Another Milestone Down, Another Surgery Up

G'day errybody!

It has been an extremely hectic month, to say the least. I've been busy trying to sort out all the stuff from the last post and then some! Mostly I've been focused on the memoir and my physical health, although I have also started back up school. I've been able to get enough strength around my knee at physical therapy to avoid knee replacement surgery (yay). However, as I mentioned before, I do have a couple bone spurs in my ankles (boo). I'm going to have an appointment with an ankle specialist (my old one moved to Seattle shortly after I had the double ankle allograft) in a couple weeks to see what the best option is, but I'll likely have surgery to get the bone spurs removed. It's not as bad as it sounds actually. It's relatively minor, so much so that I could probably just do myself by this point. I might as well have the surgeon cut me open, point me in the right direction, and I'll chip the spurs away myself. Otherwise, my health has been rather quiet and uneventful. And you know what? I'll take uneventful with little change, it sure as hell beats the alternative that seems so dreadfully
common with me.

This is kinda how surviving feels

Onto writing news. I have finished the third draft of my memoir (yay)! It's kind of intimidating that I'm getting so close to having my book published. However, I have been getting some very positive feedback from a couple college professors that read the manuscript. I've been reassured that my book is an important part of helping to get awareness up about the many issues that face a cancer survivor. Both acute and chronic, from mental to physical to emotional, there are a great many pitfalls that await those freshly gifted with remission when there doesn't need to be. Lack of information and attention to what can be the most difficult part about cancer has constantly made my attempts to rebuild my life extremely difficult. So I am hoping that with this book and speaking events and the like I can do my part to make survivorship (the part of a cancer patient's tribulation that comes after the cancer is beaten back) just a little bit easier for the millions and millions of survivors and patients out there (which is the reason for starting the Surviving the Cure Facebook page that I'm hoping will gather momentum and help a bit with that awareness. If you feel so inclined, please like it and share it with your friends). Being reminded of my goal and told that this book has great potential to achieve it, well, that's a good vaccine against the anxiety and nerves surrounding the publication. At the moment, Nick and I are reading each other's books and helping to guide the other in the right direction and polish both our manuscripts up. And slim them down so we can cut down on costs when we send our stuff out to the editor.

Of course, even with the books finished we still have the networking and marketing aspect to take care of as well. Luckily, one of Nick's friends is a photographer (a very high-caliber one at that) who took some head shots of us for when we start the marketing campaigns. They turned out really well. I might actually use some for a more personal use. If I ever need eHarmony of something, I'll definitely be putting one of Keshav's pictures up there.

Nick and I | Credit: Keshav Dahiya

In addition to all of that, I've been working on a couple short stories. Plus a whole bunch of ideas that came rushing out of nowhere in a massive creativity dump over the last few days. Not that I'm complaining, I love creativity dumps. I just wish, you know, that they wouldn't be so distracting and alluring. To me, they're like sirens trying to call me away from the memoir and all the other things that need taking care of. I hear them whispering: "Bundy, Bundy, come write us. Write us good!" To which I usually reply: "You mean 'well'! It's 'well', not 'good'!" Then people ask if I'm okay and give me that look reserved for strangers that you can't quite be sure aren't totally insane. I mean maybe I am, but that's more fun than being normal in my mind. Normalcy is uber overrated.

So those short stories. One of them I'm planning to shop around to see if any magazines or something will want to publish it. It's a short mostly non-fiction piece about my dad's summiting of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes (highest peak outside the Himalayas). The other is a more standard short story for me, which I recently posted on my author page on Facebook. I'll start you out with the beginning at the end of this post and if you want to read on, go ahead and check out the rest of it on the Facebook page. While you're there, feel free to like it! I'll be posting excerpts from my memoir and other pieces of writing there from time to time.

Many thanks to you all, have a splendid day/night/dawn/dusk/what-have-you.

Catfishing

Sitting outside, Myles realized that his plan to flush out the potential catfish was severely flawed. Sure, it probably wasn’t an old guy, but just because some girl sounded hot didn’t necessarily mean she was. “Dammit! Please, God, let her be hot. I’d give anything for her to be the hot, funny, wonderful girl she claims to be.” Maybe it was God, or maybe it was his subconscious, a little cocaine-snorting Freud sitting next to an empty couch who spoke, but the answer came to him either way: Only one way to find out.

The house was small, boring, unassuming. It didn’t fit into his picture of where such a stunning and special person like her would live. Though he couldn’t exactly figure out what that picture was, he at least knew this wasn’t it. Myles heard his friend Zachary’s voice whispering “Catfish” in the back of his mind. Try as he might to shoo it away, he could not quite rid himself of that treasonous doubt. With a sigh and a stomach full of writhing creatures, Myles stepped out of the car and closed the door, absently locking his car as he frowned at the driveway. It looked no different from any other driveway in America. What was he expecting? A driveway made of red carpet? “Go Myles,” he muttered under his breath. He couldn’t. Instead, he found himself rooted to the spot, paralyzed by the possibility that Zachary was right, that he’d been duped. But he’d seen her picture, heard her voice, how could she be anyone but who she claimed to be?

To see if Myles gets the girl or if Zachary is right and he gets the hook, read on at: https://www.facebook.com/andrewbundybooks