Heart Bypass Surgery

I worked in radio for 13 or 14 years in jobs ranging from control room operator to Programme Director and Operations Manager and most things other than sales in between. (I hate wearing a suit and there's no way I could dress like Herb Tarlek from WKRP. <g Anyway, back then, I was getting two to four migraines a week, although they were still diagnosed as cluster headaches at that time. Most radio stations are understaffed and it was only on very rare occasions that I could call in sick and actually be told I could stay home. I worked a variety of formats including "oldies", top 40, adult contemporary, and "Music of Your Life". It was really tough sounding human every three to five minutes, especially with the top 40 format and I can't say I always succeeded. At the "MOYL" station, where I was promoted from all-night DJ to Ops Manager (and had three former PDs working for me), the owner of the station had cluster headaches but except when he was in the middle of a cluster, wasn't sympathetic about my headaches. When he was suffering through a cluster, he would occasionally admit that he didn't know how I could be on-air with one, but that would evaporate when he got over the headache. (He was a Grade A jerk in many ways, so this flip-flop wasn't unusual. He once criticised me in front of three female employees for putting a "gal" on-air for some weekend shifts. She was better than a couple of my full-time DJs and went on to establish an excellent career. Just to prove my point, I hired another female DJ a month later.) I then moved to the British Virgin Islands to be PD/Ops Mgr of a radio station there. The headaches continued to increase in frequency and intensity. I returned to Canada a year later and was hired immediately to do weekend shifts at a new station. The other part-timers all had "real jobs" and only did a weekend shift, mostly for the fun of it. I could and did work at any time during the week often working twice as many hours on-air as the full-timers, but I still had to do so while suffering with headaches. Another part-timer had terrible cluster headaches and even underwent surgery to try to alleviate them. He did mid-days on Saturday and I followed him on-air. There were many days when we could tell from the first look at each other that we both had a bad one. The adult contemporary format was such that we could get away with a lower key on-air style, but even that could be a major struggle. I left there in May 1991, although not for health reasons. The stations (AM and FM) had been purchased by a big conglomerate and we'd unionized for our own protection. I went from senior management at my previous two stations to shop steward. It was that bad. They got rid of all of the experienced weekend part-timers and replaced us with two kids straight out of a broadcast course at a community college. We'd had better ratings on the weekend than the full-time DJs had all week (and that's unheard of in radio), but they saved some money and the full-timers' egos by replacing us. I'd already been doing freelance photography and writing for a few years and tried to do it full-time. The headaches (still thought to be clusters) got worse and worse and I haven't worked full-time or part-time for anyone else since May 1991. I've been offered jobs but I was always honest with them and told them about the headaches. I can't in good conscience accept a job and then either perform poorly or miss many days of work because of my migraines. I love doing the writing and photography (for aviation books and magazines) when I'm able to, but the migraines restrict that. Right now, nothing would make me happier than to be able to get and hold a full-time job, whether it's working for myself as I am now or for someone else. The migraines do interfere with my present work, but I do have the (relative) luxury of being able to work around them somewhat. That's more applicable to the writing than the photography, which usually must be done to a schedule other than my own. The biggest problem is trying to afford all of the medication. Even if I started a full-time job tomorrow, the group health insurance would probably exclude my migraine drugs as a pre-existing condition. Now, if only I could win the lottery....... <g I have nothing but admiration for those of you who still manage to function at work during a migraine. I only had to sound friendly and entertaining on the air, but those of you with more demanding jobs really have a big hurdle to clear. Jeff