I am a volunteer speaker and advocate on behalf of Stroke Survivors. Some time ago the CDC asked me to participate in their Million Hearts Drive which is a national initiative to raise awareness about and prevent future heart attacks and strokes (the website has over 5 million hits so far)
I co-founded CentreTEK Solutions www.centretek.com with my best friend Jay Miller in January, 2001. Like other entrepreneurs before us, we had dreams of building our own special IT Company. (I would find out later just how “special” my little CentreTEK was going to be.)
By the end of December 2002 we were still on plan. We had about 22 IT consultants working on several federal and commercial contracts and every month seemed a little better than the previous one.
It was then, towards the end of our second year, that I suffered a devastating stroke on December 6, 2002. They took me first to Howard County General Hospital then I was immediately taken by helicopter to Johns Hopkins. At Johns Hopkins they told my wife that my stroke had been caused by an aneurism deep inside my brain and that it was inoperable. That all we could do was to hope and pray.