A Fierce Return to Form
And when I was dying
I thought I was dying
I'd ask it, I'd ask it to bring me 'round
Bill Ward - "Try Life" - When the Bough Breaks - 1997
We now return to pick up where we left off about 55 months ago.
The interested reader will remember, from A Bit of Sanity in the Prologue section, that I had become quite ill, and had been very unwell for a long time. The combination of chronic severe pain from my 1980 hunting accident, the vast cumulative stress from dealing with a family of fucking lunatics for generations, the hatchet job and utter lack of good faith cooperation the Flozberks wreaked upon me, and other ailments yet undiagnosed had me alarmingly close to death.
To recap, my deterioration accelerated rapidly after a baffling idiot opted to mosh into me very hard at a wholly inappropriate moment at a 2021 concert in Houston. I had pain and dysphagia suggestive of a head and/or neck cancer, and given my 46 years as a smoker (I quit in 2014), there was much reason to be concerned.
The wretched insurance company made me jump through a bunch of physical therapy hoops before I could get any diagnostic imaging. Silly me - I should have just paid for the imaging and fought for reimbursement afterward. The PT seemed to do more harm than good and was costly and troublesome. After it failed miserably I finally got cervical and lumbar MRIs.
Narrowing it Down
The second I saw the sagittal view, my heart sank, yet I was also relieved, for finally I had an answer. Despite there being no lady present, in my best blue collar repairman voice, I growled, "Right there's your problem, lady."
It was cervical stenosis, or, if ya wanna keep it simple, narrowing. Very bad stenosis. Life-threatening, actually. Axial view showed my spinal cord was getting crushed in about a dozen places. No wonder I felt like shit all the time and my wheels were falling off so.
This is what a non-horrifying MRI should look like:
See that nice, open, white spinal canal area full of protective cerebrospinal fluid? I had massive bone spurs choking much of my cervical spine. It's borderline miraculous, fueled in part by my being accustomed to suffering after I got shot as a child, that I was able to function remotely as well as I did.
Later, Tater
I was loaded for bear to fight the Flozberks to my last breath, but it became clear that doing so might bring about that last breath quite sooner than hoped. Interestingly, I'm simultaneously not remotely afraid of them - should I see fit, I'll kick their sorry asses, so to speak, across the board up and down the street like a soccer ball - AND utterly terrified of them in the sense that being entangled with them in any capacity, friend or foe, greatly raises the odds of a shattered existence.
Both I and those to whom I listen grew adamant that my camp's best interests would be served by dropping all things Flozberk like the hot potato it is for a while and divert that bandwidth to regaining my health and ensuring that my household would be happy and secure for the rest of our lives. That's exactly what I did.
The Odyssey Begins
Obviously, there was dire need for extensive, prompt surgery. I went to the biggest provider in the Baylor network and ACDF surgery to fuse FOUR vertebrae was scheduled. I didn't even talk to the surgeon, but rather his PA. The consultation was disturbingly brief. I was shellshocked and feeling some bad vibes. To quote Scarface, I kept thinking, in Tony Montana's voice, "This is so fucking bad."
NOTE: If you're enough of a cinematic recluse to somehow not be familiar with the above linked Scarface scene, be sure to watch the brief vid to the hilarious end.
Range of motion in my neck would be severely limited, and it's common for adjacent vertebrae to quickly fail after such a surgery due to increased wear, resulting in more surgery and loss of motion. Well, great.
No Rugby, Birdwatching, or Colds
I was advised the matter was grave and warned to avoid even mild impacts, not to look upward, and even to refrain from sneezing.
We had a couple weeks to figure things out, but one thing I knew for sure was that the current plan seemed fucked. My deep dive into researching the subject, reading medical journals and scouring web forums for personal accounts of experiences, confirmed my fears. Rates of complications for cases as bad as mine were high, and negative outcomes, with severe chronic pain and sexual dysfunction frequently mentioned, were horrifically common. I read one destroyed life story after another on social media support groups.
My own Mother fared quite poorly after a similar adventure, becoming a sparsely-functional shut-in immediately after her cervical laminectomy, and she was actually a factor in my poor outcome from the 1990s.
Just...Yuck
Even the patient pre-op package sporting a trial packet of Ensure (which is some pretty nasty shit), Ensure discount coupon, and instructions to get on that crap faithfully before and after surgery rang badly with me. The whole damn thing reeked of a big bucket of fucked. I felt nauseous all the time.
But, I had to do something as quadriplegia closed in on me. Surely there has to be a better treatment path. We're well into the 21st century, for chrissake, yet old school techniques were still the rule, at least at Baylor Hospital! Someone, please help!
Just as I did with Lisa's seemingly-hopeless RSD/CRPS disaster, I scoured the globe for a better, cutting edge solution and soon found one.
A Can-tor Attitude
Dr. Jeffrey Cantor of the Paley Orthopedic and Spine Institute in Florida is a pioneer in the delicate art of using "cutting edge" (the pun will make sense after watching the video) tools and techniques to treat complex spinal disease and injury with a focus on minimizing trauma and preserving essential structure and function.
Years before, when recovering from a recreational mishap and unable to operate on living people, he worked on cadavers refining new techniques using an ultrasonic BoneScalpel to treat spinal stenosis. His work bore quite a bit of fruit. Behold some videos:
Cervical Spinal Stenosis Surgery Tools for High Success Rate
What is Cervical Stenosis
My MRI was uploaded and they quickly got in touch. After a very thorough Zoom consultation in which Dr. C explained my predicament and treatment in far greater detail than those clowns at Baylor offered, I canceled the local surgery and set the wheels in motion for a trip to Florida, with a few days before surgery set aside to have fun (but with no sneezing or looking up).
I called Baylor and cancelled. Dr. C prescribed a steroid pack to settle down my inflammation and ordered cervical and lumbar CT scans.
A Place to Hang My Hat
The cervical CT scan showed some distinctly interesting and unique pathology - huge anterior bone spur complexes pushing my esophagus inward. That explained the dysphagia and odd pains around my throat. Better than stage nine cancer, for damn sure. My gastro doc was puzzled that this clusterfuck didn't show up on the esophagram he ordered and said he'd never seen anything like it. I felt soooo special!
Cleared for Takeoff
And speaking of my gastro doc, when I finally became Dr. Reddy's patient after getting ravaged by reflux for years, he said I had the stomach and esophageal lining of an 80 year old air traffic controller. The chronic pain, spinal dysfunction, and Flozberk nightmare were simply too much to bear, causing the pathogen called stress to eat me alive.
I tried to manage it by eating tons of papaya enzyme, but switched to the PPI inhibitor Protonix when I started seeing Dr. Reddy. It was very effective and now I've tapered down to half the original dose while likely on the way to eliminating it thanks to massive stress reduction and lifestyle changes.
Now, it's almost completely healed, with only a moderate case of Barrett's esophagus remaining that has to be scoped every 3 years.
Whew!
And, a worrisome neoplasm that was found during all this scanning and poking was removed by the delightful Dr. Christine Landry and turned out to be benign.
You're Fired, Motherfucker
Soon after I canceled at Baylor, their surgeon, who I'll call Dr. Ish, called me. Our talk was at least a half hour and he was very concerned, explaining the risks of a delay in treatment. Not at all adverse to multiple perspectives, I agreed to come see him later that week for more consultation. His rating on Google was 4.9, so I reasoned he was worth listening to and he came off pretty well over the phone.
At that visit, he stormed into the room, briefly looked at my MRI, and explained I was in dire straits and needed immediate neck surgery, then after recovery, lumbar surgery. It soon became clear that he did not read my file, had no idea who I was, and was unaware I was an existing patient who was in his office a week before and was on the phone with him for a long time mere days before. My uncommon last name didn't ring any bells.
It was clear that this fucktard saw me as a hunk of meat revenue stream, not as a human patient in need of help.
After I let him go on, I finally said, "So, you don't remember me, eh, "Doctor?" I even deployed the mocking finger quotes thing. My scorn filled the room with a palatable air as I stared him down.
He turned back to the computer, brow furrowed and cheeks reddening. As he reviewed my file, I informed him of my intent to travel to Florida for a much more thorough and modern procedure better suited for my severe case.
Not a Good Look
Dude blew his top and made a total ass of himself. Angry, he got in my personal space and fired off a barrage of statements and questions. He insisted that Cantor's methods were a "gimmick" and would fail. He cited potential complications when away from home and pointedly asked what I would do if I had a hematoma.
I could only answer:
If such comes to pass, I'll seek medical assistance, but it won't be at this motherfucker, motherfucker. I wouldn't let a right cunt like you peel a potato, much less drive screws into my neck.
His assistant, a quite lovely Latina, giggled and he spun toward her, glaring daggers. I might have cost the senorita her job, but that's far from necessarily a bad thing - Dr. Ish was simply insufferable.
I would later jokingly bestow the title of "Honorary Flozberk" upon him.
Ironically, we would later suffer a ghastly hematoma situation, but it was CAUSED by Baylor, Scott, and fucking White. More on that later.
Greatly Divergent Approaches
Dr. Ish intended to fuse 4 levels working only from the front using old school tech. Dr. C would fuse either 2 or 3 levels (I was too far gone to avoid fusion), depending on what he found in there, and work from both the back and the front, doing two separate procedures under one episode of anesthetic.
And, instead of pushing nasty Ensure and ignoring diet like Dr. Ish did, Dr. C set forth stringent dietary requirements supplemented by a superfood called Maximum Vibrance. We call it "Maximum Overdrive" in homage to the early cult classic Stephen King flick.
Every day before and after surgery I would ingest every nutrient known. That is hugely important and paved the way to an excellent, prompt recovery. The approaches of the two surgeons were as different as those of The Istanbul Bunch vs. The Arkansas Bunch.
Recall that post-operative nutrition for Dad was the root of the conflict with absurdly ridiculous gasbag Princesa Caca con Maiz in The Monster Clash.
Oh Yeah...My Damn Neck
The diagnoses were:
- Severe cervical spinal stenosis C2-7 w/ myeloradioculopathy.
- Kyphosis C5-7
- Ossification of posterior longitudinal ligament (OPPL)
- Severe cervical spondylosis
- Plus a host of lumbar disease and deformity we won't bother with here.
Before surgery, Florida was pretty fun. I got us a nice place to live for a few weeks and we enjoyed what America's Wang has to offer. Bravo Perovian Kitchen knocked it out of the park. We hit them up four times before leaving, including the last and first real meals surrounding surgery.
The parihuela seafood soup, grilled octopus, sushi roll, and chaufa seafood rice dish were all out of this world...
...and their signature Bravo steak sandwich - Flambé beef tenderloin strips, provolone cheese, bacon, fried egg, potato sticks, Chimichurri aioli - is one of the best things I've ever eaten that isn't pussy.
Bravo was actually a factor in the outcome of this challenging adventure. Great food makes hardship much easier.
A New Life Beckons
The big morning arrived. I was ready. I drove us to the hospital, then turned our Turo Toyota over to her with instructions to enjoy her day, be ready to take good care of me soon, but if I didn't make it out of there alive, to appropriately mourn, then carefully replace me with someone even better. We knew this was a very serious matter and a while back, Lisa's most excellent best friend Leslie's partner suddenly died after a comparatively trivial surgery. Shit happens, ya know.
Into Holy Cross Hospital I strutted, flashing the mandatory rock 'n roll devil horns...
...and Lisa went to the beach to calm down, much aided by a Snapchat with Leslie...
...then she headed back to our temporary home of Wilton Manor to have a benedict with the flaming homosexuals that make WM unique. It was perfect, and a great relief.
As she chowed down, I navigated the surgery maze. First, there was confusion about whether I or another chap would get hacked first. I ardently voted for me and won. Then, in an example of how paranoid surgical teams have become, the whole thing almost got scrubbed because my normally-healthy blood sugar was a tiny bit high from the overindulging in Florida food and booze. I convinced them to overlook that and was turned over to my delightful pre-op nurse.
Way Chill
I was curiously calm and affable, fascinated by the procedures and tech. As mentioned elsewhere on this site, while the Flozberks enjoyed health coverage and burned thru my parents' money like red hot buzzsaws, I was disabled since age 12, uninsured and didn't see a doctor or dentist for over 20 years, so I was immersed in the modern sawbones experience. Just like with my root canal, I had a great time.
The nurse took my vitals, then took them again and asked if I worked out. I replied "Does banging the hell outta my old lady count? The sessions certainly tend to be long and productive." Laughter rang from my cubicle and both neighboring ones. My vitals were dead calm perfect, which is usually not the case in the pre-op arena. The vibe was great.
TIB
Dr. C found a disaster in there, much worse than he expected. The surgery was recoded as a revision of a failed decompression 30 years before, and he later told me that it was surprising I was walking around and accomplishing anything for all those years. My neck was a dismal wad of scar tissue and bone spurs and a C2-7 laminectomy was required. He pretty much cut off the entire back of my cervical spine, cleaned it out, and reconstructed it.
Read the jaw-dropping OPERATIVE REPORT
I've read dozens, perhaps hundreds of cervical spine surgery reports and have not seen one quite like mine. That dumbfounded dipshit Dr. Ish would have fucked my life up had I been sufficiently detached from my own wellness to listen to him. For some, he seems to have been the answer, but for my case he would have been catastrophic. He was going to leave a great deal of disease untreated.
Finally Free
I felt better immediately upon regaining consciousness. It was a fucking trip. Like, seriously. I'd forgotten what it was like to not feel like shit.
Doc called Lisa and said I was doing well, thoroughly explained the hot mess he found in my neck, and said I'd be cut loose tomorrow so long as I didn't start spraying blood to and fro like a lawn sprinkler and did piss like a lawn sprinkler once they pulled that damn catheter outta my amply-frowning bird. They certainly did a better job with my "haircut" than the bizarre, diagonal hack job Baylor inflicted 30 years ago and the staples were actually kinda cool. The drainage tubes were quite uncomfortable, tho, especially coming out.
She celebrated my fine outcome with amusingly-named ice cream.
Able to meet their exacting blood n' piss standards, I went "home" the next day, was at the beach 4 days later...
...then 2 days after that was enjoying octopus and oysters while suckin' down strong tropical hooch to help the feeble painkillers before our night flight home...
...and then, against medical advice, I attended a TOOL gig at American Airlines Center an absurd 10 days post-op. Sorry Doc, TOOL wins. Or, at least local TOOL - we had tickets for Tulsa, too, but Lisa put her foot down and ixnayed that plan. I suppose there's a small chance she was right ;)
There was one serious, horrible complication, though. While we were in Florida, brilliant Jethro Tull guitarist Martin Barre was in Dallas playing the entire magnificent Aqualung album, plus a second set of deep cuts. Missing that was a filthy shame, so, after a few months of recovery, we hit the road in an epic loop tour road trip to superb Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, British Columbia and saw it there, front row.
On the way there, we stopped at, among many other places, a former USAF base atop a mountain in Washington where Dad served in 1951. When he was killed in 2019, he essentially vanished from the face of the Earth without so much as an obituary, so we had his "funeral" at that most fascinating, ghost-filled place.
On the way home, we stopped at, among many other places, the wonderful Alvord Desert in Oregon and partied all night under some of the darkest skies I've ever beheld, Milky Way exploding above us. The night was dedicated to Dad (and Steven Wilson) and we, uh, expanded our minds and gave our first listen to the new Porcupine Tree album after 13 years of waiting. It was one of the best nights of my life.
The fucking sick nightmare that was Life v1.x kept getting smaller and quieter in the rearview mirror. So, this is what a life that isn't a nightmare feels like? I rather fancy it. Hopefully nothing will swoop in and kick it in the 'nads, right?
Still pursuing what I could deem a full recovery, I looked ahead, ready to roll up my sleeves and reengage the shabby, toxic, parasitic scammers we call the Flozberks. There was still bidness to settle, see. Barring complications, I, finally in health above wretched, resolved to return to the fray after the holidays on Dad's birthdeath day.
Woo-Hoo!
When Xmas 2022 came to pass, I declared myself reasonably recovered from the surgery almost a year before. Because of the failed decompression from 1992, I would always suffer serious neuropathic pain and disability, but I'd steadily improved as the year wore on.
Not
Then, it happened, and on Xmas Eve, to boot.
Lisa was moving a snake habitat out of her back seat and her 30 year old lumbar fusion failed, and failed badly. Motherfucker! And, on the same day I declared myself recovered. Bummer.
That old fusion was borne of a severe injury sustained trying to save a case of that asshole Jerry Jones's booze when she was a bartender at the big tent at Texas Stadium, years before I knew her, and she went through absolute hell getting a proper diagnosis and treatment.
Sigh.
It took three months of jumping thru the Medical Mafia's hoops before surgery was scheduled, another month later. Like with me, they would do the repair from both the front and the back in two procedures the same morning, but a much more diverse surgical team was needed due to obvious reasons.
The spinal part was done by Dr. Ioannis Avramis of Baylor Spine and Scoliosis and it would seem he did a bang-up job, but the head nurse on Lisa's floor screwed the pooch something awful. Against Lisa's wishes (and Lisa hates the hospital, mind you) she pulled her drainage tube and discharged her. She actually implied Lisa was an opioid chaser who, as a result, wanted to stay in the hospital, which is stunningly untrue.
We got her, in terrible pain, inside and in bed, but a few hours later the text came as I slept with one eye open on the sofa - "Something is wrong. I need help please." I quickly concluded that she needed to go back to the hospital and pretty much carried her down the hall and out the door, but we both ran out of gas on the front porch, so I laid her down on the cement and called a meatwagon.
In the ER, which lasted 23 hours, morphine was of zero benefit - it took a lot of badgering and a robust dose of dilaudid to finally bring relief. And, early in the ordeal, the fire alarm went off for no reason, resulting in about 15 minutes of ear splitting noise and flashing strobes in every room as she writhed in agony on the stretcher, creating an effect that resembled something in a Halloween haunted house. It was a surreal sort of ghastly.
Later that day, rushing to CVS to fill some prescriptions for her, I bought my first pack of cigarettes in 9 years. The few I smoked before giving the rest to a bum were actually a great relief. But, as a whole, no thanks. Yuck. I remain a nonsmoker.
It turned out that she had a HUGE hematoma above her hip causing all that pain, caused by the premature removal of the drainage tube. Fucking assholes. We both had PTSD for a while after that nightmare.
I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw the radiograph (x-rays make radiographs; calling the images x-rays is technically incorrect) - she turned gray upon learning what had been screwed into her. Check out this dick-shriveler:
Dang!
She got better and was again discharged to face a long, very difficult recovery. It went well, though, and she returned to form after several months.
Since then, we have enjoyed the first nice, long stretch in a long time in which no significant surgery befell our very happy household. And, next time surgery is needed, Baylor will sure as hell not be involved.
Dumbass
I made some serious errors during this process.
Foremost, I didn't listen to what my body was screaming at me and waited far too long to seek answers. And, once I did seek answers, I caused further delay by not just paying for my diagnostic imaging and filing a claim with insurance. Both of those missteps pushed resolution farther into the future, increasing the risk of a poor outcome and worsening the inescapable permanent damage in a matter in which every day mattered.
I was fortunate to have avoided permanent disaster. Don't make the mistakes I did.
A Huge Cherry on Top
And, since then, I have vastly increased our wealth by making some bold moves in the massive tech and AI buildout that is shaping up to be the largest and fastest infrastructure buildout in history. Thank you Sandisk, Nvidia, AMD, Micron, Coreweave, Iren, Nebius, and a few others.
Now I'm ready to retire, enjoy life, and concentrate on being an artist with no concerns with either funding or earning. My primary concern in simply to do good work. I've massively expanded my artistic chops, online presence, connections, associations, and collaborators with a painstakingly organized plan and execution that has proven, I dare say, brilliant.
From the bottom of my heart I thank my friends who impressed upon me that I can earn much, MUCH more diverting to other directions the bandwidth originally aimed at the fat chunk of my childhood home that fat chunk Neila fucked me out of. Now, that doesn't mean it no longer matters, but a timely shift in perspective certainly proved astonishingly fruitful.
I now have many projects on the table from which to choose and a life allowing total both total leisure and devotion as I see fit. I still have much interesting information about the Flozberks to be sifted through and brought to light. The degree to which I opt to focus on The Flozberks in the future is up in the air, and will be determined, at least in part, by how they respond to future engagements. The bottom line is this:
Act like cunts > get treated like cunts
At the moment, though, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what a life that doesn't suck actually feels like. So far, I love it. And, somehow, I hope the absurd Flozberks are doing even better than I.
Life is exquisite.