Reflections — Dec. 31, 2021 - Johnny Boy Marketing

In a few hours, this revolution around the sun will be complete and a new one will begin. Unless something unexpected happens, I will have made it out alive.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But when I look back at the year that was, I feel I’m justified in counting it as a victory that I’m alive and sane. It was a year that started with me waiting for results of blood tests to help me understand what the hell was going on with me in the wake of my November 2020 COVID fight, with my father-in-law in the hospital suffering from the after-effects of COVID unknowingly contracted just before open heart surgery, with Wifey Poo struggling to juggle her own life, my ailments, her job as a mother and homeschool teacher, plus her role as the official family hospital visitor to try to bring some encouragement to her dad.

It was, to put it quite accurately, a shit-show.

The year ends with me significantly recovered from Longhaul COVID, with my father-in-law having lost his battle, with Wifey Poo dealing with the pain of losing her dad and the weariness of a year that was far too unkind to such an amazing person.

There is so much that could be said about all the events of 2021 that made this a year in which mere survival is marked in the “win” column. But I think it might be best for me to simply lay out the facts of what the year brought. The sad thing is, even doing that won’t accurately depict the depth of the shit-show because it doesn’t lay out all the crap that happen in 2020 … or in 2019 … or in 2018 … or or or. In searching for a date at which to begin the story of why 2021 was such a challenge, I came up empty because each candidate for a starting point must itself be put in the context of what happened before. Suddenly, we’re back in 2015… 2012 … 1993.

Not knowing where to start, I’ll simply follow the calendar — January 2021 through December 2021 — and trust you’ll understand, faithful reader, that there’s a mess of crap that comes before it.

January

My COVID turns into Longhaul COVID, You can follow the course of that here in depth. Blood test show nothing. An EKG shows nothing. Further tests will show nothing nothing nothing. But I feel like I might die from exhaustion and that my brain has suddenly turned into mush.
My father-in-law dies, losing a fight that begin in earnest in November.
My parents choose the eve of his death, despite learning of my FIL’s grave condition, to pick a fight with me in which my father tells me he’s “tired of my bullshit.” We don’t talk until September.
A mere 10 days later, we’re presented with the opportunity to host a child from Burkina Faso with disabilities who needs major surgeries in the United States. We’re in no shape to be host parents. We do it anyway.
I have my first COVID vaccination.

February

Oh my God, we’re suddenly responsible for a 4-year-old named Dieudonne (pronounced JordonA) who doesn’t speak a world of English, who gets around by scooting on his hands and dragging his feet, who will ultimate require roughly two dozen surgeries in six months. He arrives ahead of a bitter cold front and snowstorm. I’m quite sure My Favorite African has never seen weather like that before. Shockingly, I love him like a son after a few short days.
The ravages of Longhaul COVID take over. I am still working, but each day requires multiple breaks, and I struggle to do basic things like think.

March

Insomnia is killing me, which is pretty damn ironic considering all I feel like doing is sleeping. No matter what I try, I wake up at 3 a.m. after fitful “rest” and struggle to make it through the day. This leads me to a sleep doctor who prescribes a sleep study. I spend a night hooked up to a trillion wires and await the results.
In an effort to find out why my heart will suddenly start galloping for no damn reason, I have a heart test and lung test. Both show nothing. My life has become a series of short periods of “activity” followed by prolonged periods of mental and physical exhaustion.
In the wake of a minor surgery to repair a hernia, D has major leg surgery to repair his clubfoot. Wifey Poo and I spend our 24th anniversary apart, with her in the hospital and me at home with Boy The Younger. I never regret for a second bringing Little D into our lives. He has changed us forever for the better.

April

I get the results of my sleep study. Though not obese, I have major obstructive sleep apnea, with the suspicion that it was worsened by COVID but there’s no way to be sure. Whereas the average person has somewhere between zero and three “events” an hour in which they stop breathing while sleeping, I have an average of 53 during my sleep study. I’m prescribed an APAP machine to try to bring it under control. I name it Bob.
The worst of Longhaul COVID buries me. I somehow am managing to excel at work, but finances are getting tough. I took the job in September 2020 knowing I would be underpaid because I had to get out from under a really rough situation (there’s that pre-2021 stuff I was talking about), and I’m watching our savings disappear. They’re essentially gone each time a stimulus check seems to come around.
I go to an ear, nose and throat doctor because one of my first COVID symptoms — a horrible taste in my mouth that never goes away — is making life unbearable. The ENT throws a Hail Mary, thinking it might be an inflamed nerve and prescribes me high-dose steroid
My bottom left wisdom tooth starts hurting one day. Like, bad, bad, bad. Ultimately, it has to be pulled. There again is some vague hints that all this mouth crap might be COVID-related, but after more than a dozen doctors appointments, a half-dozen expensive tests, a bazillion tubes of blood and a helluva lot of lost money, no one knows squat about anything regarding my Longhaul symptoms. The only thing that happens with the steroids is I gain a lot of weight really fast and feel worse.
I make the decision to stop being a guinea pig and give up on traditional medicine as the route to find any answers to help with with Longhaul COVID.
D starts running a fever and is admitted to the hospital with a major staph infection. He remains there for two weeks, with Wifey Poo by his side for the huge majority of it and me trying to balance work, my rapidly declining health, home life with BTY who has proven to be incredibly adaptable and resilient, and a wife who — oh yeah — needs some relief every once in a while. We spend Easter apart.
I have my second COVID vaccination.

May

D has his major leg surgery, during which both his upper leg bones are cut through and turned so that his feet face forward and he can begin the process of learning to walk. Wifey Poo is there for the first days after surgery in the hospital, in which D, the toughest kid I’ve ever known — a kid who has hardly blinked during all the surgeries he’s already had — wails in pain throughout the night before doctors finally find the right dosage to ease his pain. This occurs over Boy The Elder’s birthday.
I seize upon an opportunity and finally ask for a raise based on the overwhelming positive feedback I’ve received on my work, how it has become the model for the marketing departments in other hospitals in our system and the independent evidence that I am underpaid by up to 60%. My solid case is met with silence. I start looking, in the midst of all of this, for a new job.

June

Unable to find any answers to help with the Longhaul COVID, I stumble into a functional medicine doctor on the recommendation of Wifey Poo, who heard about how such alternative physicians are actually helping people get over the worst of the symptoms. Dr. Laura Wies has me fill out a ton of paperwork, asks even more questions and orders blood tests that fill 11 vials. The results start the course for a huge change that sees me regain some of my health.
I go to a neuropsychologist in search of answers for the brain fog that has left me unable to think, caused me to trail off in the middle of sentences, turned my memory into swiss cheese and leads me to say words that don’t make any sense. For example: “Oh, I left it in the glasses” when what I meant to say is, “Oh, I left it in the garage.” The tests show significant problems, but he gives me ways I can work on getting my thinking back.

July

In the midst of all of this stuff, while hosting a child recovering from major leg surgery, we pounce on an opportunity to move out into the country and sell our house at the height of the market. This is pure, utter insanity, but we do it anyway because the opportunity wouldn’t be there if we waited. We begin to get our house ready to sell.
I find the place I want to work and have the first two interviews for the position. Things are going well.
I start on a revolutionary change in my eating habits as the way to beat many of these Longhaul symptoms. It’s a huge, huge change, and I’m blessed that Wifey Poo agrees to go on the journey with me. I cut out anything processed, all sugars that aren’t nature, dairy, breads and more. It is surprisingly easy to do. When you feel like complete shit and are at the point of wondering if this thing is actually going to kill you, change isn’t so hard. Oh, and side benefit: I lose 30 pounds without really trying.
I develop a major pain in my throat that the doctors can’t explain. I’m told to get an MRI, which, shocking to no one, reveals nothing. It eventually goes away and is attributed to “one of those COVID things.”
I begin ozone therapy. Once a week for six weeks, a bag of my blood is drained, infused with ozone, and dripped back into my body. The extra oxygen molecule, seeking stability, detaches and, as the theory goes, binds to impossible-to-detect virus, rendering it impotent and killing it. The first three treatments do nothing but leave me tired. I notice some improvement with the fourth. By the end of the sixth, I’m …. good?
Our little host child, whom we have grown to love as a son, returns to Burkina Faso in a whirlwind in which there was doubt whether he would leave or have to have an emergency spine surgery up until the very last hour. Because that’s how we roll.
My sleep apnea isn’t as improved as the sleep doctor wants it to be. I’m still having more than a dozen — and often 20 or more — episodes a night. I have to go in for another sleep study, which diagnoses the emergence of central sleep apnea, the kind not caused by an obstruction in the windpipe but by the brain not signaling the body to, ya know, breathe. It is frightening as hell to realize this virus is affecting the function of my brain. I’m ultimately given a different kind of breathing machine at night, and low and behold, I start to actually feel rested when I wake up in the morning once I’m not struggling to stay alive all night.
I resign my position from Shriners Hospitals after accepting a new job with The Allen Brake Real Estate Team. When I turn in my resignation, my Shriners boss says that she’s not surprised, that she sensed I “lost enthusiasm” for the job a month or so back. I say nothing. If “lost enthusiasm” is defined as “Got tired of being drastically underpaid and ignored when I showed them their own comments about my work and what the market says I’m worth,” yeah, she’s right.

August

Unable to find any answers to help with the Longhaul COVID, I stumble into a functional medicine doctor on the recommendation of Wifey Poo, who heard about how such alternative physicians are actually helping people get over the worst of the symptoms. Dr. Laura Wies has me fill out a ton of paperwork, asks even more questions and orders blood tests that fill 11 vials. The results start the course for a huge change that sees me regain a lot of my health by the end of the year.
I go to a neuropsychologist in search of answers for the brain fog that has left me unable to think, caused me to trail off in the middle of sentences, turned my memory into swiss cheese and leads me to say words that don’t make any sense. For example: “Oh, I left it in the glasses” when what I meant to say is, “Oh, I left it in the garage.” The tests show significant problems, but he gives me ways I can work on getting my thinking back. Lumosity is a godsend.
The craziness of having a host child and his departure rolls right into the insanity of getting ready to move, then actually moving. Boy The Elder and his crew of friends pull off an amazing accomplishment of getting everything boxed and moved.
In the process of getting the house ready, I’m power-washing the deck, when I suddenly feel dizzy. As I go to get off the stairs to sit down, I miss a step and stumble into the side of the house, busting my head open and jacking up my neck and back.
Wifey Poo and I finally get away, just the two of us, to decompress after the move and all that 2021 has thrown at us. While we’re there, my phone starts blaring message after message after message that our air conditioning back home isn’t working. It’s 100 degrees. Thankfully, it’s working when we return home. It conks out three days later, but it’s only in the 80s.
I start my new job. The pace is insane, right out of the gate. I essentially rebrand the company — something that in most places might take a year or more — in three weeks.

September

Might things actually be starting to … settle down? It’s all relative. Aside from the insane pace of my new job and planning the first major event for our company since COVID, the only major thing to happen is the closing on our house, which, despite our Realtor’s best efforts to screw it up, goes relatively smoothly. Had I gotten my job a few weeks earlier, I would have known how a real Realtor operates and used my own real estate team!
Our new house is starting to come together a bit. We moved into my in-law’s former house when the Judester moved into a senior living community. Yet most of her stuff remained. That means our stuff mingled with her stuff, and let me tell you, my in-laws had a lot of stuff. Slowly but surely, Wifey Poo leads a cleanup effort to go through everything, sell stuff, donate stuff and start creating our home.
After waiting for an apology from my parents for the entire year — an apology that never comes because that’s not something they do — I reach out to my dad for a reason I’m not quite sure of. Within a day, he’s talking about how he’s glad everything is “back to normal” and is planning a visit. I did this for the benefit of my kids, but it just feels wrong, that I allowed us to do what we always do — sweep real issues under the rug under the guise of “moving forward.” They plan a visit for October.
I have my COVID booster shot .

October

The first event I planned for my new job goes great. FallFest 2021 attendance shatters expectations. The weather is beautiful. I breathe a sigh of relief.
The Judester has a property that’s been in the family for years that she wants to sell. Linking up with my Realtor teammates, we sell it for nearly double what she was asking in less than a week on the market. This is a service I now offer my friends and family, I guess!
My parents visit. It feels awful and I realize how much I didn’t miss the drama and constant conflict and anger.

November

Wifey Poo has foot surgery. She’s off her feet for a few days and slowly works herself back to action over the course of the next month or so.
The major marketing campaign I’ve been working on at work since I started launches. Now it just has to work and prompt potential clients to call us.

December

Holy crap, you guys! Not much happens. I finish off planning our family vacation to Memphis and New Orleans for Christmas, I do my shopping and find excellent gifts for my loved ones, my boss takes the team to Ruth’s Chris Steak House for a Christmas celebration, and our vacation turns out awesome.

Which leads to today.

And the scary thing is, folks, these are just the highlights. There are so many more things — good and bad, happy and sad — that filled the days of the year. I can’t say that I’ve really slowed down enough to process it all, to feel it, to put it in any sort of context.

But what I have done is survive it. And for that, I am proud.

Happy New Year.

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