I’m writing this just after my 32nd birthday. My, where did the time go? It seems just yesterday I was a kid in the 70’s eagerly waiting for Saturday morning. Let me tell you a little about myself.
As I said, I’m 32 years old. I’ve been married for 8 years to my lovely wife Marshella. We have one child, our almost 2 years old son Marshall. Living with us are two cats, Thor and Amber, and one dog, Tiffany. I’ve lived in Maryland all my life and currently working in the I.T. field for a team of engineers.
I am disabled. As a baby it was discovered that I was born with a rare heart defect called Tetrology of Fallot. Basically that means oxygen rich and oxygen poor blood mix within the heart, via holes between chambers and weak valves. My mom early on knew something was wrong. The doctors didn’t believe her. During my six month checkup the doctor finally saw that I was a blue baby with a defective heart. They rush me into surgery to install shunts to get more blood to get oxygen from my lungs a few days later. However things didn’t go well. They didn’t bother to take my temperature. I was running a high fever. Which added to my condition caused the anesthesia to drop the oxygen getting to my brain. I have several stroke like cyanotic attacks. This caused significant damage to the left side of my brain. My right side mostly paralyzed and I was slightly delayed in walking, I was actually talking and reading early. I do have a lot of trouble putting words and sentences together and that’s probably because of the brain damage. For example; I’ll see and think the sentence, "The phone rang and I answered it." and I’ll write, "Two plane ran any A antsaw ot."
My hobbies are games and home theater entertainment. I started gaming in 1974 when my parents bought me an original Odyssey game system. Since then I’ve owned virtually every game system released and currently am a computer gamer with a massive Counter Strike addiction. Recently I have been given the nickname “Rob Merritt: Bringer of Doom” since any game system I tend to be an early adopter of has been destined to fail in spectacular fashion. I got into home theater in the late 80’s. With my 27inch TV, matrix surround sound stereo system, and laser disk player; I was as close as mere middle class mortals could get at the time. Don’t worry, I’ve since upgraded. I use to collect toys. However, I’ve gotten out of the whole collecting mind frame. I still enjoy my “completed” Micronaut collection.
My future goals are really just try to have fun and give my family the best life I can.
