[DeTomaso] Where's my Profiles?.....

[Bjoern Flesland]

Dear Mike,
Even if we haven't met yet I feel I kind of know you. Shipping Pantera/car
related items to me etc. and helping out answering questions I may have had
here on the list.
I feel very sorry to hear about your girlfriend and I kind of knew what you
were writing before I had finished reading it...
Please accept my condolences.
And you shouldn't care at all about the Profiles in such a time!
Take care Mike!

Sincerely,
Bjoern



On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 7:50 PM, <mikeldrew at aol.com> wrote:

> ...a very valid question, that.
>
> Ever since I took over Profiles production back in 1995, I have been behind
> schedule, although usually it was rather consistently behind.   The last
> issue of a given year would normally be printed in the first few months of
> the
> next year.   2008 was no exception, as the 2008 No. 4 issue was printed in
> February 2009.
>
> But things change for me as I started to put the 2009 No. 1 issue together
> last year.   My girlfriend of some 13 years had been diagnosed with and
> received a horrible surgery for a particularly nasty form of oral cancer.
>  Even
> in the best case, we knew that she only had a limited time left, and were
> determined to make the most of it.   She had a pretty good bucket list of
> places she wanted to go and people she wanted to see, and I was determined
> to
> let her achieve as many items on that list as possible.
>
> And so I found myself traveling to places and doing things that had
> absolutely nothing to do with Panteras--a rather foreign concept to me.
> We went
> to New York for the US Open tennis tournament, we went to Denver to see her
> long lost brother, we went to Hawaii, both for the sake of going there and
> also to see her best friend from college, etc. etc. etc.
>
> Finally, in the fall, she became too sick to travel any more, so she stayed
> at home.   Our trips then were confined to this doctor's office, or that
> test, or an occasional sightseeing trip to Costco or Target.   Eventually
> she
> required hospitalization, on several occasions, for a week at a time; I
> would get a cot and move into the hospital and stay with her the whole
> time.
>
> Due to her condition, she was unable to speak after about October, so she
> needed an advocate to advance her cause when she was in the hospital, and
> ensure she received her medication in a timely fashion.   Her esophagus had
> completely closed off in February (almost a year ago now), so she was
> unable to
> swallow, meaning she had a feeding tube in her stomach, and all food and
> medicine had to be administered in liquid form via large syringes.
>
> My work schedule was extremely flexible and I was able to scale back work
> to a bare minimum, in order to allow me to spend more time with her,
> helping
> to care for her.   For the past few months she has been at home, suffering
> mightily and bravely, requiring ever-increasing doses of pain medicine just
> to remain barely functional; I would typically spend half the week with
> her,
> and the other half at work.
>
> Generating Profiles is an extremely intensive process, one that requires
> commitment and focus for many hours at a time, many days in a row.   I
> found
> that as much as I tried, I was unable to make much forward headway.   I
> could
> sit next to her in the hospital, or at her house, with my laptop on my lap
> while she slept, and participate in this forum, because that was something
> that just took a few minutes here and there.   It also provided an escape
> from the horror that was unfolding before my eyes, as her condition
> worsened
> and new and horrible symptoms would crop up, one after the other.   (Her
> latest symptom was to just continually bleed from her mouth, for hours at a
> time,
> requiring me to sit next to her as she slept and wipe the blood away every
> 3-5 minutes without waking her--obviously that makes concentration on
> producing a quality magazine an impossibility).
>
> But the circumstances of her condition, and of my life as a gypsy,
> continually flitting back and forth between my home in Northern California
> and her
> house in So-Cal, conspired to create what amounts to writer's block, I
> think,
> and the Profiles can kept getting kicked down the road, even as more
> material would trickle in.
>
> I was literally packing my suitcase last night at midnight, to head down
> there again this weekend, when I got a call from her sister--she had
> suddenly
> and unexpectedly died a few minutes earlier. :<(
>
> The general feeling had been that she was likely to make it through January
> and well into and perhaps through February.   I had cleared my work
> schedule and had planned to spend much, if not all of February with her--as
> much as
> her time left would allow.   Nobody predicted that her condition would
> suddenly turn for the worst, and by the time it had happened, it was too
> late
> for me to get to see her one last time.
>
> Now she's gone, and suddenly I'm faced with the prospect of once again
> having considerable time available to me to devote to perpetuating the
> club's
> magazine.   I can't promise that I'll be particularly productive in the
> next
> few days, as there are arrangements to be made, services to be held etc.
> But soon, before too long, I'll be back in the saddle with my spurs on and
> my
> fingers will once again be flying on the keyboard.
>
> POCA members pay good money to be in the club and deserve to receive what
> they've paid for, so my ambition is to knock out the 2009 issues in rather
> quick succession and then get working on the first 2010 issue.   I'm
> blessed
> with a surfeit of material to get me started, but would still invite
> contributions, as this material will be consumed by the semi-rapid
> production rate
> and the unusually high volume of magazines I hope to generate in a
> relatively
> short amount of time.
>
> Too, the vendors are on very rocky shoals, and have pulled in their
> advertising budgets, so there will probably be fewer ads in the magazines,
> which
> will make them slightly smaller in terms of page count as a result.   But
> the
> quantity and caliber of the content should remain unchanged--particularly
> if
> further contributions flow in, which I'm again asking for.
>
> Thanks to everyone for your patience and understanding during what had been
> the most trying time in my life.   I'm sorry I've been unable to fulfill my
> obligations to each of you in the past year, and I promise I'll do
> everything in my power to make it up to you, as soon as I can.
>
> Mike
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