Crazy Crap Item #201: The part where I open myself up to the accusation of TMI

Dearest reader:

No doubt you have noted a serious decline in both the quantity and quality of my installments of insanity in the Daly household. Some have even asked: "Why no entries? Has nothing crazy happened in your life?"

In actuality, much crazy has happened. Unfortunately, the "bad" crazy has far outweighed the "good crazy," leaving me little energy or inclination to document even those blessed beneficial moments of insanity that have occasionally wafted down upon me like unto manna from heaven.

I had originally planned to weather the storm, await the return of a larger proportion of good crazy, and proceed with my labors as if the summer of 2008 had never happened.

I'm finding, though, as summer turns to fall, that celebrating the joyful crazy crap without first giving due place to the difficulties of the past few months seems somehow... dishonest...? Levity, I like to think, is my habitual frame of mind, but until I discharge this past summer's flat-out badness, any show of fun feels forced and false. And you, dear reader, deserve better than that.

So here's the deal: What follows in this post is a description of my worst summer ever. Many of you have heard part or all of this saga -- say, if you are a denizen of 1500 Norwood or have ever been to my house to watch the season premiere of Ugly Betty and eat empenadas. Those of you who have not heard the tale may simply not want to veer off the path of crazy crap comedy. If you number yourself among them, please feel free to wait for my next, hopefully more cheerful posting.

The point is, I'm sharing too much here. I know it, and I own it. So here goes: my account of "Crazy Crap Gone Bad: The Summer of 2008":

June: A fine afternoon, I prepare a meal of hummus and veggies. As a precursor, I pop a handful of Beano in my mouth. I chomp down. I feel brief pain. I chew. One tablet will not dissolve. I ponder the matter, and realize that I've actually broken a tooth.

Thankfully, my dentist can see me immediately, fits me for a crown, and glues in a temp. Two weeks later, I have a permanent crown. It doesn't feel quite right. I start to notice discomfort in my cheek. I return to the dentist and have her adjust the bite. No relief. I ask her to do it again. She tells me the bite is fine; I need to see someone about TMJ syndrome.

In the meantime: Eamon and I consult a friendly neighborhood fertility specialist vis-a-vis the baby-having (you may recall, he looks like Bob Balaban). He works up all sorts of tests, sonograms, probings and so forth. It is discovered I have not one but two uterine fibroids which require yanking. (I have recorded this bit before).

My surgery is scheduled for July 11, so I decide that I will delay doing anything about the TMJ. I know it will require weeks of physical therapy, which I won't be able to do, so we'll just wait till afters.

July 4: Eamon and I take a delightful walk on the beach, and return home to find a block party on the dreaded 1400 Norwood block. As we chat with local denizens, I'm approached by a neighbor who informs me that Dolores McDermott -- she of song and story -- has passed away suddenly. We are all stunned and saddened.

July 11: I go in for surgery. We were told to expect it to be about 2 to 3 hours long. In truth, it takes 6 hours. One of the fibroids measures 8 centimeters. I've been under anesthesia so long, they can't release me the same day, as we had expected. I spend an utterly sleepless night in the women's hospital (seriously, it's called that), counting how many seconds it takes for my decompression boots (which ensure no blood clots form) to inflate and deflate. Over and over.

Eamon gallantly offers to sleep in a recliner beside my bedside, but I send him home. He picks me up the next morning, and we arrive to the welcome of our summer block party, which I cannot attend, as I find I can barely sit upright due to the four incisions in my gut.

Recovery is much worse than I had anticipated. Pain pills seem to do nothing, my jaw pain continues, and I must lie almost exclusively on my back. And I develop some pretty severe insomnia.

My jaw pain is still troublesome, so I drag myself to the dentist a few days after surgery. She's amazed I'm standing. She suggests soft food and ibuprofin. I tell her, due to surgery, that's pretty much what I've been doing. She says after I'm recovered I should go to an oral surgeon.

Five days after surgery, I learn a project I've been working on needs a revision NOW. I manage somehow to put in something like 10 hours of work over the next couple of days, and decide to knock off when STABBING PAINS develop in my gut. Fun.

Two weeks after surgery, we receive very sad news. Our dear friend Jonathan, who has been fighting leukemia for more than three years, has received his final treatment, and it has failed. We organize with friends of Jonathan and his partner Chris to come out for support. We arrange a schedule to ensure that someone is always there to help. Eamon and I will be leaving in 2 days time, and will stay for 8 days. When we leave, we will be replaced by another friend.

July 29: We arrive in New York, and in the cab on the way to Mt. Sinai, we learn via cell phone that Jonathan's condition has suddenly declined. All friends have been summoned to New York. As such, many friends will be staying at Jonathan and Chris' apartment. We call our dear friend Michael, who lives up in Washington Heights, who selflessly offers us his bed.

I won't recount much about our time in New York. It was very, very difficult. We ended up staying 12 days, as Jonathan's condition continued to decline. We had some blessings during that time, too. A testament to Jonathan's and Chris' character is the remarkable group of friends they surrounded themselves with. Many of them I knew from my time at Northwestern University (where I met Chris), but I also met friends from other parts of their life as well as Jonathan's family. If I ever find myself spending 10 hours a day in a hospital lounge for nearly two weeks, looking on as one friend suffers and another grieves, these are the people I'd want to do it with.

August 10: We returned home. That night, at about 3am, we received the news that Jonathan had passed away.

Once the dust settled, I decided to return my attention to various of my physical ailments. As many know, I am the physical therapy queen. In the past couple of years, I've experienced chronic pain in my hip and shoulder, and done something like a year's worth of physcial therapy treatment to try to get them under control. This past summer, I got add a new ailment -- stabbing pains in my forearms and elbows that particularly hit just as I would lay down to sleep. So another trip to the orthopedist. Who sends me to physical therapy.

At PT, I learn that my PT insurance coverage for the year has been all used up, and in fact, was used up a few months ago, so I'm already paying for several visits out of pocket. I learn some nice stretches and techniques for my forearms from my therapist, and tell her, I don't think i can prioritize this now. She understands, and tells me to continue with the exercises, and come back for a check in some time if I wish.

So I cue up my next ailment: TMJ. It's now quite severe. My dentist sends me to an oral surgeon. He questions me for 3 minutes, and refers me to a physical therapist, "a miracle worker," her calls her. I see her twice a week for a month. And yes, I'm going to be paying out of pocket. She reduces my visits to once ever other week. Then she says, "Well, we have one more visit, and we're done!"

To which I say, "But I still have symptoms." And she explains that I seem to have plateaued, so in her experience, there's no point in continuing. We do my exercises. She joggles things about. I go home. And I brood. So I decide to call her an clarify.

"So," I ask her on the phone, "Am I going to be in pain for the rest of my life?" And she explains that people thing therapy is a cure, but it's not always, and though we want therapy to help, sometimes it doesn't. I ask her if there's anything else I can do. She says if I continue with my exercises, I can keep further damage from being done.

I am upset. What I'm hearing is, "yes, you will be in pain for the rest of your life." It is now September. I've been tolerating this basically never-ending pain since June.

And it is at this point that the entire deck of cards which was once my mental and physical state comes crashing down. I have been exercising about 2 hours a day for my various pained parts. I have done my TJM exercises every 2 hours for 6 weeks. And now I am to understand that none of it matters, as I will be in pain for the rest of my life.

Oh, and on Monday, I'm supposed to start fertility treatments, which entails self-injecting hormones every day and driving out to suburbs every few days to have my blood tested.

And all the while I'm thinking .... How the fuck am I going to do this.

So this is the when the uncontrollable sobbing starts. And the intense anxiety. I spend the weekend sleeping little and eating less. I somehow manage to sing at a wedding .... not sure how I pulled that off.

The weekend ends, and Monday morning, I've had something like 2 hours sleep. So Eamon and I talk. We decide to defer fertility treatments for a month. I'm supposed to see a periodontist later in the week about a gum tissue transplant I need (oh, did I forget to mention that?), and he says, "Let's see if he'll see you today." He also urges me to see my GP, who I had an appointment with later that week anyway.

The periodontist tells me to postpone the tissue transplant. He offers to do some research for specialists I could see about the TMJ.

I talk to my shrink, who insist I demand anti-anxiety meds from my GP.

I see my GP, who gives me all sorts of delicious drugs, all of which help, with the sleeping, with the eating, with the thinking, with the not sobbing constantly, which is nice.

I cancel my final appointment with my TMJ physical therapist, as it was to be a follow-up to the gum tissue surgery which I'm now not having. I receive a very effusive phone call in which she insists that she thought I had improved and that she never would've closed the door on me, and all sorts of other things that completely contradict the tone and content of our earlier conversation. I conceded I perhaps did not communicate my discomfort clearly enough, but inwardly wondered why, in our previous phone call, the questions "Will I be in pain for the rest of my life?" didn't ring any chimes for her. I let her know I will "think about" her offer to continue treatment with her.

In the interim, I call the oral surgeon who treated my mother-in-law for TMJ years ago. His assistant says he can't see me till December. He only sees patients every other Saturday. I say, fine, I'll take it. I tell her I'm hoping to become pregnant, so should I do xrays now, in case the blessed event occurs. She says I can come in for xrays any time!

So I do the next day, and a miracle occurs. By the time I get home, I have a message from the receptionist saying she explained my situation to the doctor, and that he said if I'd like to come in that night at 8:30pm, he'd see me then!!!! Calloo, Callay!!!! I happily agree.

I meet said doctor, and he is everything the last oral surgeon was not. He is kindly. He is leisurely. He wants to hear my whole story. He pats my arm reassuredly when I speak of my trip to New York. He examines my bite, moves my jaw around, pokes and probes.

His conclusion: the right side of my jaw, which has been hurting, and upon which I have lavished treatments and exercises is not the problem. It's actually the left side which is immobilized. The right side hurts because it's being over-extended.

Which simultaneously makes me want to shout for joy and scream in anger.

He recommends a treatment -- an injection of saline into the immobilized joint to wash things out. The rub: it can't be done if I'm pregnant. So... logistical headache....

Finally, I muster some clarity. I get an MRI so the doctor can confirm his suspicion. I consult my calendar and do some reproductive-related calcluations. I call doctor's office, explain situation again. Thankfully, it's the same receptionist, so she gets it. I explain that I want to go ahead and schedule the procedure, if I'm "blessed," I'll cancel it. So we schedule it.

And that brings me to now. Delicious drugs have tamped down the jaw pain and evened the mood. Decorating for Halloween has had the effect of basket-weaving on inmates in the asylum. I still sob occasionally, and have wrestled with the guilt that Eamon had to miss Roller Derby Regionals in Madison, Wisconsin, to stay home with his crazy, enfeebled wife.

But it's getting better. And now that I've enforced this catharsis on you all, mayhap we can all look forward to a finer brand of crazy crap in the future.