This
has been quite a week of reading rants. And the reading has led to more
critical thinking than I have done in quite a while. There are hundreds
of thousands of armchair critics pointing fingers about wasting drinking
water, unfair police, racist policy, politicians on vacation, and I
only have one thing to say: Do something about it. Think ALS and breast
cancer are getting more attention than
the disease you or your family is experiencing? Well, fill us in and get
us up to speed on awareness. Did you know that Lewy Body Dementia is on
the rise and is far more debilitating than Alzheimers? I didn't either
until I had a friend suffering the shock of it through hospitalized
parents. The only way to get past the stigma is to put it out there. Do
you think the police have too many rights and privileges in a democratic
society? Then bring a discussion to your local community on how it can
avoid the same situations we just saw from a distance. Adding fuel to a
fire already raging is counterproductive. We should be outraged enough
to be talking to our friends and neighbors about better rapport with law
enforcement. It is our right and our duty. Scale your rage into
workable points and goals and demand that your local officials take them
to regional officials, to state officials, to federal officials, to
international think-tanks.
Let me ask you how many times you
step out of your comfort zone to volunteer in your local community each
year. And this isn't about volunteering at the inner city soup kitchen
on Thanksgiving Day, this is about the other 364 days of the year when
the children that live next door might not be getting breakfast on a
weekend morning because there is no free meal without the public school.
Adults are the ones who lob the threats back and forth, but children
are the ones who suffer the most. Regardless of your religious
affiliation or political affiliation or complete lack thereof, children
are the only hope we have of making changes. It takes a village to raise
a child and that isn't necessarily a village half a planet distant, it
is a village you live in and contribute to.
Is it popular to
say I grew tired of all the finger pointing in the news this summer?
Well, no. Is it too much to ask that we find something positive in our
lives daily to share with our fellow humans to give us hope for another
day on this planet? Probably. But we should all try.
I will
leave it at this: Every society has extremes. If extremes make you
uncomfortable, do your best to come to terms and an understanding with a
moderate form of the extreme. If you feel uncomfortable at a homeless
shelter, donate time to stock a local food pantry. If you have an
uneasiness of mentally disabled adults, perhaps try volunteering for a
pet therapy program for rehabilitating patients. If you fear death, hold
the hand of one patient in a hospice facility. The only way we can
become more human is to do things with actual humanity in them. And
these, dear friends, are the stories we should share with each other
over coffee, in a public park, with children playing in the distance. We
should live at living.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
My septoplasty story (or, How I got the center of my nose removed and put back where it was meant to be)
If you know me, you know I can be a bit boisterous at times. As a child, I was a totally bouncy trouble factory whether at home or in the wilds. And I had grand ideas of how to amuse myself while my mother was doing the serious business of grocery shopping. One Saturday morning in 1973 (I think...the photos are long gone at this point), we were at the local grocery store (Radford Bros., North Main St., you might remember it) and I was marauding in the produce aisle. A produce clerk was filling up a center of the aisle bin with gourds. Stacks and stacks of decorative gourds all piled up inside this giant red and chrome Studebaker of a produce bin. I had been on a Richard Scary drawing kick and I saw animals in those gourds. Birds and monsters, and dinosaurs and Maurice Sendak wildebeasts. And I had to get a better look. So I hoisted myself up on the side of the bin to get a better view. Something felt wobbly and I froze in place. That is actually the last thing I remember for a while. I was wearing a short sleeved shirt and the chrome lip of the bin was cold on my arms. And then it tipped over on me, gourds bouncing everywhere, and I was pinned underneath. I don't remember that part at all. My next memory is of a fireman looking down at me in his big helmet and shaking his head, laughing a little, picking gourds off of my stomach. There may or may not have been commentary about what kind of trouble I had gotten myself into, but my mother had called my father and next thing I knew we were rushing to the county hospital emergency room in the station wagon.
My next memory is of a doctor wiggling my nose and saying, "Yes, that's broken all right." With all the luck of the universe, the bin didn't totally crush my skull, but it sure landed across my face, both cheekbones and my nose taking the brunt of gravity before the bin hit the stack of empty cardboard gourd boxes thankfully still sitting there in the aisle. In 1973-ish there was no such thing as mending a broken nose. I got an ice pack, some baby aspirin, and a lollipop. And then the next day I got to dress up in a ruffled white dress and tights and patent leather shoes and be baptized into the Methodist Church, looking for all intents and purposes as if my parents had beaten me within an inch of my life. There was a lot of explaining to do that day and I was promised both Jello and Jello Pudding so I was having none of that waiting around the church thing my mom was wanting to do.
Skip forward to age 12 when I was learning to swim. I could not breathe out of the right side of my nose. Every time the swimming instructor told us to go under the water and blow bubbles in the baby pool (ah, the indignities of learning to swim at an older age), I would end up snorting a nostrilful of water. There was none of the turning your head and breathing in through your mouth and out through your nose of swimming for me. It was breathe in through my mouth, go under the water, breathe out through my left nostril, come up and breathe in through my...nope, snort a nostrilful of chlorine that was not cleared out of the right side of my nose. I was miserable and never swam with my head underwater again. I became the ultimate Zen master of floating on my back in the pool for hours and hours.
Fast forward to college where I was out at a club with my (much younger) boyfriend who had never been slam dancing. We stood at the edge of the "pit" and watched, he surfed in and out a few times, and then just decided to stand there next to me. I was wearing glasses. I did not want to smash my glasses. So, instead, the drunken buffoons standing next to us picked up their even drunker friend and threw him at my face. Broken nose number two, no health insurance, full time college student, not even enough gas in the car to get me out to the hospital where I knew that nothing would be done anyway. Not even a lollipop this time around. And it made my nose much, much worse.
I have lived with this crooked and even more crooked prow for forty years, sleeping with my mouth open and waking up with woolen teeth, having a chronic drippy nose because I could not sniffle on my right side, biting a blood blister on my lip to force my cheek muscles to flare my nostril open. And those horrible up-the-nose selfies? One nostril was tiny and one was huge, with my septum doing a funky pokey-outey thing on the side I could actually breathe from. And one day, roughly 4 years ago, I ended up going to an ENT for a complicated ear infection and the doctor looked up my nose and said, "Wow, you know you have a completely blocked nostril, right?" and I affirmed his observation. But what was I to do, thinking that my health insurance would never cover rhinoplasty. Then, last summer I was poking around on the website of my latest insurance coverage and found a listing for "septoplasty, " as in the insurance would cover septoplasty but not cosmetic rhinoplasty. What was this septoplasty they speak of?!
Of course, the first thing I did was to go to YouTube and watch a septoplasty video. Please, don't ever, under any circumstances, go to YouTube and watch a septoplasty. You do not want to see someone's face being chiseled like a jack-o-lantern (unless you are into that kind of thing, and at this point I say, ewwww, Dexter, out!). The gist of the procedure is that the septum is either removed from the interior of the nose and shaped/replaced or partially detached, reshaped and re-anchored, all through the nostrils. I am a total wimp and I have no idea how I decided to go through with the surgery, but there gets to a point in your life when you are so tired of compensating for something physical that you just have to power through fixing it. This was my time to barrel through the construction barriers.
The rest of this post is the tell-all, describe-all, nitty-gritty of the surgery procedure and the recovery process and it is really not pretty, but I am hoping that it will give someone (anyone) a better idea of what to prepare for and what to watch out for in recovery. Some of these things are hints I wish I had beforehand, some are things I never would have thought of. But I hope that they are indeed helpful details.
First of all, I had to go to my regular physician to be cleared for surgery. This had to take place within 30 days of the actual procedure so think a little in advance. I needed blood work, an EKG, a basic physical, and to review all my medications for the surgeon. Both of my doctors' office staffs were very helpful in getting all of this paperwork filled out, triple-checked, and filed with my insurance company. There are no shortcuts, just be prepared to write a lot. I had already met with the surgeon for a consultation and he took a look at my nasal passages to confirm that I was a good candidate for the procedure. I didn't have any other procedure done so no MRI, no x-rays, not any other tests. It was an obvious break with an obvious deviation. If you have sinus polyps, need external or internal rhinoplasty, or have other issues with ears or nasal passages, this is where we will really differ. The cartilage of my nose was in the wrong place and it needed to be separated from the plane of my face, the area above my front teeth and the dividing line of my nostrils, reshaped and reattached with a scaffolding of sutures. So, here we go.
A month or so in advance, I arranged to take time off work over the Christmas into New Year holidays. I took 10 full days and I needed each and every one of them. More about that later, but please do not expect to go back to work and be functional in your life for at least those 10 days. If you are up and around and ready to move then you are getting the bonus plan. I stocked up on Ensure and V8 juice as well as things like soft granola bars, chicken pot pies, and pita chips. I wasn't planning on chewing being as painful as it was, so you might want to think about some nice soups and chunky stews. Do not plan on chewing unless you have to as a last resort, seriously.
The day of the surgery, I was allowed only 4-6 ounces of water to take morning medications with (and I was the last patient of the day on a Friday). No ice, no hard candy, no chewing gum, no cough drops. You will be very dry and very hungry going into pre-op but better that than have to reschedule. I had my procedure done at an outpatient surgery center and they were absolutely top-notch at the preparations and recovery plus you do not have to deal with normal hospital traffic. Highly recommend that route if you can do it! Prepare yourself to wear the most pajama-comfortable clothes and slip on shoes because, yes indeed, someone will have to help you dress afterwards. They are serious about the zero-jewelry, zero-makeup, zero-lotion, zero nail polish rules. It was not a problem for me, but why even bother pushing it. You undress and put on a gown and all of your clothes and shoes go in a big baggie that will follow you through the building from station to station. Dress lightly and don't bring a purse or wallet. I did, however, bring my Kindle with me and I am very glad I did. Ask in advance if your center has wifi and if they will let you bring a non-phone electronic device.
In pre-op, you get an IV right away. You will be a little dehydrated so if you are anything like me, you will have a couple of bags of IV solution before you even hit the operating room. Your nurse will go over medical history, drug allergies, and confirm your name and procedure at every single step along the line. This is how they gauge your alertness as well as confirming your charts are following you. The most important step for me was planning in advance to ask for an anti-emetic patch. Ask your doctor's office beforehand so it is in your notes, ask your nurse in pre-op to confirm, and when your anesthesiologist does the pre-surgical interview, he or she will confirm what medication you will receive in the patch and how to care for it. General anesthesia causes many, many people to become nauseous upon waking and to remain incredibly nauseous for days afterward. If you have ever gotten motion sickness, you absolutely want to go over getting that patch with all of your medical staff. It was a life saver for me as I can get a good motion sickness going on an escalator. You absolutely do not want to vomit after any kind of facial surgery. Besides the fact that it will be incredibly messy and painful, it can cause severe infection and the pressure can actually undo the work your surgeon just did. It is no joke.
To this point, the IV needle was the worst part of the day. Once I got my patch installed, I was much happier and less queasy and I had a nice repetitive game set up on the Kindle to play while I was waiting to meet my surgeon for the pre-op pep talk. At some point your assistant anesthesiologist will bring you a relaxing preparation for your IV. If you are very, very anxious, you can also ask for something to make you drowsy and you can sleep through until the end from there on out. This is the final stretch. After meeting with the surgeon, I closed up the Kindle, took off the glasses (that stuff got put into my clothing bag) and I got wheeled down to the operating room. Everyone introduced themselves and then I got the mask, whereas counting down from 100 only makes it to 98. Then, tahdah, someone is calling your name and asking you to wake up.
My recovery nurse had a huge cup of water and some Teddy Grahams waiting for me. You get the snack of your choice and all the water you can drink. Again, if you get the anti-emetic, you will be all ready to eat some food and drink some nice cool water! This is a surgery that requires intubation so your throat and esophagus will be tender and scratchy. I wish I had brought some hard candy with me for the ride home. The next half an hour to an hour will be all about making sure you are ready to get up and move around. I had a serious gauze packing up into my sinuses and the nurses were instructed to remove it as soon as possible. I am so glad they did that while I was still pain-free from the surgery because it feels very, very odd like an Egyptian mummifier is taking your brains out through your nose. It is a huge sense of pressure and then a rush of a very empty relief behind your cheekbones and eyes. Be prepared for weirdness. Then I got the "moustache bandage" which is literally a big piece of gauze taped across the nostrils to catch any remaining blood seepage. The first day and night, prepare for a small flood of heinous liquids. Your nurse will give you dressings and instructions on when and how to change them properly. Here is another caveat for you. The tape is horrendous on your face. I broke out in a crazy rash and changing my dressings was like tearing off a couple layers of skin from my cheekbones. I have since heard that you can ask for a first piece of tape to be put down before the dressings so you will be removing the tape from tape, not from skin. Other people say ask for a bandage before the tape. Just beware that the tape can irritate the holy living crap out of you.
All this is still in recovery. You still have to deal with going to the restroom and getting dressed. And, yes, you will absolutely need a nurse or someone else with you. It took me at least an hour to get control over my knees and I could not even lace up my own crosstrainers. I had some fun conversations with a couple of the nurses, and my friend who drove me was nice enough to deal with taking care of my prescriptions. If you can get them filled there, do it. You do not want to be sitting around waiting in a pharmacy in the condition you are in. You will not be sure what planet you are on for at least the next 8 hours. Do not plan on doing anything critical in your life. Just making it back and forth to the toilet in one piece will be all the decision-making you should be allowed until at least the next day. Plan to sleep sitting up for a few days and nights (I bought a Wondawedge pillow and it was perfect but you can also sleep in a recliner chair). And you will be thirsty like the desert for the first three or four days. I also bought a warm steam humidifier for my bedroom. The moist air was heavenly!
If I can give you any advice at this point, for the sake of all that is holy, please stay on top of your pain meds! I got both a Tylenol/Vicodin combo and a horsepill of an antibiotic. Take those pain meds exactly when they tell you to take them. Do not try to tough it out and see how badly it hurts. It is going to hurt like ungodly hell. You do not want to know that kind of hurt. Just take them, stay still and keep your mind occupied on other things. I watched a lot of television online that I do not remember. Rewatch all your favorite movies on Netflix. Veronica Mars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You always wanted to watch those again, right? And you still have that anti-emetic patch behind your ear. Leave it there for as long as your doctor said you could. I left mine for three days. Perfect.
Now here is the gory part. The first time you change your bandages, you will be horrified. Your nose is going to be completely clotted up with blood and sutures. Leave them alone. Do not touch them, do not even try to look at them funny. They are directly connected to pain receptors you did not know you even had. Neosporin with pain reliever will be your best friend for the next couple of weeks and be very, very, very delicate in the application process. The tiniest bit of pressure will make you see stars and tweeting birds like Roger Rabbit. Total knockout of yourself. Also try to avoid any clothes that go on over your head. If you biff your nose by accident in the next couple of weeks, you will swear words you didn't even know you knew. I know I was the victim of two self-biffings and I will never forget the pain as long as I live. Your face will hurt, your teeth will hurt, your eyes will feel as if they are out on stalks like a snail. Taking those pain killers like clockwork? You betcha!
And you say at this point, "OK, but was it worth it?" Oh, heck yeah, it was worth it! At the end of my painkiller script, I was pretty much fine. I did switch down to Tylenol for the funky feeling I had above my front teeth (but after all, they had a chisel up there). I could breathe out of both nostrils for the first time in 40 years. Now, the fact that it is the most bitter winter in Michigan since I have lived here? That is unfortunate. The cold air hitting those previously-protected sinus cavities is like someone shoving a sharp, frozen chopstick up my nose even today, a month to the day after the surgery. The strangest thing is that I have two pretty much symmetrical nostrils now. I wasn't expecting that! My face looks different! My voice is also a little different and I have a muscular pain in my jaw because it is changing my bite. I do not have to grind my teeth sideways in my sleep any longer to be able to breathe. I would say to expect some of the unexpected, not all of it bad, but some of it really, really unusual.
And here is what you have been waiting for...the downside of it all. My only real drawback to the whole procedure to date (one month in) is that my sutures did not dissolve. The first three weeks I felt as if I had barbed wire in my nostrils. It was a tender, crying pain. Imagine grabbing all of your nose hairs and yanking them out...that sting constantly for hours and hours. That Neosporin with pain reliever literally kept me from ripping my own face off. Just be prepared in case you are suture-resistant like I was. In fact, this afternoon, *TMI ALERT* I blew my nose and sutures came out. They were sutures I did not even know I had from way up in the bridge of my nose. My cartilage was quilted back into my face like a finely laced doily. And I rushed into doing some things I should not have done. Shoveling snow? Don't do it. Carrying heavy laundry up and down the stairs? Don't be an idiot. Thinking of going to the gym? Do you really want your nose to go flying off your face and across the room when you overexert yourself (a hyperbole, but still...)? Just think a LOT more about what you are doing and how much pressure you are putting on that little chicken breastbone in your face. You will be thankful later.
I think that is more than you would ever want to know about septoplasty if you are thinking about having it and perhaps more about me than you ever wanted to read if you didn't. Everyone is different, but I can already see this as a game-changer in how I exercise, how I sleep, how I deal with asthma, colds, and allergies, and how my facial structure holds up in the upcoming saggy years of my life. For all of the getting used to and all of the minor discomforts, I am very thankful to have had a great outcome and a smooth recovery (albeit one I should have lengthened a few days). And to all you labored-breathers, talk to your ENT. I should have done this a decade ago! A hearty, and well-oxygenated, cheer!
My next memory is of a doctor wiggling my nose and saying, "Yes, that's broken all right." With all the luck of the universe, the bin didn't totally crush my skull, but it sure landed across my face, both cheekbones and my nose taking the brunt of gravity before the bin hit the stack of empty cardboard gourd boxes thankfully still sitting there in the aisle. In 1973-ish there was no such thing as mending a broken nose. I got an ice pack, some baby aspirin, and a lollipop. And then the next day I got to dress up in a ruffled white dress and tights and patent leather shoes and be baptized into the Methodist Church, looking for all intents and purposes as if my parents had beaten me within an inch of my life. There was a lot of explaining to do that day and I was promised both Jello and Jello Pudding so I was having none of that waiting around the church thing my mom was wanting to do.
Skip forward to age 12 when I was learning to swim. I could not breathe out of the right side of my nose. Every time the swimming instructor told us to go under the water and blow bubbles in the baby pool (ah, the indignities of learning to swim at an older age), I would end up snorting a nostrilful of water. There was none of the turning your head and breathing in through your mouth and out through your nose of swimming for me. It was breathe in through my mouth, go under the water, breathe out through my left nostril, come up and breathe in through my...nope, snort a nostrilful of chlorine that was not cleared out of the right side of my nose. I was miserable and never swam with my head underwater again. I became the ultimate Zen master of floating on my back in the pool for hours and hours.
Fast forward to college where I was out at a club with my (much younger) boyfriend who had never been slam dancing. We stood at the edge of the "pit" and watched, he surfed in and out a few times, and then just decided to stand there next to me. I was wearing glasses. I did not want to smash my glasses. So, instead, the drunken buffoons standing next to us picked up their even drunker friend and threw him at my face. Broken nose number two, no health insurance, full time college student, not even enough gas in the car to get me out to the hospital where I knew that nothing would be done anyway. Not even a lollipop this time around. And it made my nose much, much worse.
I have lived with this crooked and even more crooked prow for forty years, sleeping with my mouth open and waking up with woolen teeth, having a chronic drippy nose because I could not sniffle on my right side, biting a blood blister on my lip to force my cheek muscles to flare my nostril open. And those horrible up-the-nose selfies? One nostril was tiny and one was huge, with my septum doing a funky pokey-outey thing on the side I could actually breathe from. And one day, roughly 4 years ago, I ended up going to an ENT for a complicated ear infection and the doctor looked up my nose and said, "Wow, you know you have a completely blocked nostril, right?" and I affirmed his observation. But what was I to do, thinking that my health insurance would never cover rhinoplasty. Then, last summer I was poking around on the website of my latest insurance coverage and found a listing for "septoplasty, " as in the insurance would cover septoplasty but not cosmetic rhinoplasty. What was this septoplasty they speak of?!
Of course, the first thing I did was to go to YouTube and watch a septoplasty video. Please, don't ever, under any circumstances, go to YouTube and watch a septoplasty. You do not want to see someone's face being chiseled like a jack-o-lantern (unless you are into that kind of thing, and at this point I say, ewwww, Dexter, out!). The gist of the procedure is that the septum is either removed from the interior of the nose and shaped/replaced or partially detached, reshaped and re-anchored, all through the nostrils. I am a total wimp and I have no idea how I decided to go through with the surgery, but there gets to a point in your life when you are so tired of compensating for something physical that you just have to power through fixing it. This was my time to barrel through the construction barriers.
The rest of this post is the tell-all, describe-all, nitty-gritty of the surgery procedure and the recovery process and it is really not pretty, but I am hoping that it will give someone (anyone) a better idea of what to prepare for and what to watch out for in recovery. Some of these things are hints I wish I had beforehand, some are things I never would have thought of. But I hope that they are indeed helpful details.
First of all, I had to go to my regular physician to be cleared for surgery. This had to take place within 30 days of the actual procedure so think a little in advance. I needed blood work, an EKG, a basic physical, and to review all my medications for the surgeon. Both of my doctors' office staffs were very helpful in getting all of this paperwork filled out, triple-checked, and filed with my insurance company. There are no shortcuts, just be prepared to write a lot. I had already met with the surgeon for a consultation and he took a look at my nasal passages to confirm that I was a good candidate for the procedure. I didn't have any other procedure done so no MRI, no x-rays, not any other tests. It was an obvious break with an obvious deviation. If you have sinus polyps, need external or internal rhinoplasty, or have other issues with ears or nasal passages, this is where we will really differ. The cartilage of my nose was in the wrong place and it needed to be separated from the plane of my face, the area above my front teeth and the dividing line of my nostrils, reshaped and reattached with a scaffolding of sutures. So, here we go.
A month or so in advance, I arranged to take time off work over the Christmas into New Year holidays. I took 10 full days and I needed each and every one of them. More about that later, but please do not expect to go back to work and be functional in your life for at least those 10 days. If you are up and around and ready to move then you are getting the bonus plan. I stocked up on Ensure and V8 juice as well as things like soft granola bars, chicken pot pies, and pita chips. I wasn't planning on chewing being as painful as it was, so you might want to think about some nice soups and chunky stews. Do not plan on chewing unless you have to as a last resort, seriously.
The day of the surgery, I was allowed only 4-6 ounces of water to take morning medications with (and I was the last patient of the day on a Friday). No ice, no hard candy, no chewing gum, no cough drops. You will be very dry and very hungry going into pre-op but better that than have to reschedule. I had my procedure done at an outpatient surgery center and they were absolutely top-notch at the preparations and recovery plus you do not have to deal with normal hospital traffic. Highly recommend that route if you can do it! Prepare yourself to wear the most pajama-comfortable clothes and slip on shoes because, yes indeed, someone will have to help you dress afterwards. They are serious about the zero-jewelry, zero-makeup, zero-lotion, zero nail polish rules. It was not a problem for me, but why even bother pushing it. You undress and put on a gown and all of your clothes and shoes go in a big baggie that will follow you through the building from station to station. Dress lightly and don't bring a purse or wallet. I did, however, bring my Kindle with me and I am very glad I did. Ask in advance if your center has wifi and if they will let you bring a non-phone electronic device.
In pre-op, you get an IV right away. You will be a little dehydrated so if you are anything like me, you will have a couple of bags of IV solution before you even hit the operating room. Your nurse will go over medical history, drug allergies, and confirm your name and procedure at every single step along the line. This is how they gauge your alertness as well as confirming your charts are following you. The most important step for me was planning in advance to ask for an anti-emetic patch. Ask your doctor's office beforehand so it is in your notes, ask your nurse in pre-op to confirm, and when your anesthesiologist does the pre-surgical interview, he or she will confirm what medication you will receive in the patch and how to care for it. General anesthesia causes many, many people to become nauseous upon waking and to remain incredibly nauseous for days afterward. If you have ever gotten motion sickness, you absolutely want to go over getting that patch with all of your medical staff. It was a life saver for me as I can get a good motion sickness going on an escalator. You absolutely do not want to vomit after any kind of facial surgery. Besides the fact that it will be incredibly messy and painful, it can cause severe infection and the pressure can actually undo the work your surgeon just did. It is no joke.
To this point, the IV needle was the worst part of the day. Once I got my patch installed, I was much happier and less queasy and I had a nice repetitive game set up on the Kindle to play while I was waiting to meet my surgeon for the pre-op pep talk. At some point your assistant anesthesiologist will bring you a relaxing preparation for your IV. If you are very, very anxious, you can also ask for something to make you drowsy and you can sleep through until the end from there on out. This is the final stretch. After meeting with the surgeon, I closed up the Kindle, took off the glasses (that stuff got put into my clothing bag) and I got wheeled down to the operating room. Everyone introduced themselves and then I got the mask, whereas counting down from 100 only makes it to 98. Then, tahdah, someone is calling your name and asking you to wake up.
My recovery nurse had a huge cup of water and some Teddy Grahams waiting for me. You get the snack of your choice and all the water you can drink. Again, if you get the anti-emetic, you will be all ready to eat some food and drink some nice cool water! This is a surgery that requires intubation so your throat and esophagus will be tender and scratchy. I wish I had brought some hard candy with me for the ride home. The next half an hour to an hour will be all about making sure you are ready to get up and move around. I had a serious gauze packing up into my sinuses and the nurses were instructed to remove it as soon as possible. I am so glad they did that while I was still pain-free from the surgery because it feels very, very odd like an Egyptian mummifier is taking your brains out through your nose. It is a huge sense of pressure and then a rush of a very empty relief behind your cheekbones and eyes. Be prepared for weirdness. Then I got the "moustache bandage" which is literally a big piece of gauze taped across the nostrils to catch any remaining blood seepage. The first day and night, prepare for a small flood of heinous liquids. Your nurse will give you dressings and instructions on when and how to change them properly. Here is another caveat for you. The tape is horrendous on your face. I broke out in a crazy rash and changing my dressings was like tearing off a couple layers of skin from my cheekbones. I have since heard that you can ask for a first piece of tape to be put down before the dressings so you will be removing the tape from tape, not from skin. Other people say ask for a bandage before the tape. Just beware that the tape can irritate the holy living crap out of you.
All this is still in recovery. You still have to deal with going to the restroom and getting dressed. And, yes, you will absolutely need a nurse or someone else with you. It took me at least an hour to get control over my knees and I could not even lace up my own crosstrainers. I had some fun conversations with a couple of the nurses, and my friend who drove me was nice enough to deal with taking care of my prescriptions. If you can get them filled there, do it. You do not want to be sitting around waiting in a pharmacy in the condition you are in. You will not be sure what planet you are on for at least the next 8 hours. Do not plan on doing anything critical in your life. Just making it back and forth to the toilet in one piece will be all the decision-making you should be allowed until at least the next day. Plan to sleep sitting up for a few days and nights (I bought a Wondawedge pillow and it was perfect but you can also sleep in a recliner chair). And you will be thirsty like the desert for the first three or four days. I also bought a warm steam humidifier for my bedroom. The moist air was heavenly!
If I can give you any advice at this point, for the sake of all that is holy, please stay on top of your pain meds! I got both a Tylenol/Vicodin combo and a horsepill of an antibiotic. Take those pain meds exactly when they tell you to take them. Do not try to tough it out and see how badly it hurts. It is going to hurt like ungodly hell. You do not want to know that kind of hurt. Just take them, stay still and keep your mind occupied on other things. I watched a lot of television online that I do not remember. Rewatch all your favorite movies on Netflix. Veronica Mars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You always wanted to watch those again, right? And you still have that anti-emetic patch behind your ear. Leave it there for as long as your doctor said you could. I left mine for three days. Perfect.
Now here is the gory part. The first time you change your bandages, you will be horrified. Your nose is going to be completely clotted up with blood and sutures. Leave them alone. Do not touch them, do not even try to look at them funny. They are directly connected to pain receptors you did not know you even had. Neosporin with pain reliever will be your best friend for the next couple of weeks and be very, very, very delicate in the application process. The tiniest bit of pressure will make you see stars and tweeting birds like Roger Rabbit. Total knockout of yourself. Also try to avoid any clothes that go on over your head. If you biff your nose by accident in the next couple of weeks, you will swear words you didn't even know you knew. I know I was the victim of two self-biffings and I will never forget the pain as long as I live. Your face will hurt, your teeth will hurt, your eyes will feel as if they are out on stalks like a snail. Taking those pain killers like clockwork? You betcha!
And you say at this point, "OK, but was it worth it?" Oh, heck yeah, it was worth it! At the end of my painkiller script, I was pretty much fine. I did switch down to Tylenol for the funky feeling I had above my front teeth (but after all, they had a chisel up there). I could breathe out of both nostrils for the first time in 40 years. Now, the fact that it is the most bitter winter in Michigan since I have lived here? That is unfortunate. The cold air hitting those previously-protected sinus cavities is like someone shoving a sharp, frozen chopstick up my nose even today, a month to the day after the surgery. The strangest thing is that I have two pretty much symmetrical nostrils now. I wasn't expecting that! My face looks different! My voice is also a little different and I have a muscular pain in my jaw because it is changing my bite. I do not have to grind my teeth sideways in my sleep any longer to be able to breathe. I would say to expect some of the unexpected, not all of it bad, but some of it really, really unusual.
And here is what you have been waiting for...the downside of it all. My only real drawback to the whole procedure to date (one month in) is that my sutures did not dissolve. The first three weeks I felt as if I had barbed wire in my nostrils. It was a tender, crying pain. Imagine grabbing all of your nose hairs and yanking them out...that sting constantly for hours and hours. That Neosporin with pain reliever literally kept me from ripping my own face off. Just be prepared in case you are suture-resistant like I was. In fact, this afternoon, *TMI ALERT* I blew my nose and sutures came out. They were sutures I did not even know I had from way up in the bridge of my nose. My cartilage was quilted back into my face like a finely laced doily. And I rushed into doing some things I should not have done. Shoveling snow? Don't do it. Carrying heavy laundry up and down the stairs? Don't be an idiot. Thinking of going to the gym? Do you really want your nose to go flying off your face and across the room when you overexert yourself (a hyperbole, but still...)? Just think a LOT more about what you are doing and how much pressure you are putting on that little chicken breastbone in your face. You will be thankful later.
I think that is more than you would ever want to know about septoplasty if you are thinking about having it and perhaps more about me than you ever wanted to read if you didn't. Everyone is different, but I can already see this as a game-changer in how I exercise, how I sleep, how I deal with asthma, colds, and allergies, and how my facial structure holds up in the upcoming saggy years of my life. For all of the getting used to and all of the minor discomforts, I am very thankful to have had a great outcome and a smooth recovery (albeit one I should have lengthened a few days). And to all you labored-breathers, talk to your ENT. I should have done this a decade ago! A hearty, and well-oxygenated, cheer!
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
The Mental Dumpster
This is apparently the week that my ex-love moves back in with his family. It is a weird, falling feeling. I am picturing all of my photos, all of my emails, all the clothes I bought for him, the computer equipment, and all the furniture I had bought for our life together bundled into a proverbial dumpster. The letters and photos are probably already burned, the emails erased, and I am sure all of the clothes and furniture are residing at a local charity shop and it just feels a little empty. I mean, I am not a stuff person at all, but the fact that a whole year can just be erased like this is more than a shock.
I am healing, bouncing back, growing up, growing older, trying to stay on the path, moving forward, feeling sad...all the mixed up emotion I have been through over and over again. And I know I sound like a broken record. I got involved in a situation that was none of my business and I totally got what I deserved. Yes, I did it to myself. Yes, I knew I would crash and burn but I thought I could beat the odds. I am no gambler but I gambled on love and lost.
If there is a lesson I am trying to take away from this, it is to stop second-guessing myself, to stop being angry and bitter, to let the past go and know that I had love, and to move forward. It seems like a mountain range rising up in front of me and I am a tiny ant wondering how am I ever going to get that far. And, trite as it sounds, the only way is by six diminutive legs, one step at a time. And, universe willing, I won't get stepped on along the way.
I am healing, bouncing back, growing up, growing older, trying to stay on the path, moving forward, feeling sad...all the mixed up emotion I have been through over and over again. And I know I sound like a broken record. I got involved in a situation that was none of my business and I totally got what I deserved. Yes, I did it to myself. Yes, I knew I would crash and burn but I thought I could beat the odds. I am no gambler but I gambled on love and lost.
If there is a lesson I am trying to take away from this, it is to stop second-guessing myself, to stop being angry and bitter, to let the past go and know that I had love, and to move forward. It seems like a mountain range rising up in front of me and I am a tiny ant wondering how am I ever going to get that far. And, trite as it sounds, the only way is by six diminutive legs, one step at a time. And, universe willing, I won't get stepped on along the way.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Soaking up bliss
Tonight I stopped for a salad on the way home from work. I had just finished a late work day at the office and knew I had to hop out of the car when I got home to mow the lawn so I decided preemptive food was the best option. Plus there is just something so satisfying about a big bowl of salad on a summer day. But I digress, as I often do.
I was roughly halfway through my meal when an older, married couple came over and sat in the reading corner in front of me. They smiled at each other, they talked about their days and compared notes on positive things like a walk, good news from a friend, and (the cutest thing ever) they shared a soup and salad meal between them. Watching them (and inadvertently catching snippets of their conversation) just made me so relaxed and happy. That, I thought wistfully, is true love.
So often lately we are presented with the very worst the world has to offer in relationships because "dysfunction sells!" But absorbing all of that negative emotion has got to be bad for us. We are either shaking our heads and berating their lack of decorum (among other things) or we are taking some sort of sadistic pleasure that our lives and our relationships are better than theirs (yes, I have been guilty of this too). Wow, what an unhealthy way to experience life.
But this ten minute interlude changed my whole day. It cheered me up and rearranged my stress levels. It put me in a positive mindset for a busy night ahead and it made me think about my past and about my future. This is the kind of relationship I want for myself in fifteen or twenty years. Heck, it is the kind of relationship I want now! The smooth comfort, the lack of drama, the ease of conversation, the non-awkward silences, and the occasional touch over a tiny table. Every situation does not have to be dire. Every moment does not have to be planned. Every faux pas and misstep does not have to be recorded and fired off like ammunition.
So this weekend when you are out, look around and see who chooses the drama and who chooses to accept the bliss. And think of which of these people you would rather spend time with. And if it is indeed true that you get back what you broadcast out, what can you do to become the person or the part of a couple you really want to be. Self-fulfilling prophecies aren't always a bad thing. Take your happiness and reflect your love.
I was roughly halfway through my meal when an older, married couple came over and sat in the reading corner in front of me. They smiled at each other, they talked about their days and compared notes on positive things like a walk, good news from a friend, and (the cutest thing ever) they shared a soup and salad meal between them. Watching them (and inadvertently catching snippets of their conversation) just made me so relaxed and happy. That, I thought wistfully, is true love.
So often lately we are presented with the very worst the world has to offer in relationships because "dysfunction sells!" But absorbing all of that negative emotion has got to be bad for us. We are either shaking our heads and berating their lack of decorum (among other things) or we are taking some sort of sadistic pleasure that our lives and our relationships are better than theirs (yes, I have been guilty of this too). Wow, what an unhealthy way to experience life.
But this ten minute interlude changed my whole day. It cheered me up and rearranged my stress levels. It put me in a positive mindset for a busy night ahead and it made me think about my past and about my future. This is the kind of relationship I want for myself in fifteen or twenty years. Heck, it is the kind of relationship I want now! The smooth comfort, the lack of drama, the ease of conversation, the non-awkward silences, and the occasional touch over a tiny table. Every situation does not have to be dire. Every moment does not have to be planned. Every faux pas and misstep does not have to be recorded and fired off like ammunition.
So this weekend when you are out, look around and see who chooses the drama and who chooses to accept the bliss. And think of which of these people you would rather spend time with. And if it is indeed true that you get back what you broadcast out, what can you do to become the person or the part of a couple you really want to be. Self-fulfilling prophecies aren't always a bad thing. Take your happiness and reflect your love.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Desert island diss
Over the weekend, I stumbled over the British TV series "Monroe" in which James Nesbitt plays a brilliant but snarky neurosurgeon with a thirst for scotch and a love for music. The camera-work in the show is lovely and similar to the style used in "Scandal" where surfaces and angled glass give you a feeling of listening in to private conversations and eavesdropping on confidential information. That aside, it was the music and the surgery that made me think of a couple of weird days back in Tidewater Virginia.
Almost one month to the day from moving in to my new apartment in the swanky district of Norfolk called The Hague (tudor mansions subdivided to death into a dozen apartments or more per building), I came down with a fever and a serious case of abdominal pain and vomiting. During my overnight sleeplessness I helped catch a fugitive criminal (another story altogether) and I realized that I had no friends to drive me to the hospital which was actually only a few blocks away. The next morning I ended up in urgent care with a surgeon who said I had an ovarian cyst that had to be removed, pronto, and how soon could I check in to the hospital in the next city over. Immediate freak-out. I called the one guy I had just met who worked for me in the camera store I managed and asked him to drop me off on the way in to work. And there I sat, alone in triage.
Hospitals have two effects on me. The first is a resignation to the antiseptic smell and the herding of the patient-cattle from station to station. The second is a budding anxiety of wondering exactly what the staff is going to do to me next. I spent a great deal of time in hospitals with my mother who suffered from heart failure. From the age of four or five, I learned how to talk to doctors, how to do CPR in case my mom was in cardiac distress, how to call for an ambulance, and when to be really concerned that her ankles were swollen to the size of basketballs. My hospital stay was sandwiched in between her bout of Bell's Palsy with stroke-like facial paralysis and her final heart surgery which led to hospice. And there I sat in the orange and tan triage of an overly air-conditioned and strange hospital, alone, in a very flappy and flimsy surgical gown.
I was staying calm and asking my questions but, holy crap, I was sitting there by myself in pre-op, in the decade before iPods were all the norm. I was resigned to listen to the staff pages and machine noises and gurgles and groans of other triaged patients. And I was starting to freak completely out. In the television show, everyone had their iPod and their family sitting on the bed laughing and joking while attractive young nurses and doctors reviewed their charts and asked what they could do to help. I had a cranky elderly nurse with a bad perm and a teenage orderly with neck tattoos slapping a dirty mop against the wheels of my bed. It was as un-sexy as any free clinic on a 100-degree day in a big city. And some music really would have helped make it more bearable or at least more ironic.
Then came time to be wheeled, triage bed and all, down to the pre-op ward where I was given my IV and a first round of anesthesia. This is where they stole my eyeglasses. I mean, I am as blind as Velma without my glasses and they took them off my face without any explanation and popped them in to a plastic bag on the back of my bed. Super-freakout-level 2. There is a male nurse fiddling about with my IV and now I can't even see what he is doing. A total blur with a taste in my mouth like fresh copper pennies. I sit there for a half and hour or so, freezing my cookies off (what is it with those thin hospital sheets?!) and, huzzah, my operating room is ready. Off we go. Without music. Blurry. And copper-tasting. Oh, the goodness a song or two would have done me at this point. All I remember before the anesthetist made me count backwards from ten (I made it to 9 and zonked cold) was a huge bank of pinkish white light, my surgeon's face upside-down and the fact that I was in an actual refrigerator. Brrrrrrr.
On the show, this is where the awesome Mr. Monroe, Neurosurgeon, would have started my Desert Island Disks on the operating theatre speakers. I could have had some sonorous Pixies, some classic Who, some gentle Bach, some soothing Bowie, and even some '90s alt-rock du jour. I am sure I would have remembered none of it but it would have been interesting to have some music in my subconscious to stop the level 3 freakout of laying unconscious and sheet-clad in a very cold and bright room with a gaggle of strangers poking at my reproductive bits. This would have been a perfect venue for two of my favorite albums of 1993, Morphine's "Good" (and "Cure for Pain") and Thomas Dolby's "Astronauts & Heretics," so perfect, in fact, that in my mind, I have inserted them in to my get-well memories from that month. But there, in the hospital, in post-op, I was coming around from the anesthesia without a soundtrack.
If you have never been intubated, wow, I envy you. I woke up to a crazy, choking, gagging pain and I must have flailed around like a tuna for a minute or two before I got a nurse's attention to rip the contraption from my esophagus. You know that scratchy pain you get from a very sore throat? Yep, it goes all the way down as far as the tube goes and no amount of coughing will make it better. And cough?! Forget coughing. I had fresh abdominal incisions. There would be no coughing because I had aliens trying to escape from my belly. After a tiny cup of water with a hospital straw (don't you love hospital straws? I do!), my doctor came over with a big grin on his face and asked how I was feeling. And he told me what he thought was the funniest story...the fact that I had not, in fact, had an ovarian cyst. My ovaries were actually quite spiffy and healthy. Instead, I had an appendix that had come so close to rupturing so many times that it was nothing but a big inflamed bundle of scar tissue. He even kept it in a jar and was going to write a paper on it (fat chance, buddy...give me my vestigial intestine back!) as my white blood cells were never indicative of the problem. The funny thing, he said, was that they were already in my abdomen in north-south laparoscopic incisions and to get at the appendix, they had to sew me up and do east-west incisions. "You," he grinned, "got four incisions for the price of two!" And he shook my hand and walked away laughing.
The next half-day of my overnight stay was gory, painful, sadistic ("If you don't get out of that bed and urinate in the next hour, I WILL catheterize you! C'mon! It was a simple band-aid surgery!"), and embarrassing. It took me 45 minutes to swing a leg over the side of the bed, attain crab-walk and carry my IV (on a coathanger?!) to the bathroom, during which time my IV line was too low and started sucking blood out of my arm (I got yelled at for that one too). And instead of getting back into bed, I was told to get dressed as my check-out was in an hour and I needed to do four laps around the floor to get the inflation gas out of my belly. Oh, how I could have used an iPod then. Or even a little transistor radio with a single earphone. A little melody would have gone a long way as I surveyed my swollen stomach and my couple-dozen stitches, especially that pouchy incision on my left side that looked like a shirt buttoned up wrong. And then I got a ride home from the same guy (thanks, Alan! Friends for life!) and listened to the following music from 1992, where surgery (and life) was certainly not like it is on TV:
Ministry - N.W.O.
The Cure - A Letter To Elise
Suzanne Vega - Blood Makes Noise
Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You
Peter Gabriel - Digging In The Dirt
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk On The Ocean
Sugarcubes - Hit
Soup Dragons - Divine Thing
Sonic Youth - 100%
Tori Amos - Crucify
James - Born of Frustration
daDA - Dizz Knee Land
Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss
L7 - Pretend We're Dead
E - Hello Cruel World
Beastie Boys - So What'cha Want
Ian McCulloch - Honeydrip
Cracker - Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)
Thomas Dolby - Eastern Bloc
Concrete Blonde - Someday
The Church - Ripple
Talking Heads - Lifetime Piling Up
Almost one month to the day from moving in to my new apartment in the swanky district of Norfolk called The Hague (tudor mansions subdivided to death into a dozen apartments or more per building), I came down with a fever and a serious case of abdominal pain and vomiting. During my overnight sleeplessness I helped catch a fugitive criminal (another story altogether) and I realized that I had no friends to drive me to the hospital which was actually only a few blocks away. The next morning I ended up in urgent care with a surgeon who said I had an ovarian cyst that had to be removed, pronto, and how soon could I check in to the hospital in the next city over. Immediate freak-out. I called the one guy I had just met who worked for me in the camera store I managed and asked him to drop me off on the way in to work. And there I sat, alone in triage.
Hospitals have two effects on me. The first is a resignation to the antiseptic smell and the herding of the patient-cattle from station to station. The second is a budding anxiety of wondering exactly what the staff is going to do to me next. I spent a great deal of time in hospitals with my mother who suffered from heart failure. From the age of four or five, I learned how to talk to doctors, how to do CPR in case my mom was in cardiac distress, how to call for an ambulance, and when to be really concerned that her ankles were swollen to the size of basketballs. My hospital stay was sandwiched in between her bout of Bell's Palsy with stroke-like facial paralysis and her final heart surgery which led to hospice. And there I sat in the orange and tan triage of an overly air-conditioned and strange hospital, alone, in a very flappy and flimsy surgical gown.
I was staying calm and asking my questions but, holy crap, I was sitting there by myself in pre-op, in the decade before iPods were all the norm. I was resigned to listen to the staff pages and machine noises and gurgles and groans of other triaged patients. And I was starting to freak completely out. In the television show, everyone had their iPod and their family sitting on the bed laughing and joking while attractive young nurses and doctors reviewed their charts and asked what they could do to help. I had a cranky elderly nurse with a bad perm and a teenage orderly with neck tattoos slapping a dirty mop against the wheels of my bed. It was as un-sexy as any free clinic on a 100-degree day in a big city. And some music really would have helped make it more bearable or at least more ironic.
Then came time to be wheeled, triage bed and all, down to the pre-op ward where I was given my IV and a first round of anesthesia. This is where they stole my eyeglasses. I mean, I am as blind as Velma without my glasses and they took them off my face without any explanation and popped them in to a plastic bag on the back of my bed. Super-freakout-level 2. There is a male nurse fiddling about with my IV and now I can't even see what he is doing. A total blur with a taste in my mouth like fresh copper pennies. I sit there for a half and hour or so, freezing my cookies off (what is it with those thin hospital sheets?!) and, huzzah, my operating room is ready. Off we go. Without music. Blurry. And copper-tasting. Oh, the goodness a song or two would have done me at this point. All I remember before the anesthetist made me count backwards from ten (I made it to 9 and zonked cold) was a huge bank of pinkish white light, my surgeon's face upside-down and the fact that I was in an actual refrigerator. Brrrrrrr.
On the show, this is where the awesome Mr. Monroe, Neurosurgeon, would have started my Desert Island Disks on the operating theatre speakers. I could have had some sonorous Pixies, some classic Who, some gentle Bach, some soothing Bowie, and even some '90s alt-rock du jour. I am sure I would have remembered none of it but it would have been interesting to have some music in my subconscious to stop the level 3 freakout of laying unconscious and sheet-clad in a very cold and bright room with a gaggle of strangers poking at my reproductive bits. This would have been a perfect venue for two of my favorite albums of 1993, Morphine's "Good" (and "Cure for Pain") and Thomas Dolby's "Astronauts & Heretics," so perfect, in fact, that in my mind, I have inserted them in to my get-well memories from that month. But there, in the hospital, in post-op, I was coming around from the anesthesia without a soundtrack.
If you have never been intubated, wow, I envy you. I woke up to a crazy, choking, gagging pain and I must have flailed around like a tuna for a minute or two before I got a nurse's attention to rip the contraption from my esophagus. You know that scratchy pain you get from a very sore throat? Yep, it goes all the way down as far as the tube goes and no amount of coughing will make it better. And cough?! Forget coughing. I had fresh abdominal incisions. There would be no coughing because I had aliens trying to escape from my belly. After a tiny cup of water with a hospital straw (don't you love hospital straws? I do!), my doctor came over with a big grin on his face and asked how I was feeling. And he told me what he thought was the funniest story...the fact that I had not, in fact, had an ovarian cyst. My ovaries were actually quite spiffy and healthy. Instead, I had an appendix that had come so close to rupturing so many times that it was nothing but a big inflamed bundle of scar tissue. He even kept it in a jar and was going to write a paper on it (fat chance, buddy...give me my vestigial intestine back!) as my white blood cells were never indicative of the problem. The funny thing, he said, was that they were already in my abdomen in north-south laparoscopic incisions and to get at the appendix, they had to sew me up and do east-west incisions. "You," he grinned, "got four incisions for the price of two!" And he shook my hand and walked away laughing.
The next half-day of my overnight stay was gory, painful, sadistic ("If you don't get out of that bed and urinate in the next hour, I WILL catheterize you! C'mon! It was a simple band-aid surgery!"), and embarrassing. It took me 45 minutes to swing a leg over the side of the bed, attain crab-walk and carry my IV (on a coathanger?!) to the bathroom, during which time my IV line was too low and started sucking blood out of my arm (I got yelled at for that one too). And instead of getting back into bed, I was told to get dressed as my check-out was in an hour and I needed to do four laps around the floor to get the inflation gas out of my belly. Oh, how I could have used an iPod then. Or even a little transistor radio with a single earphone. A little melody would have gone a long way as I surveyed my swollen stomach and my couple-dozen stitches, especially that pouchy incision on my left side that looked like a shirt buttoned up wrong. And then I got a ride home from the same guy (thanks, Alan! Friends for life!) and listened to the following music from 1992, where surgery (and life) was certainly not like it is on TV:
Ministry - N.W.O.
The Cure - A Letter To Elise
Suzanne Vega - Blood Makes Noise
Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You
Peter Gabriel - Digging In The Dirt
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk On The Ocean
Sugarcubes - Hit
Soup Dragons - Divine Thing
Sonic Youth - 100%
Tori Amos - Crucify
James - Born of Frustration
daDA - Dizz Knee Land
Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss
L7 - Pretend We're Dead
E - Hello Cruel World
Beastie Boys - So What'cha Want
Ian McCulloch - Honeydrip
Cracker - Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)
Thomas Dolby - Eastern Bloc
Concrete Blonde - Someday
The Church - Ripple
Talking Heads - Lifetime Piling Up
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The creepies and the crawlies
As if you could not tell before, I am not having the most stellar of summers. So far, I could call it the summer of 4H, with the h-words being heartbreak, heat exhaustion, hermitage, and heebie-jeebies. I do admit to not being much of a summer person. With the translucent skin of my ancestral rainy sea-coasts, I have a very difficult time regulating my body temperature and a hot day usually ends in a sunburn or a total faint. I am a severe weather wimp. The fifth H of the summer, hydrology, has left my sixth H, house, full of the stagnant rainwater of a wet Michigan basement and a plethora of the weirdest insects I have ever seen outside a tropical rainforest.
Somewhere in June, I lost my yard to weed trees. If you know mulberries, trees of heaven, and elms, you know that they have enough growth-power to eat a whole continent in a decade. They are the kudzu of the northern climates. The thing that is keeping me from donning the pith helmet and wielding a machete and weed-whacker to conquer the lost empire of my yard? Mosquitoes by the truckload. Lawn moths by the blizzard. Spiders by the gazillion. Ants by the army. I am by no means an insectophobe either. I have spent many a happy hour indoors watching the cobweb spiders bungee-jump down from a moving ceiling fan (this has serious comic value if you have never seen it happen!) and I did have (until an unfortunate package delivery) a favorite mailbox jumping spider who greeted me daily. I hang out with the bumblebees, cheer for the hummingbird moths, and delight in the fireflies. But this mess is just an insanity of bugness.
In a late-night ATM transaction, I was mugged by fishflies by the hundreds (my Southern friends know these nasty little bugs as mayflies, the stinky little dragons of freshwater lakes). They were in my car, on my windshield, in my hair! AGH! Every morning I have to brave the gauntlet of spiderwebs between my front door and the car (dozens each day) and the still-kicking catches of dawn they contain. It is way too much to deal with. Mowing the lawn kicks up so many critters that I must have eaten a mouthful of winged things the last time I cut the grass. My skin crawls to consider the things I have run across and it is only mid-July.
Yes, it could be worse. There was the memorable night a few summers ago when I arrived home to be greeted by a giant leopard slug on the side of my toilet bowl. Limax maximus (with an emphasis on the maximus) is a big honking Winnebago of spotted slime. They are the carnivorous Terminator of the slug world. I have no doubt they could choke down a field-mouse as fast as any snake. And I will not even mention how they mate. It is too weird for words and it is a photo you cannot ever scrub from your brain. But, thankfully, this slug was solo and I was still overwhelmed with sliminess until it took the inevitable waterslide into the municipal plumbing system.
So, this summer has not been quite that bad. But let me tell you about basement spiders. I have a particularly pugilistic history with the dreaded longbodied cellar spider. There is just something about their weird legginess and the crazy, jumpy dance they do in their webs when you bump into them. And you will definitely bump into the webs of these prolific weavers. They do not give me the full-on arachnophobic scream of a hairy crawling dinner-plate, but they are just so insidious. Yet, I try to leave them alone as they have a hearty appetite for the other crawlies that will actually bite me. Except for yesterday. Yesterday I arrived home to find a beauty of a specimen, sleek and black and the size of a good coffee mug, having moved in at eye level above my toilet. Peaceful spider or not, I grabbed a washcloth and (pee-pee dance and all) smacked that spider into the stratosphere. I don't go hanging about in the joists of my house, so they should not be weaving where I need to be relieving myself!
And now it is cicada season. Fairly soon, I will be crunching their discarded carapace droppings between my toes and having that uncanny feeling of being watched by the tree bark. Life was so much simpler when it was all ladybugs and grasshoppers. The childhood of kicking over the smallest anthill and watching the ants rebuild is long over. And one day soon, yard-bugs, I will put on a full-coverage outfit and spray myself down with bug repellent and take over your ill-gotten kingdom. Your days are even more numbered, insects. Enjoy them while you can. *evil laugh*
Somewhere in June, I lost my yard to weed trees. If you know mulberries, trees of heaven, and elms, you know that they have enough growth-power to eat a whole continent in a decade. They are the kudzu of the northern climates. The thing that is keeping me from donning the pith helmet and wielding a machete and weed-whacker to conquer the lost empire of my yard? Mosquitoes by the truckload. Lawn moths by the blizzard. Spiders by the gazillion. Ants by the army. I am by no means an insectophobe either. I have spent many a happy hour indoors watching the cobweb spiders bungee-jump down from a moving ceiling fan (this has serious comic value if you have never seen it happen!) and I did have (until an unfortunate package delivery) a favorite mailbox jumping spider who greeted me daily. I hang out with the bumblebees, cheer for the hummingbird moths, and delight in the fireflies. But this mess is just an insanity of bugness.
In a late-night ATM transaction, I was mugged by fishflies by the hundreds (my Southern friends know these nasty little bugs as mayflies, the stinky little dragons of freshwater lakes). They were in my car, on my windshield, in my hair! AGH! Every morning I have to brave the gauntlet of spiderwebs between my front door and the car (dozens each day) and the still-kicking catches of dawn they contain. It is way too much to deal with. Mowing the lawn kicks up so many critters that I must have eaten a mouthful of winged things the last time I cut the grass. My skin crawls to consider the things I have run across and it is only mid-July.
Yes, it could be worse. There was the memorable night a few summers ago when I arrived home to be greeted by a giant leopard slug on the side of my toilet bowl. Limax maximus (with an emphasis on the maximus) is a big honking Winnebago of spotted slime. They are the carnivorous Terminator of the slug world. I have no doubt they could choke down a field-mouse as fast as any snake. And I will not even mention how they mate. It is too weird for words and it is a photo you cannot ever scrub from your brain. But, thankfully, this slug was solo and I was still overwhelmed with sliminess until it took the inevitable waterslide into the municipal plumbing system.
So, this summer has not been quite that bad. But let me tell you about basement spiders. I have a particularly pugilistic history with the dreaded longbodied cellar spider. There is just something about their weird legginess and the crazy, jumpy dance they do in their webs when you bump into them. And you will definitely bump into the webs of these prolific weavers. They do not give me the full-on arachnophobic scream of a hairy crawling dinner-plate, but they are just so insidious. Yet, I try to leave them alone as they have a hearty appetite for the other crawlies that will actually bite me. Except for yesterday. Yesterday I arrived home to find a beauty of a specimen, sleek and black and the size of a good coffee mug, having moved in at eye level above my toilet. Peaceful spider or not, I grabbed a washcloth and (pee-pee dance and all) smacked that spider into the stratosphere. I don't go hanging about in the joists of my house, so they should not be weaving where I need to be relieving myself!
And now it is cicada season. Fairly soon, I will be crunching their discarded carapace droppings between my toes and having that uncanny feeling of being watched by the tree bark. Life was so much simpler when it was all ladybugs and grasshoppers. The childhood of kicking over the smallest anthill and watching the ants rebuild is long over. And one day soon, yard-bugs, I will put on a full-coverage outfit and spray myself down with bug repellent and take over your ill-gotten kingdom. Your days are even more numbered, insects. Enjoy them while you can. *evil laugh*
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Post-mortem of an unpairing
Last night was another round of nightmares about the end of my most recent relationship. After months of self-recrimination, my mind started playing back the comments and situations that hurt me most. And if I need to put this whole drama behind me, I need to 'fess up about it all. This falls under the category of "TMI," so please skip this post if you prefer.
First of all, I endured many rounds of being compared to someone else. I do not care if it was a positive or a negative comparison, you simply do not voice these thoughts to another human being. Feel these opinions all you want, but do not tell your significant other that they are better at something, more beautiful than someone, or even that they show you more attention and love. To me, at least, those things do not prove anything to me but that you are constantly thinking of that other person and that I am not respected on my own merits, just being judged on benchmarks you have developed through someone more important to you than me. Every comment was one more drop of pain, even if you meant it as a compliment.
Secondly, I grew up with a parent that suffered from severe and untreated paranoid disorder. My mother would befriend me and squirrel away personal asides to use against me in arguments and when she did, she used them with skill and serious poison. If you have someone in your life that has a serious psychiatric problem, perhaps you understand the hurt that is dealt in these types of situations. If you do not, you have no idea how much a single comment can destroy. In my relationship, I voiced one moment of self-doubt and, in true form of my deceased mother, that moment came back as a death-blow to a stable relationship. A self-doubt is a SELF-doubt and, like pillow-talk, it should never, EVER be used against the person who voiced it. I doubted the worth of my creativity. Then it got thrown back at me as, "I will not love you if you don't really stick with your art." How many writers, artists, and performers have lost the most important relationship of their lives because they were doubted? Probably every single one because I truly felt as if I could not have been shredded into more pieces. And I still do not even though I have come out of my depression and slump to a period of great creativity and all I can think of is, "Yes, he gave up on me. Wish he could have been there to see this. Too bad."
So here I am having nightmares about missed trains, lost grocery lists, misplaced books, forgotten phone numbers. They are figurative representations of the deep spiral of emotional undercurrents I try to hide from my daily work life and my personal interactions. They are glaring error messages of my failure. When I pinpointed the personal communication differences, I was ignored. When I begged to work the issues out through a counselor, I was abandoned. When I expressed a true emotion of regret and a wish for his happiness, I was rudely told to go away with a righteous indignity I never would have thought possible from the love of my life.
It has taken this long to finally realize that it is done and over. It has taken this long to stop crying for hours a day from a physical loneliness and an emotional destitution I have not felt since being a teenager. I admit defeat. I own heartbreak. I see that I am broken and I am picking up my doll-parts and threading them back together as best I can. I can't say that I will ever completely get over this, but I will get through it. Ah, the roller derby bout of life. Just keep skating. I am.
First of all, I endured many rounds of being compared to someone else. I do not care if it was a positive or a negative comparison, you simply do not voice these thoughts to another human being. Feel these opinions all you want, but do not tell your significant other that they are better at something, more beautiful than someone, or even that they show you more attention and love. To me, at least, those things do not prove anything to me but that you are constantly thinking of that other person and that I am not respected on my own merits, just being judged on benchmarks you have developed through someone more important to you than me. Every comment was one more drop of pain, even if you meant it as a compliment.
Secondly, I grew up with a parent that suffered from severe and untreated paranoid disorder. My mother would befriend me and squirrel away personal asides to use against me in arguments and when she did, she used them with skill and serious poison. If you have someone in your life that has a serious psychiatric problem, perhaps you understand the hurt that is dealt in these types of situations. If you do not, you have no idea how much a single comment can destroy. In my relationship, I voiced one moment of self-doubt and, in true form of my deceased mother, that moment came back as a death-blow to a stable relationship. A self-doubt is a SELF-doubt and, like pillow-talk, it should never, EVER be used against the person who voiced it. I doubted the worth of my creativity. Then it got thrown back at me as, "I will not love you if you don't really stick with your art." How many writers, artists, and performers have lost the most important relationship of their lives because they were doubted? Probably every single one because I truly felt as if I could not have been shredded into more pieces. And I still do not even though I have come out of my depression and slump to a period of great creativity and all I can think of is, "Yes, he gave up on me. Wish he could have been there to see this. Too bad."
So here I am having nightmares about missed trains, lost grocery lists, misplaced books, forgotten phone numbers. They are figurative representations of the deep spiral of emotional undercurrents I try to hide from my daily work life and my personal interactions. They are glaring error messages of my failure. When I pinpointed the personal communication differences, I was ignored. When I begged to work the issues out through a counselor, I was abandoned. When I expressed a true emotion of regret and a wish for his happiness, I was rudely told to go away with a righteous indignity I never would have thought possible from the love of my life.
It has taken this long to finally realize that it is done and over. It has taken this long to stop crying for hours a day from a physical loneliness and an emotional destitution I have not felt since being a teenager. I admit defeat. I own heartbreak. I see that I am broken and I am picking up my doll-parts and threading them back together as best I can. I can't say that I will ever completely get over this, but I will get through it. Ah, the roller derby bout of life. Just keep skating. I am.
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