Situation Report

Howdy yall. It’s been a while. I’m trying to post at least once a week to my other site, as well as 5 times a week on this site. The last time I posted anything about myself was some months ago, and a lot has happened since then.

First, I successfully completed all four cycles of my chemotherapy. I had a CT Scan done a few weeks ago and my oncologist says the cancer is gone.

Before all you start cheering, both of you, I should say that the doctor expects the cancer will come back before the year is out. Apparently this type of carcinoma has a 70% relapse rate within the first few years. To that end I’m getting scans and blood work done every 10 weeks.

I had a bit of a scare a few weeks ago, just as I was recovering from my last cycle of chemo. I was very tired and couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds. Any more than that and I felt a strange heaviness in my chest. Not good. Like an idiot I tried to wait it out. I mentioned it to my folks and they shanghaied me into going to the emergency room.

Turns out it was a pulmonary embolism. You see, I developed blood clots in my arm from the induction port they stuck in me several weeks prior. My arm swelled up to twice its normal size and it felt like someone was ripping the veins out of my arm with red hot fishhooks; not pleasant. My oncologist gave me a few shots of a blood thinner, removed the port, and sent on my way. My arm shrank down to normal and stopped hurting. The down side to this was that without the induction port, I had to receive my last week of chemo intravenously. I have extremely deep veins which are so thick-walled that they tend to roll out of the way whenever a needle pokes them, consequently I get stuck 3 or 4 times before they successfully get an IV going. This wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t have to do it everyday for a week. That’s a lot of needle marks people.

In any case, I thought the clots had been broken up. I was wrong. One of the blood clots migrated to my right lung, where it took up residence and threatened to break free, travel to my brain, and either kill me or leave me a drooling vegetable. Fun stuff.

I spent a week in the hospital, where they monitored me and put me on blood thinners. Again I had to have an IV going 24/7, though my veins were already trashed from the chemo the week before. Let’s not forget the blood they drew every 4 hours to make sure it was thin enough. I’ve got an idea for them, how about we check to see if the poor bastard’s bleeding like a faucet from his open wounds? (I was, lost half a pint on my first day before the nurse could waddle in with a compress. 20 Fricken minutes after I screamed for help, even though my room right against the hallway nurse’s station. I just ended up using my pillowcase) What a freaking concept, might even have saved them the time it took to do the blood tests.

What really gets me is that, on my second to last day in the hospital, they told me my blood levels were low. Of course they f---ing were! They were taking it all! Some blank eyed cow-like wage slave with a 12 gauge needle speared me in the arm every couple hours for a week and my bone marrow was shot from the chemo. What the hell did they expect! So I ended up staying an extra night while they gave me blood.

I don’t know which I liked more, the hallucinations from sleep deprivation, or the guy next door hacking up his lungs. Normally I’ve got a bit more compassion for the ill, though if you’ve been following these rants, you’ll know not by much. But this guy was unbelievable; it was the most fake cough I ever heard, a wall-piercing shout. After about the second day of this non-stop phlegm fest, I started paying attention to the pattern. This moldering old bastard only every made a peep when someone walked by his door! Damned faker was looking for attention.
When I was finally discharged I took the time to poke my head in his room and tell him to get better, die, or shut the f--- up, but quit making everyone else miserable. The look on his face made me feel better than anything I’ve known in years!

You may be wondering about the sleep deprivation thing. First off, I’ve never been able to sleep on my back… ever. With an IV in my arm constantly, I couldn’t really roll on my side. Also, remember I’m getting people coming in to take blood every 4 hours. On top of that, I’ve got a pressure cuff on my other arm taking my blood pressure every 15 minutes, and an LPN coming in every 15 minutes to chart it down. What’s more, and possibly most annoying, is that the night nurses gossiped like hens. They wouldn’t shut up for their entire 12 hour shifts. Keep in mind that the nurse station where they hang out is right next to my door, to the degree that, whenever they rolled their chairs back to stand up, the chairs would hit the wall, creating a noise identical to a gunshot. Every…Damn…Time.

I’m still keyed up from having lived in Orlando, meaning I still reached for weapons every time I heard these noises. It was probably best my folks dis-armed me before having me admitted; else I might’ve taken a slice at a couple of the less pleasant people I was subjected to.

I think things came to a head when the night LPN, a pale little blond girl that looked younger than me, came into my room around 7 AM to ask me how I’d slept, as she was about to go off shift and had to hand the charts over to the day nurse.

Hollow eyed, tired, and infinitely frustrated, I smiled, showing teeth grinding against one another so hard they squeaked. “I would’ve slept better if I didn’t have to listen to your conversations all night.”

She smiled and laughed, waving her hand in airy dismissal, as if I were joking. “You couldn’t have heard us. The wall’s too thick.”

“Oh, no?” I said. “Well then, I suppose I’d sound crazy if I said that I hope that infection clears up for you.”

The look on her face was magic. Her jaw dropped, mouth forming a dumbfounded “O”. A moment later she colored a bright shade of red and covered her mouth with her hands as the horror of her embarrassment sank in. She turned and ran out of the room, and I never saw her again.

Had I not been so tired I would’ve laughed. It was her fault for talking so loudly about such private things in a public place. Did she honestly think no one would overhear?

Why didn’t I just sleep during the day, you ask? Because I received roughly 5 visits an hour from: candy stripers, nurses, LPNs, medical technicians, doctors, phlebotomists, bureaucrats, well-wishers, cleaning staff, cooking staff, people wanting to change my linens and ordering me out of bed, the senile, the mentally ill, patient’s so zonked on pain meds they had no idea where they were, and random passersby looking for other patient’s rooms who somehow thought I was some sort of freaking directory. I was a bald, half-naked, pale, bloodless, and supremely pissed of twenty-something with more drugs pumped into him than Keith Richards; how the hell should I know where their great aunt Flo was?

With that being said, this happened almost a month ago, and my arms are still nothing but black and purple blotches from all the blown veins. Apparently I’ve developed so much scar tissue that some of them can never be used again, I don’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved by that.
I’m still on blood thinners, which is incredibly frustrating as there are certain things I can’t do, drinking being the foremost among them. Normally I try not to drink frequently or heavily, because it can become too much of a habit very easily, but I felt that I was allowed a small reward given that I’d gotten through this medical hell. A glass of bourbon or two didn’t seem like such a terrible thing. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for that glass, and I’ll have to wait another few months.

On a side-note, while my eyes are by no means cured, my new ophthalmologist has given me a prescription for a new type of eye drop which seems to be helping the pain and dryness. Too bad they cost more than the national deficit. Oh, did I mention that they’ve also been linked with glaucoma? Yeah. But that’ll come in a couple decades. Surely by then I won’t have need of my eyes, right? Cure is worse than the damned cure, every time.

But hey, at least I’m cancer free for the moment. Well, not quite. Turns out that my CT Scan which my oncologist said was clean wasn’t clean. That really increases my confidence in her, I can tell you. The bargain basement physician at the free clinic who is my referring doctor noticed it. Apparently I’ve got a mass in my gall bladder, the technical term for which is a “Soft Tissue Opacity”. The report said that it did not match the profile of gallstones. So I’m scheduled for an ultrasound this upcoming Thursday to see if this is what I think it is.

I researched what can cause this “Soft Tissue Opacity”, and have found little in the way of conclusive information. Apparently most hystemic cancers are characterized by hard tissue opacities, the soft tissue opacity being a minor secondary characteristic for such cancers in their latest stages. But the CT Scan didn’t show any hard tissue opacities, which would’ve showed up much more clearly than anything else. So the question remains, what the hell is it? I’ll find out Thursday.

Your normal story posts will resume Monday.

Personal Update

Well folks, that’s going to be the last story I’ll be posting for quite some time. I’ve got the beginnings of an idea for another, but my funds are drying up fast so I’ll be focusing on copywriting for a bit. It’s not much fun, but at least it pays.

In the meantime I’ve submitted all my work to a number of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror publications. I get rejection letters daily. Once I’ve collected enough I’ll make a collage out of them. If I ever get a full length book published I fully intend to write back to all of them and rub their faces in it. It’s the little things that keep me going…tequila too.

Another reason for my impending hiatus, aside from the fact that this page won’t load and you’ll probably never even see this post, is that I had a talk with my oncologist. Based on the protein markers in my most recent blood tests the type of cancer I’ve got is categorized as a seminoma. These little buggers are very aggressive and only respond to chemo therapy. For that reason I’ll be hooked up to a bottle of pesticide 5 days a week, every three weeks, for the next couple of months. I’ve always wondered what I’d look like bald. They tell me the fatigue will be pretty extreme. Given the fact that I can barely keep my eyes open after being awake for 8 hours as it is, I imagine I’ll be hibernating for most of the Spring. I can only hope the fatigue is a result of the cancer. If I’m still this sleepy after it’s all taken care of, it means I’m just really lazy.

Regarding my last post about my eyes. The damn things still hurt morning, noon, and night. The bad news is that my ophthalmologist can’t prescribe any sort of anesthetic seeing as they tend to melt the corneas. I like my corneas. I want to keep them. The worse news is that the expensive eye drops I had to buy aren’t doing anything. He wants to switch to some sort of steroid and cortisone treatment. Typically it’s pretty cheap, but its use has been known to cause glaucoma. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place at this point. I can’t go ahead with the treatment anyway because the chemo includes steroids already, meaning I’ll be completely hairless, nauseas, fatigued, and unable to use my eyes for the next few months. I sound like a frigging mole rat.

I’ve got some minor news with the scam front. I managed to contact the UK version of the Better Business Bureau and told them my story about being ripped off by my employer of the past few months. They’re taking it very seriously, looking through their records, and sending investigators out to all the addresses they have for these folks on file. Hopefully they will have left a paper trail by which the people running Cooper Murphy Webb can be found.

I’ll be posting again in a few months hopefully. If not… well it was fun having people read my work. Thanks to all of you who took the time.

Personal Update

Hey all. I just wanted to present a quick update of what's going on. You may find it turns into a rant, but I at least intended to keep it brief.

First off, I've just about completely healed from my surgery. This is good news because I may end up going under the knife again sometime in the near future. The results of my CT scan show several large masses in my pelvis surrounding my lower aorta. This is the primary vein that runs down from the heart, behind the stomach, and then splits off at the pelvis to provide blood to the legs. There aren't any major organs being affected by the masses, but the proximity to this vein is alarming for obvious reasons

The size of these masses suggests they are Choriocarcinoma in the 2nd stage. It's probably the first site the cancer had taken root, the testicular tumor being a secondary growth. They're still treatable at this point and typically respond well to radiation therapy, though I understand there's a high chance of being rendered sterile seeing as the radiation would be aimed directly at my groin. I never really wanted to have children anyway, but it's painful to be taken apart slowly... one piece after another.

I've lost so much of who I used to be to chronic illness over the years that I sometimes feel hollow, as if there's nothing left.

Anyway, I'm waiting for a phone call from a medical oncologist that I'm being referred to. I've been waiting since monday and think I'll be beating down his door sometime tomorrow. With the sheer number of other things I'm having to deal with at the moment I think I may be speaking literally.

Speaking of tomorrow, I have to go see my opthalmologist again in the morning. This is to check the progress of my treatment for my Superior Limbal Keratoconjunctivitis. For those who are not familiar with the term, it is an autoimmune disease in which my body is attempting to heal tissue on the surface of the eye, despite the fact that there's no actual damage. This buildup of aberrant scar tissue causes extreme pain and burning, making it incredibly difficult to even look at this screen for the few moments in which I am typing.

The treatment for this condition is going well, as far as I can tell, though the pain is not lessening in any way. The inflamation and redness has increased considerably over the past week. If the doctor sees no improvement I'll be heading to another specialist. If he does see improvement then I'll be asking for some kind of topical anesthetic so I can get on with my day with some degree of normalcy until the treatment is complete. It often takes up to a year to be fixed entirely.

As far as my work goes, the top secret job I was taking fell through. The company has pulled up stakes overnight and completely abandonned me, taking a full month's worth of my work and stiffing me for the $2,000 dollar bill. This organization is set up in the UK and it took me several days of checking before I was even able to come up with contact information, though no one will answer my letters of phone messages. At this point there's little I can do aside from flying to the UK and beating these dead beats to death with a cricket bat, though the thought had crossed my mind. It would be more tempting if I actually had the money to afford the trip.

What's even enraging is that their last message, which was sent around Christmas, contained a virulent Trojan virus which is called Vunbo11. This virus embeds itself in the windows system files of my computer and then replicates itself. Such system files cannot be manipulated or quarantined in any way, meaning I can't get to it, despite having one of the best virus protection software packages on the market. At the price I paid, their technical support line had better do their job.

This virus also prevents me from using my computer as anything other than a glorified typewriter. It cannot surf the web or be used for research, and the virus replicates itself all the while that the computer is running. To that effect I'm writing this from a different computer and can make no gaurantees regarding whether or not I'll be able to post tomorrow or the day after.

Having posted several stories in the past, I finally decided that some of my work is good enough for print. To that effect I have been submitting several short stories for publication to as many magazines I can find who are willing to pay for the rights to print them. It's taking some time and my chances seem slim to none given how badly the market is affecting small publications like this, but it helps me put out of my mind the fact that I spent the last month working 12 hour days for free.

If I ever find the man or woman who cheated me I will skin him alive, braid a whip from his own hide, tip it with his own shattered teeth, and beat him to death with it. I don't typically make casual threats and apologize if it comes as a shock, but by tricking me and using up my time they refuse me the right to make a living; to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. If I didn't live with my family I would be homeless by now. Writing is the one way that I can think of to try to earn a living, and the people who would cheat me might as well be making an attempt on my life. It amounts to the same. To that effect I don't see why action against them wouldn't be justified.

So, unable to work, to edit my rough draft of Sons of Odin, to work on a new Japanese ghost story I'm putting together, or submit my finished work in hopes of making a few extra bucks and bulking up my CV, I decided to take the day off until I could get some help from tech support. I sat down in front of the tv and fired up the old video game system, an XBOX 360 I got for Christmas several years ago. It quite literally fired up. Sparks flew and the smell of burning plastic filled the air.

After hurriedly pulling the plug to prevent fire I called customer service, finally managing to talk to a real flesh and blood human being after about a million automated messages and menus. Apparently this problem is common with XBOX 360s produced in the same batch as mine was, meaning Microsoft strikes again. Thankfully this problem is so common that they don't charge anything for it to be fixed, they even eat the cost of shipping. I used my folks' computer to fill out the forms online and printed up the shipping label to put on my package and took it to the UPS store. I figured I would get it back in two or three weeks, as the customer service rep said.

That would be too easy for someone as terminally cursed as I am. About an hour later a second email arrives. This one contains a full set of instructions on how to place the shipping label, specifying that it shouldn't be put on the inside of the box... Yes folks, it was that kind of customer service message.

It also included a small section explaining what other information should be included on the outside of the box aside from the shipping label. Nowhere on the customer service site or on any of the instructions was this message to be found, meaning I hadn't included said information when I had it shipped, seeing as the message wasn't sent until after I posted the box.

Now I've got to call up UPS in the morning when their service center is open in hopes that my package isn't lost for all freaking eternity.

Ladies and gentleman, it is at this point where I think awards, accolades, and above all, pity, is due. This has got to be the worst day of my life thus far. A term which I learned in my drama class in high school keeps coming back to haunt me: Theater of the Absurd. It's a story which is essentially so tragic that it can't possibly be real, making it funny by sheer exageration. To that effect I keep waiting for some alien intergalactic version of Ashton Kutcher to pop out of the ceiling in his faux trucker hat and vacant expression saying "Dude. Like, dude! You've been punked!"

Maybe then the last 15 years of my life will have made sense. Being on some sick version of camera candid may be psychologically crushing, but at least it will have entertained someone.

I'm not the type to think of harming myself, so please don't think I'm in any danger when I say this, but when I go to sleep tonight I'm really not looking forward to waking up.

I'm Back...Sorta

The surgery took about an hour, which is pretty long for a single procedure as I understand it. The technical name for having a testicle removed is an orchiectomy. I was so nervous they'd cut off the wrong one that I took a Sharpie marker to my leg and left instructions for the surgeon. Apparently this is common practice nowadays as around 5% of surgical excisions remove the wrong thing. Thankfully that didn't happen in my case, though the anesthesiologist said I came close to waking up a few times. They've got a really cool electrode rig that fits over your head like a paper crown that tells the doctors when your brainwaves begin to change, which typically indicates one rising to conscioussness in an anesthatized patient. If I hadn't mentioned my resistance to medications to the doctor in passing he wouldn't have taken that precaution, so it's important to be honest with the surgeon, no matter how small or insignificant something may seem.

Rather than simply cut open the scrotum, an orchiectomy involves making an incision horizontally along the top of the pelvis and then cutting through the connective tissue until the surgeon reaches the genitals. The upside to this is that they can remove the lymph nodes along the way for further testing. If it is malignant cancer it travels along the lymph nodes first and foremost. The downside to this procedure is that they had to cut through most of my groin muscle. If you've ever experienced the pain of straining or pulling your groin, think how much it must hurt to have the darn thing severed.

I was bedbound for the first couple days, unable to move for fear of twisting at the waist. Thankfully I was able to move to the couch for Christmas morning to be with the family as they unwrapped presents. I never know what to get them, but I really enjoy wrapping presents and seeing them admire the packaging. There are only ever so many things that could be inside, and since it was a lean year we all had a pretty good idea of what we were getting, but there's just something about seeing those nicely wrapped presents under the tree on Christmas morning. There is a feeling of spontenaity, a sense that the little glittering packages could contain anything at all. It makes the experience exciting and unique. The downside to this is that once Christmas Morning is over, the moment that you've looked forward to for Lord knows how many months is over. It brings on feelings of ennui. Needless to say I was on heavy painkillers for the whole experience, as anyone who knows me would guess by the presence of that temporary moment of optimism back there.

I'm trying to get things back to normal, but I won't receive the pathologist's report until Monday. Meaning I don't know whether or not I need to go back for diagnostics to find the cancer if it's one of the kind that's likely to have spread. This combined with the extreme fatigue from the surgery as well as the muddling effects of my pain medications means I'm not good for much.

The fatigue should've passed by now, meaning it's possible that it's resulting from the thyroid problem I've suspected for the last few months. Of course I won't know for sure until I go back to the health department and repeat this whole process, which could take up to 6 months, provided of course the cancer has indeed been taken care of.

My contracters have been kind enough to allow me a few days to recuperate, but they will expect me back on the job by Monday as well. The fatigue and mental fog I'm experiencing is very distressing as I'm not sure I'll be able to make my deadlines with my head full of cotton. In the meantime I'm trying to get my hand back in by polishing up a few short stories for online magazine publication and generally living a life of quiet desperation. I'll try to muddle through as best I can, but it's frustrating I can't seem to catch a break. Thanks for the feedback and show of support all.

Time to see the Butcher

Well folks it looks like the surgeon's are getting a bit impatient. You know how it is with people like that. Shiny new knives and nothing to cut.

They'll be throwing me on the table at 7AM tuesday morning. I don't know why it has to be so early. Personally I don't want to be worked on until the doc's had his coffee and cleared his eyes, but I guess they have other ideas.

Beside the lingering fear of my own mortality, the biggest hurdle I've got to overcome is calming my folks. This is a routine surgery (aren't they all) but still there is always the danger of bleeding out as the initial incisions come pretty close to the femoral artery. Anyone who knows about triage from a brawl or knife fight knows that the femoral artery, once knicked, retracts up against the bone of the pelvis, making it really tough to clamp, even in surgical conditions. With my mother being an RN for almost 20 years she knows most of that better than I do, making it all the more difficult to console her that everything will be OK. Even if the surgery goes well, the chances are high that I'm facing some form of cancer, though testicular cancer is the most easily treated form of cancer there is, which is a small mercy.

Being self employed means I've got no health insurance. The only reason I'm being treated at all is because of a charity organization set up in my county, which happens to be one of the wealthiest in the state. Thank God for retirees from up North. (never thought I'd say that before)

Another big concern involves my track record with anesthesia. I'm incredibly resistant to anything which puts me under. I've had 3 gastroinestinal exploratory procedures and one oral surgery over the years. Each time I woke up in the middle of surgery and began speaking to the surgeons, who wigged out of course. Each time in post-op they would inform me that it took enough medications to drop an elephant to keep me under.

I think my most amusing experience was my oral surgery, which required they drill into my upper palate to get at the canine teeth which wouldn't drop on their own. They gave me a nitrous oxide mask to breath into and told me to count backward from 100. By the time I reached 50 the nurse was crossing herself in disbelief and the surgeon muttered "holy shit" to himself. It did nothing, though one of the nurses was promptly knocked out the moment she took a breath from the mask to see if the tank feed was working properly. After waiting for more than 10 minutes, breathing from the mask, the doctor had me hooked up to an IV and gave me a dose of something else, which finally did the trick. It wasn't so funny when I was charged extra for the use of more medications.

In any case, don't expect me to post for the next few days as the recovery process will take some time. Wish me luck.

Health Update

First off I'd like to thank the kind lady who posted such glowing comments on a few of my articles. It's always very touching to find out that someone actually reads this thing of their own volition. It really helped me get through the day given what went on.

As I already explained I had a large growth in a part of the body that only males of the species posses. I first noticed it in early september and since then it's swollen up to the size of a kiwi fruit and been very painful. Being flat broke and having no health insurance I had to sign up for a medical aid offered by the county. It took quite some time for them to get the paperwork done and setup my appointment with a specialist, but I finally got to see one today. He took one look and decided I needed an ultrasound.

These doctors donate their time to the local clinics, so the're no slouches when it comes to their professions, even among the extremely exacting standards of most physicians. I got the ultrasound done about an hour later. It was no different than when they look at a baby in the womb, using that gel and wand. The only issue was this it was on a decidedly more delicate portion of my anatomy, and the lab tech was a very attractive young lady. The gel was quite warm and the wand gives off slight vibrations, needless to say I spent the entire half hour imaging session clenching my fists and thinking of baseball else I should inadvertantly offend the kind woman who was performing the ultrasound. She called in a radiologist, who looked over the results and promptly informed me that I had a tumor the size of walnut in one of my testicles.

I had kind of expected something like that with my luck. Thankfully he said it was insular, or turned inward on itself, and therefore much more likely to be benign instead of a malignant cancer. In either case it was both the radiologist's and the specialist's opinion that the testicle be removed in its entiretey ASAP. I'm now waiting for them to round up an anesthesiologist and get a hold of a surgery theater, which they say should be ready by the end of the week. I had never really intended to have children anyway, and since the other of the pair is still intact I most likely will retain the capacity. Yet I am a little bothered by the possible decrease in testosterone that may result. With as many odd things that happen to me I find it helps to have naturally agressive reactions to possible threats. In any case the possibility still exists that the tumor may be cancerous, if so then it will most certainly have had the chance to metastasize. As a result they will do a biopsy once the amputation is complete.

Oddly enough I was never scared, not when I first noticed the problem or when any of the physicians I saw tried to prepare me for the worst. My chief concern is waking up in the middle of surgery. I did so during the last 4 surgeries I had, despite the fact that I was given doses of anesthesia that were considered sufficient to put a horse in a coma, let alone a human being who wasn't even fully grown at the time. Waking up in the middle of serious oral surgery is bad enough, but this is one worse in my opinion, so I'll make sure to mention that history of chemical resistance to the anesthesiologist.

I'm hoping that it's just a side effect of the tumor throwing off my limbic system, but I've also begun to show the classic signs of hypothyroidism too. My skin flakes, my eyes are so dry they stick when I blink them sometimes, I gain weight despite the fact that I eat less than 1,000 calories a day, and I can sleep up to 16 hours at a time if I let myself. The constant mental fatigue is an issue as well seeing as I'm working on a contract with some very strict deadlines.

Of course there's also the issue of my Superior Limbal Keratoconjunctivitis. It turns out it's an autoimmune disease where abberant tissue begins to grow in a crescent shape over the top of my irises seperating the colored part of the eye from the white of the surrounding sclera. Thankfully this almost never causes any problems with vision, but it does cause extreme eye dryness, pain, and burning whenever my eyes are open and mild aching sensations when they're closed. Given that my job has me staring at a computer screen all day this is damned near an ironic tragedy. I started working at home because my stomach was too messed up to make attending any form of job a possibility. I finally think I've got a chance at making a career for myself and not ending up on the street once I'm living on my own, and the two things that I need my body for crap out on me: my eyes and my ability to concentrate for long periods of time.

I've seen an opthalmologist for it, apparently half of all people who have this disease also have thyroid disorders, which simply serves to back my concerns. He prescribed me a new drug in eye drop form called Restasis. Apparently it's an anti-cancer medication which supresses and reverses the growth of aberrant or non-standard living tissue. This medication came out several years ago, before that my eye problem was fixed by either thermal cauterization of the tissue (YOWCH!), or surgical excision of the tissue (YUCK!). In either case there exists the possibility that this tissue will grow back, meaning that the Restasis is my best chance at resolving the problem without serious, costly, and dangerous eye surgery. Unfortunately it can take up to 6 months before it shows good progress in fixing my eyes. In the meantime I've got to live with the pain and burning every moment that I'm awake.

I know lots of people have things far worse than I do, but please allow me a paragraph or two of self pity, as everyone's entitled to it now and again. I've got a loving family that understands and supports me, long past the point that I would've expected them to, and I feel terrible that as I grow older I'm not able to look out for their wellbeing as I thought I would when I was little. I still rely on them more than vice-versa. As a child my scholastics were encouraged and I thought I would go into something in the hard sciences, perhaps be an engineer like my father. Now I can't even work at the local supermarket because of ineffectively diagnosed and insuccessfully treated gastrointestinal disorders, thyroid problems, emotional disorders, and autoimmune problems. It makes me wonder what happens when there's no one there to look out for me anymore, and truthfully that's a thought filled with such oil-slick black formless chattering terror that it wakes me from a sound sleep at night and makes me work as I do now, regardless of fatigue or failing health. It's the moments of silence in the dead of night that I fear the most, when the day's work is done as there is nothing else I can distract myself with.

Funny that the prospect of dying on the surgery table in the upcoming days or facing a long losing battle with cancer doesn't scare nearly as much as these simple thoughts of being alone and not having the strength to support myself. I wonder what that says about me. I'll try to keep up my posts to this site, as you may know my other blog animenothentai.com is on hiatus as I haven't the time to sit down and read books or watch animes to review, let along actually write the darn things. In my spare moments I manage to jot down a few lines and hope to build a backlog, so please be patient with me.

As always I'll tell you that I make a small portion of my living with the revenue from the ads on this site. If you want to do me a favor that costs you nothing but a few seconds of your time, please click on one of the links on the top left portion of this page. They're all legitimate and quite harmless. Also should any of you like to comment or perhaps establish a dialogue, your input would be more than welcome.

Important Notice

Just wanted to post and let you all know that I won’t be submitting any updates for the rest of the week, and will likely not be able to update next week either. A series of serious medical problems has me both terrified and in a great deal of pain. I noticed a growth in the shower which bore all the signs of a tumor about the size of a kiwi fruit. I went immediately to the physician who is referring me to an urologist to check to see if it’s cancerous or benign. While I was waiting to be contacted by the urologist I noticed that my eyes had gotten very dry. They stayed this way for well over a week and became even more painful as time went by, to the point that I’ve had to tape my eyes shut for days on end just to get any relief. I purchased every kind of eye drop on the market; without effect.

Managed to get to an ophthalmologist clinic today; man was that guy rough. He poured what felt like three types of acid in my eyes before turning my eye lids inside out and then sticking strips of litmus paper against my corneas. They were held in place for over two minutes while the paper changed color to indicate some sort of chemical reaction. Frankly I would’ve rather been stabbed again, that hurt a hell of a lot less. In any case the doc tells me I’ve got some form of conjunctivitis. It’s an autoimmune disease which stops the glands around the eyelashes from releasing moisture and fluids onto the surface of the eye, keeping it moist.

As a treatment I’ve got to instill three different kinds of eye drops in my eyes four times a day in a specific order while massaging the eyelashes and using boiling hot compresses to loosen the oil in the glands. The eye drops also have the consistency of Vaseline. Bottom line is that I won’t be able to see anything for the next week or two until this treatment is over.

Hopefully it will work. If it doesn’t then there are two reasons why. The one reason is that I have a severe thyroid disorder, one of the symptoms of which is this conjunctivitis. This means I’ll have to see yet another specialist. Thyroid problems are very tricky too. There are no medications out there which govern the operation of the thyroid effectively, meaning chemical imbalances causing a lot of nasty side effects are common. The second reason is that the next form of medication needed to fix the conjunctivitis, while dealing with the thyroid problem, costs more than my first car did.

Keep in mind that this is while I’m still waiting to find out if I’ve got cancer and am going to need surgery to remove a portion of my anatomy which, although it doesn’t see much use, I’ve grown sentimentally attached to. Whoever says curses and bad luck don’t exist has never met me.

On top of all this, I’m self employed. I’ve got no medical coverage whatsoever. So far I’ve paid for my medical visits out of my personal savings. If I end up needing surgery my only option, aside from dying, is taking out a loan and then declaring bankruptcy. I don’t own anything and have no assets which I can’t officially sign over to a family member, so I won’t loose much aside from my credit rating.

I’m going to go lie down now. I’d cry but my eyes can’t produce any moisture right now. If you’ve been kind enough to read this far, I thank you deeply. I suppose it’s a bit like watching a train wreck; it’s horrible but you can’t look away. If you can do me one more kindness, please click on one of the adjacent advertisements. They are completely harmless and put a few cents in my pocket every time someone clicks on them.