It's been a interesting week.
As some of you might know, I've been trying, semi-casually, to sell the Alabaster for some time now. No one has even test driven the Coupe in the past 9 months or so until this weekend & here's where the story gets interesting.
But let me digress first:
My co-worker Deb (picture of Deb is in the gallery) lost her 30 yr. old daughter last Monday after a failed attempt at a heart transplant. Her daughter, Sarah, was born with a missing ventricle & had made it so far with 3 surgeries to repair it, temporary fixes to get by. She's been on a heart transplant list for years & after 2 'dry runs' (you carry a pager, get paged, drive down to Madison, get prepped & then the docs. tell you the heart isn't right for you so you leave just to get ready to do it all over again) she finally got a heart tailor made for her. Until the procedure: unexpected serious bleeding, loss of blood to the brain for an extended period of time, organs such as the liver shut down and so it goes.
I knew Sarah well, she was a wonderful person to know & for some odd reason, liked me. I'll miss her badly. Deb comes back to work tomorrow, this ought to be an interesting next several months. There's only the 2 of us in the Tech. Cave & we're pretty close.

This weekend I get a call from a guy who's spotted the Coupe & loves it & wants to give it a spin. Great!
We meet & I discover that he's essentially looking for an end-of life car. This gentleman is as close to being a living human wreck (no disparity intended. I just don't know how to put it any plainer) as I could ever guess one could be. He's lost his kidneys years ago, had a transplant & gotten cancer several years later. The chemo. drugs whacked his transplanted kidney so now he has none & goes in for dialysis every 48 hours or so. He's had both eye lens replaced, is partially deaf in the right ear, has neuropathy in both his legs (mostly due to the chemo & anti-rejection drugs), has 3 large & noticable bumps on his right arm which act as 'ports' for the dialysis. Last weekend, probably due to some additional activities with his 11 yr. old son, had to go in for emergency dialysis & had 5 liters of fluid removed! He can only eat certain foods because the liquid content in most of the stuff we eat would flood his body with too much fluid.
Recently the doctors just discovered another 'mass' behind his breastbone, probably lymphatic cancer. He's going in for surgery this week.
He is a good-looking gentleman & a pleasure to carry on a conversation with. A person I could be friends with easily. A great guy! His courage astounds me; not so much for what he has to endure just to live but that he's still not given up!
Oh, and he's 41 years old.
He says that if he buys the car & doesn't make it he'll just put a tarp over it so that when his son gets old enough to drive he'll have a car all ready to go.
When I look at these 2 events over the course of just this one week it makes me pause & seriously ponder just what the heck this all means. One thing for sure, I have no reason to ever bitc_ about my whiny little aches & pains or how crappy my life can be. Jeezuz, what do I have to complain about anyways? I've had 2 surgeries in my life: one for a ruptured disk in the lower back in my twenties, one for a bad case of diverticulitis 10 years ago which means 13" of colon missing but I'm fine, I've been fixed! I'm not looking over my shoulder!
I guess we all need a perspective reality check once in awhile. I've had mine last week. Frankly, that's enough for right now.

 

It means in the end we go out with dignity. We could do it for our loved ones, or for our legacy, but we really do it for ourselves.

 

Kurts,
What is amazing about this gentleman, and so rare, is that despite all his ills, he just kept on living.
Buying a Crossfire in his state of health is a bold act of his daily reafirmation for life.

What a gem.

Thanks for relating the story, friend.

roadster with a stick