Good bye, my friend.
 

Many of you know that I tend to keep in touch with the people I've connected with. I thought I'd lost track of Danny S. He's linked on the stories page of the GPN website. I helped him get to Zeegers long before I even thought of doing this as a business. We had kept in touch since his surgery, but our last exchange was in January of last year. When he stopped returning my email and his phone numbers were no longer good, I thought he'd moved on. Yesterday, I left a message on his old business number even though the greeting was for another person. She called me back today and told me that last February, Danny died unexpectedly of natural causes. What a shock... he was in his early 40's and seemingly in good health.

I was lucky to get to meet him. On my first trip to Europe after my surgery, he was still in Munich recovering from his. He was 1 week post-op and good enough to spend the evening out... dinner... walking around Munich.

At 1 year post-op (Oct 2004), he sent me this update:

Wow. Good to hear from you, Mark. How is your back doing? Mine is doing pretty good. Check out the pic. I thought I would never be able to play golf again.

http://ispine.org/picture_library/danny_golf.jpg

We reconnected in January of 2006 (almost 3.5 years post-op for him). He was still doing well. He was an accomplished photographer and had some incredible black and white photos on an internet gallery (that's no longer active). He had worked in the Katrina devastation area and had a slide show that was very moving. (Again, the website is no longer available.) Apparently, he died a few weeks after our last exchange.

It's nice knowing that his last three and a half years were spent golfing, working and enjoying life instead of watching it pass through a fog of pain and meds. It's nice to know that I had a small part in helping him achieve that. Dr. Zeegers, you are amazing and you touch so many lives.

This really must have been a shock, Mark. Danny was a vibrant, good-looking and nice guy. It's too bad that his work as displayed on websites has disappeared.

Losing a friend is terrible. I'm sorry to hear the news and hope he wasn't in too much pain.

Allan

It's terrible to hear about a vibrant, happy person such as Danny and one of our spiney family leaving us early. At least he was able to live the last few years enjoying himself.

Jim