The Fuck Happened

It was a weird couple of days.

We woke up at 4:30 in the morning - my wife, my brother, and me - and drove to the hospital. In a small room, I stripped down to just a hospital gown and was wheeled into the pre-op room.

There were maybe a dozen of us in that room, all in beds, all nervous as balls. Someone was having hip replacement surgery, and someone was having something major done to their spine. They isolated us with curtains and sent in a mini parade of surgery players; nurses and anesthesiologists and the surgeon himself. One of the nurses gave me a quick shot in the arm and then hooked up an IV drip, and even though they told me nothing was in the drip but regular fluid, I mysteriously felt very peaceful and calm.

The last thing I remember is that they told me I was going to get a cocktail in my IV, and I'd probably have some amnesia. From there? Felt like maybe five minutes passed and then I was wheeled into another room. I remember being suddenly, unexpectedly awake, and I really had to use the bathroom. They gave me a little jug to pee into, only the curtain that shut off the rest of the people in the recovery room was stuck, and I was not prepared to deal with any of it.

What's the pain level of a total thyroidectomy like? Surprisingly, not much. I did have a couple of pain pills because I was afraid it'd get worse, but it's right between Crick in the Neck and Pretty Intense Bruise. Probably the worst part was being in a hospital bed meant for someone two inches shorter than me, which left me with some aches and pains. The second worst part was the boredom, and third was having two drains poking out of my neck. I got used to them really fast, only every time I got up to go to the bathroom, I could see this open gash in my neck with bloody tubes hanging out, and it was gruesome.

I couldn't sleep. The election was going on, and no one knew what was happening, and everyone online was freaking out miserably, which is not what I needed. My brother left that evening to go home, and I spent the afternoon trying to sleep and failing, then reading a book, then checking my phone. At regular intervals, nurses came to check my blood pressure and to make me drink calcium stuff, which is surprisingly tasty. (Actually, everything at Williamson Medical Center was kind of tasty. Think passable meat and three place.)

I'm home, and I'm kind of groggy, and I had a panic attack last night, but I think that I'm already feeling ten thousand times better. About the surgery, at least. The fuck happened in this election.

It's almost over!

Twenty-four hours from now, surgery will be underway. Voting will be underway. And hopefully, by tomorrow night, all of this will be over.

Emotionally exhausting. That's what this month has been.

But everyone's been great. My team is taking over while I'm out. My family's coming up to watch Audrey. I feel like... everything is going to be okay.

I just need to get through the next 48 hours. That's doable. I'll post again once I'm out; I want to tell you about my experience in the hospital, how recovery is, and all of that. This may be the most boring entry I've ever written. BUT LOOK, I'm nervous. This is me checking in before everything goes haywire. I'm okay now. I'll be okay again in two days.

Earth-B

Today, I was thinking about how some comic books have one-off storylines about alternate dimensions, pretty much the same as the normal continuity except for a handful of things that are absolutely ridiculous. Like, maybe Batman is actually an enormous bat, and he dresses like a person to scare the bat criminals. I don't know.

What gets me is that no one in those alternate dimensions thinks that all their dimension's shit is crazy. They roll with it. The planet is ruled by a race of Superpeople from Krypton. Or maybe Tony Stark is a closet alcoholic who got hit with some radioactive starch and now he's Ironing Man. It sucks, but what are you going to do about it.

This whole YEAR has felt like we've all been pulled into Earth B. I saw an albino squirrel playing around at the park. Twice. David Bowie died, and he's an immortal. Prince died from an overdose! Donald Trump is running for President, and I've heard maybe ten minutes in total over the past six months where he didn't sound like a hallucination brought on by glue-sniffing.

Thyroid cancer feels like an extension of Earth-B. About 0.005% (yes, one five thousandth of a percent) men get thyroid cancer in a year. That math might not line up; I don't know. It's about ten thousand men in the United States per year, and there's a male population of around 190 million. That's some odds right there.

I met with the surgeon last Thursday, and he had the weary air of a man who has already done a dozen operations by noon. "All I do is thyroid stuff," he said. "Not all cancer. But look at my scheduling book." He flipped through page after page, and I started feeling guilty about complaining about my Outlook calendar. "All thyroid stuff." He set me up for November 8th. Election day. Thanks, Earth-B.

The plan is, they knock me out around 7 AM and start the surgery. I should be awake around, hopefully, lunchtime. Then I stay in the hospital for 24 hours, and then I go home and rest for a week. Meanwhile, they slice up my lymph nodes to see if the cancer's metastasized, and treatment continues from there - if it has, I get radioactive iodine and hide from everyone for a week, and if it hasn't, just thyroid hormone.

None of it sounds BAD, per se, but there's something about someone cutting out a pretty important organ from my neck that makes me feel... gross.

I came into work Friday, and a bunch of people on my team pitched in and filled my office with amazingness, which made me feel kind of sniffly and emotional. I don't know, LOOK AT THIS MAGIC. Sigh. Okay, Earth-B. I don't have a choice, so I'm going with this. At least it's not the nasty Earth-C where Donald Trump actually wins. 

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

I kind of expected to wait for days and days for an answer, but the biopsy was only Thursday and I got the call first thing this morning. It was not one of those really satisfying calls where you get a lighthearted nurse or a stern doctor. It was like, "Well, unfortunately, we don't like the signs of what we saw and it looks a lot like cancer so the first step is going to be surgery but you're going to be okay."

Papillary cancer! At least, that's what they're going on. Details were kind of scarce, which is frustrating. Like, what stage is this? "That's a good question, but we won't know until we get in there and cut." That's what I heard, anyhow. We don't know if it's a big deal or not. The doctor SOUNDED like no big deal, but then again, I *want* them to act like it's no big deal.  

But everything I've read says that it's not that big of a deal. That's good. Thyroidectomy is the next step. They scoop it out, maybe my lymph nodes if they aren't looking great, and then it's thyroid hormone medicine and annual checkups from here on out. I have a pretty good feeling about this. I plan on eating a lot of nachos and letting my thyroid party for the next month. I'm not even sure what a thyroid even does, really. I ordered a book. We'll see.

Next step: I meet with my surgeon on October 13th. Then we find out the next-next steps.

The Biopsy

Yesterday, I went in for my biopsy. It was not SUPER fun, but I guess it was better than going to work for a two hour meeting.

I showed up at the hospital half an hour early, per their instructions, and then sat in the waiting room another hour. Biopsy tip number one: bring a book. Bring two, if you're a fast reader. I filled out two small stacks of paperwork and then spent the next while doing thing you do in restaurants when you see a waiter with plates and you look at them expectantly and they walk past, except this time, it was nurses. And instead of chicken tikka masala, it was more paperwork.

When I finally got called back, they had me strip down to my waist and lie down on a medical bed. The nurse checked out my nodules with ultrasound one more time, and then she drew an LT on my clavicle to make sure the doctor didn't bone this one up and go for the wrong side of the neck. Good.

So what's a thyroid biopsy like? Here's what to expect: lots of needles, and a pain / discomfort level on the order of 'getting a cavity filled.' For my two nodules, I'm pretty sure I got twelve needles. The first three were the same stuff dentists use when they numb your jaw, and it felt about the same. The doctor waited another minute and then started drawing tissue from the nodules.

Now, one of my nodules was on the side of my neck, and that was pretty okay. Kind of like someone pressing hard on my neck. The other was right on my adam's apple, and that felt kind of terrible. Imagine someone trying to shove a ballpoint pen through your throat. At least it didn't last long. Three more injections of the pain numbing stuff and three more samples, and the biopsy was done. The actual procedure lasted maybe twenty minutes, and then I was out the door in two. Total time: TWO HOURS. Then I came home with a bandaid on my neck and felt like sleeping the rest of the day.

Monday, I should know what happens next!

Two years, three months later...

The Zoloft worked so well that I haven't written in a couple of years.  I still have the drive, but life is pulling me in other directions. That sounds too passive, but... it's mostly true. I never expected to be a manager, never expected work to be so exhausting that I just wanted to turn off my brain in the evenings.

See? The days just flow into each other, just the magma of time sort of hardening into a weird... series of surprises. Like, the other day. The pharmacy called in a prescription for me, and my nurse practitioner said that before she'd fill it, she wanted me to come in for my annual checkup.

I hadn't planned on that, or for her to find a lump in my throat. One ultrasound and two suspicious nodules later, I'm going in for a biopsy next week. I really want this to be a one-off post. Like, maybe I'll post again in two years from Sweden and remember this week as an anomaly.

The nodules aren't too big - one is 11 mm, and the other is 9 mm. And a mildly prominent lymph node, I don't even pretend to know what that means. They automatically biopsy any nodules bigger than 10 mm. What's not great is that the nodules have internal calcification and 'increased vascularity.' It means probably not a simple cyst, and probably something my body thinks is foreign (that's a little calcium shell it's building around it.) Those are red flags.

Anyway. Thyroid nodules are super common. Benign nodules with the features above are ... not AS common, but still pretty common. That's good! The odds are that this is not thyroid cancer. And if it IS thyroid cancer, then looks like they caught it really early. They take out the thyroid, give me synthetic hormones the rest of my life, and I sit back and relax. The doctor didn't quite come out and say it, but she implied that the only people who die of thyroid cancer are the ones who refuse treatment.

Biopsy is on September 29th. I don't know when the results will be in, but here we go.

A Month on Zoloft

GREAT NEWS! Last month, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. With some OCD in there for good measure.

And no one is surprised. For a long time, I thought I was a quirky introvert. Like, how on some days, I just couldn’t talk to anyone, because I thought that everything I said sounded crazy. Or how I always had to-do lists, and I felt wound-up and nervous until I finished the last thing, and if I was interrupted, it was like a million bees in my skull. But the worst part: obsessive thoughts.

For instance. One day, my car makes a funny noise. Immediately, my brain goes into overdrive: Is that a problem? What’s wrong with it? PANIC. I get on the internet. I research. The panic gets worse: it could be a hundred things. I’m pretty sure that whatever’s happening, it’s expensive. I should take it to the mechanic. Or should I? Is that premature? What if it was a fluke? What if it never happens again? I should test it. I should take it out right now, even though it’s 10:00 at night. No. I hate driving at night.

Generalized anxiety disorder means my brain never shuts up. I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about the car, and in the morning, I wake up thinking about that noise. I feel sick to my stomach, and I can’t stop my racing thoughts. Really, I decide, I should just take it to a mechanic; I know it will cost a lot, but it’ll be worth the piece of mind. Only the car doesn’t make a noise for a few days, and I start to wonder if it’s my imagination. I start to feel a little better. Until the car makes the noise again one day, and it all comes back. I take it into the mechanic, and they fix it, and then I spend the next couple of weeks listening REAL HARD just in case there's still a problem.

This happened usually once a month about all sorts of stupid stuff: a leaky roof, a broken sink, death, a spot on a board, a creaky floor. Vacations were the worst, because probably there was a burglary or a fire going on while we were out, if the pipes weren’t frozen. If Rebecca was going somewhere with Audrey and I hadn’t heard from them in a few hours, that probably meant they were in an explosive car wreck. Etcetera.

This has always been a problem, but every couple of years, it got REALLY bad. And no matter how badly I wanted to fix my anxiety with rationality, it didn't work. I'd make plans, I'd reason with myself, and then I'd spend an entire day (or week) ramming a thermometer into the mayonnaise jar to make sure it wasn't in the salmonella zone. At the beginning of 2014, it got really miserable; that's about when I started obsessing about my anxiety, which is pretty meta. So I wound up calling a nurse practitioner and setting up an appointment.

The nurse practitioner told me that anxiety was one of the biggest reasons why patients visited her. Anxiety disorders are very common; something like 10-15% of adults have one.  They’re highly treatable with Zoloft, which is cheap and has relatively few side effects. But you know: social stigmas. "You should try asking around," she said. "You might be surprised how many people have the same problem you do."

For a couple of weeks, Zoloft ramped my anxiety up to eleven. Then I was only anxious during the first half of the day, and then only in early morning, and then it was kinda-sorta gone.

I'm STILL adjusting. It’s subtle. I still get grumpy and tired and anxious, but not nearly as much as before, and not NEARLY at the same levels. And it's so much easier to let go of it. I feel SO much more patient with everyone and everything, and I can focus on the moment instead of rushing from one problem to another.

We’re working on selling the house, too. I haven’t done much writing lately. I’m okay with that. When I get back to it, I won't feel so much like it's more stress than fun. Right now, I'm enjoying life again.

The Handyman

This is a pretty good story, so bear with me.

At LAST, I started working on The Dead Rise. At the rate things are going, I’ll have this draft finished sometime in the next five years.

But it’s okay! We have a lot going on. We’ve decided to sell our house and move to a bigger, nicer, better locale. Somewhere, preferably, with two bathrooms. But before we can put it on the market, we have to find a handyman to do some big repairs that we’ve been putting off. Recaulking the bathroom, refinishing the deck, stuff like that.

I found the perfect handyman online. Fantastic reviews. Great prices. He even works with a couple of big realtors, so he can point out exactly what needs to be done to appease inspectors and attract buyers.

And, of course, he’s overworked. It’s been two weeks since he gave me a quote, and I still haven’t heard back from him. I have the sinking suspicion that, despite his declarations that Everything’s Still On, he’s probably going to bail on us.

I complained about it at work, about how EVERY time I call someone to cut down a tree or clean my gutters, they come out and give me a quote and seem so friendly and then they disappear on me and the work never gets done. Why does it happen so often? Is it just me? Why won’t they just take my money?

One coworker said, “I can recommend a handyman . He’s a great worker. PLUS, he’s a Christian; he goes to my church.” There’s always an awkward pause when somebody gives me a recommendation like that. I’m an atheist, so it's like saying "Hey, I went to high school with this guy!" Go, Tigers, whatever. My coworker continued: “He's never done any work for me, but he restored this mansion. I saw pictures. It’s gorgeous. You want me to call him?” So I said, “Sure, why not?”

The handyman called me five minutes later. For the sake of privacy, let’s call him Dickerton. Dickerton said, “I’ll come out this afternoon and take a look at everything. Bring my pad, give you a quote. Is that okay?” What time, I asked, and he cautiously mentioned that he wasn’t sure yet – probably four or five. I said that was fine, but to give me some notice if it would be earlier, because I got out of work at four. I told him I could get out of work early, but he had to let me know.

At 3:55, Dickerton called me and asked when I’d be home. “Right around 4:30,” I said. “Oh. I’m right around the corner from you, just sitting at a McDonald’s.” So I rushed home. By the time I got there, Dickerton was waiting outside of my house in a pickup. I invited him in.

We walked through the backyard, and I told him about all the things I wanted done. Dickerton made suggestions that I was pretty sure were sort of insane, like instead of cleaning our shingles, we might just want to nail new ones on top of the old, and that we didn't have to power wash a deck before we stained it, we could just spray bleach on it. And instead of staining the deck, we might just want to paint it with some gritty paint. I started to doubt his credentials.

Dickerton just wanted to chitchat. Only not the regular kind, where you talk about the weather. He wanted to tell me all about his mom's house that he just restored, and what a good job he did.  He pulled out his phone and showed me pictures. I'm pretty sure they're the same ones he showed to my coworker. I'm pretty sure they're the same one he shows to everyone. I suddenly realized, with a sinking sensation, that his motehr's house was his entire resume.

As he flipped through the pictures, a text came up: “Are you still in Franklin?” And then another: “Where are you?” He ignored the texts. The phone rang, and he immediately hung up. “Ha ha, my girlfriend,” he told me. Another text came through: “Is everything okay!?”

His girlfriend was obviously freaking out. She called him again, twice in a row. By proxy, I started freaking out too, and I said,  "If you need to take that, go ahead." So he did. He texted her back. Again. And again. Each time, I just stood there awkwardly while he typed into his phone

Dickerton stayed at my house for nearly two hours. For reference, it only took an hour for the first handyman, and that included twenty minutes of idle chitchat at the end.

As I finally pushed Dickerton out the door, I asked for his last name. I had this faint, desperate hope that maybe he was some sort of secret genius, that I’d google him and find a couple dozen five-star reviews: “At first, I thought he was a lunatic, but…” Anyway, Dickerton told me it was Dirkley. Dickerton Dirkley.

So the minute he was gone, I googled Dickerton Dirkley. The first set of results were adorable: a Facebook profile and Twitter account for an aspiring country music star named Dickerton. I was like, wow, who knew! Country music isn't my thing, but whatever; that's kind of fun.

And then I pulled up the second page and found a series of police affidavits for a “Dickerton Dirkley Todd” who just so happened to live in Nashville and who, like Dickerton Dirkley, previously lived in southeast Texas. Turns OUT that Dickerton Dirkley Todd used the alias "Dickerton Dirkley" and had been booked something like a half-dozen times in the past five years for driving drunk and without a license. And the last time he was arrested was nine days before. He was due in court in two weeks.

Number one: driving drunk is pretty bad. It’s not the ninth circle, but it’s definitely in the bottom four. Number two: I am all about second chances, but not with someone who, nine days before, had swerved across two lanes of traffic before refusing a sobriety test. For the third time in as many years.

I had this secret hope that Dickerton would forget to call me back. Of course, he called the next day. Twice. When I finally spoke to him, he told me that he has some prices for me. “I think seventy-five should do it for the paint. But if we need another bucket, we can get one for twenty. Okay. But I need you to go shopping with me. See. I think you should see what it is that you’re paying for. So you know I’m not screwing you.”

“Great,” I said. “How much is labor?”

“I mean, well, that’s really hard to say with a job this small. See, most craftsmen make, I think, something  around $20-$25 an hour. So you do the math. We’ll add up all the time it takes me to do a job, and then that’s what you’ll pay me. So if it takes me two hours to paint your deck, you know, maybe fifty dollars. But even if it’s a little longer, you know, that’s not too much.”

The math was too tough. He assured me that he was, and I quote verbatim, “not trying to rape nobody here.”  It was around that point I told him I’d talk things over with the wife and get back with him. Then I stared at the floor the rest of the night and said “Jesus. Jesus.”

Anyway. So far, I still haven’t found my handyman. If anyone knows someone they’ll vouch for, let me know.

What is this dark magic

Audrey is turning TWO by the end of the week. How. How? 

In one year,

became

She has requested 'a chocolate cake with pink icing' and ice cream for her birthday. And party hats. I'm not sure where she found out about party hats. For a not-quite-two-year-old, those seem like excessive demands.

Every night, I have to read Charles Schultz's book "Happiness is a Warm Puppy" to her. The last page is something like, "Happiness means different things to different people." Once, I asked what made her happy. I said, for instance, that a long nap would make me very happy.

"Chocolate makes me happy," she said. "And coffee. Pancakes make me happy, too." 
Legit, except who's giving her coffee?

Her other favorite things include:

•  Play-Dough (the homemade stuff.)
•  Books (we have to go through a half dozen at bedtime or it's a cheat.)
• Legos (not Duplos; I feel like I got scammed on the whole Duplo sitch.)
• SECRET PIZZA PARTIES
• Scribblenauts (because the answer to everyone's demands is apparently the same.  "Oh, this guy says he needs to relax at the beach. What shall we give him?" "A knife." "Look, this girl wants something to make her boyfriend laugh!" "A knife.")

I’ve finally finished the rewrite of “The Dead Rise.” It’s better. I'm having an excessively good time tweaking it.  Still needs yet another draft. Then it might be gold.

So who wants to read it? For reals. It will be free. I’ll post again with more details.

My toddler has a first name: it's O-S-C-A-R

Four years into this blog, everyone knows the drill: I neglect this space.

It's okay! I use my free time wisely. I'm a little over a quarter of the way through The Dead Rise (version 3). It's more than a revision at this point: 95% of this thing is totally new plot. Think Seven Samurai versus The Magnificent Seven: same basic story, but Kurosawa didn't have the stones to cast Steve McQueen.

In other words, it's becoming a much, much better book,  and I can't wait for people read it. I'm so happy every chance I get to work on it. Yay!

A while back, I had the idea to write Audrey regular letters, or emails, or something, and post them to this blog. That never happened, because after a baby comes into the world, time becomes a super premium luxury. Also, who'd want to read that? Even Future Audrey's eyes glaze over at the idea!

So, instead, let's do a quick update. Audrey is now twenty-one months old. Her hair has finally started to grow out. Right now, it's sort of a  fine downy blonde mullet. For a while, she wanted me to style it into a mohawk every day, but I think she's over it.

She can sing a handful of songs (itsy-bitsy spider, ten in the bed, and most of the ABC song). She also can sing "What's Going On" by the 4 Non Blondes.

She can recognize most of the alphabet. She knows all of her primary and secondary colors. She can point out circles, squares, and triangles. She can name numbers up to thirteen,  but she can't actually count - quantities are either three or ten, nothing in-between. She has three ears and ten crayons. 

The other day, she spent forty minutes pretending to cook. She shook crayons into a bowl like salt shakers, making the shh-shh sounds of tiny grains falling into a bowl. She mixed and transferred from one bowl to another. She poured imaginary liquid from a teaspoon into a tablespoon. After a long while, she opened the microwave. She slid the plastic bowl in and tried to turn it on. That is when we decided to unplug it.

She's memorized most of her books and will sit still for like, a solid hour while we read. Right now, she's trying to put herself to sleep. I hear her muttering and singing to herself, and so I'm typing extra quiet.

It's pretty good. She gets intense expressions a lot, like her brain is overheating from effort. I hope she likes Legos, because I'm planning to use Audrey as a Lego-buying excuse a lot over the next few years.