Please continue to keep sharing this website with your friends and family and help me share this story with people that could benefit from knowing they aren’t alone. Please consider helping aclottedjourney.com also, see below for details on that! Happy happy 2022 and welcome to a brand new year of A Clotted Journey, enjoy Part 21, COVID and the Girl that Bought My Coffee! ALSO be on the lookout for the brand new podcast brought to you by aclottedjourney.com, CATALYST CORNER!

You can still make something beautiful and something powerful out of a really bad situation.

Gabe Grunewald

Year 2020 was one of the craziest years of my life for so many different reasons, and I know that this is true for most of the world because of the things that transpired within our species health situation. A global pandemic took us by storm via COVID-19, Corona virus, ‘Rona, SARS-CoV-2, or whatever you choose to call it. To give you all a timeline update on where we are within my story, we are sitting at the cusp of all of this excitement. I started taking my antidepressant weeks before the country shut down. Weeks before the continent shut down. Weeks before the world shut down. And today when I look back, I am thankful for the timeline because I knew that I was in for more than a roller coaster still with my blood journey to come. I knew that my stress hadn’t come to an end, but I would have never guessed that the virus would have been so powerful across all of the population.

Within my last post I discussed waiting for the medication to take effect. Waiting for anything to feel like, something. Waiting for that feeling of happiness and enjoyment that I remembered, and I talked about how slowly, my hobbies started to give me reason to hope. There is a very important element that was added to my life that made this time in my life even more difficult, along with all of the hematologic problems I was dealing with, the global pandemic. My workplace was having huge furloughs and reassignments due to the pandemic. I faced a decision at my work, do I volunteer to be reassigned to work with the deadly virus, or do I choose to be reduced to lower hours leading to significantly reduced pay. This decision terrified me. The youth inside of my heart wasn’t afraid of the virus and the prospect of being able to run these cutting-edge tests was kind of exciting, but the educated side of me told me that with a blood clot, who knows how this virus could affect me.

I ended up deciding that I would take the reduced full-time status and they way it looked like it would be working out is I would work three weeks and be off for two weeks. Many of my counterparts were not as lucky and either were not able to be off for full weeks, meaning that they would be unable to collect unemployment, or were going to be sent to the COVID-19 testing labs. We were informed of these decisions about our fate at work, and we were told that they would be taking effect within the coming weeks.

When I tell this portion of my story to some people, they are extremely surprised when I tell them that this was one of the best times of my life. About three to four weeks before all of the reduced hours were going to start for the employees here at the clinic, I asked a girl to go on a coffee date with me. Little did I know, this would be the girl that I would call Mrs. Negro someday. Down the hall I always saw this girl that I remembered from college, Megan Pierre. She was always so happy, and she just had this ambition/smile that was contagious. I don’t think I ever remember a time in college or here at the clinic where I saw her and wasn’t instantly blown away. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world when she told me that she would go get coffee with me. I, like most naïve men that approach a person they fancy for the first time, thought that I had to impress this girl in this short amount of time for her to hopefully want to see me again.

Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is like waiting for a ship at the airport.

I did everything on my way to work that day, knowing I would be having coffee with her. I dressed up, button up shirt and tie, I wore the fanciest cologne that I had, and I gave myself a fresh shave. I felt ready and determined to make sure this girl knew I was truly someone worth liking. I have to be honest with you, I really didn’t think that I would ever have a chance with this girl, she seemed so out of my league. But if there is one thing that this clotted vein in my spleen has taught me, being brave is all it takes sometimes to keep/acquire the life you want. I was and had been hurting for a long time but was really starting to find value in myself before going on my date with Megan. I knew that I couldn’t ask her before that. I knew that I had to be someone that would add value to a partner’s life. Im very happy that I was at that point mentally when I met her for coffee that day, or the events that would unravel would have hurt me monumentally.

I met her at the 9^th floor elevator that day in the Hilton Building her at Mayo. Seeing her walk down that hall made time slow down and the sun shine just a little bit brighter. The world seemed to be focused on her and my brain agreed. Within the first couple of words, I remembered how kind she always was. I remembered this sweet girl that I had always wanted to know more about. She asked me about my time at Northern Michigan University and we both were able to reminisce.  We both were able to talk about some of the hardest classes that we took in school, Megan calling me a dork when I was proud of my grades in Dr. Rebers class. We were able to discuss all of the things we loved about NMU. The hiking, the people, the lake. We both have a huge love for Lake Superior or the shining big sea water, gitche gumee. Talking about all of these fantastic memories of college made me very nostalgic and think about all of the wonderful people that touched my life during that time. I could talk for days and days of all of the people that helped guide me on that journey, and I hope someday I will be able to do that. It made me think of how far I had come on my journey from hurt and lost college student when some of my friends abandoned me to now. Wow, just wow.

When we got to the coffee shop, I knew that this was my chance to see if she really liked me, I was going to pay for the coffee. I know this sounds silly but with these types of interactions usually this is a good sign if they let you pay! Or maybe that person could be just a jerk. To my dismay, Megan insisted on paying. Instant deflation are the two words I would describe this situation as. I knew this was such a bad sign for this love connection. Stay tuned for my next post to see what happens next, I can’t wait to tell you!

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support!

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I have loved writing on here so much that I can foresee myself doing this for a long time, I hope you will all continue to support me and help me spread my message! You can do this by first, subscribing below and to all of the social media accounts for brand new content right away. And then second, if you can, help the website in other ways! If you choose to donate to the page, I will donate a portion of the contribution (you tell me how much you’d like to be donated or I will just do 50%) to the American Society of Hematology and the remainder I will put towards helping the website. I have many plans coming up for aclottedjourney.com and I need your help to keep spreading my story and expanding the type of content I can bring to you. If you want to see if I need anything specific the link to my WISH LIST is here. Click HERE to make a difference!