In The Weeds

I do not know if it is by mere coincidence, or whether it is due to something slightly more cosmic, but, many of the most important, and in fact traumatic events in my life have happened in August . It was in August at the start of my senior year in high school when my parents decided to up and move yet again, ending the  Beverly to Salem to Beverly loop by moving to Ipswich.  It was in August, 1990 when I received my first diploma. It was in August when my wife and I bought our first home. It was in August when we bought our second home. It was in August when we later sold the first. More recently in August  I received my biopsy results. Ten years ago , on the third of August I became a father. Sixteen days later, a stretch of eight days began that would bring me as close to the title of "single dad" or "widower" than I hope I ever experience again. Our son ,who I am convinced did not want to be born ( he had to be induced twice) finally joined the outside world ...

Thirty-three years ago, on this date, the sixteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, I remember exactly where I was.  I also remember what I did pretty much the entire day. That summer I was ten years old and my family had just moved from the city of my birthplace , Beverly, across the bridge to Salem. We went from living in a classic "leave it to beaver" kind of neighborhood, unified around a quaint, old-fashioned elementary school at it's center, to one split in half, divided as much by the physical location of the school, if not the socioeconomics of the inhabitants . One half of the neighborhood, the side we were now living, was filled with older Victorian-era homes that had seen better days, with mostly french-canadian names on the mailboxes. The other half was a more urban neighborhood than my young eyes had ever seen. Narrow,litter-strewn, congested streets filled with run down triple deckers, inhabited mostly by recent immigrants from Lat...

Seems I am finally getting my voice back to normal after almost 4 weeks. Sunday marked the first day without any real throat pain. Still feels as if I tied my tie too tight, but the main soreness has dissipated. Seemed to take a lot longer than they said it would. Needless to say, once you find yourself with an altered voice box, you tend to put off verbal communication as much as possible. The less I spoke the better. A week or so ago, I went into Dunkin Donuts for an iced coffee and it took three takes to get my order right. Not terribly enjoyable, but I would be lying if I didn't say it bothered me more that I repeatedly caught the clerk's eyes alternating her glances between my eyes and the bandage on my neck. In this period my main communication has been with my family , and aside from writing, not so much the rest of the world. Time to start getting back to "normal". I realized I was regaining my voice during Donovan's birthday party, which we hosted this ...

Today I had my first-ever, post-op, follow-up. (that has to rank as one of the most hyphenated sentences I have ever written.) Throughout this process ,all the appointments were made for me by the doctor's office month's in advance, completely wrestling from me the ability to delay something I very much wanted to delay, if not avoid completely. These dates seemed so far off that they may as well not even have existed. I received my "packet" three months ago that laid out the pre-op consult , the pre-op physical exam, and the post-op follow-up, along with lots of documentation, needing lots of my closely guarded personal information. It was then I began to realize how much control over "self" you give up as soon as you decide to enter the mechanism known as the "Finest Medical Care In The World". I had just seen Gran Torino when the package arrived and unlike Mr. Kowalski(or is that kwaski?) I filled out all my forms, and kept all my appointments...

Today, July 29th 2010, I got "the call" from my surgeon. The call that has had my stomach churning the previous seven days every time the phone rang. The call that would quite possibly decide at the very least, the next several months of my life. In keeping with the ways of today's online existence, I received an email notification that a message had been left on our home digital voicemail. Noting that it was only 14 seconds long , I immediately thought " Oh its just the robo-call reminding me of my apppointment Monday AM." I will check it tonight. Then I decided to retrieve it and give it a listen. To my surprise , instead of an annoying computerized robot, I heard the sound of my doctor's voice. "Hello Roger, this Dr. Randolph calling to chat about your path report. " Shit. Heart leaps immediately into my throat. Hands shaking, I called the number he left , and found myself speaking with his assistant, and not him. She seemed surprised that I...

of what remains of my patience with doctors, doctor's offices, their assistants, their mistresses and last but by no means least, their absolutely fucked up impression of what people want to read while waiting in their magazine-laden waiting rooms. Do I really need to keep up with the Kardashians even here? Fourteen days ago,( yes that's right FOUR-TEEN, not that I am counting) , I was fresh out of the O.R. after having a suspicious nodule removed for biopsy via the surgeon's scalpel. I still have no idea what the results of that biopsy are, despite being told just prior to being discharged, that they would call me with the results "next week". I know these things take a certain amount of time. After calling the office to check up on the results , I was informed that my doc was unavailable due to his being "in research" this week, and that I would have wait for one of his "fellows" to call me. Or wait for my follow-up which is scheduled for th...

Maybe it was the chance reading of a friend's "Smokey and Bandit" posting on Facebook that got the idea planted in my mind, but for some reason today just had the feel of a "road trip" kind of day. After spending the better part of mid-day lounging about the house, we loaded the kids (and the dog) in the car and hit the road, with no particular plan , but only one requirement: that wherever we may roam , part of the journey would include a stop at Kimball Farms Ice Cream in Carlisle. Off we went up Route 128, then we missed the Kimballs exit , thanks to a careless driver in a late-model Mustang, who apparently felt he was the only car on the road. Michelle was more concerned with keeping our car in one piece (imagine that) and the exit ramp quickly passed us by. So we went up 3A , erroneously thinking we would cross at some point the road that would lead us to one of the two locations of our frozen treat valhalla. Upon seeing the sign :"Entering Lowell...

Not quite sure what to make of the delay in getting the pathology report back from the doctor. Does taking a long time mean bad news? Or would bad news be reported sooner than good? Or is it simply a case of the doc being on vacation and the report sitting in his inbox on the desk? It is something I am not that aggressive in getting answered as I do not want it to be a classic case of "be careful what you wish for".

as waiting for your surgeon to call with the biopsy results after they removed a 1.5 CM tumor from your thyroid. Everytime the phone rings, or the email notifier goes off, my heart does a flip-flop and my stomach feels like it has suddenly become a cement-mixer full of lead butterflies. Do I call? Do I call? But they told me THEY would call after about a week. "After about a week" . How many days exactly is "after about a week'? Do doctors have their own variation of the Gregorian Calendar......

I think some of the best pancakes I have had recently have been the hotcakes at the Golden Arches. They were not always this way, mind you. I seem to remember them being rubbery, over-cooked , over-salted, flavorless things. Something akin to what I imagined a sand dollar drizzeld in imitation maple syrup would taste like. But since my thyroid surgery, my throat has been so sore that I have had to eat much softer things. Pancakes go down verily easily, but they are not that convenient to whip together on a work morning. McDonalds to the rescue! So I have had them the past three days , and every day they are perfect. Light, fluffy and tasting like the ones you remember Mom making on Sunday mornings. Now if they could just do something about the syrup....

I was deep in a post-surgical fog, wondering how the hell this lady talking to me knew my name. Then it started to dawn on me that "it" was over. The big mystery that had hung over my head for nearly six years was about to be solved.

It is the thrid full day after being discharged from the hospital. I never imagined recovery from a surgical event would be SO BORING. Not that there is much energy on my part to do anything anyway. Each day there is slight progress on the sore throat front, but it is very incremental at best. I find I will have a 15 minute moment where I almost feel like myself, then the fatigue returns with a vengeance. And I have no real appetite. Which may or may not prove to be a problem.

Day 2 back home after the surgery and I cannot shake this immense fatigue. Just sitting and staring at the wall seems to take all the energy I can muster. Also I totally expected to have serious pain at the site of the incision where they removed part of the thyroid. I mean, they did go deep into my neck right? So why is it the worst pain is in my mouth and back of my throat? Kind of makes it tough to enjoy a meal. One shouldn't break into a sweat eating foods with the consistency of apple sauce. Hopefully it will improve soon.

It is the day after my thyroid surgery. Still feel kind of out of it. Going home today. Have to wait a week for the pathology results and then we will take it from there. Wish they could give me more than a pat on the back after such an ordeal, rather than another week of waiting. While I am avoiding any pain meds at the moment, the thing that bothers me the most is how sore my throat is , not from where the incision was made, but from the breathing tube they put in. After 2 days it still feels like a nasty case of strep every time I take a sip of water. They need to come up with a better procedure for inserting the damn thing. They told me beforehand that it would leave my throat a tad sore. Obviously none of them had ever had one done to themselves.

I wonder how the people that freaked out at the grocery store this weekend when the water main burst and bought all the available water , feel this morning after the boil water order was lifted ? Not only are they out some serious change ( some people spent upwards of a couple hundred dollars on bottled water) but they also revealed a nasty bit of their true inner self to the rest of the world.

I just don't get it. Why do the weatherpeople feel the they have a responsibility to whip the masses into a fear-filled, bread and milk - panicked mass every time there is a threat of snow? Today we had the panic in full effect. The city declared a snow emergency about 36 hours before the first flakes even began to fall. The schools last night decided they were releasing all students by noon today. So I am working from home, with my kids by my side .Since they were sent home to avoid the impending doom of another "blizzard" that has failed to live up to its hype, it did lend itself to a nice break from the crush of the workweek. Ahh, perhaps that is what it is all about after all.