Happy 66th birthday (February 25, 2026) to my dear friend Bryan, who has always been a year and a day older than me. As per personal tradition, we speak on the phone, either on his birthday or on my birthday tomorrow.
He visited me here in southeastern Florida from almost across the United States for two days in November 2025. Unfortunately, I was not doing well:
On November 4, 2025, I had artery bypass surgery that lasted almost six hours. I had a three-foot-long blockage in the main artery in my left leg, so my two vascular surgeons, with my podiatrist observing, removed a three-foot-long vein in my right leg and inserted it within my left leg.
On November 8, 2025, my podiatrist performed surgery to remove part of the third and fourth toes of my left foot due to my artery blockage.
So, Bryan visited me on November 11 in the hospital and on November 12 in my physical rehabilitation facility.
(Since March 2022, I had eight surgeries: heart, two chest, two spine, right ankle, and those two.)
Bryan and I have literally known each other for 65 years. We were neighbors in Babylon, Long Island, New York, from the moment of my birth on February 26, 1961, until the summer of 1972, when my family moved several miles away to West Islip. Although we lived on different streets in Babylon, only a hedge separated our backyards. I was still able to shoot a tiny hole in Bryan's kitchen window with my dad's BB rifle from my backyard in the late 1960s, when my age was in single digits.
February 25, 2026, at home
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