Thursday, January 7, 2016

Real folks and real stories on health

This writer and I graduated from the same high school in the same year. It is good to know more about heart attacks so we can prevent it. Google this disease. Is the pressure of the job too big? There are too many unanswered questions.

I will ask her permission whether I can keep it here. I separated this long article (I've a hard time to pause) by paragraphs and changed the names. I will read it again to remind myself. Enjoy the moments in life and have a healthy life.

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About 2 years ago, while rushing in and out of the X Locker Room at the airport right before my shift, I bumped into a Chinese woman colleague named S.  She looked very confident, smart, normal and altogether. That was the first time we said hello and goodbye to each other because everybody's working different rotational shifts in many different areas and multi-functions throughout the airport.

Often times, you may never see the same colleagues you work with today until another day 10, 20 or 30 years later (if they have not retired from the company or if they are still alive.  And that's part of airport life for you).  Well, little did I know that was the first and last time I said hello and goodbye to her.  She's our 6th colleague who have also suddenly died within the last 6 months in 2015.  Her funeral took place on Dec 31, 2015.  She was 63.  The other 5 were all very good looking, healthy looking males and females:  46, 57, 58, 59 and 65.

All died of massive heart attacks.  It's scary and very discomforting to see their smiling faces on the wall in our Briefing Room where we go for our briefing at the start of every shift.  In as short as 6 months, from 1 familiar face to 6 familiar faces went up on that wall  "In Loving Memory of ........".  Their voices, adrenalized energies and laughters are still lingering inside my ears as I have indeed worked very well side-by-side with 4 of them before.

One of them used to go to Hawaii each year for at least 6 weeks, cycling around the Hawaiian islands daily for hours and returning to work at the airport looking so sun-tanned and totally healthy.  There was one winter night when we had the ice storm and of course non-stopping heavy snowfalls, whiteouts and blizzards that all the runways were shutdown.  He and I were controlling a few outbounds at the departure gates and we had to announce flight cancellations after our numerous flight delays announcements earlier, when the angry crowds standing in front of our counter were ready to slaughter us as some of them drove up to 8 or 10 hours to get to the airport to wait around the whole evening and then to be told there's NO more flights going out that night.

It was almost 1:30 a.m. in the morning, my heart was racing in front of the angry stranded passengers (even though I didn't show it).  But, D was extremely calm and altogether the whole time.  He's always on top of things despite what adverse situations.  And he also knew how to enjoy life that he always hop on a flight just to go to ball games and sports events all over the world.  Aahh!!!

NONE of these 6 fallen colleagues was anything close to overweight. In fact, they were all very slim and looking very fit.

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