Preface: Popular culture glamorizes chefs and restaurant operators, but in reality, we have an abundance of mundane issues to worry about every day. Food costs and rents go up, refrigerators break down and sinks back up. A staff member goes AWOL, the meat supplier delivers forty pounds of duck instead of chicken. The last thing we want to think about is a personal health crisis.
One year ago last July, at 4:30 am in a desolate commissary kitchen, my right side went numb, sending my body crashing to the concrete floor. There I lay, motionless, staring at the grimy wheels of a utility cart. A wave of panic washed over me. What just happened? Why can’t I feel anything?
Get up, get up, get up. I told myself. Just stand up.
After the most terrifying 30 seconds of my life, I pushed my left hand down against the floor and willed myself to rise from the floor. My right side felt tingly as if it had fallen asleep. Trembling and bewildered, I tepidly put one foot in front of the other.
This was my first day back from a long overdue vacation. I had a huge workload ahead and my staff wouldn’t be here for another two hours. I wanted to hit the ground running and wasn’t letting a freak accident get in the way.
So I did what every obsessive, hyper-driven restaurant owner would do. I dusted myself off and proceeded to go about my business, firing up the grills, ovens, and stock pots. In retrospect, I was likely in shock.
Only after retracing my steps over the past hour did I grasp the gravity, the magnitude of what just happened. This had to be more than a clumsy trip-up. Was this my worst nightmare unfolding—a heart attack or stroke?
I texted my wife with the unsettling news. Something really bad happened. Long story short, she picked me up and we drove straight to the UCHealth emergency room.
From there, it’s a familiar story told by millions of stroke patients and their loved ones every year. Mention “stroke-like symptoms” in the ER and you’ll jump the line and get whisked to a room filled with doctors, nurses, and beeping medical devices. Stroke patients and their care team race against the clock— a quick diagnosis increases the chances exponentially for proper treatment and a better outcome. The longer you wait, the more damage a stroke can do. Every second counts.
After multiple tests, scans, and blood draws, my hospital medical team zeroed in on the likely culprit: atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat). Also known as Afib, atrial fibrillation is a leading cause of strokes. When your heart beats irregularly, blood can pool up and clot as it circulates from your heart. The clot creates a blockage of a blood vessel or artery, depriving your brain of oxygen, and ultimately leading to a “heart attack for the brain.”
To prevent blood clots from forming, the cardiologist prescribed a blood thinner (Eliquiz). “How long will I be on it?” I asked. “Twice a day for the rest of your life,” he dryly responded. “And never, ever miss a dose.” There was no sugar coating.
Nothing in the world hijacks your attention more than a trip to the emergency room. My first ER visit dates back to high school when a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball hit me right between the eyes, fracturing my nose. Two inches either way would’ve blinded an eye.
Having spent a lifetime in the restaurant business, I’ve exceeded my quota for ER trips due to gruesome knife cuts, ghastly gashes from meat slicers, and third-degree burns from scorching ovens, griddles and pans.
While this wasn’t my first rodeo, my latest ER trip felt different and more alarming. This time, the doctors weren’t stitching me up and sending me back to the kitchen. Instead, I was diagnosed with a lifelong medical condition — atrial fibrillation. Suddenly the ongoing stressors of running a restaurant seemed trivial by comparison.
After a night of monitoring and more testing at the hospital, I was cleared to go home. “Afib is not life-threatening,” the nurse kept telling me. “Millions of people live long and productive lives with heart arrhythmias. It’s very treatable.” My initial panic started to subside. As the owner-chef of a dinner delivery business, I began planning to finish the week’s food production.
Then, an unwelcome plot twist. I was changing from my hospital gown into street clothes when another team of doctors stopped by my room. They wheeled in a mobile computer which displayed an x-ray image of my neck and head.
“We’re from the UCH Spine Center. Your MRI detected another serious issue: cervical stenosis,” the lead doctor said. “The spinal canal in your neck, your cervical spine, is severely narrowed, compressing the spinal cord and nerve roots.”
“I don’t understand. My neck doesn’t hurt,” I bleated.
“Let me show you.” The doctor pointed to an image on the computer. Indeed, my neck and spinal cord were twisted forward like a bent spoon. You didn’t have to be a medical professional to see the problem. It didn’t look right.
Doctor: “If you fall off a ladder or bike, or even trip again, you’re at serious risk for a catastrophic spinal injury.”
Me: “Ugh. Does that mean surgery?”
Doctor: “You’ll need spinal decompression surgery. And we should also fuse your C-3, C-4, and C-5 vertebrae. We’ll have to wait at least three months ‘till after your stroke. But not much later. Cervical stenosis is a progressive ailment. It only gets worse.”
Me: “So did this happen when I collapsed from the stroke?”
Doctor: “No, you’ve probably had this condition for ten years. It’s common for people who work with their heads down. Hairdressers, chefs, tailors…even surgeons.”
My stomach sank and my heart raced. I was crestfallen. My hopes of striding out of the hospital that morning with an easy fix (a prescription for a miraculous blood thinner) had completely dissipated. The discharge nurse and my wife noticed my deflated demeanor.
“You’re actually quite lucky,” the nurse said. “You had a mini-stroke. If your arrhythmia had gone undetected much longer, it could’ve led to a massive, debilitating stroke. And by diagnosing your cervical stenosis early, you might’ve been saved from a paralyzing spinal injury.”
“Well, if you put it that way, I guess I am fortunate,” I said meekly.
“You had an angel looking out for you,” the nurse added.
“Thank you for talking him off the ledge,” my wife interjected.
Prologue:
I underwent neck surgery in November, 2023 at UCHealth. The procedure lasted almost eight hours. Side note: I had one of the best spinal surgeons in the country operate on me. I spent Thanksgiving week in the hospital and went home with multiple titanium brackets—and twenty-five staples—in my upper back and three fused vertebrae, along with 15 stitches in the front of my neck. I also carried home enough pain medications, blood thinners, and laxatives that could fill a cigar box
On January 8, 2024 I returned to the kitchen, and after being closed for eight weeks, JAYS2GO reopened. (Ironically we didn’t miss a single week of service during the three years of the pandemic). Our loyal and supportive customers came back in droves. Turns out, Denver is more than home to the Broncos and Nuggets. This city embraces and appreciates small business owners, through thick and thin. For the next several months, our dinner delivery menus sold out every week, and our email list grew rapidly with new customers. By late spring JAYS2GO was cruising, my long and painful recovery from neck surgery was in the rearview mirror.
Until April, when my mostly dormant Afib reared its ugly head. What began as an occasional bout of heart flutters turned into full-blown “persistent” atrial fibrillation. I experienced Afib’s common symptoms including fatigue, interrupted sleep, and shortness of breath. Medications failed to return my heartbeat to a normal rhythm, as did three attempts of cardioversion procedure in the hospital (electrical shocks are delivered to your chest, hoping to reset your heart.)
My only recourse was another operation: catheter ablation.
In Tom Cruise’s movie Jerry Maguire, Renee Zellweger’s character tells Jerry Maguire, “Let’s not tell our sad stories.”
I’ll save my next sad story for another chapter.
I graduated from Lansing High School with your Dad, Jesse Solomon. Knew your Uncle Dickie Solomon.