I remember damage

[gwyn]

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. None of it especially great. I will start with the better stuff, though. I have been watching a lot of things on TV because I have HBO, Showtime, and Paramount Plus for a short time, so have been catching up on the buzzy HBO shows and the Trek shows on P+, most of which I've been a bit meh about, but am close to finishing Picard to get ready for its third season. Recently I watched Station Eleven to go along with my other post-apocalypse show, The Last of Us. If you'd told me I was going to get into a fucking zombie show based on a fucking video game (I hate video games) and then fall head over heels for a Nick Offerman character, I would have sneered at you, but here we are. I started watching TLOU for Pedro Pascal, found out there was bonus Anna Torv, and then the third episode wrecked me so much and I loved it so much and I just...well, as I said, here we are.

I knew the show would be better than average because Craig Mazin was the showrunner, and while sometimes he irks me, he created and wrote the magnificent Chernobyl, so he gets a lot of passes from me. The show was...okay, and I sort of half paid attention to it for Pedro, but then they killed off Anna's character and I was like, welp, I might keep watching but I sure as hell am not keeping HBO around just to see it end. But then they went and ran the episode from last Sunday, Long Long Time, and what the actual fuck was that?

This tender, lovely, mini-movie bookended by Joel and Ellie and centering survivalist Bill, played by Offerman, and nice gay guy Frank, played by Murray Bartlett, that's what. They fuckin' made me cry, and I don't cry over TV shows hardly ever! A lot of people keep talking about it being sad, and yes, it's sad in that the characters make the choice to die, but it's also one of the most hopeful and beautiful and just...triumphant endings I've ever seen in a post-apocalypse show--they chose to go out together, they chose their ending, and they made a wonderful life together in the midst of a nightmare and found each other in the most extraordinary circumstances and just...ugh, god it was so incredible. These two queer men found each other, and found love, and one of them was closeted and closed off and misanthropic and yet he opened himself up to another one, and they built a beautiful life and they died at an old age together.

Anyway, there's not a lot of zombie crap in the episode and if you're worried about watching it, and jump scares, etc., I would happily tell you when to FF or look away if you are curious to watch it. If for nothing else, the line "Not today, you New World Order jackboot fucks" is worth it alone. Ugh, Bill + Frank 4ever

And then there was Station Eleven, which is the eerily prescient story of a pandemic that starts in 2020 and kills billions of people. I didn't read the book (I don't really get to read much of anything that isn't work related anymore), and I understand it has some differences, of course, but I would actually love to talk about it (book or show, I do not care about "spoilers" with the book) with anyone else. No one I know has watched it, and I was super dubious about it--I promised my BFF I'd watch it because he adored both the show and the book, but when I talked to him earlier this week, I was...not sure I wanted to stick with it. I was super confused by the different characters and couldn't see how they were going to relate to one another, I found the modern-day parts after the apocalypse annoying and I didn't especially like grown-up Kirsten or really any of the characters, and the pandemic setting was my favorite part but some of it was devoted to characters I kind of couldn't stand, plus my favorite character, Jeevan, literally disappeared partway through and I didn't know if he was coming back.

But wow, I have to give them credit, they pulled all the different threads together and you see the whole tapestry and it's beautiful. When we see what happened to Jeevan and why he disappeared, it's so moving and lovely and heartaching, and then when he and Kirsten are reunited, OMG the feels. I wish more than anything Jeevan's brother Frank could have survived, too, but just knowing that he had found a calling as a doctor and found love and then found Kirsten again, so he knew he hadn't failed her, was just...wow. I'm still a bit unhappy about creepy fucker Tyler getting a free pass after kidnapping children and blowing some of them up, but I guess I'll just have to live with that. Miranda was a bit of a cipher to me, but Danielle Deadwyler is such a good actress that I was willing to see where she went despite the inscrutability, and then that ending, where we find out she was responsible for keeping all those infected people on the plane...that's the kind of amazing storytelling I love.

Anyway, it's been nice to have stuff to watch, because life is pretty scary right now.
I mentioned way back that I was having really terrible pain (like 8 or 9 on the pain scale) in my shoulder and sometimes my neck. I started going to physical therapy a couple times a week and that has helped, but my PT really wanted to have me see someone like a spine specialist or something, and everything was complicated by the fact that my provider left the practice in November, and most of the PAs or MDs I was interested in weren't taking new patients, and their one spine doctor there didn't do anything for me when I saw her years ago for my lower spine. Also, it was Christmas, but there was one day where things were so bad I was like "I need to see someone, anyone." I did finally get an appointment with a DO, and she was okay, but she really wanted me to get an x-ray and then see a sports medicine doctor.

I saw him in early January and he was talking to me about the x-rays looking like "cervical facet arthropathy" which I guess is basically arthritis in the facet joints on the right side of my neck. But he wanted a detailed bone scan to see what was happening in the actual vertebrae, and I had that on Wednesday. It's not the bone scan they give you when you're a menopausal old lady--this one (bone scintigraphy) involves an injection of radioactive stuff and then you go kill time for three hours and then you lie motionless on a flatbed scanner for an hour. It's not...fun, but at least the person who does the scans was super nice and it was on Capitol Hill, so I got to wander around one of my fave areas I haven't been to in years, and I met up with my friend and we went to IHOP (you can eat or drink whatever, you just have to let the radioactive material have enough time to get into your bones).

On Thursday afternoon I got a message saying there was a new test result in MyChart, and it was pretty terrifying. I don't even know what kind of a sociopath dumps something like that in someone's mailbox, essentially, without contextualizing it or explaining the medical jargon, and without letting the medical provider talk to you first. It was just insanely cruel. The report essentially said something I didn't understand and "metasteses" and "myeloma." So I know enough to know that was very double plus ungood, and googled the rest, and it was basically saying that my neck was lit up with potential multiple myeloma, which I guess is bone marrow cancer. There is no cure--there's treatment, but no cure.

Since it was the end of the day, I figured no one was going to be contacting me to discuss this, so I basically wandered around the house being kind of dumbstruck, and my phone was charging in the office while I was lying on the couch, trying to take this in, and I missed the call from Dr. Chung, the rehabilitative medicine guy who ordered the scan. He left a message--I guess he was on vacation this week, poor guy, so I'm sure he was feeling pretty awful about having to talk to me about this. I spent most of the night thinking about all the shit I'd been reading about multiple myeloma, plus I popped my jaw out of alignment and that hurt a fucking lot, and I still can't get it to go back in, which gave me an even worse headache.

I connected with Dr. Chung in the morning, fortunately--his voicemail mentioned seeing a hematology oncologist, and he said he was going to have his office set up an appointment for that and one for an MRI so they can see what the soft tissues look like. He said that the bone scans are not a good tool for diagnosing that kind of illness, and that it might mean that's typical of what you'd see in a scan for someone who does have multiple myeloma but you have to use other means to actually diagnose that. (All of which sound painful.) He was telling me that it's not a definitive statement that I have cancer, just that the technician who reads the bone scans is indicating that's what it could potentially be and why I'm having this pain. He stressed that it could still mean something else along the lines of damage to the joints.

So I have an appointment with a hematology oncologist on the 15th, and am waiting to hear from the MRI people, and that's where I am right now, I guess. This is all really frightening and upsetting--I am not afraid to die, I am perfectly ready to go and the only thing that really keeps me here is mostly my kitty--but I've seen what treatment is like, and I know what this sort of thing can do, and I just don't want to go through the horror that my mom and sister and Sandy went through. I'm sure it's a painful and debilitating cancer if it's in your fucking bones, and when you live alone and far away from friends, dealing with all of that looks pretty fucking bleak.

None of which is helped by that fact that I have fast-growing cataracts and I can't see anything! I got a new glasses prescription in April and by end of July, I already couldn't see super well with them. Even my new computer glasses were losing some of their utility, and my eye doc was like "welp, those beginnings of cataracts I mentioned three months ago are now bad enough that you can't see the top line on the chart, where before you could see the second from the bottom." So I have to get cataract surgery, which terrifies me beyond words, and I was starting to save up and I got a different health plan so that maybe I could have some of it paid for, but then this whole shoulder/neck thing started and all my money started vanishing to PT. (I will spare you the nightmare story about a neat device I was getting for cervical traction and the unexpected ridiculous expense of that.) I'm deeply afraid of anything involving my vision, despite knowing that millions of people do this all the time and my doc having some places he has great faith in, etc.

Plus I'm really overwhelmed by the logistics (I live alone, I have an arthritic old cat I have to feed and clean a box for but you're not supposed to bend, how will I drive with one eye still needing a horrendously bad glasses prescription, etc.) but then this whole bone scan thing above has sent me into a tailspin. If I'm going to do some kind of treatment, assuming I get the bad diagnosis, I would like to at least maybe be able to see while I'm in the death process? But I don't know how something like that could even work--chemo and surgery and all that shit. So obviously the vision would take a back seat. But it's such a drag--I want to be able to go to movies with minim_calibre, but I have such trouble driving in the wet darkness that is Seattle. I can't stop thinking about it and churning everything over in my mind, even though I know it does no good. Man, wan't it enough to have colon cancer and my face getting carved up with skin cancers and just having a bad shoulder and generally exceeding my design parameters by being tall?

All of this feels way too flaily. I suppose that's why I'm so caught up in gay middle-age men romancing each other in the zombie apocalypse.

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Well, hell. I hope that's not what's going on. (It is, weirdly, one of the less common cancers where multiple family members of friends have it or had it, though the one who's no longer living was hella fucking old when she died, and their treatments have been tolerable, more similar to what Mom deals with with her "keeping the stage 4 breast cancer in check" treatments than to the more horribly brutal treatments. So there's that, I suppose. Still, hoping that's not it.)

[gwyn]

Oh, that's interesting--that was the first thing that hit me: rare. Amazing you've known multiple poeple!

[sperrywink]

Oh, man. That is all horrible. I wish the best for you, in whatever form that can take.

{{{hugs}}}

[mecurtin]

well SHIT. Keep us posted.

I know a bunch of people in the Seattle area, my kids know more, and a bunch of them are reasonably healthy & trustworthy 20-to-40 y.o.s who might be willing to be a roommate & helper (cat tender, driver, etc). Let us know if you want us to send up the Fan-Bat-Signal.

[minim_calibre]

If you're willing to message me so we can exchange info, and Gwyn would like, I can help coordinate if necessary. (Obviously, hoping it isn't, but totally willing to handle some of the grunt work.)

[aurumcalendula]

Oh no! *hugs*

[muccamukk]

Oh jeeze. That's awful! I hope you figure something out :(

*hugs*

[mackiemesser]

I'm so sorry to hear about all the stressful medical stuff. I really hate how doctors dump stuff into MyChart or other health apps with no summary or explanation as if non-medical people will be able to understand it. It's messed up. I have all appendages crossed that the soft tissue tests are more favorable.
Eye stuff is a pain. My dad has had a lot of eye surgeries over the years and the cataract stuff wasn't too bad in comparison.

I kinda miss the days of just network TV, you know? There's so much to watch and my over tired brain just doesn't want to deal with it.

[gwyn]

Yeah, it's funny, they usually send me a survey after every single thing, but I have no surveys this time. Ironic, that.

[musesfool]

I'm so sorry you're dealing with all of that. I hope it ends up being something more benign and easily treatable. *hugs*

[carbonel]

Oh, geez, that is the worst way to get news like that, to just have it dumped into MyChart. I'm so sorry you had to learn that way and that it's such lousy news to start with. I hope you and the oncologist can come up with a reasonable plan.

I had a cataract (a side effect of eye surgery) and it all went quite smoothly. There was this panicky moment when the vision didn't feel right, and then the doctor took out the one stitch and things went back to normal. I still remember how relieved I felt.

[gwyn]

I should have the MRI results by the time I see the oncologist, too, so who knows what they'll throw in my in box without contextualizing!

[dine]

well, that completely bites. I'm so sorry you're facing some big heath stuff - it's scary and the way they handled informing you inhumane. I do hope you get answers, and some not!dire news once you've talked to people

[gwyn]

"Inhumane" is a good way of putting it, yes. I think a lot of this isn't helped by the fact that I don't have a regular provider, because the one I had left the practice in November.

[sakana17]

Oh, ugh, what a hideous way of telling you news like that. I am hoping hard the next tests will show it's something far less scary.

[gwyn]

Thank you--yeah, next week sounds like it's going to be a wild ride, for sure, with all the testing and meetings.

[dar_vidder]

I'm so sorry. I'll be keeping you in my thoughts, sending all my best vibes your way. <3

[gwyn]

Thank you!

[spikedluv]

That is awful! The medical system makes too much use of those types of websites when there are some things that should definitely come from a professional who can explain it all. I'm sorry you found out that way and I hope the doc is correct and it's not the worst possible scenario. *fingers crossed*

I also have fears about my vision. My aunt had both eyes done (at different times) and it all went smoothly for her, if her experience can help you feel better about things.

*hugs, if wanted*

[gwyn]

I find it so frustrating that someone whose entire job is centered around having vision and seeing minute detail is losing theirs! And apparently, they do not knock you out, you have to do the surgery awake!! I mean, what the actual fuck. Craziness.

[ratcreature]

That is an awful way to break bad news to a patient. I hope it turns out something less terrifying than bone cancer after all. And also that you find a solution to help your pain.

I remember the rapid cataract worsening period from my right eye and it sucks even if it's only one eye at a time. But it's fixable (though the artificial lense is not as good as a natural one from my experience, it beats an opaque blob) and waiting won't make the outcome worse like with other medical stuff, so as long as you can manage with whatever sight you have, the cataracts can wait and your sight will still be okay after.

Having to juggle multiple medical issues makes things just exponentially worse, even with less scary problems than (possibly) cancer.

But if you think restored sight would make handling all the other medical treatments or logistics easier, you might even fit it in before the other stuff starts, depending on how booked the eye clinic is and how urgent the other treatment. From my experience standard cataract surgery in itself is managable while living alone with no extra support, and won't stop daily life activities except for taking care with infection risks of not getting water in the eye and such. But it was much less restricting than some retina procedures I had, where they wanted me to orient my head in certain ways after and I gad restrictionson using my eyes for reading and screens (and my situation was even mild, the movement stuff for some retina aftercare can get nightmarish). With cataract surgery your eye just works again right after (any bandages after are only to preventyou from touching your eye with germ carrying hands in the immediate aftermath), and aftercare is about infection prevention, so mostly a schedule of eye drops that are annoyingly frequent.

As for having two very different eye situations after, I had no trouble with that, but from what I heard that can cause issues from double vision to headaches and you can't really predict that fully.

But from my experience if you have one bad eye and one good eye for a time, your brain just uses the good and ignores the blind(er) side. As you know, I delayed fixing my after cataract issues due to the pandemic and anxiety so for some months I was pretty much blind on my right eye, in that I barely could make out bright large blobs of color on that side at the end. But because my left eye worked, it was only annoying. I don't know about driving, because I don't drive, so my vision getting even worse didn't change that for me, but generally I had no trouble navigating in travel safely with only one usable eye.

[gwyn]

Yeah, I know I shouldn't gripe, considering what some people, like you, go through with their eyeballs. I guess depending on what we find out with Schrödinger's terminal illness, I may be pestering you with lots of questions.

[princessofgeeks]

I am so sorry about the medical news. Hope you get some context and a manageable diagnoses soon. Thinking of you.

[marycrawford]

What a fucking nightmare, I'm so sorry. You don't have a diagnosis yet, so I'm crossing my fingers in a supportive way that it's Not That and you got a horrible scare that you can then have room to be mad about. You have all my sympathy for everything you're going through.

[gwyn]

Thank you--that's a good way of looking at it, that I could have room to be mad about it later if it turns out okay. I think next week, with all the appointments, will be a wild ride.

[marthawells]

I am so sorry this is happening. What marycrawford said, I'm crossing my fingers too.

[gwyn]

Thank you so much--I've decided to call it Schrödinger's terminal illness to amuse myself and keep me from thinking too much!

[tamsin]

That's a lot to have to deal with. Crossing my fingers for you!

[silk_knickers]

I hope that is not your diagnosis. If it is - therapeutic options are evolving very quickly in all areas of oncology these days, please don't lose hope. :(

[gwyn]

Thank you--I definitely appreciate the scientific perspective!

[catwalksalone]

Oh no! I'm so sorry you're going through this, the not knowing and having to go through such trauma before you even have a diagnosis is so cruel and unfair. Sending you a million hugs and lots of strength.

[gwyn]

Yeah, I keep waiting for the usual post-procedure survey they send, but I think it's hilarious that the one time they haven't sent me one is the time I have the most to say. Thank you for the hugs!

[sineala]

*hug*

I'm really sorry. I will think good thoughts for you.

[jenab]

*hugs*

[dorinda]

Aaaaaargh, I am mad about those doctors, and the automation of the test results. GRRRR. Like everyone else, I am hoping that it was just ("just") you getting an unfiltered and undecoded list of technician-speak, not an actual diagnosis. But I still want to club them on the head.

Big hugs and hopes from way over here.

Also, I am so looking forward to watching that episode... I loooove Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, sigh. I'm also a big fan of Craig Mazin, and 100% agreed on Chernobyl. So this sounds directly up my alley.

[gwyn]

I don't know if they think no one is capable of research or they just are truly sociopaths because they don't work directly with patients, or whatever, but man, they need some retraining!

I hope you've had a chance to watch Frank and Bill, or will soon--that's the happiest i've been in a long time watching that episode.

[kass]

Oh my dear this all sounds so hard. I have no wisdom but I love you.

[gwyn]

::Sends you love right back!::

[what_alchemy]

I loooved Station Eleven, especially Jeevan and Kirsten's relationship to him. A dream S2, which I know I'll never get, would be entirely Jeevan-centric, tracing what he did in the time they spent apart. Wish I wrote for TV and anyone listened to me.

I fucking hate all this health shit for you. I can't believe they just updated you chart without calling you first. Fucking inhuman. I'm so sorry about all of it. I so hope it's not cancer. I wish all this wasn't happening.

[gwyn]

Oooo yay, someone else who's watched Station Eleven! God, I just loved Jeevan right from the start, I felt like I grokked him on a cellular level. I loved how he stood up and wanted to do something, even though he didn't know what to do, to save Arthur. How numb he was about everything that happened, but how he stepped up to care for Kirsten. And he made me laugh so hard when he threw the book while he was struggling to crawl home, trying not to die, and yelled "So pretentious!" I honestly wasn't sure for a long time what I thought about the show, I wasn't connecting with anyone at first except him but he disappeared partway through. And then that second to last episode, OMG.I so wanted him to get together with that woman who rescued him and was thrilled when he did. (I can't recall her name but I liked her a lot.) There was just so much love there with those women, even though he was afraid and upset so much of the time, and it made me sigh with happiness.

I too want to know what happened in the time they were apart, how he came to terms with everything. I wish so much Frank could have lived, even though he probably couldn't have made that trek over the ice. I really liked him too, and would have loved to know Siya as well.

[kore]

Oh holy shit. I'm so sorry. And yeah, the way they just DUMP results into MyChart is horrible (that was how I found out I had a splenic aneurysm! Over Thanksgiving!). It's an unpopular opinion but I feel like they shouldn't just release those results until you've had a chance to talk with a doctor or something.

If you'd told me I was going to get into a fucking zombie show based on a fucking video game (I hate video games) and then fall head over heels for a Nick Offerman character, I would have sneered at you, but here we are. I started watching TLOU for Pedro Pascal, found out there was bonus Anna Torv, and then the third episode wrecked me so much and I loved it so much and I just...well, as I said, here we are.

Lol, YES.

I loved Station Eleven madly and I'm pissed there are no DVDs. TLOU is a lot of fun, but S11 was really something special.

I am HOPING the doc is right and the MRI will show something better than freaking potential multiple myeloma. I wish I had a car so I could come over and help out or at least help drive you around.

[gwyn]

UGH, I must have missed that post about the spleen! I'm so sorry you went through that. Horrific.They absolutely should not be allowed to release test results until a medical professional who sees patients is able to discuss them with you. I think it's bitterly hilar that the one time they haven't sent me a survey is the one time I have something to say.

I really can't afford to keep HBO, so I only have it for a couple months (I got it specifically so I could watch a movie minim_calibre wanted to talk about), and yeah, it makes me pissed I can't buy S11 and have it to watch in future. I keep watching the clip of Jeevan and Kirsten seeing each other at the end and hugging over and over on YT. Lol. I'm pathetic. Himesh Patel's faaaace.