Hello Everyone;
Since I last wrote here, much time has passed. Some days and months passed quickly while parts of time slowed to imperceptible increments with almost no measure.
As many of you know I’ve not been well, battling several things happening in my body I am unable to control. Well, really, I can’t control anything so why pretend I can?
Looking back, there were many times I wanted to write and explain my circumstances, yet between extreme exhaustion and not wanting to bore anyone with my illness, retreated from much of life and most of my friends. For that I am sorry … the friends part that is. Life continues at its own speed despite me participating.
When last I wrote, I was waiting for news of cancer in my thyroid. After waiting months for appointments, tests, results, the surgeon presented me with lots of information, most of which he almost resented communicating. He was an absolute jerk. From the first word out of his mouth he was combative, and since I’d been through so many doctors and test outcomes I decided I’d just confront everything he said to me, much of which was inappropriate on his part. I left with the knowledge I probably didn’t have cancer of the thyroid (after him telling me if I were to get cancer thyroid cancer would be the best to have since it was extremely treatable.) Good to know if I had the ability to control which cancer invaded my body.
After an hour with him, untold rude remarks, him leaving the room and me trailing after him to ask if we were done, he asked me when he should set the surgery date. Umm … what planet did he hail from that made him believe I was hip to him slicing and dicing my throat and trying to save my voice? I told him I’d let him know and never looked back. So at this point I probably don’t have cancer but will ultimately find out when my thyroid is removed and the biopsy is sent to pathology.
As I sit and write I am concentrating on not dwelling on the surgery which happens at high noon Monday the 14th. For the several year’s journey to get to this point I can only pack my bag for the overnight stay and pray for the doctor’s abilities and God’s guidance in his life. By the way, this surgeon is a wonderful man of faith, and has answered all my questions with great patience and given me hope at a time when most of my health and hope have evaporated. His parting words to me when I left his office this week were, “We’re going to take good care of you. I’m going to do everything I can to save your voice. This is the first step on a long road to get you back to good health.”
Speaking of the voice, that really is a major concern. This surgeon confirmed what every doctor has told me. We talked a lot about that concern as he explained how the vocal nerve lies alongside the thyroid and it just depends if the nerve is clear or wrapped around other nerves and blood vessels. I may have a voice, it may sound totally different, it’s a good chance I won’t be able to sing or if I can my range will be limited. Or if I’m in the unlucky 1 to 2 percent my voice will no longer exist. But he assured me someone would be there to work with me to get even a small sound back. I have to leave the fear there because fear is a demon which steals everything good in our lives.
The surgery was supposed to happen a few months ago, but like everything in my life, oddity happened. I was on the way to work and was in a rear end fender bender. No real significant damage to the car, or seemingly to me. Suffice it to say the 18 year old without his license or insurance wasn’t happy when I finally called the police after him begging for me not to. Such is life.
The headache continued for three days before I said uncle and went to see a doctor. The diagnosis of a concussion wasn’t surprising, but that I walked around and tried going to work a little confusing to me why I tried to be Superwoman. Pain pills didn’t work, nothing worked to take away the pain. A C.A.T. scan was performed. The results looked weird and I was sent to a neurologist on a search and find mission. The neurologist, an absolutely fabulous woman, gave me a thorough exam and explained I passed with flying colors … oh but there were questionable things on the scan so I needed an M.R.I. just to make sure I could go into surgery. Yeah, me too doc, I don’t want to die on the table because my brain isn’t working.
Had the M.R.I. and went back to the neurologist. Apparently the test showed the same problems and she didn’t know why. A grey area in my brain that was patchy. I looked at the pictures as she explained the scan. When I asked her if I should be drooling, she looked at me and told me I shouldn’t be functioning. Okay, that was unexpected. But she said obviously you are highly functioning and I’ve only seen this in one other case so it looks like that’s how your brain is formed. Sounded like a weather report to me – grey and patchy with a chance of drooling. I don’t mean to make light of brain issues because they aren’t a laughing matter. The concern on her face was real, the pain in my head real, the worse news to follow. She pulled up the next set of pictures, the ones after the grey patch which the radiologist didn’t like. She asked if I’d ever had strokes. I said no, why? Apparently there were too many white spots all over my brain which shouldn’t be in someone my age. Holes in my brain. Scarring with no apparent reason. So many questions, so few answers. Did I suffer from migraines? You betcha, since I was ten. She seemed to think this is what had killed the small blood vessels in my brain and scarred the tissue. Brains don’t grow back, hence the egg in the hot pan announcing this is your brain on drugs. But new neural pathways can form.
With a new prescription and an order for more tests to determine blood clotting factors (since we wanted to keep me alive on that operating table) I left her office after receiving two large shots in the back of my head (occipital lobes) to deaden some of the screaming pain. The tests came back marginally well, new tests for RA and Lupus, plus a C.T. angiogram of my brain however prolonged the surgery. The lupus test came back positive, I went to a rheumatologist who stated I probably didn’t have lupus but the thyroid was acting so odd with my diagnosis of hyperthyroid (I’ve had all the symptoms of hyperthyroid and hypothyroid) that he felt that was the auto-immune disease I was fighting. The angiogram was a test I really don’t want to retake if I can help it and I feel for people dealing with cancer or undergoing treatment where they inject heated things into your veins. I kept singing ‘You light up my brain’ as I entered the lab. The I.V. was hooked up and the test begun. About ten minutes into the test, the tech grabbed my head from behind and said not to move, he was administering the iodine dye.
The dye makes you suddenly hot with the sensation of wetting your pants while the scan spins around you. I’ve never quite experienced a test like that except one where an isotope was injected into my arm and the tech had six minutes to make sure the crap traveled the right way through my veins. This fiery brain concoction hit my head like a hot hammer and spread across my lungs and to my heart with rapid pulsing. For a few minutes I merely gasped while trying to get cool. Then ten minutes later the test was over and I was weaving down the hall in a stupor. My neurologist called yesterday and gave me the good news that she couldn’t find any misaligned blood vessels or blood flow around my brain and I could have the surgery Monday. Next month I go back for a check-up with her since the headaches haven’t really gone away. If they can’t figure out what’s going on new tests might happen, like a spinal tap to determine MS or something else. But at least I’m cleared for surgery and with a sense of relief that my brain isn’t going to explode while on the table.
I will be happy to finally have the surgery and hopefully get off some of the medication I’m taking. Between the extreme exhaustion of the thyroid disease, all the prescriptions to regulate my blood pressure, speeding heart, deep depression, and brain pain has left me dragging to the point where some days I get up and go back to bed after only about five hours. But I’m hanging in there.
Needless to say all this has affected my writing. I thought (so foolishly) that after the debacle of the Riley series publisher taking a hike, I would blow the new novel out of my head in a few months. I think most of the ideas got blown out another area of my body. Well I’ve been floundering for almost six months with only about 17K written to show my lackluster effort. Hopefully having surgery will allow me to put things behind me a bit more and on to the next chapter in my life as well as Riley’s life.
On a happy news front, I have submitted “Kingdom in a Glass” and it will be published in the premier issue of the Mind’s Eye Magazine in January 2010. I put a poem “Punished” on one Ning website on a whim because the poem is so acerbic. The site owner liked it and asked if he could publish it in the next issue of Cold Coffee Magazine, which came out December 1. I agreed and that poem can now be found between the pages of the magazine and as a download.
I can honestly say a lot has happened this past year. A rollercoaster of emotions have left me as exhausted as this lump in my throat. I’ve been angry, hurt, felt insane, giddy, exhausted, had two hours one day when I felt like I did when I was younger and more normal, been in untold pain, and have cried a million or so tears. I think the crying jags are the worst, but I’m getting through them with a little help from the pharmaceutical companies. Here’s to little pills.
I’ll close with something I’ve often said. You cannot control anything except how you react to the circumstances you’re going through. You cannot change what you are not willing to acknowledge. Sometimes things just aren’t your fault and give up trying to make them your fault. God is always in control of the situation and if you can honestly relinquish that control you can make it through things you thought impossible.
Take care, my friends. I miss you much.
Hopefully I’ll be back in the near future. I promise not to take so long this time if I’m able to communicate.
P
