Get Well Soon, David!

Me and David Crow, pictured at the Rails Pub Night in April.

At the last DemoCamp gathering, I thought the biggest glitch was the cantankerous projector in the conference room; that night, it often refused to display what was on the presenter’s laptops. I was wrong: the biggest glitch happened to David Crow.

About twenty minutes prior to the start of the event, it was becoming quite obvious that David wasn’t looking or feeling well. Jay Goldman and I offered to take over the hosting duties.

“You’re not looking so hot,” I remember saying, “Maybe you should go home.”

“I’m thinking more like going to the emergency room,” he said.

“Shit,” I replied, noting that he was beginning to look really flushed. “Someone should go with you.”

Sutha Kamal went with David to the ER, while Jay Goldman and I took over and MC’d the event.

Later that evening, Jay got a call from Sutha and relayed the message to me.

“It was a heart attack,” he said. “He’s all right, but — wow. A heart attack.”

As you can see from the photo above, David doesn’t look like your typical cardiac ward case: he’s young (a relative puppy at 32) and he’s not obese. He neither smokes nor partakes of the Devil’s Dandruff. He doesn’t have a strong family history of heart disease. In the end, although you can mitigate some of the risk factors, there’s always a mathematical chance that you’ll have a heart attack. The best you can do is do what you can to improve your odds and hope that you’re near help should your number come up. As unfortunate that David was for having a heart attack, he was also fortunate for being spitting distance from the row of hospitals on University Avenue.

David’s doing much better now — at least well enough to write a quick blog entry about the experience, complete with ultrasound pictures — and I’m glad. On behalf of myself, Wendy, all your DemoCamp friends and Tucows, we wish you a speedy recovery, David!

(And yes, David, we’ll drop by. Wendy and I have a get-well present for you, and by the power vested in me as Tucows’ developer relations guy, we’ve got a gift for you on behalf of the company to boot!)