The Summer that Killed my Momentum

SORRY FOR THE AUDIO. It was hard getting back into things, and I messed up my video recording to record 2 audio sources over each other and never hit record on my audio only device. Argh, yeah my momentum has been killed, but I will keep at it. Listen as I talk about the summer that killed my momentum.

Special shot out to Synhorst Property Maintenance & Landscaping

Summary:
How do you prepare for life's unexpected twists and turns? Join me, Raul Lopez, as I kick off Season Two of "How Do You Save Success in Spanglish?" by sharing a deeply personal journey that forced me to confront my own health vulnerabilities. It all began with a sudden onset of severe stomach pain on July 7th, which spiraled into a medical crisis involving emergency surgery and a suspected bowel obstruction. Amidst the chaos, I had to make a hurried call to inform my wife and grappled with the frightening realization of life’s unpredictability.

From the trauma of an NG tube to enduring multiple surgeries, I recount the relentless battle with recurring bowel obstructions and the emotional toll it took on me and my family. Balancing health, family responsibilities, and work seemed nearly impossible, especially as I faced significant weight loss and a slow, arduous road to recovery. The unwavering support of my loved ones became my anchor, reminding me of the importance of a cautious approach to regaining my strength and momentum.

As I emerged from this medical rollercoaster, life threw more challenges my way, from my daughter's illness to a series of domestic mishaps. Yet, the excitement of returning to my podcast and reconnecting with you, my audience, fueled my resilience. I express my heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering support during my hiatus and promise more engaging content, even if it starts a bit rocky. Tune in for a hopeful look ahead and a sneak peek into our upcoming lesson: how to say "success" in Spanglish.

Chapters

• 0:05 Surviving Life's Unexpected Medical Emergency
• 7:54 Recovering From Repeated Medical Emergencies
• 17:31 Struggling to Regain Momentum
• 30:13 Returning to Podcasting After a Break

Transcript

Raul Lopez: 0:05

This is Raul Lopez and you're listening to. How Do you Save Success in Spanglish? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt this journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in Spanglish what's good, mi gente, welcome back. It's your boy, raul, still here, can't hold me down Trying to kick off this season two.

Raul Lopez: 0:39

So thank you for joining, thank you for taking the time to listen in. I know I've been gone for a little bit. I apologize. Things were kind of out of my hand, as life likes to come at you sometimes and knock you back a bit, which kind of delayed me a bit. So for anybody who might have seen on the podcast socials, that I did end up getting and having to have some medical emergency during the summer, which kind of knocked back my original intent of releasing new content for July. So just you know, let you know I was busy trying to get new interviews, so I've had a bunch of interviews occurring during the summer, some of which I've had to reschedule, but just to kind of get you up to date on me, and obviously I like to tell you and be honest about what's going on, keep it real about things and hopefully learn some lessons through life. Life teaches us the best lessons sometimes.

Raul Lopez: 1:41

So somewhere around July 5th sorry, july 7th I started having stomach pains. It was funny because I was watching um. You know, I've had had some things throughout the day, but it was like shortly after, uh, watching House of Dragon, uh, I was starting to feel like I just felt like man, this is just getting worse and worse and worse. Um, and I decided, hey, I'll go to the ER. I've read lots of stories on Reddit about people who had stomach ache, stomach pains, who didn't take it serious, waited too long to go to the ER and wound up dying. So that was my initial concern. Like man, I don't want to be one of those stories where I waited for too long, try to be tough and say I can't handle the stomach pain, it's just a stomach pain, it's just a stomach ache, uh. But I said, hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna go to ER and get checked out. Um, as well, I was getting ready. You know, typical, I go take a shower before I go to the emergency room and while doing that I start throwing up and realize, hey, now I'm on, I got two symptoms, so definitely making the right choice here.

Raul Lopez: 2:57

So as I start getting close to the ER, things get worse. I'm in so much more pain that it's just kind of ridiculous get worse. I'm in so much more pain that it's just kind of ridiculous. God bless my wife. It was like one in the morning when she dropped me off and came back home to stay with my daughter. I told her you know, I'll give her a call if anything happens, because I know how ERs are. It could take forever before they do nothing and tell you to go home. So I told her I'll give her a call if anything happens. So they give me some medication and try to get the pain. But the pain just kept coming back.

Raul Lopez: 3:30

They did a CAT scan to kind of take a look at stuff and there's other things in the hospital. You're just waiting, waiting, waiting and then coming around. I think 3 in the morning. They said, hey, you might have a bowel obstruction. We're going to check. You're fortunate enough, the doctor who did my bariatric surgery was on call that night, so they were going to discuss it with him, since they know my history to determine what's the next best step with that. So I'm like, okay, you know, for people who don't know, bowel obstruction is when something in your intestine is, intestines are being blocked and your bowels can't move and it causes back up. That eventually causes a lot of pain.

Raul Lopez: 4:15

So mine apparently was caused by my appendectomy that I had, which I was 13. Created scar tissue. That I guess happens when people find out about this. I got hit up a lot and saying, oh, I had that happen to me or something else happened to me. So, yeah, come back five in the morning and they're like getting me ready and I'm like what's going on? Like, oh, you're going to have surgery. We're rolling you in right now and I'm like surgery for what? Nobody really explained anything to me. And the nurse God bless her she didn't know what was going on. She was like, oh, nobody explained anything to you. I was like, nope, she's like, all right, they'll explain to you when they get into the OR. So they roll me up.

Raul Lopez: 4:58

Doctor comes in, tells me all the wonderful things about this bowel obstruction that I have. Apparently, they can tell that it looks like it's called probably from scar tissue. They want to go in there and do an exploratory laparotomy to make sure everything's okay. And that's when they come in. You have laparoscopy on your stomach and they want to just go in there. You know their goal hope is they'll come in, cut the scar tissue, unblock that obstruction and hopefully everything will start flowing after that. So obviously they tell you everything that's going to happen and every potential risk with a surgery. As with all surgery, there's risks associated with that.

Raul Lopez: 5:43

So I had to call my wife at 5 30 in the morning and say, hey, I'm going in for surgery. I don't really know much about it. I don't know what's going on. They have I have bowel obstruction. Hopefully it's okay. Um, they'll call you when I'm done.

Raul Lopez: 5:57

So obviously she's waking up, she's got to get, get my daughter ready for her summer camp and go to work herself. And you know, just woke up with a fright hey, your husband's going to get surgery. So I felt bad but I couldn't do much about it. But so they put me in. The first thing they tell me is we're going to stick a tube through your nose. We have to put an NG tube. So if anybody's never had an NG tube, it's the worst fucking thing in the world. They stick a tube up your nose, through the back of your throat, into your stomach and it is horrible. And they put it in me and I cried like a little bitch and I begged for them to pull it out. I thought they were putting it in to pump everything out of my stomach, which it was what it was but it was supposed to stay there for the full duration of my time in the hospital for the most part, so I was not aware that I'd be wearing it for the next two days. So two, three days actually. So yeah, that was fun. And then they put me down. I had my surgery. I wake up. They tell me that when they actually removed the scar tissue and they saw my intestine that it was already dying. So they had to remove about 25 centimeters of my intestine. Thankfully it would not really restrict me my nutrition moving forward, so there wasn't a fear of having to do anything other restrictive other than having surgery. So it was just heal and move on and feel better and get better. So that's what I was looking forward to.

Raul Lopez: 7:54

I had this damn NG2 for another day and a half or so and it sucked. I couldn't talk. It hurt when I swallowed it consistently, felt like I had postnatal drip and I felt horrible. I had this surgery that removed everything from my stomach, which made the pain go away instantly and I felt so much better. But that tube sucked more than all that at that moment so it was horrible. So anybody who ever has an NG tube, you know I feel you it's horrible. Don't wish it upon anybody.

Raul Lopez: 8:28

So eventually I get out, moving on minor restrictive diet. I was already eating solid food by the time I got out, so there was just really avoiding things like nuts and fiberless vegetables because you don't want fiber keeping you in there. But it was really not that restrictive, not much craziness that they were giving me. So I felt good. I started getting kind of back to normal walking, sucked, slowly, getting back up to it and fast forward.

Raul Lopez: 9:02

Literally about three days after I got out of the hospital I started having stomach pain again. So here I am again Sunday. This time I'm actually home alone. Thank God for my parents that came in and took my daughter to kind of help me you know, help me not have responsibilities while recovering and my wife went to work and I was actually waiting to get picked up to go to barbecue and I started having another pain. I was going to have a hang out with my parents for the day but started having more pain. I canceled that ride. I said nope, don't come get me, called my wife and she got out of work and we both went back to the ER. They did another CAT scan.

Raul Lopez: 9:44

We both went back to the ER, they did another CAT scan and they said I had another bowel obstruction. So at that point I'm like what the hell? Is this something that's going to be consistently a part of my life? Am I consistently having to worry about bowel obstructions? And the doctor I don't know if it was the nurse or doctor was like possible, but we're going to go in there and do another surgery in your stomach and try to see what's going on, hopefully something minor. But you know they're worried that I might have another obstruction.

Raul Lopez: 10:26

So terium again, having to go in for another emergency surgery. Thankfully I was with my wife at the time so I didn't have to wake her up at 3 in the morning. So they don't know what's going on. But the surgery. Thankfully they didn't put the NG tube in after I was already unconscious. So thank God they listened to my fears about that. I didn't have to deal with that wide awake. But yeah, so here I am and second round, same hospital, same floor, different wing and, thankfully, private room this time.

Raul Lopez: 11:05

But they were going to go much slower this time, much, much slower. It looked like the surgery they did initially caused another obstruction and they weren't sure why. So they went back in, removed the part, they fixed and refixed it with a apparently a bigger joint, um, which the doctor said you could eat a chicken bone and you should be fine. So cool, um. But they, and as well as myself, wanted to take things slower. I did not want to be back a week later, so I spent more time in the hospital a second time. I was there for five days, spent more time with the NG tube. They actually kept me in there for a good almost three days with the NG tube before they removed it. Pure, clear liquids the whole time there. They didn't even switch me on to protein shakes by the time I left. So they were going very, very slowly with me on everything. They wanted me to really be slow with everything. So I left the hospital again. The hospital again. I had lost so much weight, continued to lose weight.

Raul Lopez: 12:31

I think I looked and I think I'll post on the socials and on the website a picture of how I looked a few days after. I felt like a crackhead. I was, you know, I looked like a crackhead. I didn't feel like I looked like a crackhead. I was, you know, I looked like a crackhead. I didn't feel like I looked like a crackhead, but my face was all skinny. I could see all the bone. It just felt scary looking.

Raul Lopez: 12:58

I felt bad for my wife, who had to deal with this twice and had to deal with the trauma and the fear while also having to keep everything up at home. Thank God for our friends and family who helped with everything while I was recovering. But it was a lot of it was a toll. It was a big toll on my family, on myself. It was a lot of work and for anybody who's been through emergency situations like this, you know it knocks you down. I was expecting and prepared to have all this stuff ready for the podcast. I had this momentum going and I think that's a big part of all I probably talked about a little bit today, but momentum killers really fucking suck. I'm here the night that I'm supposed to be releasing this literally hours before midnight, sitting here and just wondering, trying to get the momentum to do this.

Raul Lopez: 14:07

My summer didn't end, by the way. After that surgery there was more shit to come, but you know, it knocked me down. It knocked my momentum out and I spent more time worrying about recovering than the vodka, which is what matters more. I took some time out of work, but I couldn't take too much time because I had run out of PTO and I didn't want to risk losing money. So thankfully I work from home in a cushiony chair in front of a computer. That didn't require anything physical so I could get back to work really quickly.

Raul Lopez: 14:43

But you know it's been hard. Things were all over the place. I didn't quite feel like myself. I didn't feel like I had the same drive at the moment. I kind of just wanted to sit down and do nothing for a while, which is kind of what I did. I rested, I tried to recover as best I can Things.

Raul Lopez: 15:14

I think it took me about two weeks or so before I started. I went from liquids for a few days to liquids with proteins and then mainly liquids with protein shakes for a while, then eventually jumped back on solids after my after a couple of weeks visit from my doctor, getting the okay to start going back to solids. So take it really slow. Try to take it really really slow. Um, slowly building my way up to more bigger foods and normal foods and, um, I thought things were getting better and I thought, hey, maybe I can come back and get back to normal. Like it took me a while, you know.

Raul Lopez: 16:02

Thank god, thank God for this buddy of mine, stuart, who owns a landscaping company here where I live, who was thankful enough to come mow my lawn for a couple weeks free, because I couldn't do anything Even after like four or five weeks of being out. When I finally decided to try it, I barely did half the lawn before I started feeling pain and said no, I got to stop. So it did take me a while, but slowly started feeling better, started thinking, saying, hey, time to get this ball rolling again. I know my momentum got killed. I got to try to go, you know, get this podcast back on and get things going again. And it seems like every time I thought that something bad happened again, because it was like I had another day where I had stomach pain and you think about it, I had stomach pain and I just started crying, thinking not again. I was scared to death that I was going to have to go back to the hospital again and have another surgery. So once again, I waited, pushed and waited and waited and waited, hoping it would just go away, go away, but it didn't, and decided to go back to the ER. So here I am.

Raul Lopez: 17:31

This is literally about, like you know, my first week out of the hospital. When I got out the second time, when I got to that following Sunday, I was scared shitless that something bad was going to happen and nothing happened. Going to happen, and nothing happened. Then another week and nothing happened. And then eventually I let my guard down again and boom, I started having stomach pains again and it knocked me down again and I was freaking the fuck out. So we went to the hospital. They did an x-ray. The doctor said it looks like you might have another obstruction. Let's give it a little bit of time. He's like I don't want to send you to go get another CAT scan because you already had two of those this month and I want to shoot more radiation in you that I don't need to, so let's give it a little bit.

Raul Lopez: 18:18

Thankfully, by about 9.30, the pain started going away. 9.30, the pain started going away and I was thankful that it went away. But it scared the shit out of me. I went back to liquid diet for a few more days and protein shakes again to kind of wean myself back into normal food again. But it was scary and I realized I wasn't really quite out of the water.

Raul Lopez: 18:50

So now I live in consistent fear of something happening with my stomach. So which is kind of difficult, because you still have the same hunger and you still want to eat the same food sometimes and sometimes I'll eat food Then I'll feel weirdness in my stomach And'm like what the hell did I do? And I get nervous and I'm uncomfortable for a little bit and then it kind of goes away and I'm like okay, I think it's just the natural progression of me healing. I think this is all going to be funky for a while. You know, so long as I'm not in super pain again, I think hopefully it'll just keep going the way it is. As I'm not in super pain again, I think hopefully I'll just keep going through this. So just got to realize I need more time. So I tried to give myself more time.

Raul Lopez: 19:33

Then, a couple weeks after that, my daughter gets sick, she gets pneumonia. So we're dealing with that Once again, like this momentum ball. I just can't get back to rolling. I can't come back up here. I can't, as much as I love this. I actually had an interview and I posted about it a while ago with another podcast and um, with Asher Wright and uh I I I'll post a link to that as well and I had missed it so much and I was like, oh my God, I had such a good time. I got to get back on this. I got to get back on it and I think that was like right before I got my stomach pain and then a week after that, my daughter got sick with pneumonia.

Raul Lopez: 20:20

So we're dealing with that and you know, just worried about her checking her temperature. I wasn't sleeping because I was staying up. You know, me and my wife were taking turns laying in bed with her to take her temperature every hour because she had a fever for about a week before she started getting a cough. Before we took x-rays done because the doctors take forever before they even determine she had pneumonia and then starting antibiotics and then obviously thinking she's getting better. A couple days later she's waking us up at three in the morning because, um, she broke out in hives and her body's full of hives all over. So we had to go spend another trip to the ER. Thankfully it went away with some Benadryl, um, but you, we were at the ER from 3 to 6.30 to come home to let her sleep fora little bit so we can go do her middle school orientation. She missed all her last couple weeks of camps that she had her soccer camp and I went to work. My wife drove to New York to go help her mom without any sleep that night.

Raul Lopez: 21:27

So it was rough, I mean physically, emotionally, you know. Just everything going on. And then dealing with my daughter was another hit on the momentum train. Man, like you want things to go and sometimes it just won't let you and so I said, fuck it, I have to give myself a deadline. I have to give myself a deadline of when something needs to come out, because then I have nothing else but to do it. And so I did.

Raul Lopez: 21:59

I posted I'm back, and I posted that I'll have something out for the 16th, and I had that I'll have something out for the 16th and I had every intention of having one of my interviews that I had recorded during summer, prepped and ready to go, but once again, life, life. I kept pushing it off. Okay, I'll do it this Friday, I'll do it this Saturday. I don't have time this Saturday, I'll do it Sunday, okay, okay, you know, do it this Friday, I'll do it this Saturday. I don't have time this Saturday, I'll do it Sunday, okay. Okay, you know what. I'm going to go do it. I'm going to go do it this week and my lovely daughter, who I love to death, decided to take a nice bath after a long day with some soccer and she wanted to relax and didn't notice the water overflowing. And the water overflowed to the point that it made its way down the bathroom, down the hallway, through the ceiling of my kitchen and even all the way to the basement. So, yeah, now I had major repairs to do.

Raul Lopez: 23:11

This isn't even talking about any of the other physical things I'm dealing with. I've had shoulder pain that I'm getting physical therapy for, and hand pain that I'm starting to get looked at, and now I'm here having to mop and clean and rip down a ceiling get looked at, and now I'm here having to mop and clean and rip down the ceiling, and while I thought I'd do a DIY, I had to get insurance involved. So another level of stress and a level of issue. So we have people here. So if you hear humming, that's the blowers and the dehumidifiers that they put throughout the house to dry everything up before mold could potentially grow from the water. And now I'm dealing with that. On top of everything, a couple good things, though. I did get the promotion that I've been waiting for. So my first ever promotion, which was a nice, my first ever promotion, which was a nice boost, a nice positive, with everything. And Tuesday I go to Vegas for a work conference. So a couple of good things to come up here.

Raul Lopez: 24:16

But momentum, this momentum, you know. Coming back to the theme of the show, how do you say success in Spanish? And I remember when I was a consultant and you deal with different projects. It's something you deal with, all projects. You know part of project management. You know when, when you get a delay and something kills the momentum of the project, it's really hard to start back up. You know to get back to that same momentum you were. It's difficult, and I think that's where I'm at. I am stuck on trying to get my momentum back. You can still have motivation, and my first episode that came out was difficult and hard and each one was scary and took a lot of work and effort to go back forward and do the next one until eventually it just became second nature and I knew exactly what I had to do.

Raul Lopez: 25:16

And I came here, I banged them out, my interviews were great, everything was going forward and I just kept doing more and more and more, learning, being faster, being more efficient. It just became second nature. And then I got stopped. And then I'm here today clicking on things and I'm like, oh, my outlook is out of sync and I have to download something else. And what was the name of the program I used to record my video? And where was this and how do I log into that? And I had to try to just starting. This again reminded me of my first time doing this, where it took me forever. And this is actually not even my first take. This is my second take because I didn't like what I started with, because I lost my momentum.

Raul Lopez: 25:57

I don't feel comfortable in this again. I'm not in my rhythm. Um, you know, even with this, when I release this. I'm gone on Tuesday you know I'm not going to be around to be on everything like I normally am and get ready and prep for next week, and I think that's okay. I think I have to realize, and I think we have to realize something that we're going to get these bumps.

Raul Lopez: 26:26

Momentum is really important. Momentum is really what's going to keep you going sometimes. But sometimes things are going to happen and knock you down and that initial jump in momentum is going to the initial push to get that momentum is difficult to get started. It's scary. Um, I feel like I'm afraid of failing again. Um, with this, I'm afraid of something else coming again and knocking me down again. Is it worth starting something if I don't know, if I'm out of the? You know I'm in the clear yet, but I want to do do this and I love it and I enjoy it and I want to provide something and I've interviewed some great people and I've got some more people that I need to interview and I've got to get back to them Because I feel I've neglected some of the people that I haven't had a chance to interview, that I had scheduled. And I have more people to call and try to get them to agree to get interviewed. So I'm excited to get back.

Raul Lopez: 27:25

But, if you see, things aren't as smooth as they were or things are kind of bumpy. The road for me isn't as smooth as it was before and it's taken me some time to get back into it. Even now I sat here for maybe an hour or two, allowing the ADHD in me to just look at a blank screen for a while. I reset my OBS to different views and moved folders around and did all the stupid stuff I should have not been doing. So, um, but yeah, man, I mean recognize that momentum is important, especially with things. Um, with things moving forward, um, trying to get back into your rhythm, trying to get back into your comfort zone that made things go smoothly, is difficult and, as with all things, sometimes you just got to jump in and start moving forward. So that's where I'm at now. That's what I'm trying to get back into trying to get back into getting this thing back to where it was. I had lots of plans, of stuff that I really wanted to accomplish this summer that I didn't get to. So I'm hoping to get there soon and I just have to kind of get back on this and keep doing it. But yeah, man, that's me Like with all things.

Raul Lopez: 28:55

Man, keep your health in check. It's always going to be important. Keep your mental health in check, it's always going to be important. Keep your mental health in check, make sure that you don't let anything slide and that you're willing to go get checked out when you need to get checked out because it's important. But then also, if you ever get knocked back and that momentum you know that momentum train gets derailed, it's okay, it's okay. You know, I think I just got to tell myself it's okay. You got to tell yourself it's okay, you'll get there, you'll get that momentum back and, baby, it'll be beautiful. So let's keep at it. I'm going to keep at it. I'm going to keep making stuff. Let's keep at it, I'm going to keep at it. I'm going to keep making stuff.

Raul Lopez: 29:50

You know, this was kind of a continual, vulnerable aspect of my life. I'll probably come back at a later time to talk a little bit about my promotion. There's lessons learned from that as well as always. But I'm excited. I hope I don't look it and I apologize for that, but I'm excited. I hope I don't look it and I apologize for that, but I'm excited. I'm excited to come back, get this started again.

Raul Lopez: 30:13

I missed it. I miss being, I missed interviewing people. I've missed talking to people and putting everything that I've done out for everybody, and I'm looking forward to giving you guys more stuff. So I promise that there will be more. I just am not promising that it's all going to be a smooth start for me right now. So I'm going to try my best and that's all you can ask for, right?

Raul Lopez: 30:42

So thanks again, everyone listening. I appreciate you sticking around. I appreciate all the people still listening and checking up the podcast while I haven't been doing anything about it. So when I jump on and I see the numbers have still gone up and people are still downloading, it made me happy. I thought I'd come to a complete disaster. So thank you all. Appreciate it, appreciate all the support, appreciate all the concern. Thank you everybody that helped out while my summer my horrible no good, very good, bad summer happened. But I'm back. So, all right, man, hopefully you guys get to join me again next time as we continue to learn how to say success in Spanish. See, even that was hard. Alright, guys, peace.