Dude, You're Out There!

Sorry about the lack of health updates as of late, but here's the situation in a nutshell: when I feel great, as I have for much of the past week, I don't feel much like writing about it, as instead I tend to get a bit giddy and spend all of my time up and about trying to get my legs back under me. And when I have really bad days, as I have for the past two, I really don't feel like writing about it, as then I become that guy that pisses and moans about his medical plight on the interwebs. I finally meet with my surgeon this Friday, and I'll know much more about how my progress is coming at that point. So that's that.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I watch an awful lot of The Simpsons. Which, by definition, means I watch an awful lot of the Fox Network.

Now, twenty years ago, The Simpsons was just about all Fox had to offer, causing the network to implement a programming strategy that can best be described as "let's throw a bunch of sh*t at the wall and see what sticks." Thus was born truly atrocious television like Get a Life, starring Chris Elliot as a 30-year old paperboy, and of course Herman's Head, starring, well, who knows. (Don't ever let anyone lump Parker Lewis Can't Lose into this category. That show was groundbreaking.)

But now Fox has some legitimate hits; House, Family Guy, the whole American Idol phenomenon...you would assume that the network was beyond train wreck television.

You would be very, very wrong. This week, while flipping through the channels, I stumbled upon the network's latest gameshow/abomination/sign of the apocalypse "Moment of Truth," in which morons prostitute themselves by answering increasingly personal and incriminating questions in exchange for 15 minutes of "fame" and a chance to earn moderate amounts of cash.

Maybe you've already seen it, but if not below is a brief sampling.





Now she's not hate-able at all, is she? I'm assuming these are actors, as nobody could possibly be willing to destroy many lives, including their own, just to make an appearance on TV. But if not, these people are worse than Hitler. *

What infuriates me the most, however, isn't even the smug manner in which the woman answers the questions, it's that the entire concept was blatantly plagiarized from a HI-larious Mr. Show skit. If you're gonna' do the lie detector bit, at least do it right.




*Not actually worse than Hitler

Monday Update

Stupid modern technology. I've got this fantastic video of my biggest accomplishment of the week -- teaching Maci to launch into my sister's pool while catching a bounced tennis ball at its apex -- and I can't upload it using the weak wireless Internet I'm currently pirating from my parents' neighbor.

/angrily shakes fist at house next door

Luckily, we thought to shoot some stills, so my little time spent outside the house this week wasn't completely for naught.

Maci, readying for take-off.


In mid-flight, ball snagged at its highest point.

Lauren with a great head-on shot. Click if you care to enlarge.

I don't want to jinx myself, but I'm currently in the midst of a fantastic three-day stretch of feeling stronger and stronger. I've started to work from home a bit each day, and even took a two block walk down the beach this weekend completely solo. It doesn't sound like much, but its a long way from my first few weeks out of surgery.

With my lovely wife attending the wedding of one of her college roommates this weekend, I took a ride down to LBI with the folks so I could briefly attend the college graduation party for one of my best -- if unlikeliest -- of friends.

Meet "Scuba" Steve Welc: recent Summa Cum Laude graduate from UNC-Wilmington, defending island champion in the 1,000 foot singles row, my hand-picked apprentice in useless Simpson's trivia, and three-time winner of the LBI Clam Chowder Cook-Off. *

We met my first year back on the stand, in 2003, when Steve was a scrawny high-school kid, I was a 28-year old graduate student, and he was the one with the direction in life. Lauren and I both took a liking to him immediately, and he won a place in our hearts at the end of that first summer when he bought Lauren a thoughtful going away gift: a giant novelty sombrero. I mean, who doesn't need one of those?

Ever since then, Lauren and I have grown to look at Steve as a younger brother. Of course, that would make Lauren and I brother and sister, which is kind of, you know, gross.

*Last accomplishment may not be true

Decisions, Decisions

If I've learned anything during my two years in Aspen, it's that sometimes it's a long, long road...

to get where you want to be.

Four weeks in today. I'm feeling much better but each day, at some point, I get a reminder of just how far I still have to go.

It also just dawned on me that with how quickly everything moved the week of the surgery, many people I spoke to in the initial days after my diagnosis are probably confused as to how I ended up with a craniotomy.

Not to get all Grey's Anatomy on you, but there are essentially three options one has when diagnosed with an aneurysm: do nothing and monitor, have the aneurysm "coiled," or have it surgically clipped shut.

The first option is rather self-explanatory, and was simply out of the question. The two weeks or so we lived with the knowledge that the aneurysm was there were the longest of my life. While the aneurysm has likely been in my brain for the majority of my life, things undeniably change once you're told that it's there; there's this omnipresent awareness of one's mortality. Even though the odds are in your favor that it won't rupture, you're also painfully aware that if it does, your odds of survival are less than 25%. That's no way to live.

Now the coiling is where things get interesting. This is a remarkably non-invasive procedure that involves going in through the femoral artery in the groin, running a small catheter all the way through the body, to the brain, and to the aneurysm, than running a small wire coil through the catheter up to the aneurysm. At this point, the aneurysm is filled with the wire coil, the coil is cut off once the aneurysm is filled, and all is well. The patient walks out of the hospital a day or two later with nothing more than a band-aid on the groin and a headache. While there are small percentage risks of stroke, seizure, and death with the procedure, the recovery time is relatively short since the skull is untouched.

As Lauren and I did our post-diagnosis research, we just assumed coiling would be my answer. Why open up your skull when you didn't have to?

Well, as we continued to dig, we found out some interesting things.

First, because the coiling is such a new technology, the long-term results are still unknown. Would the coils, if properly placed, last 30 years for an active person? There had been studies that revealed that nearly 30% of patients needed to be re-coiled, as the coils had compressed, allowing more blood to enter the aneurysm. Even worse, in some cases the metal coils had actually slipped free and entered the artery itself, causing a stroke.

In addition, the up-keep for coiling is a major pain in the ass. Angiograms (similar to coiling, they go through the groin and administer dye to the brain so they can see the vessels and arteries) are required at the 6-month mark and annually after that. Now, angiograms are an all-day affair, and they carry a small chance of stroke and death with each procedure as well.

So as I waited for the results of my diagnostic angiogram on Thursday, May 8th, I found myself surprisingly scared. Scared that the surgeon would push coiling and that it wasn't necessarily what I wanted.

As the surgeon sat down with Lauren, my parents and I, he explained his findings. Most importantly, my aneurysm had developed a secondary weak spot; a bubble on top of a bubble if you will. This meant that whatever we did, it had to be done in a hurry.

The surgeon then went on to say that based on everything he saw -- size, shape, location of the aneurysm, as well as my age and good health -- he recommended going in surgically and taking care of this thing once and for all. The disadvantage of the surgical clipping as compared to the coiling is the increased risks of surgery and the prolonged recovery from the invasive nature of the procedure. After all, a clipping involves making a large incision in the head, cutting away part of the skull, and placing a small titanium clip over the bulging aneurysm, effectively curtailing any blood flow into the aneurysm and further growth. The advantages? Once you've made it through the surgery and recovered, the aneurysm is, for all intents and purposes, gone forever. You are completely healed, the up-keep is minimal and the threat of recurrence is no different for you than anyone else on the planet. You can return to your normal life -- whatever your normal may be -- free from restrictions.

I was rather surprised to hear one of the few surgeons in the world trained to do both procedures recommend the more invasive of the two, but I understood what he was getting at. If you want to live the rest of your life -- really live the rest of your life -- would you sacrifice three months of recovery time to do it? To just be done and move on and not spend the rest of your days wondering if the quick fix is holding? I think you would.

And so would I.