THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Little did I know I was at the ending of one major part of my life. I call it now the first third of my life. I got back into the mundane of work life as just a regular employee. It was very difficult going back to a job I managed at one time. I was in the Glenwood office in metro Atlanta.

I chose to work later hours to miss rush hour traffic. So this left Rick to continue cooking dinners for the three of us; himself, Brandon, and me. He had been doing this since my promotion and the move to Savannah in 1993. Alan by this time was on his own. He had made the decision to get his own place when we moved to Powder Springs in 1995. He was working at a local mill in Rome and this is where he met his future wife.

Rick began having issues with his lower back in the fall and winter of 1996. Just a few months after our move back to Rome. He had always had a slight issue when the weather was changing to cold temperatures because his back was injured years earlier in his early 20’s. A shelf with gallons of paint fell across his back while doing a remodeling job. He was told by doctors then he would never work again but he sure did and never let it stop him. He was tough as nails when it came to hard work. But this time it was very different. He missed days of work because of the pain and having trouble walking.

After months of trying to get him to see a doctor, Rick ended up having to have spinal fusion on the lowest disc in his back. This was in February of 1997. After the surgery he just got worse instead of better. I didn’t really understand it. I knew nothing about back surgery but he knew something was wrong. I know now how the recovery should of went since I too, after injuries from a car wreck, had to have the same exact surgery he did. Unbelievably I had to have my surgery on the very day and month, July 29th, he passed on some 10 years later. Crazy how things happened this way.

I still remember his last follow up appointment with his surgeon. He made a decision not to take any of his pain medication so the doctor could see how much pain he was in. Rick knew his surgeon personally because they had rode motorcycles together and he had done work on his house too. I still get a little emotional thinking about how the doctor treated him. He accused Rick of just wanting more medication instead of hearing Rick say he knew something was wrong with the surgery and his back. While we had been sitting in the inner waiting area the surgeons’ assistant walked by and said don’t let me forget to schedule another x-ray to look at the spot on Rick’s lung that was found on his pre-surgery x-ray. I could have fell in the floor! This was the first time anyone had mentioned a spot on his lung. I knew right then what was going on. It was like the light had been turned on. I knew from my experience with mother’s health what was coming. I believe Rick did too unfortunately.

We left that appointment with no answers and Rick in severe pain. I just took him directly to Floyd medical center. It was a Friday afternoon and close to 5pm but we were close to the answer of what the issue was. I still remember sitting in the hall where they had taken Rick for a procedure seeing the gastroenterologist pace the floor. It was an unusual situation because they had to call him in on a Friday afternoon and it wasn’t like a normal process. I was there where normally patients family isn’t allowed. I had a history with this doctor because he had been mothers’ doctor too for her feeding tube. He finally came to me with the news. There was a mass that had blocked Rick’s intestines and he had almost had a complete blockage of the bowel. They removed the blockage and the mass would go to pathology but he was sure it was cancer.

To this day I can see the doctor so upset and pacing the floor. It seemed like forever. He was genuinely upset with the situation. We would end up spending the next two weeks in the hospital. This was the most numbing experience I had ever had. Nothing I had went through with mother even compared and that was terrible in itself. Life would never be the same from this point forward. Something in me actually changed that day. Innocence of life was lost to tragedy.