Happy vacation to me...

Today is the only vacation day I will get this year.

US law being the wonderful thing it is, when I go out for my medical leave, my vacation days get used first. So today is the only real vacation day I will get this year from work; one day, snuck in after Thanksgiving so I could enjoy the wild bacchanalia of a four day weekend. I would like to tell all of you, my faithful readers, that I'm spending it committing sins and debaucheries heretofore unknown. However, I spent the morning at my in-laws, drove back from San Antonio, and now I'm fooling around on the computer while B. and A. go out and go shopping for a Barbara Kingsolver book for her English class. Tomorrow, unless the weather turns out to be just unspeakable, we're going to a Renaissance fair. Wild times.

Headaches and vertigo continue. Tiredness continues. I got a call on Wednesday from the osteoplastics surgeon, telling me they are processing all the insurance pre-approvals and working on scheduling the surgery, and I should have a definite date within two weeks. I'll be glad to just get that done, so I can back- and forward-schedule everything around it. It looks like I might miss the software rollout of our new POS system at work; I'm actually not that worried about that, as my learning style is so different from most peoples' it might be best if I learned it on my own anyway. However, it means the next month I have to shove the database cleanup into high gear and get as much dead weight cleaned out as I can... and that all has to be done by hand. There's no way to automate it; it requires someone with product knowledge (IE, me) to look and go 'Do we still sell this?'.

Emotionally, no real changes. I did find out my younger brother didn't tell one of my younger sisters (the one who Just Doesn't Do Social Media) about the tumor, so I got to drop that on her yesterday during the round of Thanksgiving calls. She seems OK with it, but she's the one who's hardest to read. So who knows? My sister PT is enigmatic as a Sphinx most of the time, so I never can tell what she's thinking...

Decluttering.

In a metaphysical, emotional, spiritual, and physical sense.

I find as I move closer to Der Tag Von Chirurgie that I'm trying to simplify things as much as I can in my life. I have temporarily checked out of the South Central Area Mankind Project Leader container. I have asked for help in the Central Texas community in MKP as well.

And this weekend, we had help from some magnificent friends -- thank you to the entire Weir family -- to clean out our garage. And my friends, it was a MASSIVE purge. I am a packrat, I admit it, and things had gotten out of hand. And Lin and Mike and their two boys came over both Saturday and Sunday and helped us find our garage again. (And our garage was pretty terrible.) A lot of stuff went to charity, more stuff than I was comfortable with went to trash, and I have all my books back where they belong -- in the house.

(I scored two huge bookshelves for thirty-five bucks, too.)

For all that I'm terrified about this tumor thing, and the headaches are getting worse, I'm starting to feel more ME than I've felt in a while. I went to Austin Pagan Pride and talked to more people than I'd talked to in years. I'm even tentatively counseling someone -- might even turn into a student. Maybe it's a Hallmark Channel moment, I don't know. But I've been out of touch with part of me for a while, and it's good to be back. And that's decluttering, too. There was some guilt and shame -- doesn't matter what, those who know me know what it was, those who don't know can ask if they're curious, I might tell you -- about teaching and leading in the Pagan community that I was carrying around. I have been given a very clear indication I can let that go now. I'm not interested in going back to some sort of national leadership again. (Though I never say never; That Way Inviteth Coyote.) But I have a lot of experience, battle scars, and scorched tee-shirts I could share. It's nice to feel decluttered of the guilt and shame I had -- so that I can do that again if I choose.

The sky fell in.

Friendly readers. yesterday shit got real. Or, to quote SF writer William Gibson, the sky fell in.

At about 6:30pm last night, I was crying hysterically in my car in the parking lot of the parking lot of the HEB at the Arboretum. I had stopped in to get a few things on the way home and to see my son (he works there). He wasn't working. I don't know why, but that led to the aforementioned breakdown. Nothing was right, nothing was ever going to BE right, and 25 or so hours later I'm still on unstable emotional ground. I would conjecture that I am not as blase about this whole tumor thing as I have seemed to be, (Greek chorus in the background: "Gee, you THINK?") And, to be honest, this is not the only serious stresser in my life, so...yeah. Things fell apart, the center did NOT hold, and anarchy was loosed upon the world for a time. I still don't know if I'm OK. I'm trying not to pretend I have to be.

Appointment today with the ophthalmological surgeon and his army of subalterns; one nurse and one assistant doctor. My eyes are in great shape except for that tumor thing. I have developed peripheral double vision in the last two weeks, so that's new; the doctor explained it by using the anaology of two tracking cameras that aren't quite synced any more. I did find out today that this will be a craniotomy; they're going in through my noggin, so I'm getting my head shaved. I'm having that done by my barber, the redoubtable Louis. If anyone's making me look like Uncle Fester, he is. (And if you're in Austin and looking for a place to get your hair cut, I can't recommend him enough. Corner of G Just north of Airport on Guadalupe; any of the barbers are brilliant. Tell them Mister Duke sent you.)

Stress management.

I am beginning to feel the first flutters of fear around surgery, and coincidentally (or perhaps not) I am beginning to have to really think about stress management and really work at it.

Work is a mixed bag right now. On the one hand, the ownership is being great; they have supported and approved my request to move to a better lit work area, and it seems to have also led them to look at how they light the entire office; they're considering putting in dimmers on all the office lighting.

On the other hand, I have two co-workers who are, frankly, meddlers. They get involved in other people's work and try to tell them what to do, despite having no management role; they're quite fond of doing it to me because they've been with the company for a very long time and they think they know just how everything should be done. (Sometimes, they're right. Sometimes, they're not.)

Most of the time, I can ignore them. I am, however, running out of emotional energy to do so, and tonight when one of them told me I should take on a large project because she thought it needed done, I asked her to talk to my supervisor. I was neither polite nor impolite; just neutral. She didn't like that much. But I don't have the energy right now to fix more things that weren't done or to defend myself against more groundless criticism from people who should be doing their own jobs. I am making it to work every day and doing my thing; I need people who aren't even in my department to back off.

So that's today's bitch session, faithful readers. Thursday I see the osteoplastics surgeon; a report shall be forthcoming after that.

Entirely too much mortality.

At my age, I have lost a few friends, but not very many. It seems, in the last week or so, that the average is trying to catch up with me.

Last night, a friend and former covener of mine, Julian, lost her battle with cancer. She was very young -- three years younger than I was -- and left behind a teenage son. It was not an easy death, or a short one; she was in a great deal of pain at times, and while we were no longer close, I know from mutual friends it was a hard time for her. She was a quiet, complex, and gifted individual who I wish I had known better.

On November 5, another friend and former online gaming compatriot, Kennet, lost his life-long battle with several severe illnesses. Kennet, while having some physical limitations, had a keen mind and a huge heart, and left behind a clan of people who loved and mourned him and a smaller family of two plus commensals who have a huge absence in their lives now.

As I said to my eldest daughter, "I have had enough of dying people and people dying."

It's not that this makes me fear my own death. I still think that the upcoming surgery will come off without a hitch and I'll be back to harass the universe in my own inimitable fashion after a short recovery. It's that once again, I have been reminded of the space that we create in other people's lives; the fingerprints that we -- that I -- leave and have left in others lives. And I've also come to realize I've left less of those over the last few years than perhaps I could have; I've pulled within myself, done less teaching and leading than I could have.

I'm going to Austin PPD tomorrow. Maybe that will change. But on a night when there are one hundred and more dead in Paris because of madmen who don't understand that all of this is connected, I want to remember that to acknowledge that connection, even as I fear headaches and vertigo and surgery, is the essence of life and living.

Paper thin.

I spent a lot of time listening to John Hiatt's "Paper Thin" today. It seemed apropos.

I'm tired. Real life continues its inexorable pace, regardless of the guava's presence, and I have to keep up with it. I'm short on sleep today, and I can tell; my head hurts, and I just feel worn around the edges.

On the other hand, it was a great weekend. I took my daughter to a live show she REALLY wanted to see ("This Is Night Vale" Live) and she had a glorious time; I had fun as well. Then Sunday I spent with a friend, in his back yard, drinking too many beers and shooting the shit. Just an ordinary day that I desperately needed; it restored some semblance of normalcy that I really enjoyed, at least for a little while.

A lot of people have asked how they can help. While I expect nothing from anyone save their good wishes, if you wish to do something more concrete, B. and I worked out a list of things we will need over the next few months (or need sooner than that) and I've posted it in a Page (called, amazingly enough, "How you can help"; it's off to the right) on this website. If you feel moved to do so, take a look at it. Some of it does require some context; my surgery is tentatively in January, as y'all know. I will be in recovery through February.

We get a German exchange student in March.

There are a WHOLE lot of things I was supposed to help do to get ready for said exchange student (a young lady named Kat, from somewhere in the Schwarzwald; just what we need, another Kat) that I will be unable to do. So that's adding yet another level of panic to what is already a seven-layer cake of running in circles and hyperventilating. Thus, the rather This-Old-House-ish tone to some of the things we're asking for help with...

Blessings, my friends.

In which the clouds part a little.

Today was my consultation with Neurosurgeon #2, which was somewhere between a second opinion and a specialist for the specialist. Today's doctor specializes in both this type of tumor and surgeries that involve the skull and bone work -- given that both of these things apply to me, NS#1 handed me off to him for a longer consultation.

Despite having ominous forebodings all morning, I allowed myself some hope when he walked in and looked like a younger version of the man who led my New Warrior Training Adventure 12 years ago.

The summary is this: we got a lot of potentially good news. Here's the list --

1) He doesn't think I'll lose function on the eye. He has rarely if ever seen that occur in this type of tumor with this placement. It's possible, but he considers it very unlikely.
2) My recovery time could be shorter than we were originally told, which is good because I do not have any short-term disability and we're going to be down a paycheck while I'm out. We thought six weeks originally; he's saying it could be three to four weeks instead.
3) He does not think the image on the MRI that runs along the right side of my head is a 'tail' off the tumor. He thinks it's a blood vessel. Again, we can't be completely sure due to the limitations of MRI technology, but...

He also told us -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- he wants us to think of this as less brain surgery and more skull and eye surgery. If things go the way he thinks they will go, we'll never enter the brain. We'll skip along its surface, yes, but never actually visit Grey Matter Village. He does not think the tumor is in the brain at all, but is restricted to the dura and ocular cavity. I also finally understood what NS#1 meant when he said the tumor was 'in the bone of my eye socket'; the bone itself is not tumorous, but the tumor has punched through the bone and is growing into the eye socket. That's why my eye is popping out; it's being pushed out of its socket from behind.

(My inner 11-year-old boy thought this was awesomely gross and incredibly cool.)

The surgery is still scheduled for January, tentatively. Next step is a consult with the osteoplastic surgeon on November 19th. After that, there will probably be a CT scan, possibly a consult with an ophthalmological surgeon, and then going back to NS#1 and NS#2 for some nuts and bolts planning.

More details, friends and loved ones, as they become available.

The best damned baba ghanoush I've ever had.

Call it cliche, but I'm trying to remember to enjoy the little things right now -- especially after having a death-planning conversation with my wife this week. So tonight I had the best baba ghanoush I've ever had, and now I'm enjoying a delicious Legion Imperial Stout from Community Brewing in Dallas. Little things do make a difference.

I have my second consult with the other neurosurgeon tomorrow; he is apparently the expert at carving up skulls, and we get to talk about how he'll cut up mine before the osteoplastics surgeon (who I have an appointment with in two weeks) gets to rebuild it. I am scared; I'm afraid that I'll walk in tomorrow and get told they misread everything and my head is full of cancerous cells or something. I'm panicking a bit, I know. Doesn't help that I've had headaches at work two days this week bad enough that I had to wear sunglasses.

Speaking of which, I turned in a reasonable accommodation request at work to get out from under the Giant Shriekingly Bright Fluorescents From Hell and confused them -- because fucking everywhere at my work is lit with the GSBFFH except for the enclosed offices. (They are too, but you can turn them off individually.) They'll have to come up with a solution; if they don't want to give me an office to use (and those are, shall we say, high prestige placements?) then we'll need another solution.

Emotionally, I'm tired. Stressed. Worn. I find myself getting irritated a little easier. My aggravation threshold is lower; my patience with people getting pissy over little shit is MUCH thinner. I want to get a tee-shirt that says 'FUCKING GET OVER IT; I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR'. I'll bet I could sell a shit-ton of those on Etsy...

Today.

Originally published November 2 on my old site.

Today was the first day that if I didn't know already I had a brain tumor, I'd be worried.

(That was a convoluted sentence, but I think I got it right.)

My eye hurt all day. I have developed increased photosensitivity; it doesn't help that my work is a nightmare of fluorescent lights and is too damned bright at the best of times. Today, however, the normal low-grade headache on the right hand side of my head was punctuated by sharp, vicious stabs of pain. I really didn't think I was going to get through the day, but some aspirin, deep breathing, and sheer stubbornness got me through it. Can't afford to miss much work this week; I have some projects due this week that I have to get done.

I am, however, going to talk to my doctor about getting a reasonable accommodation from my work to work somewhere that's not lit up like a fucking photography studio. Why don't we just drag some klieg lights in there while we're at it, and light up some thermite?

I'm still headachy tonight, despite being in a dim room and working with a dimly lit monitor. I think it'll be an early night; one bourbon sidecar, one blog post, one load of laundry, and bed will be calling me.

The only other news recently is that I will be meeting with the other brain surgeon -- who turns out to be a skull specialist -- and the osteoplastics specialists before the surgery. So at least I know who will be cutting on my noggin before the noggin cutting occurs, which is some small comfort.

Things I've Discovered.

Originally published October 29 on my old site.

In the last twenty-four hours I have discovered:

1) I am loved more than I realize. I don't think I knew, or even know, how many people love me. This isn't ego, this is sheer wonderment and bemusement; from my vantage point on the inside, I seem like a shithead. I don't seem lovable. It astonishes me, still, that people care about me. That's my stuff, I know, but it's still perpetually a surprise.

2) I have touched more lives than I have realized. People remember me. I feel terrible sometimes that I have to think about where I know someone from. I have memory issues that have gotten worse over the last few years (I wonder if that's guava-flavored?) that mean I sometimes have to really work to know where someone comes from or where I know someone from or who this person is who's talking to me. I feel bad about that.

3) I have an interesting cross-section of friends and family. I have a retired Christian fundamentalist college professor in South Carolina, a Episcobuddhist retail store manager and wine geek in Texas, a Druid priestess in Utah, a motherly Jew on a farm in the Midwest, and a whole passel o' eclectic Pagans praying for me, as well as a couple of atheists who are hoping things go well. That's not even counting any of my relatives.

4) I have discovered that it is better to be good to people. I am not always a good person. But I have tried to treat people in a decent manner; to reflect the Divine I see in them, to treat them how I want to be treated. I have not always succeeded, but that has been my goal. And now I see that when I do that, people respond. People value being treated in a good manner -- not all, but the ones who are good themselves, and those are the people I want in my life anyway. If I learn nothing else from the Age Of The Guava, I will learn this.

Could have been worse. (Could have been better.)

Originally published October 27 on my old site.

The consult with the neurosurgeon was today. I give it a five. (The neurosurgeon gets a nine. I like him.)

GOOD NEWS: Yes, it seems to be a meningioma. I don't have to have radiation therapy. Um...that's about it.

BAD NEWS: Shit, I got plenty. The tumor has gotten into the bone at the back of my eye socket, the nerves that control my right eye movement, and may have an extension alongside the right side of my head. We are going to have to surgically remove it, it's going to take two brain surgeons plus bone reconstruction of my eye socket (which involves the phrase 'bone harvesting'), and the worst case scenario involves losing sight in my right eye.

Well, fuck. That's it, I demand an eyepatch embroidered with the Eye of Sauron if this doesn't work out.

Rainy days and Sundays.

Originally posted October 24 on my old site.

It's Sunday, it's been raining for two days, and I'm starting -- maybe -- to get some sense of comprehension around this.

It's starting to seem real, not something that's happening to something else. I couldn't tell you, my non-existent reader, how that's different, but it is; it's becoming fact rather than an ephemeral fantasy, and as such it's becoming a factor -- though not the dominant one -- in how I live my life.

I had plans in February, for example. Now, I have to consider if the treatment will affect them. I have to figure out how to train someone else in the eight million small things I do at work. I have to think about this stuff, and honestly I don't want to. I think it's damned unfair that the guava has forced me to. It makes me mad, and anger is not an emotion I work well with at all. (It took me three years of therapy with a very patient therapist just to get me to express my anger in a controlled fashion).

I told the leadership of a community I'm deeply involved with the news. (I am also leadership.) I'm surprised at the responses; I feel like some of them have been -- bloodless? Formulaic? I know that these men love me dearly, and my judgment (projection?) is that they may be stunned or not know how to respond. Or maybe I'm just hypersensitive, or expecting more, or something. Well, looking at things like that is why I'm writing this.

Finally, I had my first healing session with a very powerful friend who does healing energy work. My feelings on that is while I have a firm belief in traditional medicine (though I trust not the union of medicine and profit) I also know so-called 'alternative' medicine can be just as useful, if not more so. This particular man's stuff works. I've seen it work. So I am trusting him, implicitly, to do me some good. It seems, today, that my right eye is less swollen; it might be wishful thinking, but I also have no headache today...

The day the world changed.

Originally posted October 22 on my old site.

Yesterday, at about 12:35 pm, the world changed.

But -- let's back up first. A little background information might be good for you, the casual reader who may or may not exist. Let's add a little exposition; perhaps even introductions might be in order. For now, I am maintaining my anonymity, because most of the people in my life don't know this is happening. More on the whats on whys of that later.

I am a 47-year-old white male, tall, overweight, in mediocre health but without any major issues up until now. (Foreshadowing. Ooh.) I have always had a right eye that protruded more than the left; I was always told -- mostly by my mother -- that it was the results of being a forceps delivery. (I got my head squished.)

However, about two months ago, my wife said that she thought the eye looked different, and since I was going to the optometrist would I ask her about it? Now, I have a good optometrist -- my eyes are, frankly, shit (20/525 and 20/575 respectively) -- so if there was something wrong I figured she'd know.

So the day for my appointment came about two weeks ago, and my optometrist looked at my eye, and looked grave, and took some measurements, and did a bunch of tests, and said she didn't like it. She referred me to my regular doctor. I went to see him. He looked at it, and he didn't like it either. (By this time none of us liked it.) So he ordered thyroid tests and an MRI. The thyroid tests came back negative.

The MRI did not. I found out at about 12:35pm yesterday afternoon.

I have a 4.4cm meningioma located behind my right eye. Meningiomas are, apparently, a class of tumor that hang out between the brain and the skull. They are mostly benign, and quite often the appropriate treatment is to just leave them alone and monitor them to make sure they don't suddenly grow to the size of cabbages or something. (After a silly discussion over Tex-Mex food last night, my wife, my youngest daughter, and I decided mine is about the size of a guava -- or would be if it was perfectly round.)

However, because mine is behind my eye, and presumably pushing on my eye and face (did I mention the constant, low-grade headache?) that may not be an option here. We'll know more after I meet with a neurosurgeon.

I'm still processing. I'm terrified. I'm boggled. I'm not shocked; I knew, on some level, something serious was wrong. I keep having what I call JIHAFT moments (stands for 'Jesus, I Have A Fucking Tumor'); they're moments where I just stop and think to myself 'I have a brain tumor'.

I'm writing this blog to chronicle this process so I can remind myself where I am or was at any given moment in it. For now, I will remain anonymous, because I'm only telling a limited number of people in my life about the tumor until I know what the course of treatment will be (after that, I'm telling everyone).

 If this helps others, great. If you're out there, say something. If I'm by myself, that's OK, too. 'Cause right now, it's me and the fucking guava, and I'm walking away from this without it.