Hello-
My name is Andrew and I am 31 years old. My mother’s family hails from Chicago and I grew up watching Harry and Steve and Ryno and Mark and Andre on WGN. I have never wavered in my love of Cubdom, despite baring the slings and arrows of my friends, who were friends of more traditionally successful franchises.
Heck, even the Padres went to the World Series in 1998! Don’t even get me started on the upstart Devil Rays, Diamondbacks, Rockies and Marlins....or Astros or Mets or...well, you probably know the list as well as I.
Through all of that, I have prevailed. That is, until the Cubs tried to do me in! When I was 11, I diagnosed type-1 diabetes, or, as I call it, Ron Santo’s disease. While I certainly do not blame the Cubs for this malady, it is the first in a series of escalating medical bouts, many of which have Cub-related associations. These include such things as selective Tourettes syndrome, occurring during the playoffs of both 2004 and 2008 and the ever increasing Marmol-ian headaches which have persisted through much of the past two seasons.
Once again, all of this has been taken in stride, until the most recent occasion. I live in Southern California and rarely get the chance (or risk) to see my Cubs in person, but this year, my fiancee was able to procure excellent tickets to see the Cubs play the Angels in Anaheim on both Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon. We very much enjoyed the game until the 8th inning, when Albert Pujols won the game on a late-inning home run, his 54th against the Cubs. I returned home dejected, but looking forward the seeing the game the following day.
That is, until about 2 in the morning, when I awoke throwing up blood with what was later diagnosed as a severely bleeding ulcer. This is the first time that such an illness has been associated with my love of the Cubs. I understand that you are doing the best that you can, trying to put a championship caliber team on the field but I beg you to please try to do so sooner rather than later. I am using my vacation this year to follow my beloved Cubs to both Phoenix and Denver this summer, and I am not relishing spending my time laid up in a hospital wing...or worse!
Thank you and yours in Cub-dom,
Andrew
