So this has been long enough ago that I figured I'd share it with you all. In mid- to late-2010, I started having back pains. Not the normal kind of "I threw my back out" pains, though it started that way. It just kept getting worse and worse until I could barely walk. After seeing several doctors, I ended up at the Atlanta Spine Institute where I was lucky enough to find Dr. James. After a mylegram CT scan, he diagnosed me as having a severely pinched nerve root due to a herniated disc on one side and a bone spur (that didn't show up in other MRIs that I had) on the other. I was in constant agony, and without surgical intervention, it wasn't going to get better.
So in January 2011, I ended up in Saint Joseph's Hospital to have a discectomy and laminectomy and to have my L5-S1 vertebra fused. Until that time, the most severe procedure I'd ever undergone was LASIK surgery in 2001, and I had certainly never been admitted to a hospital or cut on for anything before. This was HUGE to me, and I was a bit concerned, to say the least. I wasn't really scared; I was in so much pain all the time that I mainly just wanted to get it over with so I could (hopefully!) get on with my life. Still, as far as surgeries go, this is not the one you want to start with!
Anyway, before I went under the knife, I sent a PM to Avatea and War Witch, just to let them know that I had made arrangements in case something went horribly wrong (which I didn't expect, but still...) for ownership of the Titan Network to be transferred, and that I had made arrangements in my will for various other things pertaining to the game. I ended by writing to them:
Again, I'm sorry if this comes off as a bit morbid. I really expect all of this to be a non-issue. Still, you know what they say, hope for the best and plan for the worst, and I just didn't want you to get hit all of a sudden with non-me people asking you to do weird things with no background or context and no way to personally confirm with me that it's on the level.
Wish me luck, or if you don't believe in luck, wish me favorable statistical variance,
--TonyV
I guess I kinda expected a "Good luck!" message or something of that sort, but what I got back from War Witch in particular actually really moved me:
Since I have faith, I'll be sure to pray for you, the doctor's guiding hand, and a speedy recovery. It is a good and wonderful thing that you do, a labour of love, and I'll pray that you can continue to do it. We are all blessed by the personal time and effort that people put into websites because they love the game. (I know this, because I've done it, and I spent HOURS on it and days and months. It truly is a labour of love. Especially since I didn't get paid for it way back in those early 90s years.)
So, I do wish you a favorable statistical variance OR luck, whichever appeals to you the most for your peace of mind. And for my peace of mind, I'll let it rest at God's feet since I know He's got it all together.
To be honest,
that is why I have such affection for the Paragon Studios staff, and is one of the reasons that I love City of Heroes so much. Some people dismiss this as "just a game," but I've always been impressed by how it was so much more to the people working on it. These PMs, the warmth and camaraderie at the Player Summits, the joking and the playing, it all just goes to show how good we really have had it the past eight and a half years. I've played a
lot of games over the years, and I know that most development studios care about "the community" in an abstract kind of way. But I've never,
ever felt like the people who wrote them cared so personally and, in many cases, individually about its community. I remember thinking how special it was that the tutorial contact Coyote was named after a beta tester who passed away, and in January 2011, it especially hit home very personally with Melissa's message.
Incidentally, it took six weeks of rehab after the surgery to build up the muscles, but I've had zero back pain since. When I was out at the last Player Summit, I took a week of vacation and did a lot of sightseeing in San Francisco, walking up and down the hills, climbing umpteen stairs, loafing around Alcatraz, until my feet were numb--but my back never once twinged. As far as I can tell, I'm good as new.
