It’s hard for me to forget my first newspaper editor, a gruff old guy presiding over a bustling city newsroom ― often with a lit cigar ― when he made it clear that the use of the first person and thank you’s were both strictly forbidden.

“Nobody cares about you kid,” he said, ripping in half my copy, then typed on paper, and handing the pieces back to me.

But I feel compelled, all these years later, to explain my recent months-long absence from The Day, and I’m sorry to say it needs to be in the first person, with lots of thank you’s.

Be forewarned, and anyone interested can read on, in part because there is no copy paper anymore for editors to rip in half.

One of my most heartfelt thank you’s here is for the helicopter crew who let me fly along, the morning of May 18, as my husband Dan, in the midst of a hemorrhagic stroke, was transported from Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London to Yale New Haven.

The event had begun unfolding earlier that morning, when Dan came home from swimming laps at the YMCA pool, complaining of a severe headache. He soon realized his vision was impaired, and we were off and running.

I still can’t imagine how hard it would have been to see him off alone in that helicopter. Emergency room staff who had diagnosed the bleed with a CAT scan had warned it was up to the crew whether to take passengers.

The pilot asked a few things, including how much I weigh, looked me in the eye and said OK.

How lucky we all are to live in Connecticut, where a remarkable teaching hospital like Yale New Haven operates a 24/7 stroke intensive care unit.

A large team of doctors, nurses and students, responding to an alarm, were waiting in the emergency room there that morning and fully prepared for intervention, which wasn’t necessary, because the bleeding stopped.

And so emergency turned to recovery, which is continuing successfully today.

That pivot also began my summer of great gratitude and really, maybe my first editor, for different reasons, was right about thank you’s, because it is so hard to know who you might inadvertently leave out.

I am so thankful for the professionalism and kindness of each and every staff member in the Yale New Haven Health system we encountered, from the emergency room doctor who first rushed to Dan’s side to the dozens of doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, medical students and therapists, including the caring staff at the hospital’s rehabilitation clinic in New London, where the hard work of putting patients’ lives back together is done so gracefully.

Dan’s primary care doctor is a champion among them all.

Thanks to so many family and friends who called, wrote, visited and well wished. Many thanks to our professional colleagues and friends who helped facilitate recovery time.

Thanks, too, to the late Walter Baker, a businessman and former trustee of The Day, whose enormous community generosity included the room, named for him, that Dan stayed in at the rehabilitation unit at L+M.

Thanks to those of our local lawmakers who voted to make Connecticut one of the most caring states in the country, with its paid leave act for families upended by medical emergency or caring for newborns.

I will always be grateful for the neighbor who left meals in the refrigerator the nights I made it home late after visiting hours ended at the ICU in New Haven.

I’m enormously grateful to Dan for his patience, hard work and resolve, which has brought us back to normal.

I’m sorry for all this giving of thanks and first-person rambling, because I’m sure my editor was right. I know lots of other people have endured much more stress and greater challenges this summer, and all the unsung heroes of Connecticut’s wondrous health care system are helping them the same way every single day.

I suspect most of them also have also come to appreciate the wealth of kindness and goodwill that lurks in every corner of Connecticut, at the ready.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com