And Now, Some News!

Hi blog,

Still no hello back? Maybe someday you'll stop being so shy.

Anyways, news!

Doesn't look terribly healthy

After waiting over two weeks to get the results of my CT scans of my shoulders back, I got a call from the doctor's office on Monday (I called five times over the course of those two weeks) and the nurse actually asked me to come in just a couple hours later so the doctor could tell me what he saw. So, I went in and waited nearly an hour to see the doctor before he showed up and pulled up the images of my CT scans. (On a side note: I was told, based on the x-rays, that I would probably only be a candidate for a reverse shoulder replacement, which is the surgery of last resort and they don't like doing it on anyone over 70 because there's nothing to fall back on after it wears out in 8-10 years.) As it turns out, the scans showed that while the ball joint looked like hell, the socket of both shoulders are both relatively intact! The reason it took so long to get the results back is because my doctor wanted to confer with another surgeon up in San Francisco, and they both agreed that it's possible for them to do a partial shoulder replacement on both left and right shoulders! It's the least difficult of the surgeries, the one they would go to first, rather than the last-resort reverse replacement. A partial means that they would only replace the ball joint and leave the socket as it is. If the doctor is doing the surgery and he does the partial replacement and he doesn't like how it works, he can always switch to a total replacement (replacing both the socket and the ball) while he's still in there. This is (relatively) excellent news in terms of what kind of recovery and future I'm looking at. A partial replacement would mean that I have two more surgeries to fall back on after the first wears out. It means I won't have to hope that some new technique comes out soon like I would if I did the reverse. So, I guess I'm happy. Except...

It turns out that I won't actually be able to get my shoulder done until July 29th. Yea. Two months from now. The surgery scheduler at the doctor's office is working on finding some OR (operating room) time sooner so I don't have to wait that long, but I'm understandably concerned. Mostly because if I wait that long, I can't be sure that there won't be more damage to the joints and then I won't be able to do the partial replacement surgeries. Also, if I can get the first surgery done during the summer, recovery can happen before I go back to school in the fall and it would just make life a lot easier. Also, I despise waiting. I get too much time to think when I wait. And the pain has been getting worse in both shoulders on a nearly daily basis as well, so more waiting means more pain for longer, and quite frankly I don't really like pain all that much, so I'd rather get the surgery done as soon as possible.

My apologies for taking so long to relay this information, but hopefully you're more patient than I am dear reader and blog. I can smell the irony from here.

More news: I'm done with school for the semester (and did really well by the looks of it), so I can get back into writing again. I did a bit yesterday and it literally felt like my fingers had rusted up from misuse (despite using them constantly for typing all sorts of other things besides my book). The first 500 words or so took much longer than usual as my stiff and unresponsive fingers creaked and groaned and strained against my willpower until I managed to painstakingly put one word after another onto the electronic page. It got easier the more I wrote, and actually the whole experience was significantly less troublesome than I anticipated. Generally when I go on writing hiatuses it takes an enormous amount of effort to get back into the story, but this time I slipped back in with relative ease. I'm pleased.

I saw Nick today as well, the two of us got together and discussed a number of things regarding the books. We finished our book proposals and are now sending them out to editors and publishers to see what they think and if anyone would be interested. We also talked about how I should end my book (still not sure, since my issues are ongoing and I don't really have a very definitive stopping point on which to end on a high note), how much progress we've both made (not too much), and set goals for how much we need to get done by the next time we see each other. We also did some writing exercises and wrote for an hour. 

For the writing exercise, we wrote down a number of words and attached three other words to those, and then circled one and gave it to the other to write a five-minute short story about. My word was German. Here's what happened:

Helga and Zer Ax

Helga swung her ax and split the wood with one clean stroke. Her husband made an irritated huffing noise and shook his head. “Ja, you can choop zer vood like a man, but you vill never pass for one, for your breasts are larger than most boulders.”

Helga sighed and slammed the ax-head into the stump with barely a thought, her oxen-like muscles laughing at the pitiful ease of her task. “Ja dear hoosband, but you forget zat no vun vill care, because I can beat zem at zer arm wrestling.” She flexed her arm and a small shockwave ripped apart one wall of their meager shed. “Oopsie, sorry dear hoosband, I forget myself soomtimes.”

Yea. That's about it for now. I'll keep you updated dear blog when I find out more about the surgery dates. 

Also, I'll be going up to San Francisco next weekend to spend time with my best friend from when I was young. I'm excited, I haven't really traveled anywhere too far since I got diagnosed, and this will be the first time I've been on a plane in over ten years. I'm a little nervous, but that's far outweighed by my excitement to see my friend and also the enormous step forward it represents in my recovery.

That's all for now. TTFN.

Your Germanic Topiary (HUH???),
Andrew