The Great Surgery Adventure of 2019

Posts tagged "The Great Surgery Adventure of 2019"

Happy birthday to me…in 6 days.

Technically five, actually, since it’s almost 2am on Wednesday as I am writing this, but let’s just pretend it’s still Tuesday, okay? I actually remembered to do this, then got busy with work, then looked up at the clock and realized that a whole two hours had gone by and…oops? So here we are. Almost 2am on Wednesday-pretend-it’s-Tuesday. Sooooo my birthday is March 27th (in case the math didn’t make that clear enough). Smack between winter and spring. the weather is usually crappy, but the one year it was nice, I was unable to walk due to the Great Surgery Adventure of 2019. Hoping for good weather this year! I will be forty-seven years old. Three years away from a half a century on this lovely planet. Seventeen thousand one hundred fifty five days old, not quite exactly, because I don’t feel like figuring for leap years. I just looked it up, actually. It’s 17, 165 days, just ten more. Wow. And 564 months. There are a bunch of other figures, which I won’t bore you with, but I liked this one: 15.7 years sleeping (approximately). Seriously? Wow. That’s seriously mind-blowing. So I was thinking back to my childhood. I’m sure you’re all aware that my generation is the last that never had cell phones, or internet, or any of the technology that we enjoy today. Cell phones came around — well, technically in the 80s because I remembered a friend of mine in middle school, her dad had one…

Looking Ahead and Behind

So, it’s 2020. A new year. A new decade. Let’s see what I was doing in 2010: ~I launched Turtleduck Press with Siri Paulson, KD Sarge, and Kit Campbell. With that launch, I published my first poetry chapbook, Life as a Moving Target. It was my first publication, apart from poetry in literary magazines, ever. ~I had entered into my nth draft of Pirouette (now titled Death Dancer), hoping that this time it will be ready for a literary agent. This is before self publishing took over, and I ended up setting it aside on the advice of my writer friends who felt I was too wrapped up in revisions. I ended up writing Fey Touched instead (and published that in 2012).~I started writing an odd, supernatural thriller thing that to this day is still waiting to be finished. I’m close. It is important because of how the idea came to me, and how the story has warped and changed over time. It is also a new genre that’s a bit out of my comfort zone, but that’s a good thing.~I had been married for one year, yay! And we’re still going strong. ~I had three foot surgeries, the most recent this past March. I am hoping that’s the end of ALL surgeries for awhile. So, pretty major stuff going on. In the decade, I’d release another poetry chapbook, four novels, a novelette, a flash fiction collection, and a nonfiction book. Unfortunately, none of it is Pirouette or the supernatural…

I am a horrible boss

This year has been crazy for me. I had surgery on my right foot in March and then had months of rehab. I started having severely painful headaches and discovered that I had a pinched nerve in my neck, and by the way, I have several herniated discs in my neck as well. I’ve expanded my freelance business again. I’ve been trying to stay organized and efficient through all of this, and I think I might have succeeded except…my writing had to be put aside. I didn’t take this decision lightly. Anyone who’s known me for awhile knows that I usually write every day. I am always trying to reach a goal — a completed novel draft, complete a revision of a novel, or maybe an edit — and I work like hell to make it. I’ve always been this way. One of my main goals for the future was to publish at least one book a year, maybe even two if I could manage it. This was before my health got dicey again and I had a lot less time and energy to devote to it. I did start transitioning to dictation again, mostly to speed up the process, and I’m still working out the kinks. I had a deadline for Reaper Girl #3, The Vanishing. January 1st. Which would have been doable…had I had time to finish the draft and revise. I need at least three weeks minimum and that’s pushing it. My drafts change significantly in revision,…

The End of the Great Surgery Adventure of 2019

So I saw my foot doctor this morning. She asked me some questions, then told me I was “all set.” My mom jumped in before I could really process it. She asked if I still needed to wear my orthotic (my “cyborg leg,” lol) that I’ve been wearing for about a month to stabilize my Achilles’ tendon so it heals better/faster. She said yes, until I am one hundred percent pain free, then I need to wean out of it. I’m done, unless there’s anything that comes up. It feels a bit surreal to be done. I’ve been seeing her since Dec. 21st. I’ve been dealing with this foot issue since maybe last September, which puts us at just under a year. (That’s an estimation because I don’t actually remember the exact onset of the pain). I’ve been working upstairs in our kitchen at least since December. My plan is to get down there ASAP but it needs to be cleaned and organized badly. I might just start working there anyway—I miss my solitude. It’s been rough working in a different space long term. I am truly a creature of habit and need stability in my routine. It’s hard to believe that on March 1st —five months ago—I had surgery and wasn’t able to walk for a month. In that time, I’d been cleared to walk (March 29th—two days after my birthday…it was the best birthday present ever!), had physical therapy for almost three months, and have been in an…

Thank God for Physical Therapy

Well, of course it’s a Godsend after having foot surgery. I’m getting my mobility back, one step at time. But did you know that PT is really good for writerly brainstorming? We do mostly the same things every time—strength building, weight bearing, massage. At the end, I get “stim and cold pack” which just means using a TENS unit to give me electrical pulses and putting an ice pack on my foot. So there’s about fifteen minutes where I’m literally doing nothing but thinking. Or resting. Or zoning. Sleeping, no. Not yet, anyway. <grin> So I hit a wall in The Vanishing, my work in progress. Reaper Girl #3. Due in August. (No pressure.) I couldn’t figure out how to get from one place in the plot to another. Everything I thought about felt lame and too easy and contrived. I’d last left Leliel and Rick at their favorite diner, sharing breakfast and discussing the <something spoilery> they found. They needed to discover the next plotty bit. I was tired of not writing (Sunday doesn’t count because Game of Thrones finale) or writing just a few hundred words (deadline) so I started poking my muse and asking her questions. And while I am still a bit shaky on the what, I do have a bonus why. I figured out quite a lot in that short fifteen-minute period. I have literally had no other time to really dig into it. I was planning on doing a freewrite—which I still might do—but…

When I’m Not Writing…

I get twitchy. Out of sorts. Ideas feel like they are going to explode out of me if I don’t get them down on the screen. It’s just not pretty. There have been a few times when I stopped writing regularly. Once was after my first ankle surgery, where I didn’t touch the computer for a week. Another, which I’ve talked about at great length, was due to the trigeminal neuralgia attacks and not being able to concentrate. I could write around 100 words a day (and I did, resulting in this) but while it felt good, it also felt like not enough. I need to be able to immerse myself in the world and characters of a story. I need momentum. I depend on it, actually, to keep me moving. I can rack up quite a few words even at 500 words a day if I do it every single day. Let’s talk about the last time I wrote anything regularly. That was the Fireborn revision back in December, which required some rewrites, but not a whole lot. There was my antho story, Of Poison and Promises. The anthology released in March. I’ve also finished my online serial, Sun Touched, and I just need to revise the last installment before posting it on May 1st. I did write a bit on Oubliette, an older novel, but for only two days. And last week, I started book #3 of my Reaper Girl Chronicles, The Vanishing. The muse/right brain/writer brain is…

Still Mostly Brainless

So, the observant people will probably notice that this blog post is up on a Wednesday, not Tuesday like usual. There’s a story in that. So it was one task after another all day Tuesday and into the evening. Six clients’ work. I also posted my own blog post for A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80) which I always participate in because it keeps me accountable. I hadn’t posted check-ins except for two, and thought it would be good to at least post the final one for the round. Why this didn’t send up a flag in my head about this blog I’ll never know. It was around 10:30pm and because I need help to use the bathroom, my help wanted me to start so she could go to bed. Fair enough. As I am shutting down for the night, it finally freaking dawned on me. I’d forgotten this blog! But wait, there’s more. Between this and two other incidents, I am convinced that surgery can screw with your mind three weeks later. Please note that I feel fine with the exception of pain. I am also more tired because it’s physically wearing on me to haul this body around on essentially one foot on a scooter. And I have fibro fatigue added to that. I started working four days after my surgery. Say what? I had a lot to do. My clients were great about it, but I’m apparently insane. So I have a vivid memory of…

Surgery Prep Central and the Insanity of Trying to Do All The Things

Yep, so in case you haven’t heard, I’m having surgery on my screwed up right foot next Friday. When I was first notified by my foot doc’s boarding department of the date, it felt like forever. Now, it feels too soon. I have an impressive to-do list. I took on extra work for my VA clients because I wanted my first week of recovery to be easier. Which means…I have lots more work to do than usual. Like, I have two newsletters to put together before my surgery. One for a client, which I am totally okay with as I was the one to suggest it, and one for myself because I was an idiot and signed up to do a promo the day after my surgery. So that needs doing. My mom and sister have been AMAZING. I decided that I should have frozen meals to get me through that first week (and possibly beyond). The original plan was the three of us were to make the meals. Except…I got bogged down in work so sister and my mom took over. And did they ever! Holy crap, it the past I don’t know, five days or so, they’ve made 4 or 5 meals already! So that’s been happening. I also need to pick up my scooter once the medical supply place calls. I know the surgery is scheduled for 7:30am but I am assuming they will want me there earlier. I’ll have a pain ball, and as I’ve never…

Tag: The Great Surgery Adventure of 2019