Tomato bisque is pretty, um, blah. If you eat it a couple times, you’ve experienced all it has to offer. Normally I load it up with saltines but that’s not happening now.
Instead, I added about a tablespoon of butter, garlic vodka and some sriracha. This is really good!! Om Nom Nom!
The last few days have been relaxing in a daze of percocet and books. I finished Patrick Rothfuss’ second in the king killer series and it’s really, really good. If you enjoy some beautifully-crafted swords and sorcery, it’s about as good as it gets (I’m normally leery of books with covers that say “awesome!” all over them but in this case it appears to be justified. Besides, John Scalzi liked it.) I also blew through the latest of the S.M. Stirling “change” series, which is beginning to seque into boring military fan-fic. Now I am working on a biography of H.L. Mencken, which is a bit more down to earth (i.e.: depressing) One thing that is nice about being at my parents’ house is that you cannot run out of books to read. It simply isn’t possible. Last night I got sucked into a biography of Caravaggio and passed out halfway through, then woke up remembering very little of it. Opiates do that to me.
Should I fear becoming boring? Soup appears to work.
Food is not too bad a problem but there are occasional surprises. If you sneeze while you’re eating, stuff flies horizontally out through your perforce clenched teeth. Even small particles in your food stick in the wires and you can’t get them out because your normal means of extracting stuck food usually involve working your jaw so you can move your lips or tongue – oops – that’s a non-starter. I woke up in a mild state of panic because in my dreams my mouth was blocked. Little things like that are a constant low-level stressor. But not too bad. The trick is to just stay cool and not panic.
The ice cream I got has been pretty good but I have to let it melt to the soup-point then suck it up my hose. I’ve been eating a great deal of tomato soup.
I hate to admit this but two-three weeks doesn’t really look like a very long time to me. I am considering just being boring and subsisting entirely on Trader Joe’s cream of tomato soup. Simply because I do not want to waste a huge amount of time figuring out how to eat.
Yesterday I did an experiment and took some beef chili that I bought at whole foods, and mixed the squishier bits in with my tomato soup. I finished it, eventually, but it was a disaster. Even the teeny-weeny chunks of beef were able to jam behind the wires and stay there until sluiced away with 2 mugs of tea and a great deal of poking with a sharp toothpick.
I am learning that there are: things that melt, and things that don’t.
A chunk of chocolate caught between your teeth melts and vanishes. Chocolate chip ice cream milkshakes are acceptable and present no problem. A chunk of beef caught between your teeth settles in for the long haul, and laughs at your feeble attempts to dislodge it.
Sunday morning I wake up and observe the leakage from my ear. It’s not as bad. I ponder the old joke, “Q: How do you know when your Harley needs oil? A: It stops leaking.” It’s going to be a long day.
Fully-developed bruise and surly expression: Fight Club!
While I was asleep I had a horrible nightmare, probably based on my experiences in the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles back in the 80s – in which you go from one line to another only to be told you’re in the wrong line, endlessly repeated. In my dream I called the jaw specialist and when they got a look at me they said, “your skull is cracked; we can’t do anything until that’s healed.” And the neurosurgeon, of course, said, “come back when your jaw is fixed!” and gave me the phone number of a jaw surgeon and told me their office was closed until January but they’d be back January 1st and to just try not to chew until then.
After some thinking I decide I really should update my parents. Usually, in the Ranum family, nobody shares information until someone is dead. So instead of getting a call like, “your cousin is sick” it’s “the funeral is on wednesday.” I don’t really like that tradition so I try to break it.
I explain the whole situation with the specialists and whatnot and my dad suggests that they could come and get me and that I could go to Hopkins. What a brilliant idea! Hopkins is where the doctors are! It’s in a huge city that never closes! They may have specialists that are open on sundays! (hint: nope) I double-check with Robin who also thinks it’s a good idea, then I call a limo company and book a ride to Baltimore.
My driver is pretty awesome. I explain to him that I have a broken jaw and am not feeling chatty. He asks if I’d mind if he put on some music and he puts on The Rolling Stones. The whole way. 3 hours. Actually, it’s great because I doze and dream and think about the amazing fusion of blues and rock that The Stones have accomplished, and how odd and wonderful that it came from industrial England instead of the deep south and…. Zzz….
I worked at Hopkins in the 1980s. It’s a wonderful place and the original hospital building (above) is truly beautiful. I felt like I was coming home.
I get to Hopkins, check in around 1:00pm, and wait. Immediately upon mentioning the leakage from my ear, the nurse performs a basic neurological assessment. She explains that it could be several things leaking and that it’s actually fairly normal for this kind of thing. They take a sample of the stuff coming from my ear and send it to histology to see whether it’s CSF and queue me for a more detailed CT scan, etc. I feel like things are turning around. Every single nurse from Hopkins performs a basic neurological assessment on me the first time they talk to me. This is comforting, really.
They come back and tell me that it’s just blood, not CSF, and that my skull is OK and I just have a nasty broken jaw. It’s something that happens a lot and is a well-known problem. It’s going to suck but it’s not a huge life-threatening disaster any more. Also, I can now take painkillers.
Things are turning around, mostly. I get scheduled to meet with a specialist on Tuesday. His credentials are amazing. This is going to be an assessment meeting. I go home to my parents’, eat some of Trader Joe’s awesome tomato/red pepper soup and wash down a percocet and that’s the end of my day.
A couple of thoughts: It’s clear that the nurses are the people who run the medical world and I’m actually quite glad of it. I guess it makes sense for there to be specialization of expertise in some roles and broad expertise in others. Everyone I talk to is switched-on and smart and educated and caring. The vast majority of them are women. Other than the fact that it probably points to severe gender inequality (?) at the upper end of the medical field, I find it comforting.
My Mouth Wired Shut 