The VIR 2024 Story, Part IV

I walked into the dark, empty, house a little after 2:30 in the morning. We had left VIR 9½ hours prior on an ambitious energy drink -fueled mission to get home ahead of schedule for both our sakes. I knew nobody was home, yet I still felt the need to creep around in order to cause as little disturbance as possible. The stillness of silence rushed me as I sat my bags down. With my wife on the other side of the globe for work and my dog at my parents, I felt like a stranger in my own house. I went from tip-towing out of habit to not awaken my absent housemates to navigating a familiar yet oh so foreign landscape as if I was in a dream. Alone in my house under the circumstances of the weekend prior, I felt like I was in a cold, dark, purgatory. I sauntered to the kitchen without turning any lights on, poured myself a tumbler of bourbon to calm my nerves, then shifted my body weight onto the counter. As the moonlight cast my shadow on the floor, I soaked in the burn within the glass. Once in bed, I was surprised at how quickly I fell asleep considering the caffeine in my system and thoughts in my conscious.

My wife & I had VIP passes to see one of my all-time favorite bands in Buffalo a few weeks prior. That was until sickness within the band resulted in the show being rescheduled to what would be the Monday after VIR. When I got to my parents house after many hours of sleep, I thought it was just to have dinner with them before going to the show then head back home with my dog after. I wasn’t remotely expecting the bomb to be dropped on me.

“So… in preparation [for the original procedure], they found something else”, my mother bluntly led with in preparing me for the news that she had a life-altering condition that would require a critical non-zero-risk surgery… and that was also hereditary.

“Oh.” was all I had.

If Road America marks the jumping point for my new life, VIR was the propeller of the turbulent plane I had just jumped out of and nicked on the way out. VIR severed parts of me that needed to be shed, but it was less than surgical about it. I came home bleeding out from the laceration VIR left me with.