Why am I having surgery, you ask? Welp, I found out in August that I have a patch of oral squamous cell cancer on my lower left gum. Let me say first that it is eminently treatable, I have a top rate team taking care of me, I have an excellent prognosis of recovery, and nobody should be freaking about about this. I’ve got it handled.

The Background:

In 2001 my dentist put a crown on a molar in my lower left jaw (Molar 19 if you grok dentistspeak) that had been root canal-ed in Sweden. Shortly after the crown was installed a small patch of inflammation appeared on the gum directly under the crown. The dentist checked it, didn’t see anything concerning, told me to use salt water rinses, and said that he would monitor it.

The inflammation continued over the next twenty years, never really hurting or anything, just there. In July 2021 I had the bicuspid next to the molar crowned. The inflammation began to get a bit puffy. I was supposed to have it biopsied but the periodontist I was sent to … let’s just say that he didn’t inspire confidence. Fast forward to this spring’s dental cleaning when my dentist said, “This is growing. You really need to get this biopsied—I’m making an appointment for you with an oral surgeon.” The OS turned out to be the same one who took out Ramón’s wisdom teeth so I knew he was good.

I went there, he looked at the inflammation and opined that I was having some kind of reaction to the dental cement in the crowns, but that we’d take samples and send them off to pathology anyway just to confirm. He numbed me up, snipped out five bits of gum, and sent me on my way.

A week later, he called. To his shock, it was oral squamous cell cancer, the most common form of oral cancer. Since I don’t smoke at all or use any tobacco products he really didn’t expect this diagnosis. But it needed to come out tout de suite so my August and September suddenly became filled with medical visits.

The Medical Visits:

The Oncology Surgeon: Doctor E (nice guy, very competent) x-rayed my jaw, palpated my neck (nobody, by the way, has been able to feel any swollen lymph nodes, nothing has ever shown up on my blood tests, and all the x-rays of my teeth including the ones taken at my dentist show no sign of cancer in the bone), scoped my nose and throat, and laid out a surgical plan. He would surgically remove the two molars and two bicuspids on my lower left jaw, remove the cancerous gum tissue and a strip of jawbone to make sure nothing had gotten in there, do some reconstruction on my jawbone, then wrap everything up by doing a biopsy on the lymph nodes under that side of the jaw. Everything would be sent off to pathology, at which point it would be decided whether or not I needed radiation, chemo, both, or neither. In about six months or so I could be fitted with a partial denture or implants, depending on how well the jawbone healed.

Pre-surgery physical: That was done at my GP’s office and was a standard physical with an additional EKG and chest x-ray. Everything came back okay (I have a little bit of opacity at the bottom of my lungs, but so do 90% of people in the United States who had COVID so…) and I was cleared for surgery.

The Radiation Oncologist: Dr. D (very nice guy, also extremely competent, with a great scheduler and nurse) took my history, palpated my neck, and felt around in my mouth. He told me I would most likely need radiation and what I could expect from it. Treatment would take six weeks; every week day I would drive to their office where I’d lie on a table and a mask that had been fitted to my face would hold me in place while I got hit with radiation. I could expect loss of taste, a drop in saliva production, and increased soreness and pain in my jaw and throat as the treatments proceeded. It would become painful to swallow during the second half of the treatments and I’d probably go on liquids, at which point I would need to make sure that I was taking in 2000 calories a day as the pain and lack of taste would affect my interest in eating. That being said, they have good painkillers that are very effective for this sort of thing, and I have a Ninja blender that could turn a brick into soup.

Long term effects would be a permanent drop in my saliva production (he said I’d probably need to have a water bottle next to my bed, which I already do), but it wouldn’t affect my ability to swallow or speak, and my sense of taste would eventually come back. I can live with that.

The Chemotherapy Oncologist: Dr. T (also a very nice guy—really, everyone I met at the cancer center was a doll) had spent a rotation at the University of Chicago Medical Center so we commiserated on Chicago winters. He didn’t think that I would need chemo, but it would depend on the PET scan and the path results of the excised tissue. We talked a little bit about the effects of chemo and what I could expect from that. He also asked me when I was supposed to get the PET scan. When I said it was two weeks out he said, “That’s unacceptable,” made some calls, and got it for me the next morning.

The PET-CT scan: I showed up after not eating anything since midnight, got a shot of radioactive glucose, waited for an hour for it to make the rounds of my body, then spent a half hour with my arms over my head while the scanner did its thing. A PET scan finds areas of high metabolic activity, which can include cancer, incisions, infections, and recent bone breaks. Unsurprisingly, it picked up on some low-level activity in my jaw, more apparent on the side with the cancer and much spottier on the other side. The doctor who wrote the report said that the other side might be due to an infection; since I had an URI/sinus infection complete with sore throat, coughing, etc. at the time, that could explain it. Oh, and apparently I have a large mass on my right ovary, but it didn’t react to the tracer so it’s either a cyst or a fibroid. Quelle surprise, said the woman with PCOS. I’ll get that dealt with once the jaw is done.

The Surgery:

The surgery was scheduled to happen on last Monday but there was a scheduling miscommunication between my surgeon’s office and the hospital so the event has been moved to 7:30 AM on Monday, October 9. Once I’m out of surgery I’ll spend between 2-5 days in the hospital (I’m hoping for two but it’ll be whatever they recommend), then go home to recuperate and heal for 2-3 weeks before they start the radiation and/or chemo.

Pretty much every medical professional I have spoken to has gone out of their way to reassure me that they can handle this and I have an excellent prognosis. I choose to believe them, so I’ve been doing my best not to panic. I probably won’t be bringing my laptop to the hospital but I’ll load my login details into my phone and hopefully I can update you tomorrow. Think good thoughts for me, please, and if you would like to support me in a more material way you can always join my Patreon. The most basic tier gets a free short story from me every month for $3, plus updates on my work and sneak peeks at the current WIP. Higher tiers will get bonus material, a free ebook, print book, or hardcover book, and all proceeds will go towards paying off my medical bills. And if you can’t swing that, totally cool—I will be happy with prayers, healing vibes, and any good thoughts you can shoot my way.

So I caught the season finale of And Just Like That (the Sex and the City continuation) yesterday, and the first five minutes and last ten minutes made me want to throw things at the wall.

Now, I have actually been enjoying this season. In fact, I’ve enjoyed the entire show so far, which came as a bit of a surprise because I tried rewatching SatC a while ago and had to turn it off because I wanted to strangle most of the characters. But hey, there’s twenty-five years between original broadcast and now, and attitudes change. The nice thing about AJLT is that the characters are all my age and have similar problems so I can hook into their storylines far more easily.

Anyway, back to the Season Two finale. It opens with Carrie getting a call from [SPOILER] and leaving her apartment door open while she takes the call. Which wouldn’t be an issue except that she now has a kitten and had been in the middle of greeting the kitten when her phone rang. I literally sat there saying out loud, “Carrie, get the door. Get the door, Carrie. Get the door. Get the door. CARRIE, GET THE MOTHERFUCKING DOOR BEFORE YOU LOSE THAT KITTEN!”

Which kind of cut down on my enjoyment of the scene. And indeed Carrie finishes the call in time to see the kitten toddling into the hallway and scoops it up, at which point I could breathe again. Okay, maybe that scene only bothers cat owners.

But then we get the denouement with Aidan (more spoilers here so if you haven’t seen the episode yet don’t read this post). In the previous episode he finds out that his 14-year-old-son Wyatt got pissed off at his mom, decided to get drunk and drove Aidan’s truck back to their farm where he promptly crashed the car into a tree and broke his arm and leg. Okay, it has been established that the kid has issues. Fine.

But after Carrie’s last dinner in her treasured brownstone apartment Aidan shows up, sits her down, and explains that he was the resident parent while his ex-wife had to fly around on business, and that he needs to be there for Wyatt until Wyatt is out of his teens, which will be in five years. He then tells Carrie with his whole fucking chest that they can’t be together for that period of time and asks her to wait for him, telling her that it’ll go by in a snap.

And she says yes. And they go to bed before he heads back to his farm house and his kid in Virginia. And I was left there thinking, “…wait, what?”

The thing is, Carrie is inherently selfish. She’s beautiful, kooky, funny, and has great taste in clothes. She’s also selfish. It’s why she clicked so well with Big—they were both self-obsessed New Yorkers who got off on the drama of their breakups and makeups. Aidan was never, ever right for her—he wasn’t back in the original series, and he’s still not now. So I find it hard to believe that that Carrie meekly agreed to wait for five fucking years until Wyatt grows out of his phase (assuming that happens at all, but that is a whole ‘nother issue that I won’t get into here). This woman is 56. She’s already lost one husband and had a hip replacement. She’s in the age range where bad medical shit starts to happen more and more often. She’s closer to the end of her life than she is to the beginning of it. She’s selfish. And she’s just going to drift around her beautiful new apartment with her cat Shoe and patiently wait for Aidan?

I call bullshit. This is not what Carrie Bradshaw would do (frankly, it’s not what any intelligent, wealthy, self-centered widow in her mid-fifties would do). She’d call Seema up and rage about being dumped for Wyatt, Charlotte would shame her about wanting Aidan to choose her over his son, she’d come to terms with it and write Aidan a beautiful breakup letter hoping that he finds ways to help Wyatt and wishing him all the best, and she’d move on. Not this modern take on Miss Havisham nonsense, even if she did wind up on a beach in Greece with Seema.

Sorry. I’m having flashbacks to the last season of Game of Thrones. The AJLT producers were so damn close to sticking the landing on this, but my writer brain cannot see it as anything but a massive fumble.

We just got word that the portable AC unit that was supposed to arrive today will be delayed until tomorrow. As it is about 108°F out there at the moment and the downstairs is muggy as hell I have decided to take the day off, retire to the bedroom, and catch up on Good Omens 2 and a couple of movies that have been in my watch queue.

Yes, I could go into the office and do some work. But frankly, this has been a bitch of a week what with various things going spla and I need a freaking day off. Ramón has headed off to game at a friend’s house and the J Crew are currently splooting on the cool tile floor in the master bath so my time is my own and I want to watch David Tennant and Michael Sheen try to save the world while being completely oblivious to the romantic tension between their characters.

Also, for people who have only really seen Michael Sheen in recent years or maybe the Twilight movies, go check him out as Lucian in Underworld. You can thank me later.

I’m sure that this has happened to you—you’ve been listening to a popular song and you could swear that you knew what the singer was singing … until you actually read the lyrics and realized you were completely wrong. This happened to me with most of Elton John’s early songs—I don’t know if it was his habit of accenting a word oddly or his accent or what but I badly misunderstood a lot of Sir Reg’s lyrics. Frex, the chorus to “Rocket Man” is:

And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time
‘Til touchdown brings me ’round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I’m a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

If you had put a gun to my head, I would have sworn that the last sentence was:

Rocket man, goin’ round the world I’m here and gone.

Which brings me to a cute little video I saw on FB a day ago that featured a bevy of beautiful actresses from the sixties through today. It was set to a song by Raspberries, which I always liked when I was a kid, a song that will be familiar to anyone who bought Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix, Vol. 1., but until yesterday I could have sworn that the chorus was, “Please, goooooo away.” I had no idea that the song was actually called “Go All the Way.” Which is why enunciation is an important thing, kids.

I don’t have a new ep of High Tide up today and will probably not get one up this week due to everything going on here. Sorry about that. Check back next week.

WRT what’s going on around here, after much research Ramón went out and fetched home a Midea 8000 BTU inverter air conditioner, which is one of those U-shaped units that the window sash slides into. It’s also got an Energy Star rating and is super quiet.

Granted, the instructions and illustrations are not the clearest in the world, but a video helped us get it installed in the breakfast nook (all of the other windows in the living room/breakfast nook are too big for the bracing bracket). The breakfast nook is now deliciously cool, and the kitchen and living room are acceptable. We have fans blowing cool air through to the dining room and library, and a darling person is sending us a portable AC unit this weekend which we will stick in the library for the moment. Between the breakfast nook unit, the portable AC, and a larger Midea window unit (ideally one around 12K BTUs) we’ll more than match the two tons of cooling power from the defunct downstairs unit. I don’t know what this is going to do to our electric bill but the Midea units are supposed to sip energy so hopefully we won’t get slapped with something atrocious.

The cats are not that happy about the warming of the atmosphere—Jemma has taken to sprawling behind my chair where a lot of the cool air gets funnelled (unsurprisingly—she’s still pretty chunky and has thick fur), and the others have taken to hiding out in the master bath where they can sploot on the cool tiles or in my office which is maintaining a decent temperature. I can’t say that I blame them, but we’ll all just have to struggle along.

Ramón has also found a different AC company that can replace our system for less, and he wants to root around in our records and find who replaced the compressor when we first bought the house and see if we can possibly get that done again. The current AC company is only interested in selling us a new system, which we understand but cannot afford at the moment. I just want the temps to go back down to double digits.

As it turns out I will need additional treatment for the gum inflammation. C’est la vie.

But because Fate needs a laugh as much as anyone else our downstairs AC unit stopped blowing cold air yesterday. I was able to get our AC company out today to check the equipment and it turns out that our compressor has finally given up the ghost. As it’s about 15 years old, we honestly can’t complain since it’s done yeoman work.

That being said, the company gave us a quote of about $12K with a rebate for the repair work we’ve already had this year. We don’t have $12K, pure and simple. Ramón is currently researching window units to try and bring down the temps downstairs and take strain off the upstairs system, with the idea that if we can limp through to October we should be able to get a better price on a system replacement. Seeing as the downstairs unit was rated for two tons (24,000 BTUs), we’re going to need multiple window units to make up the difference. But he wants to pick them, and as he’s paying for them my attitude is, “Go ahead.”

It’s gonna get warm around here, folks. Fun, fun, fun…