Update: Paging Nurse Syrina, Paging Nurse Syrina… July 26, 2023
(As posted publicly on our Patreon Page)
Hello everyone, it always seems like all I’ve been doing lately is apologizing to you… hell, all I’ve ever been doing lately is apologizing to everyone… and, of course, I need to do so with you again.
While we were moving forward at a really good clip and it looked like we were going to make the July deadline of release, I made a tragic mistake that I had to do… but wasn’t really smart to do.
One of my friends had been living in North Carolina with a couple and another friend, that couple announced that they were going to get married and gave my friend and the other roommate notice that they would be moving out in May.
So, through February to the date of move out, my friend and her other roommate tried desperately to find a couple of other people who could move in and replace the expense they were losing from the couple that moved out.
Regretfully, long story short, they were unable to do so and unable to continue to keep the apartment and needed someone to come move her and the other person back to Michigan (where she is from), so Krista and I agreed to help her.
While that wasn’t a smart decision on my part, it is one that I would make again to help a friend, but yeah… since then, my body has definitely informed me that it was in NO CONDITION to make a 10.5-hour drive down and back again.
By ‘informing me’, I mean that currently I have limited use (or feeling) in my legs and left arm… my overly stressed-out wife has been doing her best to help me move around the house and I am restricted to using a walker if she isn’t around and also had me call my surgeon, Dr. Fischgrund to move up my surgical date (from the end of August and the start of September) to ASAP.
Prior to me being able to be put on a table, he (and the insurance company) needed me to get a Cervical Myelogram and an EMG Nerve Conduction Test, which I did last Monday and on Tuesday.
For those who don’t know what a Cervical Myelogram is, they strap you face down on a table and inject dye into your spinal cord, then tilt the table to make sure the dye is throughout the whole spinal column and then take x-rays and a CT of your spine and nerves.
This procedure can (and DID) cause intense headaches (that make you wish that the world, or pain, would end.
Then on Tuesday, with the remnants of day’s prior headache, still very much alive and kicking (in the front of my skull and behind the eyes), I went and had my EMG Nerve Conduction Test to determine just how little signals are being sent from my brain to my left arm and legs… and how they do it is by having you lay down on the table, strap a bunch of electrodes, attached to a machine, to the areas to be tested and then hit you with something like a taser…
NOTVERYFREAKINGFUN!!!
My entire freaking world turned white as my body (that could move) flopped around like a fish out of water and an instant urge to urinate suddenly strikes you and before you can even say anything…
ZAP!!!
They zap you again! Then, after a bunch of “Hmmm’s” and “Uh huh’s”, they take the electrodes off of you, as yesterday’s headache revisits you with such a ferocity, you’ve forgotten all about that urge to urinate you had moments prior.
So, just as you think everything is over, you see the doctor produce a long, ass needle capped with another electrode and he informs you that is he is now going to ‘Listen to your muscles’.
Look buddy, you don’t need to use that long, ass needle to hear what my muscles are saying, I can already tell you what they are saying… they’re saying:
“What the HELL was that?” They are screaming at me as they continue to twitch and spasm, “What the FRAK did you DO?!!? DON’T TOUCH THAT AGAIN!!”
While your killer headache is laughing maniacally and screaming over the muscles, saying: “I’M BACK!!”
And before you can report to the doctor, your bodies findings, he is jabbing that long, ass needle into the muscles of your arm (in multiple spots), while listening to static on the machine that the electrode is hooked up to… uttering more “Hmm’s” and “Uh huh’s”, while I am trying to tell the doctor that “NO, that static is NOT what my muscles are saying, buddy!”
He is kind enough to inform you that the lack of feeling in the three fingers of your left hand is not the result of carpal tunnel and I am like: “No Shit! I am here because several nerves in my freaking neck is pinched!”
And then, he hits the ‘Dead Zones’ of my body… you know, the areas that I no longer have any feeling in. None whatsoever… as proven by the fact that my body no long reacts to the long, ass needle being jabbed repeated into it or on the machine.
Either I am screwed in those areas or my muscles have final decided to go and huddle in some dark corner and are sobbing so softly that the machine can no longer hear them.
Then the doctor looks at me, somewhat perplexed and states: “Yeah, you definitely have several pinched nerves in your neck.”
No crap.
I wanted to grab him by the lapels of his smock, shaking him while screaming: “I KNEW THAT!!”
But, I can’t… because my muscles are tired and sore, my headache is banging against the back of my eyes, screaming loudly through my skull to such extent that I can only gape at him with a dumb look on my face.
He at least provided good information to the wife, in telling her that the nerves are only ‘pinched’ and not ‘severed’, which means that things can return to normal after some time and rest after the surgery.
TLDR: I am screwed (I knew that), I will be able to walk again and grab things with my left hand without dropping it (which is good), but I DO need the surgery (yeah, kind of got the hint lately).
So, I see Dr. Fischgrund on August 2, 2023 to arrange the surgery, which could happen on the 3rd or the following week.
I can’t stubbornly try to hold out longer, my body won’t let me. I can barely walk, can barely use the left arm/hand and my body is done… I’m tired, I hurt, I wanna go home… even though I already am.
As such, I am unable to finish right now what I need to get the Prologue out to you, I am still working an hour or two, for as long as my body (or my wife) will let me, but most of my day is spent in pain and wishing for a quick end.
So, if you wish to pull your support, I will completely understand. I’ve been stupid, unreliable and unproductive enough that I am unable to make the deadline before my surgery and release won’t be till after it and some rest.
Those of you who have stuck by me through my last two surgeries (last year and the year before) know that I try to bounce back pretty quickly and I am back at the computer within a week or two after the surgery (and that the wife or I try to come in here to keep you updated on how the surgery went)… but that is the current state of things. Right now, I am lucky if I can get one or two renders a day finished.
If you decide to stay, I appreciate it, if you decide to leave, I will understand… but if anything, I could really use some positive energy directed my way and also Sierra3’s way (as he is having surgery to remove the tumor, they got to shrink in his bowels on August 21st… so, please also send some his way too).
In the meantime, I will be doing what I can while I can, while listening to my body and my wife scream at me for being stupid. I (or the wife) will keep you updated once I’ve seen Dr. Fischgrund and please, take it easy and sorry for having to make you tolerate my stubborn, dumb ass.
~Jack