

While i’ve got a few mins to work on the site, I decided to actually make a post here instead of on twitter.

Saturday night I was doing my normal getting ready for work the next day routine. One of these is plugging my ipod in to get some of the podcasts I listen to while driving from customer to customer (section coming soon on which I listen to).

One of these, Slice of Scifi, had a newer ep up and in it, was this name that I recognized. Derek Colanduno. An old friend who I used to LARP with when I lived in Vegas before he moved to Atlanta, Ga.

I left Vegas in ‘02 and he had left several years before me, and through the rigors of life, we had lost contact. Last I had known, he was getting married and I was unfortunately not able to attend his wedding. I had wonder from time to time what he was up to and it seems he’s been very busy. New job, his own podcast named Skepticality, along with being very involved with Dragon*Con.

After locating his email, I fired off a small note and to my pleasure, he responded. What came next was a surprise. Even more so then the thoughts I had of it truly is a small world.

It seems back in Sept ‘05, Derek had a stroke, a bundle of vessels in his skull had ruptured.

In his own words in an email to me, he had this to say:

Basically, I was at dinner after I got home from a business trip, went to dinner with a bunch of people… had to go to the bathroom. On my way back to the table to eat my food, I started to get a very strange head-ache, then had to vomit suddenly… Next thing I know I am waking up in the hospital with tubes coming out of the top of my head and stuck in me everywhere. I was confused and had no clue where I was. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t walk, or get up, I was strapped down. When I finally started to ‘come to’ my wife came and told me the deal. I had just woken up from a coma which lasted a tad more than a month. They had to drill several holes in my skull to let out all the pressure, and they didn’t know how much brain damage I had.

Then about 2 months of in the hospital stuff happened. They got me back on my feet so I could move myself around and such. Around that Christmas I started to go to full time 8 hour a day rehab to learn how to talk and think and remember stuff again. The speech part was the WORST. I had to start from the beginning and learn how to make the words with my mouth and tongue again. At least I didn’t have the common damage which ALSO makes it so you don’t realize you are saying the wrong words. So, I KNEW I was saying the wrong thing so I was able to re-learn fast. They used the, at the time, experimental music therapy to get me to talk again like a normal person. So I don’t have that ‘stroke stutter’ that people know from most stroke victims. So, you wouldn’t really know if you hear me on the audio show now. Actually it was my podcast which helped that, the speech doctor loved that he was able to listen to HOURS of my old speech so he was able to use it to get me back to normal. I slowly regained my ability to taste different flavors over the first year, which is good, I HATED that everything, no matter what it was, tasted like… nothing…

I sat there stunned. Both Derek and I are around the same age, so lots of things went through my head. Two of the biggest ones were happiness and guilt.

Happiness that he is ok and continues to get better. That he has a strong loving wife and friends who all were there for him to help him get his life back.

And guilt, that I hadn’t tried harder at maintaining a viable friendship with someone I honestly think is a totally down to earth guy.

Because of the net, i’ve re-located a friend and hope to recover that friendship and at the same time, it has caused me to re-think some of the things I take for granted.