the excision

Thursday, Mom and I drove to my sister's house.  We then met up with my sister's husband at a crappy restaurant that gave crappy service.  And the meal made me feel crappy.

We woke up at 5:30am on Friday and left a little before 6:30am.  The arrival time was at 9:00am but my sister said the traffic would be bad enough that we'd need to leave early.  Plus, we weren't exactly sure where the hospital was.

Turns out, it wasn't that hard to get there, thanks to the map the nurse gave us during our last visit as well as the GPS mounted to my Mom's windshield.  Traffic also wasn't as bad as my sister had anticipated.  We ended up arriving at the hospital at 7:30am.

Mom and I were taken into a room where a tall black lady in brightly colored clothing took my insurance card and co-payment.  Then, we were sent to surgery check-in, where we waited over two hours.  I read and people watched and chatted with Shannon and my mom until they finally called me back to get prepped for surgery.  This was around 10:30am.

I was led into a long hallway separated into rooms closed off by sliding curtains.  A bed stood off to the right side next to a large computer.  Past the bed was a bathroom and a hand washing station.  A sat on the bed as a slew of people came in and took my blood pressure, explained the steps of my surgery, and asked me a ton of questions.  Then, I was given my purple hospital gown, footies, and a hairnet to wear.  I went into the bathroom and changed, making sure I tied up that gown as best I could so I wouldn't catch a cold front across my crack.  It was cold in there.

If you'll recall, the last time I went to the hospital to go through more pre-op paperwork, I was placed in a room with a left-handed gentleman who attempted to put my information into the computer.  I noticed he had trouble highlighting and deleting the text on screen.  I half-joked that he'd accidentally put in that I had some sort of disease.  Well, one of the nurses was going through my information on the large computer next to the bed when I noticed her raise her eyebrow.

"Mr. Jackson, do you have a pacemaker?" she asked.

"Um, no..."

"Ha, well it says right here you do."

It must have been the dude with the poor hand-mouse coordination.  I was kind of kidding about him putting something crazy in like that but turns out, he actually did!  And as much as it seems exhausting having fifteen different people asking you the same fifty questions, I suppose that's why they do.  Always cross-checking each other.  That's a good thing.

When that was done, I was instructed to lay back on the bed and rest until it was time for surgery.  Mom came in and waited with me.  We watched "Axe Men" on The History Channel until about 11:30, when a resident physician came in and marked my throat.  Then the nurse came in and asked me questions.  Then one anesthesiologist came in and asked me questions.  There was supposed to be another anesthesiologist to come in and talk to me but he must have missed me so they had to wait around until he came in and asked me the same questions the others asked me.  By this time, it was 12:00pm.

I asked them to remove some of the fat from my chin while they already had me cut open but they refused.

goiter-day, gone tomorrow

"I can tell it's winter from the

size of the lump in my throat..."

Silversun Pickups, Rusted Wheel

A lot of youngsters around here spend their spring break in Florida.  I'm going to be recovering from surgery, stuck in my bed swimming in and out of lucidity.

Eh, I don't like the beach anyway.

Today was my last day of work before taking my much-needed vacation from work.  I'm going to take seven days off and, if all goes well, the surgery and recovery will take a minimum of 3 days.  That'll give me 4 days to work hardcore on my book.  I'm almost finished with the second part and I don't think the third part is as long as the others so hopefully I'll have it finished in the next month or so.

But it's only the first draft so there will be tons of revisions.  That's fine, though, I just want to get the majority of the writing done.

Going to my sister's tomorrow, which is when the hospital will call to let us know when the surgery will take place on Friday.  If everything works out, I'll stay with my sister the night of the surgery and then go home the next day.

If there's complications, I'll have to stay longer until everything is resolved but I really hope there won't be any problems.  Not only do I not want to deal with the potential hazards of hacking up my throat but I also don't want to spend all of my time away from work inside a hospital with my butt crack hanging out of the green paper gown.

I'll update with gross pictures of my scar as soon as I can.

And speaking of gross pictures...

You wanna know how easy it is to shave over a cyst?  As evidenced by that nice razor burn I've got going on, not very.  

Yikes.

face off

The lump situation has once again forced me to examine the way I feel about myself and my physical appearance.  When I gained sixty pounds after college graduation, I ignored it.  I wouldn't let myself face the weight gain because I was depressed and food made me feel better.  If I couldn't eat, I couldn't function.  Food was the only thing that got me through.  No parent, no friend, no god was there for me but spaghetti always was.  And I think if I couldn't eat, I very well would have went insane.  I didn't have a healthy way of coping so I constantly consumed.

My situation hasn't changed much.  I don't feel better about anything but I suppose I've become complacent in my misery.  And because of that, my waistline has become more apparent to me.  And my focus has shifted from eating to survive my own head to not eating so I can shed this fat suit I put myself in.

The funny part is I didn't even realize how big I was until I started losing the weight.  As people began to notice me getting thinner and started commenting on it, it actually made me realize how large I was to begin with.  And now, all I can think of is how disgusting and big I am.  How could I have been so oblivious 20 pounds ago when I started the weight loss journey?

So, here I am, losing the weight, trying to do better for myself, and I'm losing my hair at a rapid pace.  I started thinning at my crown but now I'm also starting to see the scalp on top of my head.  I push my hair forward and to the side, messing it up and positioning it just right to hide the thinning.  And as I do, I realize it's another obstacle, another hurdle that keeps me from being good-looking and feeling good about myself.

Obviously, the weight thing has always been an issue for me.  All my troubles started when I got fat.  And then I hit puberty and the acne started and it wasn't your typical cluster of teenage pimples.  It was deep and painful acne that ravaged my cheeks.  So, I was fat and pimply.  And nothing helped the outbreaks.  I had to take Accutane to get my skin back to normal.

My skin was cleared in a matter of years but the struggle to lose the weight took much longer.  But, I did.  In most people's eyes, I was thin.  In mine, I was still fat.  I looked at my face and saw the marks from the acne.  I saw the crooked lower teeth.  I saw the long face and the eyes that weren't level.  The slanted nose.  The ugliness.

The only time I ever felt okay about myself was when I was in college.  I was at my thinnest and my face and scalp was mostly clear.  I still had scars and stretch marks and about fifteen more pounds to lose but all in all, I was okay.  I felt decent.  I wasn't handsome but I wasn't disgusting.  And for me, that was progress.

But nothing stays good for too long.

When I thought I finally had things under control, this mysterious lumps popped up in my throat and derailed all confidence I thought I had.  It was a reminder, a little note sent from the cosmos to tell me that I am still not okay, that I never will be.

I gained the weight back.  The lump came and went but eventually settled in its size.  My hair started falling out.  And now I feel like such a mess.  It feels like there will always be something that pops up or falls out and I'll always struggle with trying to minimize one thing or maximize something else.

I hate the fact that I feel I'm ugly and what I hate even more is how much I care about it all.  Some people might find the flaws I've listed as only minor inconveniences and they would be right.  I don't have a missing eye or a gigantic birthmark that covers my entire face but it's the sheer number of little things that add up.  It's the paper cut concept I've constructed.  It's the things that seem minor when considered individually but when put together in a pudgy package, the unattractiveness really comes out.

And I might even be able to deal with it all if my insides weren't so icky as well.  I'm a pretty crap person so maybe that's why I look to the physical so much.  Maybe I'm such an internal mess that I consistently try to fix the outer shell, as insurmountable of a task as that seems sometimes.

I know I'm not ugly.  I get it.  To most people, I'm average.  I'm cute.  Whatever.  That doesn't mean anything to me.  I used to gather my confidence from the compliments of others.  It got me by over the years but it does nothing for me now.  I'm so far gone, seen more of my grossness up close and personal, the parts of myself I've kept meticulously hidden for so long, that other people's assessments of my aesthetics doesn't phase me or make me feel better.  When it comes to my image, I'm only concerned with what I think.  And I think I'm ugly. 

There are times when I feel I've come to terms with myself and the way I look.  I know I will never be conventionally handsome.  I know that I will never have a strong jawline or good hair ever again.  And I can accept it.  Sometimes.  And I try to shift my focus from trying to look like someone else to trying to look the best I can.  And that works.  Sometimes.  But, really, I just wish I could get over all of it.  Not care that I don't look like a model.  Not care that I don't even look average.  Just be clean and comfortable in my mediocrity.  There are times I'd like nothing more than to just take my face off, to go a day without worrying about how much oil my pores are exuding or if a nose hair managed to dangle its way down my nostril.  I'd like to have a break from berating myself.  But exhaustion does not evade entropy.  It will always continue, flowing out of me and pounding into me.

The most annoying part is how much time and effort and money I put into looking like a mess!  I try so hard and nothing ever seems to pay off.  I wonder why I keep going, keep trying.  I suppose I always think there will be this attainable measure of beauty that I'll reach if I just use that cream or buy that shirt.  I'll finally be attractive.  Desirable.  Wanted.  Needed.  And nothing ever comes to pass.  I keep chasing after vapor and get angry when I can't grasp it in my palm.

It doesn't matter what you say, so don't bother.  No matter what I do, I will always struggle.  Just like I mentioned how food will forever be a demon that nips at my heels, so will the fight to find peace with my face.  I can scrub and zap and shave and crunch and lighten and I will still feel gross.  Something will always come around to undo me.  I'll never see myself as anything more than defective.

laryngocele

Mom woke me up at 5:00 am and I got dressed and we were on our way.  Drove about twenty minutes, then stopped for some breakfast, drove a couple hours more, stopped for gas and food, then drove more hours still until we arrived at my sister's house.

We peed and rested and then headed to the hospital.

I was unnerved the entire time because the city was too busy and crowded for me.  I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.  All these medical students whizzing around, staring so hard at their cell phones they aren't paying attention to the traffic and jaunting out into the street just as easy as you please.

We found a parking garage where we were met by a very bitter parking attendant who told us the one we drove into was full and then proceeded to give us directions to another one.  When she was done barking at us, my sister Shannon who was driving, looked back and said, "Did y'all get any of that?"

We managed to find out way to the hospital, where I peed, signed in, filled out a bunch of paperwork, then waited.

I was called into a small room with shiny sharp instruments and bed pans and waited.  The doctor's assistant came in, a tall lanky man in a yellow and navy striped bow tie, thick black rimmed glasses, and medical headgear.  He inspected my throat, looked in my ears and up my nose and asked a bunch of questions about the lump.  He saw that we had the CT scans from my previous doctor visit and took them.

"I'm going to hand these over to the doctor and we are gonna look at them.  Hang tight."  More waiting.

He came back in minutes later with an instrument with a long, skinny black appendage.  He squirted a numbing agent up my nose and said the doctor wanted to look up my nose and into my throat.  I sniffed it all up and he left.  More waiting.

The assistant came back in with the doctor, finally, and he sat down.  He was a tall man with a long neck and shaggy salt and pepper hair to match his goatee.  He wore scrubs and a serious look on his face.  In fact, he never smiled at me once during the consultation.  He was pretty clinical and cold.

He took the device with the black appendage and snaked it into each nostril and told the assistant with the bow tie that things looked clear.  He then told me that it was definitely a cyst, but one that stemmed from my vocal cords.  A laryngocele.  Another brand new diagnosis.  Was my goiter really that abnormal that no one else could have came to this conclusion?

The strangest part was he said my cyst is normally found in glassblowers and people who play musical instruments like trumpets.

He sent me to complete some pre-op stuff, which consisted of moving from floor to floor, waiting around, being placed in a room and asked the same questions (what's your birthday?  would you accept blood in case of an emergency?  ever had a stroke?  drink/smoke/crack/marijuana?, etc.) and then told to go back to the waiting room and then put in another room with another nurse asking the same questions again.  And more peeing. 

I was a bit worried because the nurse practitioner was left-handed and had trouble working the mouse on the computer.  I watched him struggle as he tried to highlight and delete information on the screen.  He'd highlight one portion and the other portion that was highlighted wouldn't be anymore.  He'd project a "blam" under his breath and try again.  I wanted to ask him if he needed any help.  I was pretty sure he accidentally put down that I had Hep C.

I was then sent to another floor to get some blood drawn.  More waiting.  And then a short older lady called me back to a high chair-looking contraption, swabbed my arm and poked me.

And then I was finally done.  But not before I peed one last time.

Getting out of the hospital wasn't nearly as bad as trying to enter.  But by that time I was tired.  We got to the hospital by 11 and didn't leave until 4:30.  I was tired of the bumpy roads and a brand new diagnosis of the lump and I was put off by the doctor's dull demeanor.  At that point, I just wanted the lump out.  I was tired of worrying about whether it would get bigger or if people were secretly staring at it when I wasn't looking.  I was tired of it hurting and enlarging and tired of trying to shave my way around it and getting razor burn, which really just drew more attention to it.

I just wanted to be done with it.

We went to a restaurant and I felt like I deserved to indulge a little.  After being poked and prodded and made to fill out a questionnaire concerning my "swallowing abilities," I just wanted something delicious to mask the mental exhaustion.  Ordered some potato skins and chicken tenders and once I saw them in front of me, I regretted the decision.  Portions were too big and they were all too greasy.  After having abstained from the greasy stuff for about two months now, I was pretty sure that stuff was going to slide right on out of me, probably while I was on the road.

I surprised myself by only eating a small portion of my meal.  I was proud at my willpower but I also had to admit to myself that some of it stemmed from the fear of having to crap in a cracked commode in some shady gas station off I-65.

I boxed up the rest.

We made it home around 10:30pm and I crashed.  Work the next day.   

The surgery is scheduled on the 30th so hopefully that will truly be the last of the lump!

turd surgery

I was already pissed off because the situation with my lump still hadn't been resolved.  When the ENT referred me to a doctor four hours away because my cyst was placed dangerously close to my voice box, I was annoyed.  I didn't want to endure the inconvenience of having to take a day off work and driving that far just for a consultation.  But I did want to preserve my seductive dulcet tones so I begrudgingly accepted it.

Over the next couple of days, circumstances became jumbled and schedules became conflicted, which frustrated me further.  There was some confusion when it came to whether or not we were supposed to pick up the CT scans or if the doctor's office was going to mail them to us and when I asked my mom for clarification, she got annoyed with me and accused me of being rude because she had already messed up the schedule for the appointed consultation and she thought I was taking a dig at her.  I tried to explain myself but she was an ice queen for the rest of the night.

With the mounting circumstances of a more complicated surgery in my future, trying to figure out when and how much time to take off work, realizing I would have to spend my vacation days in recovery, and my mom over exaggerating, I went to bed angry.

I always leave my bedroom door cracked to allow my cat Moses to come and go as he pleases.  If I don't, he will scratch on the door frame until someone opens the door for him.  He does not like closed doors.  So, as I was settling into sleep, I heard my door squeak open and felt Moses jump on the bed.  We usually have a midnight meeting.  When I lay myself down, he jumps on the bed and rests there for a while before bouncing off and going about his business.  He usually wedges himself between my arm and torso but this night he settled himself on the edge of the bed next to my feet.  I thought it was weird but in my half-unconscious state, I didn't think anything of it.

Until the smell hit me.

Vile dookie aroma flew up my nose and I flew up in the bed and reached for my lamp.  Clicking it on, light burst onto my cat's butt.  His rear was facing me so I got a fantastic view of the string of Tootsie Roll-shaped turds hanging out of his brown eye, dangling on my sheets like his second tail.  Just chillin' there, dangling.  I shuddered.

"Ugh," I groaned as I pushed him off the bed.  He flew through my open door and I thought about going back to sleep but then I felt bad.  He was obviously having problems and I didn't want him to be distressed throughout the night.  Besides, there was no telling how much he would have flung the feces around throughout the night so I decided to get up and try to help him out.

I grabbed some tissues and opened my door wider.  Outside, a giant poop streak snaked its way from the hall to the threshold of my room.  I found Moses in the living room licking his butt in utter futility.  The smell was as bad as something I'd unleash after a heavy night of Mexican binge eating.  I lifted up my shirt and hooked the collar over my nose  to block some of the pungency.  I lifted his tail and plucked most of the poop from his butt fur.

"This is my existence," I thought to myself.  "I'm standing here at 12:13am with my shirt over my nose with a handful of tissue and turd waiting for my cat to lick the rest of it off of himself."

After he ate himself out a little bit, I bent back down and lifted up his tail to check for any rectal remnants.  Sure enough, a turd had become severely tangled in his fur.  I grabbed some more tissues and tried to gently yank the poo free.  This is when Moses got difficult.  I thought the turd would detangle with a gentle pull but I guess I yanked Moses' fur and he squeaked and yelped at me.  I tried to explain what I was doing but he wasn't having it.  He swung his upper body around toward me and sunk his claws into my arms.

"That's it!  I'm done!" I whisper-shouted at the cat.  I flushed the poo, washed my hands of the situation (both literally and figuratively) and then left a note for mom that she'd see in the morning:

Moses has a turd stuck to his fur.  Don't let him sit on your lap or he'll rub his stank all over you and your housecoat. 

The next day, Mom had a visitor as I was walking out the door to go to work.  I didn't think it was appropriate to mention our cat's incontinence in front of company so I texted her later that day while on my lunch break.  I asked if she found and removed the offending feces and she replied that she looked and didn't see or smell anything.  I was going to tell her to check again, that it was definitely there, but things were still awkward between us because of her blow up the day prior and I didn't want to make things worse so I let it go.

After work, I came home and asked about the poop again.  Mom said she looked and looked and I told her it wasn't right underneath his hole but a little to the left and pretty far in.  As if on cue, Moses came through my door and jumped on my bed.  The smell hit me again.

"How do you not smell that?" I asked.  Mom just shrugged.  I put on some latex gloves and coaxed Moses to lay on the floor.  I lifted his tail and he meowed again but I ignored his pitiful pleas and poked around his butt.  Ah, there it was, the fugitive Tootsie-turd.  I lifted my shirt over my nose again and slightly pulled on it.  Yeah, that baby had dried, solidified, and fused with his fur.  It was going to take more than finger finesse to loosen that log.

I pulled out the scissors and asked Mom to hold the cat down.  More yipping, more scratching, but the turd had to come out.  I grabbed the poo and cut the fur around it until it finally dislodged from his body.

It took a couple of tries because his fur is so dense and I was hesitant to really go in there and start hacking away because I didn't want to cut his skin.  Considering his squirming and the fact that I was holding onto a dried piece of crap, I think I did a decent job.  Moses got up, licked himself a bit, and then jaunted away.

"You're welcome," I called out to him.  Jerk.

Over the next couple of days, any time he would jump on my bed and rest his rump, I'd get worried and eye him suspiciously.  I took a few deep whiffs to make sure he hadn't had another...occurrence.  But he seemed fine.

Although I had delays in my own surgery, I had to end up performing an emergency turd-ectomy on my cat.  I only hope I'll be able to walk away as easily as he did.

This is the offender.  Don't let his cuddly fuzziness fool you.  He's gross.  

Cute face.  Sour stomach. 

don't text and jive

"There's over a thousand ways to communicate in our world today  
and it's a shame that we don't connect..."
-TLC, Communicate

There's a couple of cell phone related rants I'd to share with you.

First of all, I'm so annoyed when I see people on their cell phones all the time.  It's especially apparent at my job.  As soon as these kids get off work, their cell phone is next to their ear before they even leave the building.  They are on it when they take their cigarette break or go to the bathroom.  They are on it before they clock in and as soon as they clock out.  Constantly talking to someone.

I know several coworkers who text during their entire shift.  One guy keeps his phone on a shelf behind his department and one girl straight up keeps hers in her cleavage and as soon as the boss is out of sight, she whips it out and starts texting away.

Maybe I'm just jealous because no one ever calls me but I find it really annoying.  I mean, there's nothing wrong with communicating with people but do you constantly have to be talking to someone every minute of every day?  Maybe there's just no one in my life that I feel I have to constantly be interacting with or maybe I just understand that when I'm at work, I'm supposed to be working.

It's like, people, we can take five minutes away from the cell phones.  It will be okay.

Another thing that I can't stand is when I'm hanging out with someone but they are playing with their phone the whole time, either texting or getting phone calls from other people and then engaging in a conversation with the caller.

I always thought when you hang out with someone, it's supposed to be about giving attention to and receiving attention from that person.  Right?  I know my social skills are severely lacking but I thought I at least knew that much.  So, it seems to disrupt that delicate balance of attention seeking/giving when the person completely disengages with you and begins to give their attention over to the caller.

Once, I was driving an acquaintance to an eatery when she got a phone call and then spent ten minutes talking to the person.  Meanwhile, I sat there and felt perplexed.  I was completely forgotten about while she shifted all of her focus into her Blackberry.

I just think it's rude and I've pointed it out to other people but they don't seem to think it is.  Maybe I'm too old-fashioned or maybe I just don't understand these new ways in which people communicate.  But, to me, that's not communicating.  All this texting and mindless minute-by-minute chattering has diminished true communication.  When you can blurt out any thing at any time, there's no more filter.  Nothing needs to be decided or edited because the connection is constant.  No one is having to pour time and energy into writing a letter or even an e-mail anymore!  Because it takes no effort to converse, no effort is given to conveying something meaningful.

And lastly, let's recall what I said about how people are on their cell phones all the time.  Well, there is an exception to that observation.  They are always on their cell phones until I need to call them.  Then, suddenly, they don't have their phone with them or can't talk, even though they can talk to to other people when I'm with them.  It drives me insane when I text someone, hoping they'll reply right away, expecting they will because I always see them with their phone, but magically when I'm trying to get a hold of them, it's turned off or they lost it or it's on silent and they didn't get the message.  So annoying.

What's worse than that is when someone calls me and I can't talk for whatever reason so I tell them I will call them right back and I do immediately call them back and then they don't answer.  It's like, where did you go?  That not only happens with acquaintances but with customers at work as well.  They will call and ask a question and I tell them I need to investigate it but it shouldn't take longer than two minutes and then when I call back, I get their voicemail.  What happened in that two-minute time span?  How were you suddenly pulled away from your phone when I told you I'd call you right back?  And why does it take someone sometimes hours to call me back?

I guess I'll never understand.  But in some ways, I'm glad I don't.  I'm glad my phone isn't constantly buzzing and chirping.  All that social overload would probably drive me further into my hermit status.  Plus, because of the limited amount of cellular communication I come across, it's a bit more special when my phone does ring or light up with a text message.

But, the problems persist.  And as cell phone technology advances, communication will most likely decrease.  Pretty soon all people will have to do is express themselves through grunting because articulating words with tongues and parting lips is too much of a hassle in this fast-paced world.

Communication will come full circle.  We'll be the new cavemen, clubbing each other over the head with our texts and tweets, running away and hiding away from humanity in our caves with our smart phones that don't require us to be smart because they auto correct our spelling.  The meaning of our words will be muddled without facial cues and body language.  We will grunt and bark and bite and make clicking noises with our tongues and we will never say anything at all.

persistence

"I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognaise
and not feel bad about it for days and days and days..."
-Lily Allen, Everything's Just Wonderful

Last week, I finished an eight week workout program.  I planned on taking around two days off before starting something else.  I ended up taking three days off, and in that time, starting eating too much.  I knew I needed to try to counteract that.

I felt I had been too lenient with my diet, and although I hadn’t been scarfing down cheeseburgers, I just felt I had been eating too much.  It doesn’t matter if the food I’m eating is low fat/low calorie, if I eat a ton of them (which I thought I had been doing), then those calories add up.  Low calorie is not an excuse to gorge.

So, last night I decided I needed to work out.  But I was tired and I didn’t want to.  I told myself I’d do it the next day, that I would even do a double workout.

But I know myself better than that.

I just got up and did it.  At first I thought I’d take things lightly, maybe do a mile or two but then I realized if I was going to go, I might as well go hard (hard as in moderate).

It felt good to just get up and do it.  It felt good to see myself changing, to see myself starting to make better choices.

Just like when I go grocery shopping and my stomach growls at the candy and pizzas but I just keep going.  I look away and reach for the lower fat, healthier options.

It feels good to be able to leave all of that stuff behind me.  And it feels good to get up and go because I know I need to.  That’s not to say that this is a new lifestyle, that I will continue to make good choices.  But every bit counts, does it not?  Every calorie saved is important.  Every calorie burned is important.

And even if I screw up today, I can feel good knowing I at least did something good for myself yesterday.

Because that’s all I have: today, yesterday, tomorrow.  One day at a time.  Sometimes one hour at a time.  One choice at a time.  One decision at at time.  One workout at a time.  One baked instead of fried at at time.  One serving instead of two at a time.

This is a process.  This is not a cure.  This is not a solution.  This is a struggle, a life-long head game, a siren that will always call to me, an addiction that will carry me to my grave.

I just hope, once I'm there, I can finally enjoy a pizza without guilt as the garnish.