The last time I wrote a word for this paper – or any publication for that matter – it was early July, and, unbeknownst to me, I was bleeding internally at a rather rapid rate thanks to a baseball-sized cancerous tumor growing deep in my gut.
More specifically, it was a Tuesday evening, and I had an approaching deadline when, while working on a lead news story about the latest evolution of the Naples development saga, my cell phone rang. On the line was my primary doctor, and when your doctor calls you after hours, it is usually not a good sign. Roughly 12 hours later — and after filing my story for The Independent — I was admitted to Cottage Hospital. Nothing has been the same since, and I am fairly certain it never again will be.
This story, however, truly begins exactly one year ago when, after pushing my way through what I thought was a particularly brutal bout of the flu, I also ended up in Cottage. I started feeling lousy on the weekend after Thanksgiving, and, following a couple weeks of on-again, off-again fevers and assorted other symptoms that just wouldn’t quit, I finally dragged myself to urgent care. Flash forward five days that included a return visit to urgent care and two trips to the emergency room, and I was admitted to Cottage with what they were calling a “fever of unknown origin.”