Ten Year Anniversary

After reading the title of this story, you're probably thinking this has something to do with radio. Well, I guess it does a little since I"m posting this from the radio station. But the radio portion of this story stops at that.

Ten years ago I was in the tree business, i.e., I trimmed and felled trees for a living. I had a successful business based in Spring Hill, KS and worked through the southern portion of the KC Metro. I was also still working in the country nightclub business as a DJ. But I had taken some time off from the nightclub to go down to the Beaumont, Texas area to clean trees and debris from Hurricane Rita.

I arrived in Texas a few days earlier, staying in Houston and driving back and forth every day to the Beaumont area. On this particular day ten years ago, the other guys I was traveling with and myself stopped to have breakfast and then we headed out to fill the vehicle up with gas before we headed back to the hurricane damaged area. As we stopped for gas, I was sitting in the back of the vehicle and felt short-breathed with a shot of pain running down my left arm.  

To make a long story short, I was having a heart attack. The ambulance came to the location, they took to me to the ER in Humble, and then decided they need to life flight me into Houston.

Two stints later along with medications through the years, I'm here with you. The reason I'm telling you this is it was the day before my birthday that I had my heart attack. I was laying in bed in my hospital room the next morning and a male nurse came in to check on me and said, "Man, it sucks for you. You're from out of town, you've had a heart attack, and it's your birthday!" I responded back to him, "Yeah it could be worse...I could be six feet under and ten toes up!"

To wind this up remember our time on this earth is not up to us. Be thankful for every day. As you've heard and read many times this quote by Alice Morse Earle, "The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present."