Piece of cake
I was getting the chief surgeon at the hospital, a tall strong man whose physical qualities I’m sure helped for the job he did every day. In his early fifties perhaps, personable and friendly while sticking to the matter at hand. First he explain carefully why I was here and detailed all the aspects of my problem. They were many. We talked about the failing of placing a stent in my prior visit the hospital and the reason of it in sight of the blockages of my veins leading to my heart. Then he spoke in generalities about patients with similar diseases and what is done to make them better. In my case he explained that my chest would be opened, a vein harvested from my leg, and he checked my legs for possible varicose, luckily I was not affected by the scourge, that they would be grafted to my heart to bypassed the blockages, that a graft of organic matter, either porcine or bovine, would replace a leaky valve, and finally a maze would be performed to reshape the electrical impulses that control arythmia , all done during my time on the surgical berth. This would take a few hours on the operating table, four or five. He spoke of vitally and mortality rate from the procedure and the benefits of it. He spoke of the mortality rate and gave ne numbers, the percentages. I asked him, jokingly what his was but was only answer with a glare. I was asked to approve the surgery and signed a for to that effect, he set on a date within a couple of months to have it done. And that was it.
All was set up. Again all my loved ones, all my friends furthering appeasing and optimistic opinions with allegories like oh, it’s just like plumbing, and again mentioning an uncle or a brother, pointed to the banality of the event. I was not much concerned either and showed no senses of worry. I was just curious how I got to this point, asymptomatic and without discomfort in my daily life. I started conserving my energy, stopped lifting heavy boxes of books like I was doing before my diagnostic, I stopped smoking pot, an activity that I was doing more as a routine than pleasure, as I was at a point of not getting the sensations that lifted me earlier on when I started smoking again. The break was neat without much signs of cravings. I was made like that, I had given up heavy drugs when I was young, before my daughter was born, it was not a struggle. I gave up smoking tobacco years ago after my young daughter said I should not. She had learned a in school. To quit was somewhat easy, whenever I had a craving for the nicotine I would pick up a cigarette, hold it between my fingers, sometimes getting seduced by its aroma, all the while thinking to myself that the devil is a killer and it would do me in. I was thinking to myself, that thing makes you die. I did not want to die so I quit in a short time. I had given up love for my second wife, the mother of my daughter, as my love had turned to hate after many years of marriage. That was not difficult either as in general, I’m not a hating person. I generally I’m pretty tolerant as I understand that every one has demons within, just like I have demons within. But most of us deal with their inner demons, I do. My second wife did not and the separation was inevitable. Then I gave up alcohol when I was diagnosed with hepatitis C, another silent killer discovered only recently and for which, at the time on my diagnosis, was no medication or cure. I volunteered for two different medication trials for it, when the drug company I was enrolled with finally found a regimen of medications to rid the virus out of my body. These experiences prepared me well for the future procedure and I was determined, for the few people I love, to get strong and healthy so I could get out of it well if not better.
before this ordeal as we have done the last dozen years, we had planned to spend a week week in Nice where, lucky us, have a small apartment there. The tickets were booked in advance and refund was most likely be denied. There were discussions about me traveling on account of the situation. After much discussions, at home and with loved ones, uncertain advice from the doctor who was concerned that if I had a crisis over the ocean, the plane would not be able to land for me to get treatment, but flying was okay, we decided to make a go at it.
My life returned more or less to normal, digging at the mountains of books that had to be disposed of. My job was to help do that, and I liked it. The books are located in a warehouse near me, a twenty minutes rides and I went there just as needed, on my own schedule. In order to achieve our goals, to market as many books as possible , rapidly and efficiently, we set up weekly where the bidding price per lot was either five or ten dollars. We had commenced about a year before my diagnosis and the sustem worked well and the sales increased from auction to auction. Our auction took care of a few hundred books weekly and in light of the amount of books occupying some nine thousands square feet, some on shelves but the great majority on the books cradled in boxes stacked up six feet high on a 4×5” wooden palette. The amount of books to process was and still is in the hundreds of thousand. Our auctions only slowly make a dent into the pile, but the mouse does not eat the pound of cheese all at once, and every week we have another auction. Every week we set aside, either from the shelves or the books that we sort out of the boxes full of books . From the boxes we have several criteria for choosing the books we select. Desirability, value and condition. The books we deem un-marketable we send to charity. We keep the rest and decide if they fit in the next auction. The rest is shelved for futur auctions or the shows, antiquarian book fairs, where we set up every year. Some books are culled but not many. It’s a lengthy and tidious process that can glaze your eyes after a while. It requires physical effort as well. Books in these boxes weight between 25 and 35 pounds, sometimes more depending on the box size. Most times they are in document size boxes, easier to handle, but most boxes vary in size and weight. The heavy lifting part is not ideal for a person in my medical condition, but I had done it for the past here. Not everyday of course but enough that it could have a toll on my well being..
Once the books sorted my friend and I would start listing and filling the lot allocated by the auctioneer, each working on a separate auction or combining our efforts on one. I liked numbering the lots to give them to the auction house for photographing, then describe from the photographs at home at my own pace. He liked describing the lots first then giving the books to the auctioneer for photographing. Both methods worked well and our auctions, timid at first, grew to sales climbing to about ninety percent of the offered lots. We sell nationally and online exclusively, there is no previous viewing of the material we offer and the bidder rely on our descriptions and images provided for every lot. The way my method works for me is that my time at the warehouse is limited, it’s not a nine to five job.
I prepared a couple of auctions during the two weeks before I was leaving for france, I needed something to keep occupied while away and my method of working the auctions permitted that.