When I was 21 and just out of college, I took a newspaper job in a Southern Gothic town. I wrote all the news, took all the photos and made engravings of them, sold all the ads, even cast my own headlines in lead, and made extra money by photographing dead people at crime and accident scenes.
I was dizzy all the time — to the extent I went to the emergency room one day and they told me I had the “common problem” of blood that was too thick.
They convinced me to come in weekly to get some of my blood drained (leeches were not used). My dizziness continued. I drove home to Atlanta to see my doctor here, who handed me two prescriptions — one for Valium to curb my anxiety-caused hyperventilation and one that said, “Get out of that hell hole.”.
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