Life goes on!

As long as I can remember I wanted to publish a book. Now I have done that and it was hard. Very, very hard.

In December 1986, I had my first triple bypass operation; I was 36! My son was six years old and my daughter was one year old.

At that stage I was a senior management consultant working for the National Productivity Institute (NPI) in Pretoria. It was very good times and I was doing very well for myself. It all changed after the operation. I didn’t have the interest, drive, and energy afterwards and I was a psychological mess. I only realised much later that I had terrible trauma.

I left the NPI in 1992 to start my own business, but my heart wasn’t in it and I wasn’t physically or psychologically capable of pulling it through. I just went through the motions. The result was bankruptcy and the sequestration of everything I had. I lost everything including my self-respect – it was hell.

In 1994, I started as a lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology. The pay was dismal, but I really liked the work. It was really nice to stand in front of a class and teach. It was the hardest, but the best time in my working life. I really loved it! Land surveying, which I left in 1982, to join the NPI, come a close second as far as job satisfaction goes.

In September/October of 1997, I did a presentation at the Tenth World Productivity Congress in Santiago, Chile. I wasn’t feeling to well at that stage, but thought that it was only exhaustion. However in July 1998, I had my second triple bypass operation and my world started to really came apart. At that stage I was the Principal Lecturer: Business Economics and I had already received a number of commendations and prizes as best lecturer as well as best researcher.

I truly tried but my energy levels could not sustain me. I had to give class to over a thousand students, do research, and manage the Business Economics Section. I once again knew that I was not able to cope and in August 2003 I was placed on disability pension.

In October, while on holiday with my wife and daughter in Cape Town I had a retina detachment (the third at that stage) and had an emergency operation on my left eye.

During the operation my heart stopped and I had pulmonary infusion in both my lungs – both lungs filled completely with fluid. For a few minutes I was clinically dead before I was resuscitated, but I still was in a coma. It was Sunday evening.

My wife was told that I would not make it to the next morning. However, around five o’clock Monday morning I regained consciousness in the cardiac intensive care unit of the hospital. I indicated to the nursing sisters that they must remove the ventilator from my mouth and throat. I was fighting against the ventilator and I was sure that I was going to die! The sisters declined and eventually I extubated myself. Of course then I had to breathe on my own and my blood oxygen level kept falling and at stages was under 30%.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, was completely taken by surprise when I was still alive Monday morning and nurses and sisters kissed my hands. I have survived the night and things were looking up. My condition improved till Wednesday evening when I again had a serious relapse and people told my wife again that my lungs was to weak and I would not make it to Thursday morning, but again I did.

We were supposed to leave for home on Saturday morning, but I was still in intensive care at that stage and things were still not looking too great. I eventually spent two weeks in intensive care and one week in a general ward before I was released.

At that stage no airline carrier was prepared to take me on board and I eventually had to fly back to Pretoria in an emergency flying ambulance.

I was extremely ill for months after this incident and regained my strength very, very slowly. I was in bed most of the time and again started to think about writing.

Through 2004 and 2005, I wrote to keep me busy. I even started to write blogs at that stage to get a bit of human interaction.

I also had a number of eye operations again since then. When anaesthetics were normally used for a procedure I had to go without it and at one stage was completely awake through a two-hour long operation. I truthfully don’t know who was more stressed me or the doctors and the theatre staff.

Since then I have been in an out of intensive care more times than I can remember. This was mostly due to food allergies and anaphylactic shock, which became very pronounced after my Cape Town incident.

Nevertheless, I think that everybody will agree that I can surely now congratulate myself for finishing and publishing a book during these very trying times.

Thank you wifey.