As readers may know, I have spent much of the past few months recovering from health issues that kept me hospitalized for much of 2024 and 2025 with release in January of this year. I went back into the Carilion Roanoke Memorial on June 15 for three days for insertion of a wireless pacemaker into the lower cavity of my heart to help fix a blockage.

Recovery has been steady, but slow for a normally impatient man like myself. I hope to get final clearance from them to resume a higher level of activity in a day of followup tests on Sept. 16 at Roanoke Memorial. I hope to be cleared to return to the gym and resume photography of sporting events at Floyd County High School and musical events at places like the Jamboree.

Daily blood pressure checks show good levels and a bedside monitor sends constant reports through a wi-fi connection to the cardiologists at the hospital.

While I continue to need a cane when on my feet, I am able to walk without one around the house and on stairs. No falls since the one that sent to the hospital last December.

This has been a long recovery but using what I have learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped me stay sober or 32 years, two months and 18 days, I face this latest challenge one day at a time. At age 78, I have body parts that are worn out and orthopedic surgeons at Carilion want to replace my left shoulder, both knees (again), repair my right shoulder, insert an ear device to deal with disappearing hearing, and add whatever time is left in what has been, mostly, a good life. With a great wife and partner (48 years and counting), we are blessed with careers that brought adventures and allowed us to observe and be part of history.

I have survived a helicopter crash, still have shrapnel in my back, almost died from a motorcycle crash with a steer at age 64, made it through too many assignments in war zones and made it through too many dangerous situations.

Wife Amy survived rheumatic fever and a spinal condition as a child to pursue acting and directing in plays, commercial and films. She was bedridden with Epstein Barr for months while we lived in the National Capital Region and fought back to recover, work with Al Pacino and other actors and actresses for a tribute to their mentor, Lee Strasberg, in Manhattan. She later joined me in several of my overseas assignments.

With luck, I will be able to return to shooting sports images for newspaper use and continue to document our area’s music culture and life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia in images and on video — one day at a time.

I have my fingers, toes and eyes crossed.