I apologize for posting late today–life intervened last week in the form of some surgery that is basically a tweak to some brain rewiring I had done a few years ago. (Anyone interested in the details can click here.)
The surgical tweak I had done last week went fine, but it has imposed a few constraints on my life. For the next few weeks I’m not allowed to drive; turn my head; walk faster than a snail on a hot sidewalk; wear contacts or glasses, which means I’m basically as blind as a cave fish. (I did some research to find which critter is the blindest of the blind in the Animal Kingdom, and it appears to be the cave fish. Let me know if you discover some critter that’s even more myopic than my fishy friend. You never know when that kind of IFNWK (Interesting Fact Not Worth Knowing) might come in handy in your writing.
The upside to this whole experience is that the surgeons have flung open the doors of the locker of Happy Drugs. So my mood is quite cheerful, although my writing seems to have gone on a wee little vacay. I’m thinking I’ll give it 10 days before I call the Writing Police to wrangle that little mongrel called discipline back into my brain.
I just reread that last line, and I suspect the docs have given me just a few too many Happy pills today. So I’ll leave you with a question: Have you ever had a physical issue that brought life to a screeching halt, and did it affect your writing? How did you find the road back, and what helped you the most?
Take care of yourself and best wishes for a speedy recovery! I’ve only once had something that brought everything to a screeching halt. A horrible and weird onset of vertigo which meant if I moved my head at all I felt instantly dizzy and nauseous. It meant a few days of immovability while the docs figured it out and gave me an antihistamine used for severe sea-sickness. Then I was just in a drug induced torpor until, just as quickly and as strangely as the episode had come on, it resolved itself. No writing was done at all needless to say!
Vertigo and I are old friends, Clare. In fact it was an attack of vertigo and migraine that finally got the docs to do the MRI a few years back that revealed the hydrocephalus. (Not saying that’s what you have, heaven forbid!) Thanks for the good wishes!
At risk of TMI, I had colon resection surgery two years ago. It was elective but major-category and doc told me to expect to be useless for 4-5 weeks. I didn’t believe him and stupidly, at 5 weeks post, went to Michigan and helped my sister move in a snowstorm. Ended up back in bed with orders not to move. No writing for weeks, depression over inactivity (I am a daily runner). Really lost a lot of time career-wise in a blue funk.
But the good thing I got out of it was a respect for my mortality and my otherwise great health. Also, the realization that being lucky enough to WRITE for a living is a precious gift that I sort of took for granted. I can’t say my healthy issue was a life-changing thing but it did result in a positive shift in thinking that has stayed with me.
So…take care of yourself. Go easy and enjoy the drugs while they last. 🙂
Thanks Kris! Fortunately these meds work just enough to do their job, but haven’t (so far) thrown me over the rainbow into LaLa Land. Although that might be an interesting trip, as they say! 🙂
“Let me know if you discover some some critter that’s even more myopic than my fishy find.”
Republican pollsters?
Like all political animals, though, I’m sure their hindsight is 20/20! 🙂
You have to keep your sense of humor. My wife was diagnosed with adult normal-pressure hydrocephalus over a year ago. It was scary, and I cried during the operation.
But today, she’s fully recovered, and is playing the best tennis of her life.
Good for her! That’s an encouraging story–thanks for sharing it.
I rarely get sick, but the physical calamities keep on comin’.
I, too, have had a few bouts of positional vertigo. The way I describe it is when you’re up it’s all the bad effects of being crapface drunk – room spinning, stumbling, etc – without any of the good parts of intoxication. What’s especially frustrating is that while lying down flat – can’t roll to the side – I feel just fine, like I’m ready to take on the world. And then I sit up and it’s all over.
Right now I am dealing with a physical issue that has brought a good part of my physical life to a screeching halt: bursitis of the right hip. This struck suddenly (while I was swimming)in December. Within 24 hours I was unable to walk, and have been incapacitated to varying extents ever since. I was told that while the bursitis was incapacitating, with physical therapy I would recover in 4-6 months. Ha! I’ve done the PT exercises, I’ve had the cortisone shot, I down the Celebrex, and I’m still in pain pretty much every day. I do have good days where I can get around ok, but I also have bad days where I have to use one of those motorized carts to get around a store, and brutal days where I don’t want to leave my couch. I used to swim for an hour 3-4 days per week, and walk for 1-1 1/2 hours on the other days. Swimming is starting to come back, but I am starting to fear that the walking never will. It all just disappeared in the blink of an eye, and I’m only in my 40s. It’s depressing to think about never getting better.
Sorry to hear about the bursitis, catfriend. I’ve heard that it’s terribly painful. Hope you feel better soon!
Sending you good healing vibes!
I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately. I have been getting killer migraines over the past few years. I am now very cautious about how I go about my days when I am on a writing deadline. I try to take as good of care of myself as possible during those times and I try to get things done well ahead of schedule–but that isn’t always possible. Apparently, one of the causes of said migraines is stress–so it’s a Catch-22 sometimes. Bleh.
Jeanne, not to be an alarmist, but I’ve become a huge advocate of people getting an MRI done whenever there are repeated episodes of neurological issues such as migraine, vertigo, tinnitus, lethargy, and even garden variety clumsiness. My condition might never have been diagnosed if I hadn’t had an MRI. Not to turn this post into a medical discussion, but hydrocephalus is something most doctors aren’t schooled to look for. The most irritating response I have gotten from the doctors who failed to identify my condition was, “When you hear the sound of hoofbeats in the jungle, you don’t expect a zebra to pop out from the trees.” That statement sounds like a lame excuse from doctors who didn’t do their due diligence to test and diagnose the underlying cause for the symptoms that their patients are suffering. Unfortunately, as patients we have to do tons of research and sometimes we must almost diagnose ourselves, as well as become aggressive advocates for our own treatment, when our conditon is even slightly unusual. Too many doctors are programmed to brush off anything–and anyone–who doesn’t fit the standard treatment model.
Kathryn, hope you have a speedy recovery.
Thanks Joe! I think I’m on the mend.
Kathryn, I hope you are feeling better very soon. I have had my experience with both vertigo and migraines. Never enough to raise an issue but I’m no stranger. It was however, a bulging disk that brought everything in my life to a neck breaking halt. I had had back issues for about 6 years and then it was one sneeze at work that landed me in an emergency back surgery to prevent permanent nerve damage. I suppose I am a little off topic because I wasn’t writing then. It’s important though with back issues to get back to normal activity as soon as possible so I went back to cocktailing within a month. 🙂 Again I hope you are feeling better very soon.
A sneeze set off that medical crisis? Yikes! “Cocktailing” sounds like excellent therapy, whatever’s ailing us! 🙂
Kathryn, So very sorry for the surgery, yet glad it went well and that you are recuperating, albeit slowly.
I’ve been guilty of quoting “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” to a couple of generations of medical residents, but let me hasten to say that I always told them to keep all possible diagnoses in mind as they did their workup. I’d like to think that I and the docs I trained would have ordered that MRI pretty quickly when the common stuff didn’t pan out.
Anyway, I sympathize with you. I’d been healthy as a horse (or zebra, take your choice) until pain in my back and leg brought me to a screeching halt and the need for disc surgery. My writing was put aside for surgery and my own version of happy pills.
Get well soon.
Richard, I heard that phrase is one that’s bandied about in medical school quite a bit. Disc injury is really painful, I’ve heard. Hope yours is all cleared up as well.
Wishing you a speedy recovery, Kathryn. Send any extra happy pills my way. 🙂
They’re going fast, Joe! But any leftovers have your name on ’em… :
I hate to ruin the party, but at 71 I’m doing fine and everything is in excellent working order. I was even able to stop wearing glasses when I’m out and about. Still wear ’em for reading.
I just started a new diet that is Ultra Vegan (nothing with a face or a mother, no oils [some cheating allowed], no dairy, no eggs. Lost 25 pounds after six weeks. Hopefully my bad cholesterol will drop from 500 and change down to zip at the next blood test. The MedTech is a roller derby star, so there’s no fooling on that test.
Otherwise, I’m glad y’all are still alive and kickin’ here on TKZ!! …as we inflict misery and grief upon our hapless characters.
Wow, Ultra Vegan, really? I’m glad it’s working for you. My Dad has been on a pretty extreme diet (not vegan, but ultra low fat and mostly unprocessed foods, tons of veggies) since the 1960’s, when he suffered a heart attack. At age 85 he is stronger, healthier, and has more energy than lots of guys half his age.
Five years ago experienced a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding around brain from abnormal blood vessel/aneurysm – essentially a type of stroke). Ten days in the intensive care unit not allowed to do anything for fear of recurrent bleeding. I guess I didn’t miss much as I have little memory of it:). Anti-seizure and specialty ‘protective against’ re-bleed drug for six months
Couldn’t read for a few months – could get through several pages and had no recall of what I’d read.
Lost my job due to memory difficulties and problems with multi-tasking. I’ve been very lucky (more than half die and about three quarters are seriously handicapped) continuing to improve. I’ve always LOVED reading and undertook writing as therapy.
On a slightly different angle from some earlier comments I have to say how grateful I am to modern medicine, doctors, nurses, paramedics and the whole healthcare team that has taken care of me for this and anaphylactic shock, two emergency back surgeries, carpal tunnel and shoulder surgeries. These things seemed secondary after my bleed but anyone of them would have been very debilitating (fatal in the anaphylactic shock case).
Providing full disclosure – I used to work in medicine. i’m hugely and favorably biased not just by my experiences as a patient but as a co-worker. An overwhelmingly high percentage of special people doing noble work.
So, in a way, I had a medical event START my writing. Damn it’s good to be lucky!
Imagine our forefathers and the havoc and suffering illness and accident wrought on them and theirs.
Best to you, Kathryn – I’m glad we didn’t meet wandering about a parking lot somewhere looking for our cars 😉 (been there and done that)
I have developed a method for never losing track of my car–I jot down the letter, floor number, or, in the case of Disneyworld, the fairy tale character. My system hasn’t failed me yet!
I hope you’re feeling better, Kathryn. Health issues can be really tough.
My personal experience came with major surgery and a potential cancer scare. I had just started writing my debut book at the time – NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM. I tell people that I sacrificed a body part to sell my first book. I was on medical leave from my energy job for 6 wks and I wrote the entire book while I recuperated. I got off my pain meds in a week so I could write. Writing that book was euphoric and I finished it a day before I had to be back to work. I knew it would sell, but never anticipated how well. My scary surgery will always be a positive experience for my writing.
Take time off and get back on your feet soon, Kathryn.
What an inspiring story of perserverance through a crisisis, Jordan! Kudos to you for having that kind of strength.
Here’s to your health and improvement Lady K.
And may we all reach the health level of Sir James de Missoula, must be something to do with that “grey hair is a sign of wisdom” bit in the Bible.
While I still imagine myself being strong as I was just six years ago when I started writing, I have learned that treating my body as if I were a mule was probably a bad idea. Since turning 40 I’ve had two orthopedic surgeries (foot and shoulder). My arthritis has, according to my VA doc, resulted in a bunch of degenerates hanging out in my joints, milling around behind the school smoking cigs and talking smack not to mention causing this funny sounding “pop-crickerik-slap-bok” sound in my knees and shoulders. I think the sound is some kind of degernate joint rap music. The general degeneracy of my rapper joints was tested again last week as I spent eight days running around the woods east of Fairbanks AK with a bunch of Boy Scouts who have little concept of their mortality.
The nice thing about being a VA patient is that some of the docs have no problem alleviating chronic pain with the good stuff. The entertaining but probably bad thing is, writing, let alone editing, my books while on pain killers makes for very creative grammar. Some of my most colorful characters may well have been born of long hours sitting in my comfy chair with a sore leg listening to that mellow hum in my head…oh…wait…that hum’s been there for longer than the meds.
Never mind.
Now…off to work on a blog post about an ancient Chinese/Korean geneology
Oh…I forgot to add that I learned to do accupuncture along the way too…very useful for a drug free recovery from just about anything.
Thanks Basil! I remember reading Stephen King saying that he can’t even remember writing CUJO, because he was on so many substances. Of course, that was an addiction thing, not injury, but still–amazing!
Yikes. I hope everything gets back to normal soon.
Health problem? Yep. I had a heart attack three years ago today. Not something you’d expect at 48. I had problems with math and writing for a little while. By Sept., I started doing Soduko to get the math in line.
I worried about my writing skills. In late October I gave myself permission to try NaNoWriMo. I didn’t write a novel – I just wrote. I wrote about what I was going through, about my family, about any idea I had.
Guess what? I made the deadline and 50K words.
All’s well now.
I’m impressed by your will to get back to full functioning, Ann! I always sucked at math, and it never occurred to me to try to do anything substantive about it. Back when I was applying to journalism schools, I had very good writing-related scores, grades, and credentials, but my math GRE was so abysmal it was mortifying. I simply shrugged and kept my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t care whether future journalists could handle algebra equations. I got into Columbia Journalism School, so I must have been on to something!
Fun (within limits) and speedy recovery. I was out for two weeks after relatively minor surgery. I thought I would be physically inactive, but mentally able to go on. Not so. Watching TV was too much most of the time. Just a vegetable. On the subject of cave fish, there shouldn’t be a creature more blind, as the fish don’t have eyes. Flat worms do better.
Thank you for confirming my cave fish factoid, Lance! We writers (or at least, this writer) live in fear of some reader delivering a lecture about how some detail in our book is wrong. Nice to know I nailed this one despite feeling like a bit of a mush brain. 🙂
Glad to hear you are on the mend and “happy” about it.
Two events have dangerously derailed me in the last few years. The first was being forced into the role of caregiver when my (now ex) husband was critically and permanently injured in a freak accident. 30 hours a week as caregiver and 60 hours a week at 3 jobs to make ends meet.
Extricated myself from that (although I still work 20 hours a week to help support him), this April, a natural disaster punched fist-sized holes through the roof of my building. After hashing it out with the insurance company, I am moving 10000 sf of the ex’s filthy hoarded mess into an 1800 sf house. Still have 200 boxes to go and I’ve developed a wicked case of asthma induced by mold.
But I’m letting writing be an escape from it. It comes in fits and starts and too much of it is non-fic content for pay. I’m going to a funeral this weekend, arrangements are making it a 15-hour trip each way from Kansas to California. I’ve tricked out my iPad Mini into a mini writing studio. I’m hoping to add another 10K words.
Wow, you’ve got an awful lot on your plate, Terri. Make sure to take care of yourself as you handle all of that. I at least have the luxury of being able to be completely lazy, a status that, admittedly, I overexploit! (Is overexploit a word, or does one merely exploit? See, I’m too lazy to go look it up for myself!) 🙂