It Might Get Messy

When I was a kid, the world was young. My parents lived through World War Two—the attic at the cottage in Pompton Lakes was stuffed with, among other stuff, a fat file of newspapers and magazines from the war, including the big headlines on the New York City papers from VE and especially VJ days. People kept quiet about sex (when I was near puberty, my folks took a half dozen books out of the library and scattered them around the house for one six-week return cycle) and drugs (you can’t imagine the chain of events perpetrated by the afternoon I was alone in the house and got to watch the lady from next door sneak in through the back porch to get her day’s fix of alcoholic beverages from our collection on the kitchen counter). Self-expression was a little more…inhibited. You seldom heard people swear in public unless in pain or drunk. You NEVER saw people swear in writing except for the shocking (SHOCKING) use of raw language by Hemingway, Ginsberg, et al. No, the proper way to indicate swearing in print was the top row of the typewriter, caps: !@#$%^&*()_)(*&^%$#!@#$%^&. Nowadays, drugs are less universal (if measured by the standard of tobacco use), sex is physiology not taboo, and, hell, language in communications media, including what’s left of print media, is what it needs to be.

But there’s still applicability to be wrung from the old-fashioned #$%^&*&^%. Now, it’s for expressing frustration nominally beyond swearing. You use that top row of the keyboard when you’d have to chain so many nasty adjectives and/or adverbs together that you’d lose impact. 

I tend to stick %^&*(*&^ in the subject line of work emails. I don’t worry so much about language in the body of emails (what are they gonna do, fire me?), even after years ago my boss had to take me aside to make me understand that my use of the “all company” address list to circulate my suggestion that everyone drop their pants and moon their neighbors on the night Frank Zappa died indicated something less than a fully mature professional ethic. And had ticked off a number of more sensitive, mostly administrative or clerical people (be an interesting study to ascertain why) nationwide. 

Anyway. Early this week, I sent a “$%^&*(*&” email updating my medical condition to a few of my colleagues who are also close friends. Here’s the deal:

Last weekend, my mouth was fussy. Lots of goop (i.e. sticky mostly dried mucous) from the roof of my mouth. Some generalized pain as well, although more nagging than acute. I felt like it might be an infection in my mouth, possibly up in my palate somewhere. So on Monday I called my GP’s office and made an appointment for Wednesday morning.

Monday I got home, farted around, read just about to the finish of the Gospel of Mark (I’m now deep into Luke, timing things beautifully this year, I can’t wait to see the Pope and the creepy ceramic Christ figurine at midnight on Christmas Eve mass), and started the second volume of Laini Taylor’s OUTSTANDING Y.A.D. series that began with Daughter of Smoke and Bone and has now moved on to Days of Blood and Starlight. When time for bed, I did my usual toilette, rinsing my mouth preparatory to brushing my teeth (or “brosse les dents” as I believe Ms. Azvadorian, delightful language teacher from PLHS, would have put it). 

Which elicited a shocking effusion of blood. Fresh, bright red blood, with clotty hunks mixed in. Once I’d broken the dam by mouth rinsing, the blood just poured out. I tried to estimate the volume while I worked to a) reduce the loss rate, and b) localize the source in my oral cavity. I estimated somewhere between 100 and 200 milliliters of blood before the flow stopped, more or less on its own. Nor could I see any obvious source.

But flushing a deciliter or two of blood in a sudden incident is a bit shocking. I couldn’t make my mouth repeat the bleeding, but on Tuesday I called my oncologist’s office to let him know I was going to see my GP. His administrator actually tracked him down and made him take the call, and he told me to come in so he could scope my throat.

Which worked out well. My GP can’t do throat scoping. He said “Huh. Maybe it’s a sinus infection. Let’s try some antibiotics” and gave me a scrip for a big-ass jar of amoxicillin plus clavulanate potassium. That was like 10 in the morning. So I drove to the office, worked for a few hours, then whipped back up and around the Baltimore Beltway to see Dr. H at GBMC in Towson. 

He was upset about the bleeding incident, and frustrated that it didn’t repeat and so could not be diagnosed. But in the meantime, he insisted on scoping my throat thoroughly, which means running the cable through my sinuses via both nostrils in succession. When he finally snaked the wire out for the last time, he turned the computer around and said “OK, here’s what I’m lookin’ at. There’s a sort of a bleeding sore on your palate, but that doesn’t seem like it would have precipitated a deciliter of gore, so you should probably assume you got a sinus infection and take those antibiotics. But do you see this mass here in your throat? That’s new. And disturbing.” 

Indeed. There is a bright and shiny new growth in my throat, which looks really, really ugly. Rather resembles a fungal skin infection we used to get as kids called impetigo, which manifested as swollen mountains of tissue with raw bloody spots and scabs on them. Icky. 

So, mid-January, I gotta go back in to the hospital for anesthesia and diagnostic biopsy surgery. In the interim, of course, I need a full suite of blood assays and an EKG, required (I presume) as pre-op prep by either the anesthesiologist’s or the surgeon’s insurance company. 

Thus the “#$%^&*()(*&^%” email. If this sucker is malignant and I have to be treated again, I’m gonna be pretty well pissed off. At nobody and nothing in particular, of course. And we’ve already established that the Universe Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass. 

Maybe it’s benign. I’ll dedicate this round of diagnostics to the poor alcoholic woman who used to live next door to my parents at the cottage in Pompton Lakes. If nothing else, I’m sure she would appreciate the Xanax prescription!

It’s Christmas Eve Eve, my friends, and we’re all still here, despite Mayan prophecy and internet paranoia. I’m just glad to be here. Really, really glad to be here. Gonna make the family ravioli recipe, a boned (as in de-boned) and stuffed turkey, and shrimp and smoked fish for Christmas Eve supper. Going to finish the four gospels and Revelation, and watch the Pope totter through Christmas Eve services from Rome. Most of all, I’m going to bask in the fact of life itself. Under easily imaginable circumstances, in most of the alternate realities out there in the multiverse, I’m not here to feel the love. But in THIS universe, I am. I love you all. I’ll probably get a fresh essay up at http://www.aehsfoundation.org/ later in the week, and some recipes and photos up at http://docviper.livejournal.com/ after Christmas. Have a good holiday, everyone. This might be a good time to reflect, whether you’re a believer or not, on the prospect that the God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is the SAME FRICKIN’ GOD. Which, of course, means that the ongoing violence done in his/her/its name (I kind of like Alanis Morisette’s portrayal in Dogma) is OUR problem to solve. 

Every year around this time, for just a few days, I feel like maybe we’re up to it. Wish I could capture that feeling year round. Love you all. Ma Salaama!