Some of you might have noticed the re-appearance of a venerable little byline here at DealBreaker—my own. (Yes, this is Carney and I’m breaking out of our “royal we” house voice for a moment. There’s just no elegant way to write “we got out of the hospital.”) I’m back at DealBreaker, gathering gossip, making fun of business news, protecting sources, writing and having Bess bring me my mail once again.
So here’s what I did on my winter “vacation.” In the wee hours of January 14th, a car mowed me down while I crossed a Lower East Side street. For the past three weeks I’ve been in and out of the hospital. Last week I had surgery to reconstruct my right leg. And thanks to the addition of several metal plates to my skeletal structure, I’ll probably never get through an airport security screening again. Fortunately, thanks to some very large prescriptions for very potent opioid painkillers, I probably won’t mind too much.
I was discharged from the hospital late last week, and yesterday my surgeon reviewed his work and delivered the good news that my body was taking well to all the grafts, implants, plates and screws. So this morning I decided it was time to fire up the DealBreaker machinery once again and get to work.
This won’t quite be the great “surge” into DealBreaker I’d been hoping it would be. Because my pain levels are still unreliable, I’m going to phase back into posting. Think of it as a soft relaunch of my involvement with DealBreaker. That means you’ll still be seeing a lot around here by those two stalwarts who have kept DealBreaker thriving in my absence—Keith Hahn and Bess Levin. I’ve been amazingly impressed by the work they’ve done while I’ve been out. Intimidated, even. I am grateful to them, as well as our founder and leader Elizabeth Spiers, our general manager David Minkin and our dawn patrol guardian Joe Weisenthal, for everything they’ve done while I was out of commission. DealBreaker has always been the product of an amazing team effort, and nothing proves this better than their performance, understanding and patience these last few weeks.
Even more important, I want to thank our readers, who have stuck with us during this time and who sent so many nice notes my way while I was being tortured treated in some of our city’s finest hospitals. You guys and gals have been great.
I can’t believe so much happened while I was gone. To start with, how dare the Money Honey-Slutty Citi scandal break while I was on the DL?
I won’t exactly be regularly reporting from DealBreaker HQ for several more weeks. My right leg still doesn’t bear weight and stairs are impassable obstacles for now. So we’re opening a temporary branch office down here on Wall Street, and I’ll be writing from here. If you work nearby, feel free to drop me a line at tips@dealbreaker.com. Perhaps we can have drinks at Harry’s while I pry non-public information and gossip from you.
This is the first and last lengthy “personal statement” I plan to make on DealBreaker. How much do you really want to hear about me getting run over by a car, anyway? From now on it’s back to our usual fare. And, of course, back to the royal we.