Day 1 prompt for Reverb14:
At the start | Where did you start 2014? Give us some background on this year.
I built the site using Ruby on Rails. It was a simple site that gave some background about Claire with a call to action. Claire was armed only with kindness as she faced her killer so the call to action is to live like Claire and to make your actions speak so loudly that we can not hear your words.
I attended her memorial service which was attended by thousands of people who came together to honor Claire's life and listened to her father's impassioned plea to forgive the young man who had killed his daughter.
I was attending a web development immersion boot camp in Austin and returned from Denver for the final four weeks of the course. It was hard to get back on the plane for the final leg of this journey. I did not want to go back.
I woke up one morning in mid January with an intense pain in my left leg. I was having a really bad calf attack. I have had this numerous times over the years, but this one felt different. Hours later I could barely walk. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was a foreshadowing of things to come.
We began the final project which entailed many hours of hacking away during a weekend so we could give an initial presentation to the class on Sunday afternoon. The pain in my left leg continued to persist and seemed to be worsening. Over the course of the next two weeks we continued to work on the final project and it had reached the point where it would take twenty minutes for me to walk six blocks from where I parked my car to get to school. Something was definitely wrong
The final week of class had finally arrived. I was so looking forward to leaving Austin and returning to Denver.
On the morning of the day that we were to give our final presentations to the Austin Tech community, the pain in my left leg had become so intense that I went to an Urgent Care Center. They immediately sent me over to the emergency room at a hospital to see if I might have a blood clot in my leg.
The initial diagnosis from the Ultrasound were negative. No explanation for the cause in my leg, but the doctor assured me that I would be safe to make the 900 mile or so drive back to Denver the following day. She encouraged me to stop ever hour or so and walk for a few minutes to promote circulation in my leg.
I headed home the next day and called my primary care physician to make an appointment as the doctor at the hospital told me that I needed to follow up with my doctor because "something is going on" and we needed to figure out what that something was.
I finally made it back home around 5:00 the following day. I was home at last with my family.
I was looking forward to watching the Super Bowl the following day. It had been 15 years since the last time the Broncos were in a Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl was a super bust. Everything went wrong beginning with the first play from scrimmage and we watched in disbelief as the record setting high powered offense was relegated to a single consolation touchdown in order to avert the first shutout in Super Bowl History. A season that had so much promise ended in shambles as the Broncos lost 43-8. Sue and I had lived through many of these Bronco Super Bowl shellackings before.
The next day I met with my doctor and after discussing the symptoms with him briefly he stepped out of the room and made a phone call to discuss this with another doctor. He came back and told me, when it sounds like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you treat it like a duck. It sounds like a blood clot and ordered another ultrasound. I walked across the hall and told the technician that I had a prior Ultrasound done in Austin 4 days prior.
Very early into the procedure she confirmed that I did indeed have a blood clot in my leg. How this was missed just a few days ago was and is still a mystery to me.
So I began 2014 with a blood clot in my leg and hopes of beginning a career as a Ruby on Rails Web developer.
No comments:
Post a Comment