On 12 December 2002, two months to the day after a fall from a stepladder broke my leg and ankle, and about a week after my 41st birthday, I was making my way down the stairs at my office to where my wife was waiting for me with the car. At the bottom of the stairs (thankfully) I passed out. Barbara managed to get me to the emergency room, where several doctors and nurses spent 45 minutes trying to find veins for IVs (never easy on me under the best of circumstances), where I got a CAT scan, a sonocardiogram, and spent the night in the ICU after they’d confirmed that I had suffered a pulmonary embolism. More specifically, multiple embolisms, because I had a number of blood clots in both lungs. A week in the pulmonary ward, a year of blood thinner treatment, and I’d be good as new.
This photo’s from the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Southeast Portland, where Barbara and I bought a cremation plot last month. That brown patch under my feet is our spot (the marker is not ours), which is just few steps from the plot of Oregon Gov. W.W. Thayer (1878-82).