Surgery Update and a Chance to Get a Free Book

Hey all,

Sorry, I lost track of a lot of things over the last few weeks, and so I totally forgot to let you know how the surgery went. There's a lot, so I'll try to summarize it.

Doctor said the surgery went perfectly. For those who don't know, I had my right knee totally replaced, which is joint replacement number ten. I'm now only three away from obtaining the world record. I was surprised at how easy walking was, and was out of bed not long after I woke up from surgery. What sucks are the exercises. Bending was not easy, and for over a month I was struggling with simple range of motion, but with the swelling mostly gone and after a lot of work, I've whittled away a lot of the stiffness. Currently, I'm able to bend the knee to 117°. The other goes to about 130°, so I'm pretty close to returning to a normal range of motion. When I saw the doctor last week, he was pleased with my progress and said everything is coming along well so far. I get to drive again!

I'm happy to say my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard, had a great weekend in book sales. Last weekend, (May 12-14), several hundred copies were downloaded on Amazon. Since the book came out, I've been working hard on all the marketing and publicity myself, and have had some good results so far. There is still a lot to do, but that's pretty much always true when it comes to marketing. I'm also glad to hear so many people have enjoyed the book and the writing, as well as the message of the reality of life after cancer.

Saturday, I went to the San Diego Writing Workshop. It was really informative and helpful, and the speaker, Brian Klems, was hilarious. It was especially helpful with regards to publishing and getting an agent. I'm currently querying agents to find someone to help promote my book and garner more publicity for it. Fingers crossed.

Haven't read the book yet? Then maybe you want to participate in the...

Book Giveaway

Want to receive a free copy of my memoir? I'm currently running a Goodreads giveaway. There are 25 print copies available, all you have to do is click and you're entered to win one of these books!

I'd also like to ask anyone who has already purchased the book to leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. I'm always curious to see what people think of my writing.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me since my diagnosis, and to all those who have helped me with the book and getting it out there, it has all meant a great deal to me.

Until next time (which isn't going to be nearly as long),
Ciao

Another Joint Closer

Well, tomorrow's #10. Ten joint replacements. I guess I'm a deca-replacer (that's a horrible name, I'll work on it). I'm getting my right knee replaced, again. The first time was a partial replacement that did well for a few years, but pain has cropped up in other parts of the knee, so, time to hack it out. I still have a few surgeries after that, but it's a good step toward being able to live a better life. And also to being a robot. That's the ultimate goal. And getting the world record for most joints replaced. I guess there's a lot of goals.

The other goal is my book. Over the last few weeks I've been putting out a lot of feelers with regards to my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard, and it's paying off. I've gotten interest from a couple national cancer magazines about my story and work to educate people about the challenges survivors face after cancer. I'm crossing my fingers about getting it published, so we'll see where it goes.

And, do you want to win free copies of my book and other prizes? I'm running a referral contest on Surviving the Cure's IndieGoGo campaign. You can either donate, yourself, or you can share the campaign and get free prizes based on how much your friends and family donate. All you have to do is go to the campaign page, find the share tools to the right of the "Back It" button, and use that so your referrals can be tracked and rewarded! The money is going to helping me raise awareness for the challenges cancer survivors face in order to improve their support and quality of care, and also to let them know they aren't alone in having to deal with problems.

I'll update you guys after surgery, when I'm coherent enough to update you, anyway.
Well...coherent-ish.

Ciao

PS: If you buy the hard copy of my book and bring it to me, I'll sign it. Even if I'm not that coherent, which might make it really interesting.

In a Sea of Chaos, Find the Lighthouse

I never would have guessed the title of this post would be so appropriate when it floated up from the depths of my brain to present itself, but we'll get to that later. (For clarification's sake, this was written after the rest of the post.)

I guess we'll start with the biggest piece of news. I'm almost at the end of the fourth draft of my memoir. Only things left after that is a read through to try to catch spelling and grammar mistakes and selecting sections for eradication to get the work count down further. If it goes according to plan, the fifth draft should be the last one. (For more updates on this and other projects, keep your eyes out for new posts on my writing blog: Make a Write Here) I thought I would be more excited, and maybe I will once draft four is done and dusted. But at the moment it's more of an anxiety trigger, probably because next I'll be moving from the thing I know, writing, to the things I dread, marketing and networking (both of which involve interacting with humans...egad!). I've marked out several avenues of approach, but that hasn't taken care of the Titanic in my stomach. I'm hoping that, as with other things that make me apprehensive, once I get to it I'll be fine. Now I just have to convince my brain that will be the case. Good luck, me.

Maybe that's not the biggest piece of news. Maybe having joint specialists tell me that the increased pain in my knees and ankles over the last couple months isn't going anywhere is bigger. Maybe seeing one of the top AVN (avascular necrosis, which is the bone disease I have that has caused many of my joints to collapse) specialists and having him tell me that there isn't really anything I can do to try to fix my crumbling bones other than replace them is bigger. Those are what dominate my thoughts as of late. That the only real solution is more joint replacements down the line when the pain becomes intolerable. The singular light in this pall of darkness is that the pain is manageable for the time being. But how much longer does that last? A year? Five years? Ten years? Ten months? Five weeks? Tomorrow? It's literally anyone's guess. It'll happen when it happens. I've started doing low-impact exercises to strengthen the joints and my body in the hopes it staves off surgery a bit longer. If not that, then at least the exercises should grant me a bit more muscular strength and support to draw from during the recovery process, which might make recovery progress more quickly. So that's good, right?

In my last post I talked about pushing harder to be social and how it was getting easier. In this post, we talk about backsliding. I've become increasingly reclusive over the last few weeks, and am only now starting to fight it again. It's another case of sticking to what I'm used to, even if what I'm used to isn't really all that great, like, say, surgery. There's comfort in familiarity, simplicity in what's already been established. It's such a constant theme in my life that I should probably think about shoving it into a book title or write essays about it. "The Siren Song of Familiarity." "Comfort in Stagnation." "Doctored Bundy, or How I Learned to Love Surgery." But moving away from that and back to listing off reasons for craving reclusivity (which sounds a lot less clunky than "reclusiveness," and I love words that whisper like liquid silk into my brain), I know my reluctance to engage in human contact is in part to do with the conditions of my joints, which has been become an increasing stressor lately as pain ratchets up and options diminish. I don't want to talk about it, because then I have to think about it, and when I think about it all it does is remind me of where I am and what sort of future appears imminent. I dunno, maybe I'm just trying to find excuses, reasons to explain and justify my lack of effort.

I think I just realized why I haven't written a blog in a while: because there doesn't seem to be much to write about other than more bumps in the Unmerry-Go-Round called My Life. Because I'm feeling particularly morbid and exhausted with looking for what's good when all I can find is more dismal news. I really have no idea what to talk about. Do I try to paint a cheery picture over the bleak canvas? Or do I leave it bare, the naked truth for all to see? I want people to see the truth, but I don't want to discourage people and make them pity me. My life isn't miserable, but when I try to look for  events worth writing about, I can't seem to find anything positive. It's in those little moments, getting into a pun match with my family, watching funny TV with a friend, inventing a word or phrase that tickles me, listening to music in the car and not caring who watches me sing and play air instruments, reading about space and Pluto, those are the moments with seemingly little importance to life's progress, and yet give life the color and pleasantness that keeps me going when all I want to do is implode and hide. Finding pleasure in the small things is what keeps the crushing weight of the Colossus of Bad News from squashing every bit of life out of me. It's what kept me (relatively) sane in the hospital when all I had to look forward to was toxic sludge and vomiting and oxygen masks. It's a revelation every time I remember this obvious, simple, yet transformative bit of insight.

Pluto

I started off this post with a title, which I quickly removed because I had no idea why I wrote it. "In a Sea of Chaos, Find the Lighthouse." It just came up, completely without context or reason. Maybe it's a lot more appropriate a title than I gave it credit for initially.  It's certainly a hell of a lot more fitting than I could have known when my subconscious floated it up. Freud might have been onto something.

~Andrew

End of Absentia

Hello all,

I guess I'm back. I mean, I am back, but the question of whether I shall remain back has yet to be answered. I suppose we'll all find out together.

The good news is that the surgery discussed in the previous post (I will end up getting to the Coming Soon section, but not now) went very well. It turns out that, in addition to the bone spurs, one of the screws from my ankle allograft in 2010 was loose, so that was taken out during surgery as well (I told him that another doctor said it might be loose, "I've known for years that I've had screws loose, but this is the first I've heard about the one in my ankle"). That was early November. It's been healing up very well, the pain is down and the flare ups of pain have become much less frequent. I'd call that a success. It has been good enough that I did a lot of walking on our family vacation to Oahu this last week (by the way, we went to Oahu), although my ankles weren't particularly pleased and I did spend some time in a wheelchair because of how painful and swollen the ankles were getting (see right: wearing a tight ankle brace does not really mesh well with very swollen ankles/legs). I'm planning on sitting and icing my ankles for the next couple days, that way my ankles return to normal as soon as possible.

After the surgery, I started to feel like I was returning to the mental state that had plagued me at almost the exact same time a year ago. It felt like my mind was beginning to slip again, and fear of pushing myself too hard and taking on too much led me to pull away from the world and try to keep my stress and anxiety levels as low as I could to avoid having another total nervous break. I'm hoping that I'm more stable now, and that this three-month hiatus can be broken without too much worry that I'm overreaching. It really bothers me, I feel like more of an invalid than I ever did with the physical problems, having my definition of "overreaching" be talking to people, writing, and taking a couple classes to finish up community college (which also bothers the intellectual in me, but after two failed attempts at UC schools due to bone collapses, I just don't want to go through the hassle for a third time until I'm in a much better physical, mental, and emotional state). But I've learned over the years that I can't compare myself to anyone else, or, at least, I shouldn't compare myself to anyone else, which is nearly impossible I'd like to add. It's a hard lesson, harder still to live by, but I'm doing my damnedest to follow it and take care of myself to the best of my ability, even if it feels a lot like failing (I just need to ignore that, it's hard, but I'm trying).

Inspirational metaphor goes here

Despite all this, I've been able to take some measure of comfort and hope from my memoir (Life Has No Title). A few weeks after my surgery, I decided that I'd spent enough time trying to save money by chopping bits out and sent it off to the editor. Soon, I hope to have it back so I can take a look at the notes and start with the finishing touches to have the writing and editing portion of this project complete. Then I'll be able to turn my focus toward marketing and networking, which is something I'm a bit antsy about, but at least I have faith that the memoir can do a lot of good and it's my hope that knowledge will help get me through potential rough spots that might come up in the final stages of completion. It also helps a great deal that the editor has already somewhat eased the anxiety about how good my book actually is by being kind enough to let me know that she likes the voice and the content and thinks it could be helpful to others. The narrative tone was my biggest worry about the writing aspect of the book, so that's a bit of a load off my mind. I'm really looking forward to reading her notes and starting work again on this project. I've been doing some writing in the interim, although more dabbling than anything else.

I think that's a good-sized post for now. I'm getting weird vertigo while looking at the screen, so I'm thinking this is a good stoping point. Hope all y'all had a good (insert preferred winter-related holiday here) and will have great 2016s.

~Andrew

When Surgery is Good News

Hey readers,

So we're going to be going with a relatively short post this day. I suppose it's a good thing, not having that much to report and update you on. Mostly it'll be focused on news with my ankle.

After getting an MRI and some x-rays, I finally managed to get in to see my new ankle specialist. I went through the whole routine of filling out paperwork and running out of room where it says "List all surgeries with approximate dates" and having various nurses and doctors saying "Wow, aren't you a bit young for all this?" and "I'm sorry you had to go through all that." It's funny to see trained medical professionals act with the same stunned uncertainty that I see when "normal" people find out about my medical past and can't figure out how to express their pity and/or sympathy properly. But I did like the doctor, he listened to my opinions (I can't work with doctors that assume I know nothing and won't factor in my suggestions or treat me like an ignorant child), showed me what he saw in the MRIs and x-rays, and freely admitted that this was an extreme case and, rather than go forward assuming he knew best, wanted to get the opinions of some other doctors to see what they thought. I always like that, because I've had more than my fair share of arrogant doctors who think they know best and then turn out to be totally wrong.

The bone spurs are visible just to
the left of the screws

There is some separation of the bones that
is usually associated with older people

Now let's get into the specifics about the ankle. The x-rays and MRIs showed that there are some bone spurs on the inside portion of my left ankle, no real news there. However, he also spotted a stress fracture on the medial malleolus (lower tip of the tibia), which is right above where most of the pain has been located. It might be possible that at least some of the pain comes from this stress fracture. These are all pretty sedate problems for me, things can will either heal on their own or require basic surgery (which I'll discuss shortly) to fix.

The black areas surrounded by white
are where the AVN is most noticeable
(A dove-shaped area above and a
bridge-shaped area directly below that)

However, the MRIs showed a much more serious potential problem in the future. Back in 2010 I had ankle allografts on both ankles (basically removing part of my ankle and replacing it with donor bone) that helped with the damaged portions of my bones caused by AVN (a degenerative bone disease I got as a result of my cancer treatment's treatment, my not so little souvenir I picked up when I had to survive the cure). These donor bones were healthy and over the last few years they've looked very good on x-ray, everyone's been impressed by them. But looking at the MRIs of the ankle, the specialist saw that the AVN was now starting to affect the fresh, healthy bone. The AVN is very pronounced in the lower "knob" of the tibia and also in part of the talus (the part that had been replaced five years ago). Although it probably isn't causing my pain now, since AVN usually only hurts when it reaches the surface of the bone, which it hasn't done yet in the aforementioned areas, it will require additional surgery at some point. It could be years or decades from now, or it could be months, it's hard to say. Basically it'll happen when the pain comes back because of the AVN or if the structure collapses like it did back in 2009, which is what prompted the surgery in the first place.


Fortunately, the AVN is not an immediate problem, but it is something to keep an eye on. The more immediately problem (bone spurs) are a lot easier to fix. My doctor would prefer to be on the cautious side and err toward a minimalistic approach to healing, which I can totally get behind. The plan is to do arthroscopic surgery, which uses a small camera and instruments to see and clean out the damaged areas of the ankle, and then see if that helps sideline the pain for a little bit. Compared to the huge joint replacement surgeries I'm so familiar with, this is far less intrusive and debilitating. After the surgery, the specialist wants to see me every 6-12 months to get images of my ankle so we can check on its progress and catch any further damage early on, before it has a chance to morph into something major. Until the surgery, I've been given orthotics and a brace to help take some of the weight off of my ankle and alleviate the pain as much as possible. And I'll be back to using my cane to take weight off of my ankle. (The doctor felt bad for me, since I would "stick" (terrible pun) out, but told me I could use it to whack people. I think that's the moment I realized how much I liked this guy. Beating people with canes always makes me think of the man who tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson and the 67-year-old president wailed on the guy with his cane). All in all, it feels like this is something that can be taken care of easily and I'll be able to move past it with relative ease. I don't have a date yet for the surgery, but I'm supposed to get a call from the doctor's surgery scheduler to get that sorted out.

Until then, I'm going to keep chugging along and staying productive.
Ciao

Coming soon:
Keep an eye out for the next blog post, which will throw some hard truths and harsh spotlights on an issue that underlies everything in my life, and in the lives of millions and millions of other cancer patients and survivors.

PS: I don't think this was nearly as short as I thought it would be. Sorry for accidentally lying to you.

Rollercoaster (Featuring Claire)

If you want to look at it from a glass half full perspective, then this recent reclusiveness was a lot shorter than the last one. A month and a half versus five months? That's better. If you want to look at it from a glass half empty perspective...then keep it to yourself. Or myself, since I'm the one struggling NOT to look at the glass as half empty.

Speaking of struggling...

These last few weeks have been extremely difficult for me. At times I've felt like I was on the verge of losing control like I had in January, although I am happy to report that this week has been substantially better than the last two or three. I'd actually started writing this post over a week ago and the saved draft I had was wildly different from what I'm feeling now. I think it really sums up just how much of a roller coaster this year has been for me.

There are two big events that I can cite for my increased anxiety and reclusivity (I need to get this word in the dictionary, I don't care what anyone else thinks). Firstly, I've run into another major hurdle with my health: knees. For those who don't know, I've actually replaced parts of my knees before, back in 2012 (right) and 2013 (left). When most people think of joint replacement, they think of the total joint replacements that involve fitting an artificial device where the puny organic joint used to be. But for me, the doctor and I decided that we would approach it from a different route: allograft. Essentially an allograft can be explained as a bone replacement. It appears to have a better lifespan than the artificial joints and, being younger than most recipients of new joints, it made more sense to do an allograft so I would not need to undergo surgery again for a longer period than I would have if I'd scored myself a total knee replacement. However, the allograft didn't replace the whole joint, just the most damaged parts (although the doctor did say that the allografts were looking really good, the best part of the knee actually). There is still a large amount of AVN (degeneration and dead bone) in my knees, and over the last few months I've noticed an uptick in the amount of pain experienced in both joints. I saw the doctor about a month ago and he couldn't exactly pin down what was wrong, but he basically said that there wouldn't be any major fix for the pain except to just scrap the whole knee and put in a shiny new artificial one. Needless to say, I was extremely displeased with this news. I'd just finished up getting both my shoulders replaced (both total joint replacements) and thought I was in the clear for at least another 5-10 years (when the artificial joints put in 5 years ago might need to be replaced again). Several months of no physical problems left me cautiously optimistic, because I'd pretty much replaced everything I could replace, but I can't remember anytime in the last 8 years when there hadn't been some major complication at least one or two times a year, so I felt overdue for something. So when the doctor said "Probably have to replace the whole thing," I was both shocked and unsurprised.

I took a couple weeks to decide whether I wanted to replace them or not, after all, the pain isn't debilitating yet. But what really drove me to say yes was the fact that he wouldn't have any surgery openings until the end of September. I didn't trust Murphy to play nice (I suspect my life is guided by Murphy's Law, as discussed in the blog post A Murphaic Victory). Rather than wait until the pain became debilitating and unbearable (assuming it ever did), I didn't want to wait until the pain got that bad to schedule the surgery and then be forced to wait several months in agony while I waited to get fixed. By scheduling it now, I have a safeguard in place in case they DO get worse, and if they don't I can always cancel. It all sounds solid, but for some reason that no matter how hard I try to explain, nobody really seems to be able to fully grasp (which is understandable, seeing how my situation borders on being unique) why making that call and scheduling the surgery was so difficult and painful for me. It feels like giving up. And at a time where I'm just starting to come back into the world and maybe even look forward to what the future has in store for me, it all comes (potentially) crashing back down to Earth and the same cycle of replacements and surgeries and setbacks all rushes back into place. Stuck. Scheduling the surgery makes me stuck. I won't pretend very many people will understand why the two-minute phone call undid two months of exhausting mental work at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), but I'll leave it out there in case someone does manage to figure it out.
Summary (in case none of the above makes sense): My knees, which had already been partially replaced, are now beginning to hurt again. The doctor told me the only real solution would be to completely replace them, so I scheduled a surgery for the end of September as a safeguard for if the pain gets worse. It's stressed me out a lot.

The proof is somewhere in there

Now that the small essay you may or may not have just finished reading is over, I can move onto the second big reason for my increased anxiety and depression: diagnosversary. Sunday marks the eighth year of my leukemia diagnosis. Some years it hasn't been too bad, others it's been the worst day of the year. With my mental state the way it is, inherently unstable and only just starting to recover, perhaps it's more than a little underst
andable that I am what the kids call "freaking scared." The anticipation is definitely one of the worst parts (and I'm sure I've mentioned how much waiting is the worst part of anything medical), but coupled with my very recent recovery and scheduling the surgery, I've become exceedingly anxious about the day. Thinking or talking about it makes me anxious, I just caught myself holding my breath for the last minute and noticed all my muscles were tight and my body felt jittery and flighty. Perhaps why I am so nervous is because of how anxious I am NOW, not even on the actual day. The day is a symbol of a life thrown off the rails. It brings up memories that I've so deeply suppressed that I didn't even know they were there. Maybe the reason it's so bad is because I fixate on it and work myself up into a tizzy in the days leading up to it. In my last day of CBT, I discussed my anxiety and somebody pointed out that the day only means something because I make it mean something. Sunday is just Sunday after all. I think I've known that for a while, but trying to tell myself things that could be helpful for me...well let's just say I tend to discount much of the positive self-talk I attempt. It's a lot easier for me to accept something coming from someone else. I'm really going to try my best to remind myself that it is a day just like any other, that the only power it has over me is the power I give it. Easier said than done obviously, but it's certainly a new approach that warrants a try. I could also reframe it in a positive light: I'm alive. Sure, that day may have pushed me into a life nobody would ever ask for, but I made it through and survived it all. I guess the proof will be in the pudding, although why anybody would bury proof in a pudding is utterly beyond me.

The Old Guard with Mr. Swan

Quick life tidbit: I went to a send-off for my high school drama teacher Mr. Swan last night. I thought there would be tons of alumni there, but it turned out to also be the awards ceremony for the kids at the high school (most of whom are ten years younger than I am. Nothing makes you feel older than being in a room with kids nearly half your age). When I got there, I only saw children and immediately wondered if I had the wrong night. Nick came in a few minutes later, also being a theater geek from back in the day, and for nearly half an hour we thought we were the oldest people in the room. Luckily, there was a group of our peers from back in the day sitting at a table on the other side of the room. Only a few of us "old people" showed up, but we had a raucous good time reminiscing about drama and looking at old pictures of ourselves in plays. It was an emotional night for just about everyone there, but it was really good to see some of the old thespian buddies and to catch up afterward over a beer and talk about all sorts of things (ranging from Chinese words never to say in America to expensive toys to amusing stories from our lives). There is going to be another get together, this time with a lot more of the Old Guard (which is very literal for me, because in both Shakespeare plays I performed in, I played guards) at a restaurant later this month. I'm pretty excited to see a lot of the people I expected to see at the send-off last night.

This last week has been better for me. I think a lot of that has to do with me being extremely busy running around San Diego (not literally, I save that for Nick) to doctor appointments and whatsuch. I've also been a lot more social and have been doing my best to talk to and hang out with several friends of the last week or so. I also forced myself into writing more. I've been reluctant and anxious about finishing a long short story that I am enamored with. I didn't know why I was anxious about sitting down to work on it every time I went to write, but last night I figured it out. When I'm done with this story, I have no excuse or distraction to keep me from getting back to editing my memoir, Life Has No Title. Currently, I'm stopped at the very worst time in my life. This section was not only the most difficult to live through, but also the most difficult to write. At a time where I'm worried about memories being triggered by the diagnosversary, perhaps it's not hard to imagine why I would be finding any way (whether conscious or not) to prevent myself from going back to work on the project that literally takes my most painful memories and shoves them in my face for me to reread and edit. But...I know I have to do it. I've got lots of wonderful feedback from my neighbor (the first professional feedback I've ever gotten to this extent, which was nerve-racking in and of itself) so I will be able to go back into the book with a lot better sense of how to edit it. But holy damn am I really not looking forward to this. I need to force myself to do it though because this is extremely important and I need to face my fears. Not just face them, but overcome them. It'll be cathartic. I hope.

Ciao for now

PS: By the next post I hope to have some pretty exciting news regarding the memoir. Appendages crossed!

PPS: Claire says hi

Three Weeks of Updates (Left Shoulder Surgery Recovery)

Hi blog,

Finally time for the update! Since I'm still having a bit of a hard time typing, I'm going to give you updates as I've been giving them to friends of mine since the surgery.

10/28
The surgery went really well. It took half as long as the right shoulder did last time. I had a nerve block so I'm not in any pain and hopefully I'll be able to go home in the morning! Typing is a bit of an annoyance cause I've only got one arm, the left arm is immobilized by my uber sling and I can't really feel anything in that arm anyways. I don't need painkillers that much because the nerve block means I don't feel anything. All in all, things are looking great and I'm guessing recovery is going to come along nicely!

11/1
I got home yesterday, I had to stay in the hospital a couple extra days because the pain got really bad and I couldn't leave until it was better controlled. The nurses and doctors didn't really help much with the pain because they didn't listen when I told them I have a very high tolerance for pain medication, so I kept getting doses for normal people, which did very little to actually control my pain. I got through it though and got out of the hospital. It's manageable now so I'm resting at home and able to do a little bit already. The doctor says everything looks really promising so far. It might even heal better and faster than the right shoulder, so it's all going well so far. 

11/4
I've started doing at home PT which is going well. The range of motion is decent and it actually doesn't hurt too much to do the exercises as long as I keep it calmish. The therapist I'm seeing says that it's definitely better than the right one was at this stage and was impressed at how much better it was. I'm seeing the therapist again tomorrow so we'll see how it goes. Other than that I've just been taking it easy to ensure I don't push myself too much and worsen my recovery. I'm trying not to let the boredom of being safe with my health annoy me too much. I'd been having some fevers and shaking on and off at night, but it's gone down and hasn't happened in a couple days.

11/5

I saw the doctor for my one week post-op appointment and they took the bandage off my surgery site before I saw him. It's looking very clean and hardly at all swollen. There's a thin scar but it doesn't look red or angry, which was a nice surprise. The bandage was left off so now it's completely uncovered, which burns a little to the touch but is otherwise fine. I had some x-rays done and the doctor says it's looking good so far. He also checked my range of motion and was pleased, even said that he fully expects the left one to heal up faster and better than the right one. All in all, the doctor thinks everything is coming along nicely and I'll be seeing him again in six weeks.

11/13
The nurse who comes to the house says the scar is looking really good, no infection or anything. PT is still going well, I started doing shoulder shrugs and my arm is getting better range of motion, although it's definitely painful. Part of that pain is coming from the lack of painkillers, the person who wrote the original prescription did it differently than I'd been taking it so I've been forced to ration my painkillers in order to have any at all, waiting to get more all week but tomorrow I'll get new ones. It's been difficult and has caused more pain, but I didn't really have an option. I tried calling the woman who prescribed them but she never called me back so I just rationed them and dealt with the extra pain. This sort of thing isn't too uncommon, problems with medication or hospitals or health stuff in general always seem to follow me around, you just deal with it best you can. An increase in my pain for a week I can deal with, I've held out this long, I can wait another day. Still, would have been nice if this hadn't happened at all. 

11/16
Got my painkillers so everything is good now. PT still going well, added in a couple more exercises. The pain has increased a little bit and I'm not sure why. I've had a couple nights in a row where I've woken up repeatedly with sharp pain assaulting my shoulder, I think it might be the way my arm is positioned so I'm going to try to change it a little and see if that helps (note: it did, although I only slept 3 hours last night I didn't wake up due to pain). I'm starting to get back into school and normal stuff instead of just sitting around and relaxing and making sure I don't overdo things. I'm still not back to my normal routine, that will take a while since I'm supposed to wear the sling for another three weeks at least, but I can at least start to catch up on stuff that I missed and work on keeping my grades intact as best I can. 

And that sums up the last three weeks of my recovery. I will do my best to keep regular updates from here on out, although I will be very busy with school because I have two classes to catch up on. I will do my upmost to keep you and all the readers apprised of my health and any updates as they come up. 

Ethereal

You know the brain is a weird thing? (See above) One minute it's fully comprehending something, and the next that something is completely out of reach and inaccessible. That's how it's felt with this upcoming surgery. I've known about it for a couple months, hell I half-begged the doctor to do it, but it hasn't felt real to me in all that time since then. Ethereal, that's a good word for it. It's like some vague threat that nobody really takes seriously, yet is still very real. Tomorrow that threat is realized, because that's when I'm going in to get my left shoulder replaced. I did have a very short period of realization during my hospital pre-op last week, which resulted in a half-second panic attack, a single smothered sob, and then total composure and the connection to the surgery flitted back off into the ether.

This is kinda what it looks like...
only worse

The surgery is taking place at 7:15...in the morning. Which means I need to be at the hospital at 5:30 am, which means I have to be awake at approximately 4 am. I'm debating not even bothering to go to sleep, because that's about when I go to bed anyway. The surgery itself will be a total shoulder replacement, sawing off the ball joint and replacing it with an artificial head and fixing a plastic cup to the socket area so the fake head has a snug place to sit. The x-rays showed that the shoulder configuration essentially reversed itself, with the head collapsing around the socket...it looked weird. The x-ray tech complimented me on my train wreck of a shoulder. Someday I'll talk about how much I enjoy x-ray techs and their odd, somewhat morbid sense of humor that totally jives with me. But that's a post for another time, space, space-time, and quantum. Maybe some strings and branes for added effect. Look, I had to throw in science somewhere...

The reason you haven't heard from me in the last two weeks is because of all the work I've been doing trying to get ready for the surgery. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up (no I don't work for the Mafia...usually) and things to get put in place so I don't have to worry about anything other than my recovery for the next few weeks. School, paperwork, government stuff, medical things, life, friends, stress, all that needs to be taken care of prior to a surgery. Even if these surgery is completely ethereal to me, the full ramifications just out of reach to my conscious mind, I'm still under an inordinate amount of stress. I've been increasingly anxious without having a concrete reason (even knowing full well a lot of it comes from an unconscious worry about the surgery, I can't connect it on a logical or conscious level), so it's lowered my ability to focus and be able to do things, which requires me to prioritize what needs to be done and neglect certain others. Most of that has come at the cost of my social life and writing, two things that took a major hit in the last month when I semi-dropped off the face of the Earth. I figured that's something that I can pick back up after I'm doing better, whereas making sure my grades remain unaffected and finishing up paperwork on time seemed to be a more pressing issue.

This is the voice in my head for those who remember

I have taken some solace in knowing that this shoulder isn't as bad as the right one (which was replaced in June) and that I'm familiar with the workings of this one. The second joint always seems to be easier than the first one I've found (as evidenced by having both hips and knees replaced separately), so that does alleviate a little of the stress. It's still there, it always is. As blasé as I've been about the surgery and reassuring to everyone that it will be fine, there's always that little voice going "Yea but what if it isn't?" It's a hard voice to ignore. It convinced me I was going to die last year when I had my left knee replaced, although clearly it was wrong. That doesn't mean I can shut it off, but I have been slowly turning down the volume to its rambling statements of doom and hellfire.

I suppose it will be another couple weeks before any meaningful posts come out of this blog again. There might be a quick "I'm fine" post when I feel up to typing, or maybe something written by someone else with a quick explanation of how everything went. Otherwise, I'll be laid up and unable to use one arm and on enough painkillers to make a whale very, very happy. I'll try to get something out at a reasonable time.

Until then,
Andrew Bundy

Hectic

Hi blog,

Apologies for the late post, my computer recently attempted some bizarre form of self-destruction and I put it in the time out corner...forever. In its place is a new computer that seems to function normally as of writing this, so I shall stick with this one because I like functional technology. But the technology has not been the only hectic thing going on lately, it's been a veritable madhouse of events and non-events.

The magnetic donut

Still no word on my knee. In fact, I still haven't even had the MRI. I should have included in last week's post about the fun MRI waiting games "Hey MRI, when are you going to get scheduled so I can actually learn something?" But I have a date with a giant magnetic donut machine on October 10th, so at least that's good. Although if it takes two weeks to get figured out, I'll be cutting it really close to my surgery date on the 28th of the same month. Down to the wire!

It is now official: I have begun (in earnest) on the second draft of my memoir. Please, please, hold the applause. Oh, there is none...right, well keep holding it then. After Nick got back from insane death race in which he kicked proverbial ass (because kicking a real ass usually pisses off its owner, or worse, it'll kick you back), we shortly resumed work on our books. Nick has been screaming through his (I'm not sure if that's literal, you'd have to ask him) and cranking through his edits at a blistering pace. Meanwhile, I am trudging through the quagmire of my childhood and questioning the legitimacy of keeping any of it for the final product of the book. It's an agonizingly slow, painful, annoying process to go through nearly 40 pages of probably unnecessary junk to sift out what is important, especially when you know the real content hasn't gotten done and you feel like all you're doing is wasting time when really you'll have to rewrite that whole section almost completely. And the feeling that I have to rewrite that entire childhood-high school section is reinforced by reading Lance Armstrong's 2000 memoir and seeing how much more compelling the telling of his story is than the telling of my story (at least through the pre-cancer parts). It's driving me crazy, knowing that what I've done is supremely subpar work and having very little idea how to fix it save for scrapping it all and starting over is just...GAH!

Anyways...I'm at least making progress through it and am now on the edge of getting to the real meat of my story. Progress has been slowed somewhat by a resurgence in physical issues (discussed shortly), but I'm doing my best to push through them and get the work done anyways.

(Told you it was shortly)

Well if I ever had a nickel for a dime, I'd tell you that the first part of this sentence makes no sense. However, I'd also tell you that my migraines have crept back in when I wasn't looking. Over the last week I've been dealing with borderline crippling headaches, and over the last two days the headaches haven't been borderline at all, they've been full-force Andrew-stopping nightmares. I'm not sure where this sudden surge of headpain comes from, but I suspect it's stress-related. The other option is that my preventative migraine medication is no longer functional. This happened last year with a different medication, which I'd been taking for a year. Now that I think about it, I've been taking this new medication for about a year too. That's probably just a weird coincidence that I don't particularly like at the moment.

But let's focus on something else: my shoulders! The right shoulder continues to improve and is now functioning just as well, if not BETTER than the left shoulder! Then again, this might not be as impressive as it sounds, because my left shoulder is slowly deteriorating at an increasingly not-so-slow pace. In fact I can hear the grinding crackling crunches when I rotate my left shoulder in certain ways, which, although they don't hurt, elicit a kind of anticipatory wince for the pain that doesn't come. But I'm not worried about the left shoulder, because I'm getting a better one soon anyways. What's more important is my right shoulder and how it's been holding up. The range of motion is improved, the pain is nonexistent at the best of times, and not as bad as it used to be at the worst of times. I'm continuing to stretch and work on both shoulders, both in physical therapy and at home (although probably not as much as I should be at home, but that's something I'm working on), and I think I can expect a very good recovery for the right shoulder, and the left one once that's been dealt with.

All right, time for me to fly off and do something. Ciao blog and readers!
Your aeronautic overlord, Andrew

Sometimes It Crashes Around You

Hi blog,

Apologies for the abnormally long pause in post, I'd been meaning to do post more frequently and instead the exact opposite happened. It's something to work on.

Part of the reason for not posting when I normally do is because there really isn't all that much going on. It's been relatively low-key over the last couple weeks and finding anything interesting is a bit of a challenge. That applies to positive things though, there's been a slew of neutral and negative things piling up, which accounts for the other reason I didn't post at the normal time: I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Looking at nudibranchs...great stress reliever

My version of overwhelmed seemed oddly calm compared to some people's, but it's less about the workload and more about the mental taxation it puts on me in terms of anxiety and stress. I've been scrambling to get a number of school-related issues cleared up and have been running into nonsense after nonsense that pushes me back two steps for every one I put forward. Coming across all this bureaucratic BS that has been making it difficult to get anything done, I've become more and more stressed as these tasks are added to even more things I need to do, creating a backlog of different chores and assignments that doesn't ever seem to get any smaller. Mixed in with the schoolwork that I'm not quite used to just yet and it leads to me feeling anxious. I've managed to whittle away at some of these projects but then something else will come up that needs to get done and the neverending march does its own whittling on my heavy mind.

But why is my mind heavy? Surely it may be frustrating to deal with all these assignments, but it's not impossible to deal with them given the time and the mental stamina. Within the latter lies my other major problem. I'm worn out mentally and emotionally exhausted. You might think the upcoming surgery is weighing heavily on my mind, but really it isn't. In my last post I discussed how it actually was somewhat of a relief to get it out of the way. Instead, my taxing problem is with my knee. For almost nine months now I've been experiencing some new form of new pain within my right knee. I had that one replaced with an allograft almost two years ago to deal with the same degeneration that has plagued the rest of my body. This new pain started off minor, so I didn't think much of it, just some pain because I was doing a lot more walking after a semester of on campus classes for the first time. However, it recently kicked up to a much sharper level last month and my mind invariably goes to the worst-case scenario of severe damage, either due to further degeneration or a failure of the allograft. I didn't do anything about it for a few weeks, in part because I was almost overwhelmed from all the other work, but mostly because I didn't want to find out what it was and learn I might need to have yet another surgery. "But Andrew, don't you like surgery? You just said-" Bugger what I just said. This is different, this wasn't expected. It's forced to light a problem and possibility I've been trying to ignore for a while now: that the rest of my life could be spent fixing one problem or another, that the surgeries will end up being continuous as one problem emerges. I hoped to avoid further surgeries and have all my replacements hold up for at least ten years, and now I'm facing (what I think) is a real possibility that something very bad is wrong with my knee. Of course, I could be wrong, but this kind of deep, sharp pain is eerily reminiscent of my pre-surgery knee pain. I had x-rays done of it a couple days ago, but couldn't get in to see my knee specialist until October 9th since he's out of the office for almost all of September. Instead I'll be going to my general practitioner, who luckily is a sports doctor so at least he knows damaged bones when he sees them. I can get a preliminary idea of what's wrong from him I hope and then see the knee specialist to be absolutely sure.

All in all, I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping because if I bend my knee to a certain angle the pain kicks in (and because I'm a rabid insomniac to start with). Actually it only hurts within a certain angle and otherwise is fine. It could be because there's something grinding against something else or a spur of some kind. Now I have to wait for over a month wondering what's wrong with my knee and try to live as normal a life I can, getting things done and continuing to rehab my shoulder. Maybe I'm just blowing this all wildly out of proportion, but my mind already has had the idea and now, in its tenacious desire to freak me out, it won't let me abandon it. It feels like everything is happening all at once, raging and howling at me like some vindictive hellstorm that whips up a frenzied tsunami as I stand helplessly in the middle of my 10' by 10' walled fortress plopped squarely in a vast ocean of problems. I'm just waiting for the waves and the wind to sweep me away as I watch the churning water crash around me, slowly but surely eroding the not-so-very solid rock beneath my feet and knocking bricks from my flimsy walls. All I can do is watch and occasionally stick a brick back in place, feeling like an exercise in futility.

Andrew stared unseeingly at his computer screen for a couple minutes, the imagery all too real in his head as yet more concerns about his knee taunted him. Then he blinked and took in a deep breath, which escaped in a slow, steady sigh ending with more finger movement across the keyboard.

...annnnyyyyways...

I'm supposed to be working on my memoir but that got kicked aside as soon as school started abruptly. Maybe since I'm not sleeping I can work on the outline I keep promising Nick I'll do. I really need to get that done. My writing has not totally suffered though! Positive note time, because I hate ending on less than positive news. I've been working on a revamped version of a short story I wrote four years ago and finally finished the rough draft and posted it online a few days ago on a few different websites. Officially, it's a Harry Potter "fanfic," but if you've read this blog even just a couple times you should know better than to expect something normal. In fact, you should be downright suspicious because I'm not the kind of person to write nice, fluffy pieces (as evidenced by the brutality of The Eagle and the Milk or the pure oddity of Fruity Pebble Tea), although I have been known to indulge in them from time to time. Most of my short stories are more along the lines of the two examples given above though, so if you do read the Harry Potter "fanfic" (there's a reason for the quotation marks) just be aware of what you're getting yourself into. Links to the various sites for the story will be posted below. PS: I wrote a poem as well, you probably guess it is weird and odd and quirkly. You're right.


Message for Mr. Potter - FanFiction
Message for Mr. Potter - Archive of Our Own
Message for Mr. Potter - Wattpad
Message for Mr. Potter - Goodreads

I think that's about enough for today. I might update on Monday if I have anything worth mentioning. Feel free to share the Harry Potter "fanfic" if you want, or don't, that's fine too.

Blog, you might have to deal with more erratic posting habits for a bit while I work to get my life under some semblance of control, but I shall not forget you! (Probably)

Your tired tyrant,
Andrew

On the (New) Horizon(s)

Hi blog,

I don't have a ton to add, but I'll see what I can do so this post isn't just two sentences.

School started up last week, much to my surprise. I thought it was starting this week but apparently I have no idea what's going on with that so...school. I was taking three classes: critical thinking, history, and biology. I'm very excited about the first two, they both seems like interesting classes taught by interesting people (I researched the teachers first to make sure I got ones that wouldn't kill me with boredom). All three were at least partially online and the biology course had an on-campus lab that lasted three hours. Now, for those not in the know, I'd attempted to take an on-campus class complete with lab for the spring semester of this year and it went catastrophically. I was away from home for seven hours with only one break to rest and the toll it took on my body put me in so much pain I was forced to drop the class or see my health severely impacted. That was my big concern with taking a lab (when I went on Friday it was about studying snails. This is actually interesting, I swear) this semester, but since it was only three hours, I wasn't as negatively affected. It still hurt, my arm is still tender from the lab three days ago, but it wasn't debilitating. Maybe it would get worse as the labs got more complex and maybe it wouldn't have, but it's a moot point. At the moment it seems like I'll be dropping the class regardless of what it does to my right arm. Why? Because of my left arm, which I shall now explain. 

October 28th, 2014. That's my explanation. Not ten minutes after I left the biology lab I got a call from my doctor's office from his surgery scheduler. Yes, that's when I'm having my left shoulder replaced, in just over two months. If I stayed in the lab I'd be missing out on the last few weeks of class, and after talking to the person teaching him, he said it would be extremely difficult to pass the class if I stopped showing up. Plus I'm going to be wonked out of my mind on drugs, and two classes will be hard enough. Every sensible fiber points to dropping the class, and my disabled student service counselor agrees. The more important focus here is in the surgery and getting better, both so I can move forward in school and in life with as few problems as possible.

Polar bear cubs are the personification of warm fuzzy feelings

Why is that? Because, and I dread saying this because it got me in trouble last time (I said that after the knees and then the shoulders got bad), this will probably be my last surgery for a while. I'm out of joints, this is #8/9 (because the left hip was done twice the numbers are a bit finicky), the only things left after this are redos when the artificial/allograft joints wear out and need to be replaced. I'm actually excited. I don't know many people who are excited to have someone cut them open and tear this joint out only to replace it with something else, but I am one of them. I'm more comfortable with surgeries than I am with most things in my life, I guess that says something. It's their familiarity that really comforts me. The monotony of surgery is part of the appeal. The surgeries may be different on the surface but underneath they're essentially the same. The only uncertainty is with the surgery itself. But once you go under and come back up it's all about the same. The pain is in different places but it's still there. The methods of recovery are a little different but you still go through it. It's one of the few constants I can count on to understand in a maelstrom of uncertainty I'm currently facing. So I cling to it with joyful relief and get spared the looming specter of a cloudy future for a few more months. It's a smidge macabre, but you find the warm fuzzy feeling of familiarity wherever you can (especially in polar bear cubs; see above).

And now for a new segment that is really only taking place today because a bunch of stuff happened...

Today in space:

Yes, Neptune is STILL in space

• Two years ago we lost the great Neil Armstrong. There's a man who has left a mark (literally) on history that very few people will ever replicate. 
• Also today two years ago (although the date is a little more approximation than hard truth, but it's pretty close), the Voyager 1 spacecraft left our solar system, making it the first man-made object to leave our little neck of the galaxy. 
• Voyager 2 performed its flyby of Neptune in 1989 on this day as well, getting a good view of our (now) farthest planet and one of its strange moons, Triton. 
• Finally, the spacecraft New Horizons crossed Neptune's orbit (25 years to the day that Voyager 2 did) on its way to rendezvous with Pluto and then a couple objects in the region nearby. New Horizons should be reaching Pluto in a little under a year.

And just to round things off: I finished up a short story. It's actually a remake of a story I did a few years ago. I'm going to find a place to put it and then link it to this blog sometime in the future probably.  That's about it. 

Your cosmic-minded tyrant,

Andrew

Memoir-able (Recovery Part 4)

Howdy blog,

Well there's a couple exciting bits of news I wanted to share.

The first pertains to the recovery of my shoulder. I am now 10 weeks post-op. When I saw the doctor yesterday he continued to be impressed and amazed at how much range my shoulder has. He told me (again) how tight it used to be and that I have the range of motion that I do is just astonishing. It's actually better than the left shoulder now in some regards. There's increased pain in the right shoulder since I've started doing outpatient physical therapy, but that is normal for an operation and should subside soon as long as I make sure to rest it. I have to keep reminding myself of Zen #3: The faster you hurry, the slower you go. You'd think I would have that one deeply ingrained in my recovery process after so many surgeries, but I'm impatient and this surgery has been unlike the others in both its recovery and my abilities post-surgery. It'll be about a year before the right shoulder is fully healed if things continue on the way they have been, but progress will be semi-continuous throughout so it's a promising bit of news.

The other thing discussed during my doctor's visit was the left shoulder. As some of you may or may not know, the left shoulder was nearly identically damaged to the right one, and it was only through the arbitrary filter of how much each one hurt that the right shoulder was chosen as the first to be replaced. The left shoulder is now beginning to ache more, so after I see my doctor in two months, I will likely be having another surgery shortly afterwards. I'm more excited about this than I am any other emotion. With any luck, it will be my last surgery for a while (although I said that last year after my left knee replacement so...I'm cautiously optimistic) and then I can start focusing more on everything that comes after. It'll be nice not to have to think about when I'll be cutting out my bone and replacing it next, maybe I can better focus on writing and other life events after that's dealt with.

Speaking of writing, we move onto my second (I'm including the last two paragraphs as one big semi-related news item) bit of news. I've been working on a memoir detailing my life (briefly described at the end of The Cancer and the Cure) and specifically all the crap with cancer and dealing with the side effects of treatment after the fact. For 16 months I've been doing on and off work with Nick regarding our memoirs, and after all that time...I have finished the rough draft! It's a huge deal for me, because this isn't the first intonation of this book. I tried writing it half a dozen times before and each time wound up abusing drugs or having a mental breakdown from the stress of recalling all of the traumatic experiences in my life. It took an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy to get it out there, and it wore me out to the point of exhaustion, but I finally got through the rough draft and proudly did so in one piece! (Not including all the extra pieces put into me by surgeons) I've been on a short break as school starts, but then Nick and I are going to be going into the editing process and making the books even better.

To celebrate the finishing of the rough draft, here's a small section conscripted from my book Life Has No Title. Until next time readers and blog.

Normally I encountered runners along the path, but today it was just myself and the little white dog. I looked at him, he pointedly ignored me as he usually did, and got an idea. Maybe there could be a runner. Me. I thought back to Nick, who had returned early in the summer and had been spending some time with me. There was a runner, someone who pushed his limits to insane measures and even further than that. If he could run a hundred mile race, why couldn’t I go on a short jog? He once drew inspiration from me as he made his way 3,000 miles, and now I could draw inspiration from him as I ran…a lot less than that.

“Come on Tucker! Giddy-up!” I put one foot in front of the other, picking up speed slowly but surely. The dog started to trot alongside me as I increased my pace but suddenly stopped and nearly dragged me off my feet after just a few seconds. “Okay, fine. We’ll take it slow you little prick.” I started again, making sure to stick to a light jogging pace. Every slap of my foot against the uneven surface sent a strange jarring sensation up my leg. It felt…good. I kept it up, sometimes going a bit quicker, but would soon be dragged back by a resistant dog. After about ninety seconds I gave up trying to pull the little ass along with me and settled back down to a walking pace. “Well that was fun,” I said to myself. Tucker sniffed at a bush.

I wasn’t content with such a paltry result though. During that jog I felt as though I had untapped energy that I could have unleashed had I not had a leashed mutt at my side. I would have to try again.

That’s exactly what I did too. My mom and I were walking the dog this time, so I didn’t have to hold the leash. As we walked, I told her about my jogging experience a few days before and she seemed impressed. “I think I could do better though,” I said, channeling my inner Nick. “Watch this.”

If she protested, I didn’t hear her, because I was off without another word. Uncertain of how fast to go to start with, and not even sure if I remembered how to run properly after five years, I could hear Nick whispering in my ear. “Open it up Bundy!” I’m pretty sure he’s never said that to me in my life, but that’s what I did. I sped away at full-blast and nearly lost my footing in the surprise at how quickly I was going. For a few precarious steps, I was running to avoid faceplanting, but I caught up with myself and sprinted away. I could feel the years melting away as everything around me became irrelevant. None of the pain to remind me of surgery after surgery, none of the aches to remind me of the atrophied muscles and hospital stays. None of the mental anguish harassing me those last couple months as I further slipped into becoming an anxious wreck. It was just me and the path. Everything else was in another world.

The wind rushed by, my legs pounding into hard earth, and on and on I ran, laughing silently and grinning ear to ear by the time I came to a halt as my burning legs asked politely to quit. Besides, I was almost out of bridle path and I would have to make the trek back to my mom. I honestly felt as though I could keep going if I wanted to, the rush was exquisite! I felt, for the first time in years, like a normal human being. It was such an alien feeling I wasn’t sure what to do with it. At least now I knew that my body wasn’t totally trashed, and I knew Nick would be pretty pleased when I told him about this the next time I saw him.

Your one and a half armed overlord,
Andrew

The Right Angle (Recovery Part 3)

Hey blog,

Wasn't all that Top Ten Zen stuff pretty cool? It was a lot of work but I definitely would agree that it was very much worth it to be able to reach out to so many people and offer insight and guidance. It was also pretty cool to be able to look at each quote from a different angle by having Nick co-author those posts with me. Maybe we'll do something like that again in the future, I wouldn't mind another collaborative project with the ultrarunning Zen master.

Step 4 in happy dance shows off my range of motion

I do apologize though, because although I did assist in dropping Zen knowledge upon thy head, I haven't given an update into my recovery in over three weeks now and should probably remedy that. As you may remember from part 2 of the recovery posts, my doctor was pleasantly surprised at the progress I'd made in the range of motion of my shoulder, which had already surpassed his one-year prediction in less than a month. Now I am in my eighth week of recovery (haven't seen the doctor yet, that's next week) and have moved from being in a sling to being out of a sling with active assistance (being able to move my arm with assistance from my left hand) to finally being allowed unrestricted movement! (Insert happy dance here.) I've been out of the sling for two weeks now and it feels good to have a semi-normal shoulder again. In some respects, it's better than my left one (which also has damage and will require surgery soonish), although still a bit sore. After all, I've been using it more and more and as such will run into a bit more pain for a while before it calms down. However, the range of motion is quite a deal higher than it was before the surgery, and indeed better than it has been in several years. The forward flexion (holding my arm straight ahead and raising it up) is all the way up to a whopping 125 degrees! The abduction (holding my arm straight out to the side and raising it up) is up to 110 degrees! Now, I should note that both of these numbers are a product of active assist and not unrestricted movement, but it is reassuring to know that I have the potential to reach these numbers as I continue to build up strength without the help of my "better" arm.

The rest of my happy dance, as reenacted by bear cubs

I'm sure I'll have some more updates available after I see my doctor in a couple weeks, although I might have something sooner because I just started back up with outpatient physical therapy. I had an initial assessment a couple days ago and so far so good. The biggest issue at the moment seems to be the pain, but that's just pain, not anything major problem, so I can handle that.

Summer's coming to a close. It's felt long and short, with lots of ups and downs to accompany it. Overall things went well: I fixed my right shoulder, both my brothers were around for a while (Chad left yesterday), I didn't get much writing done but am starting back up, I completed a ten-part blog series and kept to the timeline the entire time, and I managed to write a short story. All in all, I think I'm pleased with how it all went. Now I need to prepare for school and make sure I stick to a productive output for my book as I march slowly toward the next, and hopefully last (for a while anyways), surgery on my left shoulder. That one will round out the set: eight major joints replaced. With any luck, I won't have to worry too much about major surgeries until the first replacements begin to wear off in a few years. By then, I hope to establish some kind of normalcy in my life. Then again...what is normal anyway?

Comet 67P from 177 miles away

Before I get into the rest of my personal update (and a very touching part of this post for me), I wanted to share a very cool piece of news. For those of you who know me, you know I like space. It honestly confounds me that not everyone is totally enamored with it, but that's just how it is. However...I would like to quickly share a HUGE accomplishment that took place earlier this week that deserves mention. If you don't already know about the Rosetta mission, then here is a quick summary. Ten years ago Rosetta was launched to rendezvous with a comet named 67P (for short, the full name is a bit wordy) and enter into orbit around this 2.5 mile wide body careening through space. No other craft has ever accomplished this feat before. As of yesterday, August 6th 2014, and after a nearly four BILLION mile journey, Rosetta successfully entered into orbit around comet 67P and has made history!! But merely entering into orbit wasn't enough, because in November of this year, Rosetta will drop down the Philae lander, which will be the first craft to ever land on a comet. The pictures will be...well, I'm excited, let's put it that way. It's a monumental accomplishment and I am very much looking forward to seeing what kind of discoveries about comets and about our early solar system drop out of this truly special mission.

Relay for Life Luminaria

Back to the update. Now that Top Ten Zen is finished, I can get back to my writing. I had to put it on a temporary hiatus while Nick and I wrote our ten-part series as well as editing and formatting for our posts too. But it is done and the writing can recommence. I've not done as much as I wanted (although so far today, after meeting with Nick, I have managed over 4000 words), but it is always difficult to reinsert myself into the frame of mind of writing my memoir, because of the painful and difficult nature of writing non-fiction about yourself. Plus, I never really fully got back into writing Life Has No Title (my memoir) after the surgery. I had only done about 5,000 words when Nick and I began the Top Ten Zen project. For me, I've always found getting back into writing non-fiction a lot harder to start back up than fiction, which I adore and can pick up at almost any time with relative ease. It doesn't help that there are a lot of memory gaps in the long road of my treatments that I need to fill in by reading over old CaringBridge posts. Re-reading those is like taking a punch to the face with every paragraph. Nothing about this book is easy for me, but the potential benefits of raising awareness for post-cancer treatment and the state of mind of a cancer survivor (click on my About Me: Cancer and the Cure page to learn more) coupled with the (hopefully) cathartic nature of jotting all this down make this project essential for me to complete. In essence, I've given all of the shit I went through a purpose by writing this book and sharing my story. Whether it manages to shift people's perceptions of life after cancer and change policy and treatment methods and touch hundreds, thousands, or millions of people...or if all it does is help one person get through their cancer treatment, I know that I've done something good. Even if it's just one person it saves or makes their treatment just that little bit easier, I'll know that I did something good and worthwhile.

Your definitely not normal creator,
Andrew