I returned to work on this week’s paper last weekend.
It was good to begin the process of putting out a newspaper again.
Over the past month and a half, I’ve been in three hospital – here at MRMC, in Sugar Land and in downtown Houston.
The result of the most recent stay is a new aortic heart valve.
The other one wasn’t working well.
I feel much better. It’s amazing how more blood to my brain enables me to think more clearly.
I still have a ways to go, but this operation made a difference.
I was chatting with the anesthesiologist before being wheeled into the operating room.
He wore an Aggie ring - Class of 2005.
After exchanging the comments about a shared university, he asked what I did.
After I told him that I was a newspaper editor that got his attention and that of others on the operating team.
Like most people, he wonders how anyone – like MaLinda and I – started our own newspaper amid turmoil in this industry and the vast array of media platforms.
There was this one nurse, a friendly fellow – this was an operating team consisting of several people with different medical specialties all within heart repair.
So, as the big moment approaches, the nurse begins to tell me how much he hates the Houston Chronicle.
As I check out the strange world of an operating room, he’s still enumerating all of the things the Chronicle gets wrong.
OK, I’ll be sure and share that critique when I next see someone with the Chronicle.
That would be somewhere like, oh, never.
Anyway, the operating is a success.
Everyone on the team is celebratory, which seems like a good thing to me.
People take newspaper mistakes personally, whether that’s the case or not.
I’ve been in civic clubs, including one here, where people would walk up and point to some grievous error.
Since I was the only journalist, I wonder if the other members and their various occupations they have receive similar scrutiny?
Since I’ve gotten a new lease on life thanks to the heart repair, I pledged myself to approach this life-long profession of mine differently.
Getting your health back, seems to make a difference, even at my rather advanced age of 71.
Well, I don’t feel like 71 anymore and I still believe we can help tell this community’s story in stories and photos.
MaLinda and Jessica did a good job minding the store while I was out.
I’m anxious to bring renewed energy to this effort to inform and entertain Matagorda County.
