A Joint Venture

Hi blog (he said sheepishly),

I'm sorry for neglecting you for the last couple weeks. To say things have been hectic would be putting it mildly. To say things have been stressful would severely underrepresent just how difficult it's been. A couple weeks ago I talked about my shoulder and my book, and really those two things have kind of taken over my life. Although to be fair, I don't really have much of a life to start with, having been busy trying to get this book done and going to school and not having a lot of time to spend with other people.  I miss other people, hopefully I can start hanging out again soon. It'll definitely be a lot easier to see my friends again once the rough draft is done and school is out for summer. But enough about that, I have some serious news to parse out. So let's get cracking, how's that sound blog?

Recap
Since my last post I've gone to see two other doctors. My general practitioner (who is a sports medicine doctor and does not specialize in any particular joint) told me he'd never seen a shoulder joint that degenerated in all his years of practice. This worried me for a bit until I realized he's not a shoulder specialist, so maybe it wouldn't be as bad as it appeared when I went to see the Sharp hospital doctor he recommended the following Monday (last Monday, a week ago).

Sharp Specialist
The Sharp specialist ordered a couple more x-rays so he could get an overhead view of my shoulder before I saw him last week. After a bit of a wait and a couple visits from his PA (physician assistant), the doctor came in and pulled up the x-rays. "I've never seen shoulders this degenerated before," he told my mom and I. Perfect, I thought bitterly to myself. It wasn't shaping up to be a good visit.

The doctor informed me that whereas the ball and socket joint normally forms a sort of ball and cup structure, my joints were so damaged that this structure had actually reversed to form a cup and ball. Due to this level of damage and because the bones were so worn away, he actually wasn't sure if he would be able to replace either shoulder at all. Normally the surgeon need a certain amount of bone in order for him to be able to do the replacement, but because of the severe degradation of the joints, the way it appeared from the x-rays, it would be next to impossible to do any of kind surgery. I can't say I was too pleased about that.

However, he did mention that (I don't know if "lucky" is the right word, because nothing about this feels lucky to me) there is a shoulder surgeon convention going on in San Diego in the middle of June, so the doctor would take my x-rays with him and "shop around" the images to see if anybody had any ideas. I didn't want to wait until June, that's two months from now (it's mid-late June). As helpful as it would be to have all those specialists taking a look, I'd rather get more information now.

Scripps Specialist
Before I saw the Sharp specialist, I'd already scheduled an appointment the following Monday with one of the top shoulder surgeons in California. I really wanted that third opinion to be a good one. Even more so after the less than pleasant visit the week before. It took nearly an hour to get to see him, but once he came in and started to look over my the x-rays and check my range of motion, he got right to work.

Again, as with the Sharp doctor, he told me just how bad my joints were and pointed out the structural reversal going on. He tossed around a few big words and drew some pictures on some paper and said most of the same things I'd heard exactly one week ago. However, the big different is that he didn't think it was unfixable. While the damage was extensive, there were ways of doing the surgery and getting the joints replaced.

The more damaged shoulder might be a candidate for a normal shoulder replacement, but the left one is shaped different and it would be extremely difficult to do a normal replacement with that. Instead, he talked about a surgery called a reverse shoulder replacement, which would, in effect, reverse the normal way the joint works, pivoting the head of the humerus (upper arm bone) around a shaped structure in place of the socket. The problem with doing this surgery is that it is a measure of last resort. Normally doctors like to use normal shoulder replacements first, and then use this when no other options is present. In fact, they don't really like doing this surgery on anyone under 70 because the joint wears out after 8-10 years and then it's iffy on what would be available to do next. The left one would almost certainly be a reverse, the right one too probably (although there's still a chance for a normal replacement).

In the end, he decided CT scans of both shoulders would give us more information to work with, which will allow for a more accurate assessment of what can be done for my shoulders. Those should be scheduled either today or tomorrow and then hopefully I'll get them done soon so I can get that information I so desperately need. The sooner I get the joints replaced, the easier it the surgeries will go. The longer I wait, the more degeneration occurs and the more pain I'm in, and the harder both the surgeries and life will be. I'd rather just get these done with, I don't like waiting. At least I shouldn't have to wait until June to get better answers, so there's that.

Next Time
I've been working a crazy amount on my book. Progress shall be updated. Stay tuned.

Your disintegrating master,
Andrew

A Murphaic Victory

Hello blog,

I know I neglected you all last week, but I was busy doing stuff and needed to rethink my direction with you. Still thinking, but I don't think it's fair that you should suffer because of my reassessment. So, until then, you shall continue to develop a use for one thing or another.

VICTORY! After a couple months of writing about all of 2008 (easily the worst year of my life) I am finally finished! I was extremely stressed the entire time and was nearly convinced that I would either relapse and ruin over four years of sobriety or end up in a mental institution. I am happy to report that neither of these occurred! Honestly, I'm kind of shocked. In fact, I was so shocked and happy that I actually wrote about the whole thing at the end of the chapter. Here's an excerpt from that:

Secondly, I’m telling you this because I…am…DONE! 2008. No more! I am free from the hellish quagmire of pain and misery that nearly killed me multiple times, that destroyed my body and put me through the whole new hell of recovery that you will read about through the rest of this book. If any part of my life was bound to totally undo me and send me to a mental institution with a very clean, snug jacket clasped around me, 2008 was it. But it hasn’t. I’ve come very close to relapsing (in a drug sense, you’ll read about that too in a bit), to crying and never stopping, to slamming my head against a wall until my brains resemble scrambled eggs, to curling up in a ball and never coming undone, to never speaking again, to losing my very essence to complete madness. I’ve been assaulted by memories rising out of the dark crypts where I buried them so long ago, I’ve yelled at myself both in my head and out loud, I’ve told myself to shut up, to stop writing, to give up and give in. But I DID NOT!

Whenever people tell me I’m strong and they could never go through what I’ve been through, I tell them the same thing: “I’m not really any stronger than you are. You really only have two choices. Be strong or die. Most people’s self-preservation instincts can pull them through some of the craziest stuff. I hope you never have to find out though. I hope you’re allowed to keep on believing that you could never make it through what I’ve made it through. I don’t want you to go through what I went through.” I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Still, I always diminish my strength because I believe that people are far stronger than they think. If you had asked me if I was strong enough to survive even half of what I’ve been through in the last seven years, I would have laughed and said “No way!” But I have. We underestimate ourselves. There is so much potential strength lurking in every single one of us. You, yes you, can almost certainly make it through what I did. I hope you never have to find out. But I believe in the power of the human mind and its astonishing ability to guide us through times of intense trouble. Sure, we have little hiccups along the way, like my panic attacks or nervous breakdowns, but those occurred after the main body of the danger. In the midst of it, you lose sight of almost everything except one: survival.

That being said, I’m a lot stronger than I would have guessed. When I started writing about my diagnosis, I told myself that if I made it through 2008 without relapsing or ending up in a mental hospital, I would be some kind of uber Superman. I’ve tried half a dozen times before and never made it into the year 2008, the year of hell. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I did it. Baby steps I guess. I didn’t look too far ahead, I just focused on one problem at a time. That’s what it takes sometimes. Baby steps.

Of course, my life seems to be watched over like a hawk by Murphy's law. Murphy doesn't like me very much. A couple weeks ago I started having shoulder pain shortly after getting a vaccine and having the nurse hit a nerve bundle. That pain dissipated, but I realized that a much deeper, sharper pain was emerging in my right shoulder. Then it became mirror (with a lesser intensity) on the left side. I have severe bone degeneration in my shoulders, have for years now. And although my range of motion is pathetic at best, pain has never really been an issue, so I haven't seen any reason to get them replaced. But now, I fear that might be my course of action. I saw my general practitioner today and got some x-rays. He looked at them and told me he hasn't seen any joint look that bad from degeneration ever. I told him I would probably make a good case study then. "It looks like it's melted," he told me. This is the image that popped up into my dismayed head:

Yes, my shoulder resembles a melting clock from Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." The socket is intact, but the head (the "ball" of the ball-and-socket joint) of the shoulder is just a total mess. There's bone spurs and collapse and cracks and fractures running through both shoulders. The right one looks only marginally better than the left. My doctor recommended we try a couple different type of shots, but if the pain persists, I'll have to get one or both of my shoulders replaced. Needless to say, I'm rather upset about this. About a year ago I had my left knee partially replaced (transplanted technically) and I very foolishly made the declaration that "this is probably going to be my last surgery for a while." Murphy must have heard me, because it's not even a year later and now my shoulders are going. The only good thing I can think of is that at least this will complete the set. Eight major joints and none of them mine. There's a lot of words going through my head now, and hardly any of them are printable.

A totally normal left shoulder x-ray

My left shoulder x-ray as of April 11, 2014. Where the arrow is pointing, you can just make out a
thin crescent shape going from the bottom left of the ball to the top middle of it. Everything inside
of that has collapsed. The digital picture looked about twice as bad as this one. There are also a number
of cracks in the bone that can be made out in addition to decreased bone density (more transparent)
compared to the normal x-ray seen above. 

Your relieved, concerned, and irritated master,
Andrew

Friday's Five Fun Facts

Hi blog!

Today we're just going to focus on some interesting things. Learn stuff!

1. Humans love alliteration: Alliteration is a tool used by many authors to garner attention to a certain phrase. It's particularly useful at eliciting emotion. The title of this blog post is an alliteration. Alliteration is the use of the same letter or sound at the beginning of a series of words. For example: All aardvarks adore alliteration. Notice that all of the first letters of each word is "A"? Alliteration!

2. There is a dolphin-to-human translator: Kind of, it's being developed now. Researchers studying dolphins were able to teach dolphins certain "words" (in the form of clicks and whistles and other dolphiny noises obviously), such as "seaweed", and got the dolphins to mimic the noises. Seaweed happened to be the first word picked up by a pod of wild dolphins the team had been studied for twenty-five years. The full story can be found here: Dolphin-to-Human Translator

3. There has been a lot of war: In the last 3500 years, it is estimated that there has only been 230 years with no wars at all. Yea. Only 6.6% of the last 3500 years have had no war at all. Ponder that.

4. There is very likely an infinite number of yous: If the universe is infinite, everything that can ever happen within the realm of physics MUST happen. There are an infinite number of Earths, an infinite number of yous, and you have done everything possible. Even if the universe isn't infinite, there is a possibility that there is an infinite number of universes, meaning there are an infinite number of parallel yous running about on some other version of Earth.

5. Vending machines are evil: More people are killed by vending machines worldwide every year than they are by sharks. 10-13 people a year are killed by vending machines, while sharks kill less than 10 people per year on average. Most of these deaths are caused by a person shaking a vending machine and having it fall on them and crushing them to death. It is probably the worst death you could suffer, especially if it's a cheap brand of soda, like RC Cola. "Oh Mrs. Smith, how did your son die?" Are you REALLY going to say he was killed by an RC Cola vending machine. No, you say he was eating alive by a shark. 

Well that's what you get today blog, I hope you like it!

Sincerely, your fact-loving tyrant, Andrew

Nickronicity

Hi blog,

Today Nick and I met and discussed some topics for out books. Since our stories intertwine at certain points, our main goal today was to work on finding ways of connecting our books, showing points where we either were together or nearby, or finding similar emotions or events that we both experienced but weren't necessarily in the same place when they happened. In essence, we're attempting to synchronize our books. Since I'm trying to synchronize with Nick, it has henceforth been dubbed: Nickronicity. I called them explicit and implicit events. The explicit events took place when we were together: high school, middle school, when he was doing his 3000 For the Cure project, and more recently after he came back from college. Implicit events were things like: how we felt at certain points in our lives, major historical events, important life events, and how his timeline and my own seem to either mirror each other or have opposite amplitudes (his life being great vs. me going through the worst stuff in my life).

But before we got into that, we decided to do a couple writing exercises. Nick was working on some of his stuff yesterday and had worked himself into a very good writing mood. He decided he wanted to take advantage of that and set for us a very strange writing task. As he was sipping his tea (which he had made a couple minutes before) he commented on the fact that it tasted like Fruity Pebbles. That gave him the idea for our writing exercise. "We'll write a short story on one page of paper that has to start with 'This tea tastes like Fruity Pebbles!'" His story, once he finished it, was a lot more cohesive and normal than mine. Mine...well...here it is...

This tea tastes like Fruity Pebbles!” the priest spat as he chucked the cup at the nun. The woman glowered at him before staring at the muddy-colored stain splattered across the wall behind her.

“I hope you don’t think I’ll be the one to clean that up,” she huffed irritably. “Honestly Jim, you’re such a fluffing child.”

The 436-year old priest WAS a child though. Although his aged mind was sharp as ever, his body had never grown past five years old. “And whose garnet-dwelling fault is that?” he whined.

The vampire nun rolled her sharp, crystal-blue eyes and started to pick up the mess. “Honestly Jim, thou art a boil. You should be thankful the Creator has gifted us so.”

“Easy for you to say Bev, you’ve got the body of a 16-year old maiden with the brain of Sun Tzu.” Jim walked over and helped her pick up the sharp pieces of glass. “One day we’ll fi this.”

“The cup?”

“Not the ever-preaching cup! Our curse you mutting horse. Now, where did you leave our guest?”

“Basement, same as always. Let me know when you’re hungry. I picked some fresh leeks. Go get the water boiling. We’ll have crème de screaming tortured gooseman tonight.”

“My favorite!” exclaimed Jim.

Yea...anyways. You can probably tell that I didn't have a clue what the hell I was doing. Insanity is a good bet though, for me at least. This is what happens when I don't get to write fiction for several months, the scaly weasel that lives in my head and helps me write starts to do really odd things.

Apparently there's a pangolin in my head

I'm still trying to get this blog to reach a wider audience. As much as shameless self-promotion bugs me a bit, I think it's more important that people start reading this blog in greater numbers (not at ALL biased on that). If for no other reason than to highlight some of the important tips given out during Awareness Week. So if you could share this blog with other people, post links up on your Facebook or Twitter or whatever, comment below, subscribe by email (look right), the whole works, I would be vastly grateful. I've already given you a present in the form of a short story: Relax. A preemptive gift so to speak. Thank you.

Blog, I hope you and I can reach more people, I know that's what both of us want. You like having people read you, you exhibitionist sneak, but I actually feel like sharing useful things with people (...sometimes. Other times I like talking about vampire nuns apparently) and helping them out whenever possible.

Sincerely, your caring dictator for life, Andrew