osheas::blog

After a nice week of no travel, we’re leaving tomorrow morning for San Jose. It’s all work: the annual California Library Association conference. The preparation is always more difficult than the actual event so it will be kind of nice to get up there and get started.

But before turning off the computer for the night, I have to tell the quick story of Chuck’s Thing on the Roof of His Mouth. It’s been there for about seven months, doing nothing much but hanging around and being a fairly unobtrusive bump. Our regular doc saw it when we had physicals and was so unimpressed by it he said, “Don’t worry about it  it’s nothing!” Oddly enough though, when Chuck had an abcess on, uh, the Area That Must Not Be Named, the antibiotics he took made the bump a bit smaller! When he went for his dental checkup however, the dentist noticed it, asked about it, and sent Chuck off to an oral surgeon (the dentist didn’t know what it was either, but found it more intriguing than our regular doc had). The oral surgeon also didn’t know what it was but being an oral surgeon said, “Let’s cut it out!” So that’s what happened last Friday. I missed the really gruesome money shot right after the surgery, but caught a good shot Saturday. the followup shot is from tonight.

Chuck saw the oral surgeon today and he was quite impressed with the healing. The consensus still is on its being a thing, but better a thing gone than a Thing on the Roof of Your Mouth. Oh, and he can’t eat croutons for a few more days.

Sheesh, life got away from me again. It’s been a week of a lot of work, with the odd recreational or small surgery activity thrown in.

Last weekend, we went down to Ocean Ave here in Long Beach to watch the last day of the Tour of California. I’d never seen a professional bike race before, and it was actually really exciting! The riders were averaging 28-30MPH and rode so close to the gutter that you thought they were going to take you out if you stood too close to the curb. Given all of the glorious cameras we have, I’m sad to say that the only cameras we had with us at the race were camera phones. So it goes. Here are the sorry low-res photos we took. Turns out Chuck’s KRZR phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera, so takes much better pics than my RAZR. Next time we’ll try and remember better cameras.

Fast forward the week to yesterday and I had an appointment for more slicing and dicing at the dermatologist’s. Sic semper sun worshiping fair-skinned folks. We spend our golden years being slowly carved to pieces. I had a mole on my back that had changed color so needed to be cut out. The doctor, to save me a trip, performed a very deep biopsy - basically he took the whole thing (barring any bad findings from the biopsy) out right then and there. Chuck had the big camera, and photographed the entire proceeding. I missed it all, as I was laying on my stomach for the entire procedure. The chunk was about half an inch long and probably one quarter inch deep, and the doc closed the resulting hole up with three stitches. I was very brave - he said early on, “I’m not hurting you, am I?” To which I replied, gritting my teeth, “No it’s okay, I’m tough.” And that was just him giving me a shot of local anesthetic to numb the area. It’s a little tender today, but that’s it. No blood is pouring out of the wound or anything Gruesome high-res pics are here. Squeamish folks be prepared - you will see scalpel action and chunks of flesh if you click. You have been warned.

Tomorrow we are doing the L.A. Marathon. It’s a very last-minute thing; basically we decided this past Wednesday to do it. Our friend Bill is a legacy runner - he’s run every L.A. Marathon, and is running out of steams and interest. This has manifested itself thusly: he doesn’t train. At all. His long run leading up to this marathon (number 22) was a three-mile run. For those who have never run a marathon, let me assure you that that is NOT enough training. At least, it’s not enough training to RUN it. Our plan is to walk it - briskly - in about seven hours with Bill. It’s an all new course, and given that our pace will be so manageable, we’ll take lots of pics and some movies, too. You can track runners online so if you have nothing better to do on a pretty Sunday, keeping in mind we’ll be at it ALL DAY, look for numbers 25261 and 25262. That’s us!

I’m off very early Monday morning to Seattle for a conference, so may not get a chance to report on the marathon until a bit later in the week. But THEN it’s time for Chuck’s BIG BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION because he’s turning 60 this coming Thursday, so the marathon may be completely forgotten in the breathless recounting of the b-day celebrations. Much fun will be had by him over the course of the week, but I can’t say more now because some of it is secret and while he doesn’t always read the blog, it would be just my luck that he starts today when I spill the beans about his birthday surprise(s). ‘Nuff said.

Along with checking out fireworks yesterday, we also ran in the Palisades Will Rogers 5K & 10K in Pacific Palisades, CA. it’s a challenging course with a very nasty hill at about mile three that goes steadily up for about a mile. It sells itself as a neighborhood run, and encourages families (that means lots of strollers) to run or walk it. The problem is that everybody starts at the same time, so the start gets quite clogged. And even though they use chip timing (so the clock doesn’t start on you until you actually STEP on the starting line), people still feel the need to jostle their way up to the front. Now let’s be honest here: the likely winners are already at the front, so the posers pushing forward are just that - posers.

Anyway, we were well back, not being very concerned with our time and so we were surrounded by a fair number of walkers and strollers, and the odd idiot who decided that they were just too fast for these pokey folks and who was going to by God elbow their way to momentary stardom. I got elbowed by one of these folks and went down on the asphalt not more than fifty yards from the start. I stuck my hands out to catch myself, but went down on my left with my left knee taking the force of the fall and grinding along the pavement for a foot or so. Our friend Perri grabbed my one arm, and another kind soul grabbed the other so I could get up before being trampled. I kept running (not having a lot of choice in the crowd), and was surprised enough that nothing really hurt. I looked down a minute or so later and saw blood oozing down my leg, but it didn’t seem too bad. Chuck, who had headphones on, missed the whole thing. I was feeling a little letdown by that, as a part of me wanted him to go find the miscreant who whacked me and give him a good thumping. Oh well.

I went over to the first aid tent at the end and was ministered to by two no doubt grossly overqualified doctors who mentioned that I was the first adult they had seen all day (their previous patients had been little kids who fell down during the 5K). After much kidding about Barbie band-aids and lollipops for my bravery, I was sent on my way with two band-aids covering the weeping knee and elbow wounds. They were appreciative of my roadside cleanup; I used the aid station water to get rid of most of the grit.

My total injury count: both knees scraped (one badly, one minor), one elbow skinned, and one palm gashed. I woke up today feeling like I’d been hit by a light truck and with a stiff knee. So it goes. Who knew running was a contact sport?

Another day, another doctor’s appointment. Today it was Chuck’s turn. He had a date with the dermatologist: the removal of a basal cell on his neck - weirdly close to where mine was (yikes, it’s catching!). I went with him for moral support, and to drive him home if he didn’t feel up to it.

The doctor is a really cool guy, and a super surgeon. He’d be a great plastic surgeon if only it weren’t for these crazy scruples he has about saving lives. Anyway, when the nurse came in we immediately started swapping gross-out stories of injuries we have suffered and seen. The doctor came in on us and joined in and soon topped us all with a truly awful tale of a guy who blew his head off (apparently quite literally) when he stuck an M-80 firecracker in his mouth and it accidentally went off. These were clearly our kind of people!

When it came time to start cutting, I whipped out my Razr phone and asked if I could take photos. The doc was fine with it, so I snapped away (why I don’t come better prepared to these events, I don’t know). They took a surprisingly big chunk out of Chuck’s neck (about a tablespoon, as best as I could tell) and left him with an incision about two inches long. All in all, I felt very CSI-ish watching and didn’t get at all queasy. There was actually very little blood. Once the basal cell and surrounding tissue was removed there was a fairly cavernous gap in Chuck’s neck. I pondered how the doctor would take care of it, but needn’t have worried. In a series of stitches that would make Betsy Ross proud, the doc sewed Chuck up so neatly that by the end it looked more like a scratch than an incision. He goes back in 10 days to have the stitches removed. There is no way in HELL that I am even contemplating taking them out for him!!

Mo’ better pics of the goings on here. Warning: these pictures do contain images that may be unsettling to wimpy cowards and yellow-bellied wusses. I’m just saying.

Three days post-surgery and feeling fine. I can turn my head now and it’s no longer tender to the touch. Chuck is really looking forward to taking the stitches out. I’m looking forward to getting them out.

Just when I thought it was safe to put away the bandages and polysporin, I had a superficial basal cell carcinoma removed from my neck yesterday. This is like something my sister used to say to me: boys always get scars on their knees or their elbows, while girls get the scars on their chins or their foreheads. So of course my basal cell carcinoma (mine didn’t look nearly as gross as any of these) is on the side of my neck where all the world gets to see and enjoy the incision. The doctor offered me the cream option, but I opted for the more permanent cut it out option (the cream has a fifty-fifty chance of getting rid of it once and for all, the surgery option is 100% - I prefer those odds). Anyway, we went in yesterday afternoon, and first the doctor drew an outline of the incision area (he had to cut out a larger area than the actual carcinoma to make the whole thing heal correctly) so I looked like somebody had made a bizarre attempt to draw the eye from the back of a dollar bill on the side of my neck) and I got a lidocaine shot in my neck (and with my skinny neck, the shot hit a nerve and numbed my jaw and my ear, along with the neck area -a very weird feeling, or lack of, let me tell you). Then the slicing and dicing commenced. I coudn’t feel any pain, but did get a serious case of the willies from the sensation of stretching and pulling and the snip-snip sound of him trimming my skin. Brrrrrrr……

The whole procedure took about half an hour. The feeling in my ear returned about four hours later. Now my neck feels sore and a bit pulled and I’m sporting an inch and a half long stitched up scar. Lovely. The stitches come out in 7 to 10 days when we will be in Michigan, so Chuck volunteered to take out the stitiches, and the doctor actually thought that was an okay idea! The doctor was going to give Chuck a surgical kit (which sent him over the moon), but they were out of them, so it looks like it’s scissors and tweezers for me!

Pics here. I’ll monitor progress as it heals.

Well, I am, I hope, on the tail end of the last of my extreme makeover surgeries. 23 days ago I had my wrist operated on to correct a protruding ulna, the result of an old break. They took off about half an inch of bone (off thee end, so no plates or screws were needed), and ten days ago the doctor took the stitches out. Here is the progression of the healing process:

the splint	incision w/stitches
12 days post-surgery	23 days post-surgery

These shots aren’t super gross, sorry. This whole surgery has involved very little in the way of blood, puss, or gore of any sort. So for those who need a little ickiness in their lives, here you go.

So yesterday was the big day! After twelve days stuck in a splint over my elbow, we finally got to see my latest surgical results. The doc cut through the bandaages, off came the splint and there it was: my now withered left arm. It’s weak as a kitten, but I’m free! It’s one dat later and I’m now back to typing with both hands. I can’t lift anything heavy or do anything requiring much strength yet, but it’s getting stronger with every passing hour and most exciting, I can type with two hands now. Cool! Now I’m sporting a wrist brace and feeling very liberated and a good deal cleaner. I soaked the arm in the tub and did some serious molting. Several layers of dead skin came off my arm, leaving a gross film all over the bathtub. Yuck! But also ahhhhh…. Pics of the inveiling here (all we had was my Razr camera phone which, I must say, did a nice job recording the event!

The arm looks kind of funny now. I was pretty used to that ulna bone sticking out and now it’s gone, leaving my already skinny arm looking even skinnier. The scar wwill be almost invisible though. So all in all, another great surgical experience, couresy of the doctors at USC!

My friend Carole found a gruesome site that nicely shows what I had done to my wrist. Many cool, gory photos are included. Oh, and my surgery did NOT include a plate - it wasn’t needed. Sure glad I was unconscious!

Well, it’s day three post-surgery and things are getting better. The wrist hurt like a son of a gun at first, but it’s a dull ache now. A constant dull ache. A twenty-four hour dull ache. Can you tell I’m getting tired of the constant dull ache? This is it, though. I am now officially Jamie Sommers. I’m going Vicodin-free today (cuz it is just a dull ache, right?) as I would like to do a bit more than lay on the couch going, “Ooh, look at the pretty clouds on the celing!” all day. But seriously, I figure if I’m going back to work tomorrow, I should probably be off the hard stuff. Also, and this is just between you, me and the wall, vicodin constipates you something awful and well, need I say more? So that’s the latest from old Lefty O’Shea, fastest one-handed typist in town.

BTW - the photo with this post is true. They really do write on the limb they’re operating on. Seems like a sensible precaution to me. A nurse wrote “yes,” then the surgeon came by and put his initials by it. Just so they’re all on the same page. A few photos of the makeover are here (sorry, no gory shots - all G-rated).