misery for overtime a colleague of ours suffered a brain aneurysm. surgery is over, now they're waiting for the blood collected in his head to be absorbed by his body. tomorrow, day 3, he's expected to be transfered to a rehabilitation facility.

his aneurysm started with a really severe headache. first chance he got out of the office, he asked a former colleague to drive him to northwestern hospital, where doctors immediately spotted what was wrong. we circulated a card, it's around here somewhere.

aneurysms are a lot more common than i thought they are - one web site says that 3 to 5 percent of americans have brain aneurysms. [ more ] it sounds a lot like cancer, in that things can be prevented from getting worse - rupturing, bleeding, pressure building in the brain - if blood vessels in the brain are checked and if anuerysms are caught right away.

everyone is suprisingly springy and worried for him. he is the type to whistle down the hallway even during an apparent crisis inside and outside the newsroom. he finds something to be cheerful about even as public relations agents fool him and his colleagues into thinking an official went this way when he actually had already left the building.

"you're sure you placed that piece of paper on skip's desk now," he told me once.

"ya, but i didn't reply, i mean, it's skip, it'll blow over," i said, stopping working and looking at him.

he started laughing, sardonic sounding to others but replete with mirth to the rest of us. "did you see that e-mail he sent you?" he turned to everyone else in the newsroom. "he carboned this really nasty email to ulanmaya to the news editor, asking her to change her phone number, saying it's a fax, and that he couldn't find the specials request fax on parn's desk. most likely, he took the request paper, walked around and placed it down somewhere else, and can't remember where."

and then just last saturday, he came out of his hole of a workroom when we laughed at a college per diem person who played hookie and didn't even call in to tell us he's skipping work. "i have to cover a sorority rush scene," he told the supervisor, who pounded his head on the desk and laughed to the high heavens.

"that boy will be our boss someday soon," said jeff, a photographer.

mike green emerged, confused, and took a moment to look at all of us doubling over. "i would choose to cover a sorority rush scene myself, over the AP," the supervisor told him.

"i'm trying to sleep back there," green said, when we very well knew he wasn't. you will always catch him plugging away at his machine in the workroom, or lugging four different kinds of cameras to assignments. typical mgreen banter.

to cheer me up one afternoon, about a third of the way into my second year working here, he let me see one of his pictures of the pope. he opened his small cupboard space and showed me a picture of ioannes oaulus II, slumped and praying in his throne, with a giant image of the christ filling the background, looming over the aging pope. "sometimes, with the way the world is going now, someone has to say no. it's his job to say no," he said.

but my favorite quote from him is still something i think about everyday: "your misery is my overtime."

it is always in the back of my mind during my regular shift and when i have to work longer to make sure that every candidate has either won or conceeded, every criminal charge noted, every person hurt accounted for, every death documented and reported. he'd better hurry back into the newsroom; everyone's worried. he'll never know he was missed, of course. ;-)

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What causes a brain aneurysm? [ webMD ]

A person may inherit the tendency to form aneurysms, or aneurysms may develop because of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and aging. Some risk factors that can lead to brain aneurysms can be controlled; others can't. The following risk factors may increase your risk of developing an aneurysm or, if you already have an aneurysm, of it rupturing:

* Family history. People with a family history of brain aneurysms are twice as likely to have an aneurysm as those who don't.

* Previous aneurysm. About 20% of patients with brain aneurysms have more than one.

* Gender. Women are twice as likely to develop a brain aneurysm or suffer a subarachnoid hemorrhage as men.

* Race. African Americans have twice as many subarachnoid hemorrhages as whites.

* Hypertension. The risk of subarachnoid hemorrhage is greater in people with a history of high blood pressure (hypertension).

* Smoking. In addition to being a cause of hypertension, the use of cigarettes may greatly increase the chances of a brain aneurysm rupturing.   ¶ 1/13/2005 04:48:00 PM