I've been trying to write this post all day. It may go on a tangent, so people may think this isn't the place. I'm sorry in advance.
I feel horrible. Of course. Everyone is, I'm 43 years old and I've lost many friends. Even internet friends. Sure internet friends aren't "real" but the emotions we feel are. I have taken some deaths of internet friends hard. I first experience this pre-internet when I ran a local multi-line BBS with door games. The most popular game was Scrabble. I even held local get togethers with real scrabble boards. It got insane. The best player was the 73 year old retired man. We got to be fairly close in real life as well. One day I got home from work and saw he had been logged on to the BBS play Scrabble for 14 hours. He passed away playing on my computer. That hit me hard but for some reason, Ryan Davis' passing is hitting me harder and it is making me feel weird.
As some of you may know, I've been battling heart disease for the past few years.Last year I had a heart attack and was rushed in to have several cardiac artery stents installed.When I woke in recovery, I asked for my ipod and drifted in and out of sleep for the next 16 hours listening to the Giant Bombcast. Ryan Davis' upbeat attitude help me to get past a scary moment in my life. It was like he, and the rest of crew, were reassuring me. Everything was going to be all right. We are still going to be here talking about stuff you love.
I know speculating on Ryan's death is against the rules, Talking about just my case, I was a lot like Ryan before my heart attack. I was morbidly overweight, got out of breath easily, sweat all the time, and while I didn't use a CPAP machine to sleep at night, my doctors were concerned that I should have a sleep study done. After my heart attack, I lost close to 100 pounds, got fit, eating healthy, and exercised. Most of the time went I was on the treadmill I was listening to the Bombcast.
A few months ago, my heart took a significant turn for the worse. I went in for one corrective surgery, only to be woken up and told the surgeons didn't perform it because they didn't believe I could survive it. They told me I had just weeks to live and they were putting me on the transplant recipient list. I had another group of surgeons told inform me they could do the surgery in a different way and my odds of surviving would be 30%. I went in thinking I might never awake. In the recovery icu, my wife had the nurse put my ipod on me. When I awoke, I started my ipod and the first voice I heard was Ryan's cheerful voice "HELLO IT'S TUESDAY!!" Once again telling me that everything was going to be alright. I really believe that he and the rest of the bombcast was as important to my recovery as my exercise. My recovery so far as exceeded even the most optimistic estimates.
I wanted to write Ryan Davis and tell him how much he helped me. Just doing and loving his job. I didn't write him. I felt it was corny, he might never see it, or worse, he might have read it and then get self conscious. Now I wish I wrote it. Even if it was stupid.
RIP Mr Davis.
