How To Lose a Month of Your Life · 6:25am Sep 11th, 2016
Right off, just to keep everything straight, this is not a post of alarm, or apology, or even pity. This is a - very abridged - account of everything that happened in the last month as a way of explaining why I haven't logged in, checked in on authors, or emails, let my editing and correspondence fall by the wayside across this site and others, etc. It's not cause for alarm because things are more stable now. It's not an apology because given a similar set of circumstances I'd be making the same choices and not feel bad about it. It's not a pity request because - as you will learn if you're curious - people I love in my life had a way more difficult time than I did. No, this was just my turn in the barrel. You live long enough, you will get a turn too. Sometimes multiple turns. Now then, here's what happened in a convenient, easy-to-read, borderline OCD conversational style post:
1) Son receives a concussion doing something stupid because he's nine years-old, which means I probably didn't even need to add the "stupid" detail.
2) While treating son, ignore sudden pain behind left knee, the one that's been surgically repaired, and brush it off as muscle tightness.
3) Allow pain to get worse until you can no longer put any weight on leg.
4) Go to doctor's office. Discover you have a Baker's cyst. Receive steroid injection.
5) While icing knee, feel a slight pop and then an immediate relief of all pain and tightness. Realize in horror that the cyst has ruptured and all the fluid is now down in the leg. This is not a good thing.
6) Go to hospital immediately for draining. While it's draining, acquire an infection in the leg (damn those resistant superbugs). Stay in hospital longer. Have a worst-case conversation with the doctor at some point and find out that losing the leg is a possibility, albeit very low. Taste real fear for the first time in a few years (it tastes like Red Bull for anyone who doesn't know).
7) Leg heals up. Get discharged from the hospital and then immediately buried in work because it's now the end of the month, you have a demanding job, and those revenue cycles wait for no man. Start working a string of 16-hour days.
8) The day you're caught up on work, receive a call from your uncle informing you that your cousin has a detached retina and is currently blind in one eye.
9) The very next day, receive a call from your father, who informs you that he has renal cancer.
10) Learn that both family members will have their surgery on the exact same day at the exact same time (this past Thursday), so pick who you're going to be present for.
11) ???
12) Profit, I think. I never was very good at that penultimate step.
Anyway, that's it. Both my father and cousin recovered nicely. I'm writing this post from Chicago - yes, I'm with my cousin instead of my father, his recovery is, believe it or not, longer and harder and there are fewer people actively caring for him - the night before I leave to head back home. Once I'm home, I'm taking a few days to just breathe (and work) and then I'd like to actually use my little space on this site to do something more than post explanations for absences that no one should honestly care about, and yet I have to make said post because it affects my ability to get edits done, thereby affecting any author I'm working with. Maybe the next post will be enjoyable with actual substance. Let's see...
Someone cursed you to live in interesting times, didn't they? I'm glad everything has worked out. Don't be in any sort of rush to get back to me, I have nothing urgent for you, and I'm just glad you and yours came out of everything safely.