This is a call for help. You are the intended recipient.
A good friend and former employee of mine left working for me about a year ago to pursue becoming a fireman. He passed the background, physical, psychological and fitness tests and was accepted into the training program. For as long as he worked for me (three years) he talked about becoming either a fireman or a cop (his dad’s a cop turned DEA agent). His name is Wes. He’s a good kid, about 26 years old.
Six weeks before he was to start the state firefighter’s training program he learned that he had a brain tumor. It explained many things - most notably his increasing feeling of being in a dream - so much so that each morning he was unsure if he had actually slept the night before.
The tumor was removed in a 10-hour surgery, and determined to be benign. Wes started the firefighter’s training program six weeks later, never telling them of his ordeal out of fear they’d reject him, and he already felt like enough of a reject. The side-effects of, and recovery from, the brain surgery compromised Wes’s mental and physical abilities - he nicknamed himself Gomer Pyle, saying he struggled with tasks which would have been simple for him before.
He drives around for hours in his car and cries. He has a brain that doesn’t work quite right anymore, but the doctors say that will probably improve in time. He says it feels like the surgeons gave him someone else’s brain, because it doesn’t feel like his.
I called him today to chat and he told me that the fire department cut him from the training program. Aside from being unable to achieve his goal of becoming a fire fighter - at least for now - he can’t purchase a road bike, which was the reward he had planned for himself after reading Lance’s book in the recovery room.
He’s unemployed, has a new wife, and struggling to keep his head above water - emotionally and financially. I can probably find him a job that will help make ends meet, but what I really want to do is get him a bike. He needs it. Anyone that has had a bad day turned good by a few hours in the saddle knows exactly what I mean.
Want to help? Shoot me a PM.