An Eventful Spring

In February of 1997, we moved into our house on Sequoyah Drive in Buckhead (inside the Perimeter in Atlanta, GA).  We had been in a small house nearby there for 6 years,

The Dump (in honor of Margaret Mitchell)

and had clearly outgrown it.  Eleanor’s piano lessons made us feel like the piano was on top of our head.  I remember I was out of town while MA was house hunting and when we were talking one night, she said she had seen the house we wanted.  It had a big kitchen and an Alpharetta master bath.

Work was going well at that point, although I think I was getting a little too smarty-pants about some of my management responsibilities.  I had an employee come into my office on Friday afternoon and inquire about sick policy.  My response was something along the lines of “I haven’t missed a day for sick in the 6 years since we started this company, so I’m not sure what the sick policy ought to be.  Just come to work.”

Back to the move.  Selling Ridgemore was the best house sale we ever had.  We weren't leaving the area, we had no job pressure, we just wanted a bigger house.  So I was able to negotiate from a very strong position and we did well with that sale.  As with most of our moves, I tried to get from closing to packing to closing to loading within a few days.  We were well on our way to that, when the corporate seller began to become problematic.  As we were threatened with a delay in closing, I told the selling realtor that we had our key and we had reserved our moving van and we would be in that afternoon, closing or not.  We closed at 11am.

By the second weekend in the house, it was time for a very fun chore - going to buy a bigger TV for the den.  Eleanor and I had a long list of errands.  I remember feeling just a little twinge in my belly at the Target as we got the TV paid for, but didn’t think anything of it.  By the time I woke up on Sunday, however, the pain was bad enough that we decided to stay home from church, which almost never happened.  I felt better as the day progressed and we decided to go forward with our plans to have dinner and bridge with the Martins that night.  Dan was bringing a bottle of Dom Perignon as his house warming gift (still the only time we’ve ever had that, despite champagne being MA’s favorite drink).

Sunday night my stomach felt worse, and by Monday morning I went straight to the doctor.  I had an MRI, confirming Dr. Dan’s immediate diagnosis of diverticulitis.  I got my prescription for heavy antibiotics, and went through 10 days with my mouth tasting like nails, but my belly not hurting.  At the end of that course of therapy, the pain returned, so I went to even stronger oral antibiotics.  One was TID and the other BID.  The TID ran out first, and by mid afternoon of the day I didn’t have a noon dose the pain was back.  I was on a business trip, so after a painful flight home, I called Dr. Dan.  He told me he’d done all he could, and he’d have to introduce me to someone with a knife.

We went in the next day and I was admitted to the hospital.  I was on more antibiotics, IV this time, to try to calm down the infection enough for surgery.  When we called my folks, TGP had MA hit me hard on the foot to see if I was really sick.  When that hurt incredibly badly, he conceded that maybe I did need to be in the hospital.  We played hospital bridge with the Martins, and spent 6 days with friends coming by the hospital.  This was the first annual Faithmates ski trip, and Matthews Gwynn et al called me from the hot tub in Utah to tell me they wished I was there.  MA had her folks come in from SC so they could watch the girls and she could stay in the hospital with me.

As the length of prep time became obvious, father-in-law Ira determined he needed to return home so he could work.  Mother-in-law Anna stayed at the house watching the girls.  Ira drove home in the hardest rainstorm any of us ever experienced along I-20.  The next day, as Anna was at our house watching the girls, she was speaking with Ira on the phone.  His speech became slurred and he dropped the phone and wouldn’t answer. Anna managed to disconnect the line and call their neighbor, also a doctor.  Bernie came over immediately, found Ira on the floor and called the ambulance.  Ira got to the hospital in time for them to administer TPA.  He became, literally, the poster boy for that drug, as it led to a remarkable recovery from his stroke. I wish I had a picture of the poster.

But I get ahead of myself.  MA was at the hospital with me, a day away from my surgery.  Anna was at our house with the girls, but needed to get home to the hospital for her husband.  Flights were all sold out, so we called our friend Lindsay.  He was Diamond Medallion with Delta at the time, so claimed Anna was his mother-in-law and got her on a flight to Columbia, SC.  The Wharton grad was forever known in the Horton household as “that nice southern gentleman”.

To cover kid-sitting on our side, MA called Muv and Soph.  Sophia came up from Charlotte and Muv flew in from San Diego.  Mary Anne was at the hospital with me during surgery and had to shoo my sister out afterwards when she made me laugh, before my body had recovered enough to laugh.  I have done fine since 1997 without those 18 inches of colon.

Recovery was slow but steady.  Months later, one of our new neighbors (this story is so long you forgot we were just moved in, eh?) said her daughter had asked her about the sad looking man in his bathrobe that walked just a little bit up and down the street.

Ira and I both made it through our ordeals fairly well, and tend to remember each other especially around mid-March.  My favorite part of the aftermath was that October, when we had PtHalloween at my company, and one of my colleagues dressed up as me.