[Bigtoe32067]

What a horrible story.

Mines not different and I’ve never really shared it all as not to sound like I’m looking for anyone’s pity because I’m not. I have a great family and I’ve had a great life in spite of it all. I’m sitting here in this hospital again after more than a week. Shoot I just got out in June after spending a month in.

Let’s go back to the beginning.
Dec 19 1986. I was 19 and in the Navy. It was a dark and rainy morning about 430 am and I worked for the doe at a small nuclear power plant in upstate NY and I was heading to the facility to check out early for Xmas leave. Coming across a bridge already inside the security perimeter I got hit head on by a drunk contractor driving a vw pickup. I was driving a Fiero. I tried to avoid him but he swerved also and hit me head on.
I woke up in the Saratoga Springs hospital a few hours later. Apparently I broke the steering column with my groin and was peeing blood really bad. They did what they could but I continued to pee blood so I was sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital to determine the extent of whatever was going on. I was there for six weeks and the conclusion was that one of my kidneys was gone for good and the other was functioning around half way.
I was given a discharge option because I was a nuke and couldn’t be around ionizing radiation in my condition. I took it and got out. They told me to keep an eye on my renal function and it may be fine forever or may fail tomorrow.
It last until Sept 2010 and it failEd. My sister gave me a kidney and other than some medicine interactions I could live a relatively normal life. During most of this time I owned a very successful automotive repair facility with numerous locations and three partners. I decided a few years before my kidney transplant in 2007 to go out on my own and bought some land and built my ideal shop in The Woodlands Tx. about 3 miles from my new dream house I had built a few years before. I had a great wife and a great son and the world was smiling on me.
Fast forward to 2014. Sisters kidney was doing good but my marriage wasn’t. I went through a very ugly divorce in 2014 and in Sept 2015 I got remarried to my savior. She was and still is amazing. I sold my business and retired. I was 48 years old. Happy, in great shape, didn’t smoke, drink, eat fast food and had been going to the gym daily for years.
Aug 2016 we were getting ready for bed and I felt a little pressure in my chest. Nothing severe and was going to get in bad and go to sleep. My new wife of 10 months freaked out, threw me in the car in my pjs and rushed me to the er.
Apparently I had a massive heart attack that would’ve killed 9 out 10 people according to my cardiologist and had I not been in such great shape it would’ve killed me too.
67 days in the hospital later I had gone through three open heart surgeries, one of which was a triple bypass, another jone of which, the last one, they didn’t think I was going to pull through because I was far too weak but they had to do it because I was bleeding so bad somewhere inside that the hospital was running out of my blood type which is the most common. Now mind you I didn’t find out any of this until later because I had been unconscious for 11 days at this point.
Needless to say I made it through the night and so began my new life. All the medication used to keep my heart alive through it all unfortunately damaged my transplanted kidney I got from my sister so began my life on dialysis every other day.
I wasn’t too worried about it because I had another donor so I just had to go to the process of getting approved for another transplant.
Because of all the damage to my heart I was in congestive heart failure, my ejection fraction was really low at about 25-30% and they were worried my heart wasn’t strong enough for transplant surgery so they wouldn't approve me.
I was to be on blood thinners for the rest of my life along with 37 other medications every day.
The VA came through and rated me 100% disabled for life which helped with disability pay, a waiving of property tax property tax (about $17k/year), social security disability, and, best of all, Medicare eligibility. Because even with Medicare my hospital bills are astronomical.
I had done very well selling my business and the 3.5 acres of Woodlands property it had sat on but I had to give my ex wife half of it but still came out ok.
I used most of this money to buy a small shopping center near where I had just bought a small farm and a small mobile home park about two hours away further away in the country. Both are decent investments. When all this happened in the beginning my new wife slept on a couch in my hospital room for all 67 days. Going home every two days to shower and bring back clean clothes.
She had been a manager for Heb grocery and was up for another promotion and big raise but came into the hospital one day and told me she had quit her job to take care of me.
I didn’t know what to say. God had truly brought me an angel. The mobile home park was bought for her to manage remotely and replace the salary she had given up so she would have her own money.
I spent about $200k to build and stock a 4000 sqft dream shop on our 5 acre farm. It had everything a car guy could ever want. Every tool, paint booth, blast cabinet with a dust collection system that cost more than the cabinet, air plumbed all though the shop fed from a compressor I mounted behind the shop in its own little shed and the air and electric plumbed through the walls to keep the noise down. Shelving everywhere, a long section of pallet shelving for engines and transmissions. Most of which are Porsche parts. I have every type of welder, plasma cutter, parts cleaners, heated one, vibratory one, and ultrasonic. I have several work tables and an engine build table, paint shaker, fiberglass work station, sand paper cabinet, large paint cabinet, and large chemical cabinet, and enough caulk, seam sealer, and construction adhesive, to fill up a whole shelf. I have an old tool cabinet converted into an adhesive cabinet with more types of glue than I ever knew existed.

It also has 20 ton press, drill dress, English whell, slip roller, piping notcher, band saw, sheet metal brake, gantry crane with electric hoist, engine hoist, several engine stands, table saw, many types of other saws, a very nice unused rotisserie, several spray paint guns including an air brush with its own little compressor, a welding work station, a powder coating footy inside the very large paint booth, shrinker stretchers, a $5k metric and standard nut and bolt assortment, every other assortments of o rings, roll pins, cotter pins, pipe plugs, e clips, c clips, you name it.

It also has a 2 pot lift and a little relax station with a sectional fake leather sectional and a 60’ tv and wi fi. It has 3 12x14 roll up doors facing forward and another in facing the rear so I can open it and see the rest of my wooded property. It als provides some good cross ventilation. I just put in two 9 ft giant ceiling fans in the front half. The first roll up door is electric with remotes to I can just pull up to it, hit a button, and drive right in.
It has an electrical workstation with about 25 or 30 different wire rolls mounted and some ones not mounted because they too thick. It has regular crispers and hydraulic crimpers tomake lugs on cable or battery cables.
It has 11 electrical extension reels around the shop and another 12 outlets, it lit with extremely bright led lights in the shop and send some serious led flood lights around it for nighttime.
The paint booth was made out of lumber and caulked at every seam to be air proof, I haven't finished the ventilation system that exhausts through a filtration system to a fan in the back wall of the shop with an automatic louver system. The paint booth also has 12 220v heat lamps behind fold away covers that generate quite a bit of heat to bake the paint.
I also have an electric bead roller, bar bender, and welding outlets with extension cords so I can weld at any point in the 100x40 shop.

I built it to have everything thinking this was how I was going to spend my retirement and it was my dream.
I’ve spent less then ten or fifteen days in it in the 3 years since I built it because of my health. My wife even bought me a little sit down scooter lot ride in to get to it and ride around in it but it’s not much help and during these Texas summer months its so hot it saps what little strength I have so my wife suggested air conditioning it because it’s already very insulated from when I built it and then finished the whole inside with 3/4” plywood over the beams and insulation.
I thought about partitioning the front half so I’d have to buy less AC but I think the electricity bill would still be over $700/month for something I barely use.

Most of the equipment in it is still brand new and never been used. I don’t know anything about metal working but was going to teach myself. I can arc and mig weld barely and was going teach myself tig. Never used an English wheel but was going to learn. Haven’t ever turned on the electric bead roller. Thought about buying a small lathe and bridgeport mill but know I’d never even turn them on.

Before you think this whole long thread jack is bragging it isn’t I promise.
It’s a story about not waiting to do the things in life you plan to do later in life because you may not be able to.
I still have hopes that I’ll recover enough to be able to do the things I’ve always dreamed of doing when I had the time to do them.
I have the time now but my body has broken down to the point where I may not be able. I haven’t given up yet but it’s seems like it two steps forward and three steps back

**Story continued**