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

[Ed Pike]

Mike:

So very sorry to hear about your loss. I will keep you and your girlfriend in my prayers.


Ed...




________________________________
From: "mikeldrew at aol.com" <mikeldrew at aol.com>
To: detomaso at realbig.com
Sent: Sat, January 23, 2010 1:50:43 PM
Subject: [DeTomaso] Where's my Profiles?.....

...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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