It Sucks to Be Me (Learning to Walk Again)
Alex, I know it is difficult, but I really need you to make an effort, get out of bed and start walking again, ever so slowly, no matter what it takes. Thanks for the advice, I will think about it.
That must have been the most brutal awakening process of my life. As I opened my eyes, there are people around me, some of which were crying. Newsflash: you are not helping. They have never seen me in such dire state. I could barely move my head, but I could see all the machines around me. I think there must have been like 10 different apparatus, connected to me one way or another. I have one down my dick, god knows what it does. It is very uncomfortable. There were just too much stuff going on. I could not swallow. This was very irritating. It felt like sand paper down my throat. They told me it is there because the surgery was so long, my intestine had stopped working in the freezing process. It will take a while to restart all these functions they said. I could not name or understand what all these machines were doing. Overwhelming does not even begin to describe the difficulty of the situation I was in.
As my doctor accurately described, I was a wreck of epic proportion. They cut my belly of about 12 inches to clean all internal organs of potential cancer cells. I was obviously stitched up all the way across. The entire scene looked disgusting. Fortunately, I could not feel the pain because they were giving me some serious intravenous pain killers, as it should. They told me they would remove each machine one by one over the next few weeks or so. I was looking forward to it. The tube down my throat was painful. I think that was the first one they removed so I could eat. Yeah! As I recall, it was a long process. Every day had its fair share of challenges and I was looking forward for the next day, just to see which part will free myself up ever so slightly. I was not sure about the timeline. I had no idea how long it would take to overcome this and what was in store for me in this recovery process. My patience was running thin. I must have spent 2 weeks on the bed without moving already. Very slowly, each machine made their way out of my vicinity. The last one to go was the pain killer, which I was unsuspecting of its presence because that made the whole thing feel bearable. It is like the saying goes, you don’t know what you got until it is gone. It was such a painful day. They then gave me oral pain killers and I had to get used to this new reality and a closer relationship with pain. Up until that point, I was brave and resilient somehow but it came a point where I did not have the energy to face another challenge. I was depressed.
Alex, I need you to start walking again
The nurses were spectacularly kind and considerate. I don’t know how they do it, to be honest. You must be psychologically strong to see so much pain and challenges people are facing on a daily basis. As an empath, being in the hospital and seeing all these people suffering, including myself, was emotionally draining and a though pill to swallow. Pun intended. As I recall vividly, there was one day when I was feeling specifically depressed, incapable but more importantly unwilling to do anything. I was barely able to start moving again, as in standing up and walking to the bathroom and come back to the bed, a task of about a few meters at most. Doing just this took a long time and it was extremely painful. I was walking like a 100-year-old man all curved up forward and very slowly. They could have giving me a walker to make the scene more appropriate perhaps. Unfortunately, I did not have such luxury. I was depressed because I was doing a 5-meter walk - or so - and I then needed to take a nap for an hour. This is how far down I was. I felt the road to recovery was too long and overwhelming. I did not have the energy to face that challenge. The nurse came to see me and she knew I did not have it and she said: I know it is painful but I really need you to start walking again. I started crying. I could not take this anymore. She helped me get out of the bed and walked with me a little, as I was trying to hide my despair and not disappoint her. As I am writing it, I also become emotional just like I was that day. I have not really thought about this moment since then. These strong emotions are coming back to me.
From the relentless support of nurses, I soon after decided to sum up all the courage I had left, and started listening to their advice. I had been committed to the ‘do as you are told’ from the medical staff. I could not break free from this mindset as I had no other option but to keep moving forward, ever so slowly. I thought about it and started setting myself some objectives. I knew I could make it to the bathroom and back, and how much energy it took to make the ‘trip’. I was starting to make some hypothesis about how far I could walk and how long should be the subsequent nap to recover. I was measuring the number of meters from my bed to the closest nurses station. The first one was about 10-15 meters away, so 6 times the distance I was used to for the trip. I made it there, salute everybody, and came back to my bed and had a nap. The next day I would do this again. That became my daily routine. Eventually, the nap requirement got shorter, so I figured I could walk a little longer as a result. There was some intense calculation going on. I kept setting myself new goals. How about the second nurses’ station on that same floor I thought? Oh, I am not sure about that. That was a whopping 80 meters or so, round trip. It felt like a trek and it was. What if I don’t have the energy to make it back? What if I fall on the floor and break something? Just because it is bad, does not mean it can’t get any worse. It was not a good time for gambling. Those trips took a long time to achieve. It would take me 30 min to walk that distance. And so, it went on like this for weeks at the hospital until I was able to walk about 100 meters, each trip requiring a recovering nap. They told me I should keep doing this for months until I am back to normal. That was the plan.
More bad news
This lengthy recovery process was punctuated of additional good and bad news. Marc-André was bringing me a laptop in the hospital to perform certain tasks, to the dismay of the medical staff. It soon became apparent that my role as a marketing specialist with Globe-Trotter Aventure Canada had to come to an end because the business could not wait for my return. On the positive side, I was still collecting EI (Canada Employment Insurance), even though I was not technically ‘available for work’. I was pilling some money for whatever future project I had in mind. I also had plenty of time, so I studied Internet marketing from top to bottom to the point where I was studying those books, as if I was getting ready for an exam. By late December 1999, I could talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) like an expert.
I recall this part of the story with accuracy because it is only after I was able to walk 100 meters that they gave me the green light to go home and continue the daily walking exercises. At that point, I had no choice but to move back to my mom and dad’s place on a street called Des Roseraies, in Ville d’Anjou. That geographic location turned out to be quite useful because the distance between the house and the nearest stop sign was 100 meters, and another 100 meters would bring me to the closest convenient store. It was an L-shape street with roughly the same distance between each point, so I could calculate distances easily and design a walking program accordingly. I remember this one day when I felt specifically motivated, I was wondering if I could make it to the convenience store and make my way back, a roundtrip of 400 meters or so. I first got to the stop sign, looked around, assessed my physical state with concerns & hesitation, look at the convenient store with envy, and decided to make my way back home. I was disappointed that I did not have the energy to make it to the store. Still, I managed to walk 200 meters that day. That was a milestone. It took a few more months to extend my daily commutes towards more reasonable distances.
Rob Morrow
Back in late 1999, and somewhat stuck in my mom and dad’s place, there was not that much to do for me there. So, reading the news for hours was a daily activity. At the time, a company called Intrawest was making headlines regularly in Montreal newspapers because they had been investing hundreds of millions to rebuild Tremblant over the last decade, in the same fashion they had done Whistler Blackcomb, with the same flair for ski resort design. Every day, I was reading more about Intrawest and what they had been doing In Tremblant but also in Whistler and other ski resorts they own, such as Panorama in BC. I was fascinated. As a snowboarder, I thought it would be kinda cool to work for such company. They had some pretty phenomenal perks too, such as yearly ski resort passes. So, I started researching more about them, and discovered that if I wanted to make a career in Internet marketing for Intrawest, as a starting point, I needed to talk to a guy named Rob Morrow, who was their internet specialist, responsible for a lot of internet-related activities including online marketing. At that time in the web history, it was not uncommon to see 1 person wearing numerous hats. Rob was one of those guys. Armed with nothing but courage, I sent him an email and told my story. I talked about SEO and asked what their needs are. He said, sure, why don’t you come to Vancouver and we will talk. He did not take me very seriously. At least I had a name. I had ‘something’.
Rob Morrow was an internet jack-of-all trades that had been working with Stan Sprenger and Erik Austin from Tremblant Central Reservations for many years, building websites, taking care of servers, online marketing, emails and plenty of other things. By all accounts, these guys were doing a better job at selling Tremblant than Intrawest did. As a result, they had recently been bought by them. As part of this process, the entire staff, including Rob Morrow, director of e-business for Intrawest, moved to Vancouver, closer to the Corporate Office in Downtown Vancouver, near Canada place.
Following Rob’s email, it is at that precise moment that I made that decision: I will move to Vancouver to work for Intrawest. That was the new objective. I became more motivated than ever before to speed up the cancer recovery process & doing my daily walks with enthusiasm. Everyone I knew in Montreal thought I was crazy. These are some of the various supportive comments I received:
Why are you going to Vancouver? You don’t know anybody there!
You can’t go there to work for Intrawest, before then even hire you. That is insane.
You don’t have any experience in Internet marketing. Nobody will hire you.
SEO? Nobody knows what Search Engine Optimization even is! Let alone hiring you.
(Or you prefer this one) SEO? What is the hell is SEO?
You can’t go to Vancouver, you don’t even speak English properly.
You need to speak Japanese to work in tourism in Vancouver.
The deck was stacked against me, even more so than what I just been through. Never mind all this. If I knock on the right doors long enough, eventually someone will let me in, I thought. Nothing will deter me from this objective. I still had another 6 months of EI to collect. Therefore, I had some money. I could walk by then. I bought a plane ticket. I brought my 4 Internet Marketing books with me. I was on my way. Vancouver, here I come.
Up Next: Welcome to Vancouver - Part 1