A whole two dollars, mind you. The Brit said, “Clearly this is a sign that you have to go back and buy more tickets.”

I know just how long the odds are of winning a state lottery, I do. You don’t have to tell me that I may as well crumple up the sawbuck and toss it in the trash. And it’s not like we’re basing our retirement on this. But I like a little flutter, and I enjoy dreaming of what we’d do with that kind of money. The Brit would retire, we’d invest the bulk of it in S&P funds and live off the interest for the rest of our lives, and we’d settle down to a quiet life somewhere pleasant where the Brit would build a workshop out back and refurbish antique computers and I’d write until I dropped dead over my keyboard.

Sound kinda, well … small? Yeah, but we’re talking about the state lottery, not one of the big multi-state deals (at my age I have no interest in winning that kind of money—it would be more of a detriment than a blessing), and the store where we buy the tickets only sells the cash option AND I have to split any winnings with my editor. So we’d have about enough for a very comfortable retirement with some nice trips.

In any case, I can spare a couple of dollars a week, and hey, someone’s got to win it. So I’ll buy some more tickets with my winnings and shove them in my purse like I do, then go about my day. But if any ancestors or forces for good are listening, I would not mind winning the next Texas Two Step or Texas Lottery, just so you know. Thank you.

Which bemuses me. See, I’ve been heroically sized for most of my childhood and all of my adult life. I won’t get into the complicated reasons behind all that, but I’ve been dealing with excess weight for a good fifty years or so.

Until last year, which had a number of medical things happen. For one, I officially entered menopause in April. With most women, that means that their estrogen level drops precipitously and they start putting on weight. With me, it meant that my cysted-up malfunctioning ovaries finally shut down and stopped dumping estrogen into my system at random times, also stopping the random water retention that would occur no matter what part of my cycle I was at. As I wasn’t constantly bloating up anymore, I slowly dropped from 334 pounds to 321 pounds.

Then I got cancer. The surgery required to remove it left me with a relatively torn up mouth for months. Biting into anything tough or chewy was challenging due to my numb lower lip so I switched out my breakfast bagel for oatmeal. Anything crisp or sharp like chips threatened to damage the healing gumline so those got deleted from my diet as well. My surgeon said no working out for six weeks minimum, so I switched over from 15 minutes of walking a day to 30 minutes.

And I lost more weight. Mind you, I’m sure that the increased exercise and ditching the chips helped with that. But I went from my average breakfast of a Lender’s onion bagel with regular cream cheese and a serving of Frito’s chili cheese corn chips (488 calories) to three bags of Quaker Oats instant oatmeal, a splash of heavy cream, and two heaping spoons of brown sugar (454 calories). Calorie-wise, that’s not much of a change. My calorie intake for lunch and dinner remained pretty much the same, and may have even increased a bit.

Nevertheless, I continued to lose weight. At my 01/24 oncologist’s appointment I officially weighed 301.4 pounds (with clothes and shoes on—I was 299.6 that morning naked). As of this morning, I weigh 289.6 pounds.

According to medical science this weight loss doesn’t make sense. I haven’t made that many changes to my eating habits, and I’ve been walking every day for years. Hell, this last weekend I was eating fast food and store-bought pizza like it was going out of style because Lyndon and I both had con crud and I was too sick to cook. And I still lost weight.

But. My paternal grandmother, who also had Hashimoto’s and I suspect had PCOS as well, was a large woman for much of her life until she hit her fifties. Suddenly she lost all her excess weight. She said it was due to a diet, but I think what really happened was that she went into menopause and stopped getting hit with estrogen storms. Not having to deal with constant bouts of inflammation, her body shed the excess weight and settled at what should have been her normal baseline. That seems to be what’s happening with me.

Which … is nice? I mean, I’ve been going shopping in my closet and finding all kinds of clothes that I haven’t been able to wear for years because I’d outgrown them or they were bought on the dream of, “Well, someday…” I had to throw out a bunch of my capris because they were simply too big and baggy, and I’m getting to the point where I need to go through my t-shirts and consider which ones to save for a t-shirt quilt because they’re too big. When I step out of the shower I can see the actual outline of my shoulders and upper arms, and my collarbones are slowly emerging. When I’m in bed I can feel my xiphoid process (the lower tip of the sternum) and the curve of my ribs.

And yes, I have sagging skin. I’ve got an increasingly impressive set of batwings, and pretty much everything on my torso is drooping. By the end of this I’m going to need a tummy tuck at minimum, and a tummy tuck, butt/breast/thigh lift, and brachioplasty at maximum. But my neck skin seems to be tightening up (I’m using Vaseline on my lymph node removal scar every day so maybe that’s helping) and my calves look fabulous.

So, yeah, I’m getting smaller. It’ll be interesting to see if there are any changes in my vitals at my physical in April, especially since I may well be in the 270s by then.

Yeah, I know, I’ve been quiet since October 24th. In my defense I was 1) still recovering from the cancer surgery, 2) cleaning the house for guests (and that took a whole month in itself), then 3) decorating the place for Christmas.

On the upside I’ve managed to keep the house relatively clean and I hope that can continue once I find some contract work. We are in desperate need of a new air handler for downstairs, foundation repair, and a bunch of other expensive repairs, and until I start making more money with the books the only way to do that is for me to pick up contract tech writing/instructional designer work. Meh—it is what it is.

On the plus side I finished a knitting project today (a Doctor Who scarf) and I think I can knock out a second one in the next two days (a coordinating beanie), which is a good way to kick off the year. I also decided to try and put the blinds up again in my office window, which has been a saga in itself. They’re cordless, which means you have to install two or three clips that the blind bar snaps into, and when I tried doing it before my knee surgery I completely screwed up the placement. To make matters worse my then-bad knee started screaming at me so I just left the blinds standing next to the window until, well, today.

So, yeah, guess what I screwed up again? Yup, the clip placement (you have to position them so that they don’t hit the flywheel innards in the blind bar), and now there are a bunch of holes in the top of the window inset. I’ve repaired everything with spackle and I’m going to pick up some plain white paint tomorrow (since the 15-year-old can of paint I used to paint the office is completely dried up) and paint the ceiling of the inset, then try again.

By the way, this burst of DIY may or may not have something to do with the fact that I binge watched Bargain Block and Fixer to Fabulous over the Christmas break. Ahem.

Tuesday I had an appointment with my chemo oncologist. According to the path results my squamous cell cancer is Stage Two and the surgeon got everything. There is no evidence of cancer in the jawbone, nerves, or lymph nodes; apparently the tumor was wide (35mm) but only 2mm deep (or as Lyndon put it, “You just had a bit of surface rust.” Dr. T says I don’t need chemo and he strongly doubts I need radiation, either, but I need to confirm that with my radiation oncologist next week.

Dr. T has officially recommended that I continue to recover and we monitor with scans in January and April, then another one in October, then go to yearly checkups. This is, without a doubt, the best damn early Christmas present I could have asked for. Phew.

I’m missing four teeth, gum tissue, a strip of jawbone, and all the lymph nodes in the left side of my neck, but the surgeon said he got all of the cancer and nice clean margins. We’ll get path reports in a week, at which time I find out what further treatment is required, but my chemo oncologist was visiting someone else and stopped in to see me, and said that the prelim path reports are good. Right now I feel majorly relieved more than anything. And I’m gonna have a really cool scar on my neck from the lymph node removal.

Highlights from the hospital stay:

• Zofran is a godsend for opioid-induced nausea, but it doesn’t do bubkes for blood-induced nausea. And I swallowed a lot during surgery, apparently, so I spent a fair amount of Monday vomiting. Whee.
• Doing my prehab routine and getting into as good a shape as possible for the surgery paid benefits in that I was able to do three rounds of the floor on Tuesday, got cleared by speech and physical therapy, and was untethered from the DVT calf sleeves so that I could get up and wheel my IV stand into the bathroom unassisted. The only reason I had to stay for one more night is that my surgeon wanted me to get a few more rounds of IV antibiotics.
• There is a phlebotomist out there who is damn lucky I didn’t punch him in the nads when he startled me awake at 3 AM this morning and proceeded to use a regular blood draw needle on the back of my hand while saying, “Huh—I should use a baby needle for this. Oh, well.”
• My GOD, hospitals are noisy places at night. But my nurses and CNTs were lovely people so many thanks go out to them.
• A diet of clear liquids gets really, really dull after awhile. But I can start eating soft foods tomorrow so I’m looking forward to pudding, overcooked pasta, and soup instead of broth.
• Pain-wise, it’s being handled nicely with Tylenol (granted, I still have a lot of opioids from the surgery in my system). Right now the most annoying thing is the sensation of having the world’s biggest canker sore under the left side of my tongue from the stitches poking said tongue.
• I still have a drain in my neck from the lymph node removal, as well as some swelling that is giving me an impressive double chin, and I’m getting rather good at decanting the vacuum bulb and recording the output. The fluid is going from red to straw, which is expected and means that things are healing well.
• I’m tired, happy to be home, and will be taking it easy for the rest of the week under direct orders from Lyndon. I am not to clean, cook, do laundry, or any other chores. That will be a challenge, but I also know I really do need to rest and heal. The cats will just have to live with being locked out of the bedroom until my drain gets removed on Monday.

Why am I having surgery, you ask? Welp, I found out in August that I have a patch of oral squamous cell cancer on my lower left gum. Let me say first that it is eminently treatable, I have a top rate team taking care of me, I have an excellent prognosis of recovery, and nobody should be freaking about about this. I’ve got it handled.

The Background:

In 2001 my dentist put a crown on a molar in my lower left jaw (Molar 19 if you grok dentistspeak) that had been root canal-ed in Sweden. Shortly after the crown was installed a small patch of inflammation appeared on the gum directly under the crown. The dentist checked it, didn’t see anything concerning, told me to use salt water rinses, and said that he would monitor it.

The inflammation continued over the next twenty years, never really hurting or anything, just there. In July 2021 I had the bicuspid next to the molar crowned. The inflammation began to get a bit puffy. I was supposed to have it biopsied but the periodontist I was sent to … let’s just say that he didn’t inspire confidence. Fast forward to this spring’s dental cleaning when my dentist said, “This is growing. You really need to get this biopsied—I’m making an appointment for you with an oral surgeon.” The OS turned out to be the same one who took out Lyndon’s wisdom teeth so I knew he was good.

I went there, he looked at the inflammation and opined that I was having some kind of reaction to the dental cement in the crowns, but that we’d take samples and send them off to pathology anyway just to confirm. He numbed me up, snipped out five bits of gum, and sent me on my way.

A week later, he called. To his shock, it was oral squamous cell cancer, the most common form of oral cancer. Since I don’t smoke at all or use any tobacco products he really didn’t expect this diagnosis. But it needed to come out tout de suite so my August and September suddenly became filled with medical visits.

The Medical Visits:

The Oncology Surgeon: Doctor E (nice guy, very competent) x-rayed my jaw, palpated my neck (nobody, by the way, has been able to feel any swollen lymph nodes, nothing has ever shown up on my blood tests, and all the x-rays of my teeth including the ones taken at my dentist show no sign of cancer in the bone), scoped my nose and throat, and laid out a surgical plan. He would surgically remove the two molars and two bicuspids on my lower left jaw, remove the cancerous gum tissue and a strip of jawbone to make sure nothing had gotten in there, do some reconstruction on my jawbone, then wrap everything up by taking out the lymph nodes under that side of the jaw. Everything would be sent off to pathology, at which point it would be decided whether or not I needed radiation, chemo, both, or neither. In about six months or so I could be fitted with a partial denture or implants, depending on how well the jawbone healed.

Pre-surgery physical: That was done at my GP’s office and was a standard physical with an additional EKG and chest x-ray. Everything came back okay (I have a little bit of opacity at the bottom of my lungs, but so do 90% of people in the United States who had COVID so…) and I was cleared for surgery.

The Radiation Oncologist: Dr. D (very nice guy, also extremely competent, with a great scheduler and nurse) took my history, palpated my neck, and felt around in my mouth. He told me I would most likely need radiation and what I could expect from it. Treatment would take six weeks; every week day I would drive to their office where I’d lie on a table and a mask that had been fitted to my face would hold me in place while I got hit with radiation. I could expect loss of taste, a drop in saliva production, and increased soreness and pain in my jaw and throat as the treatments proceeded. It would become painful to swallow during the second half of the treatments and I’d probably go on liquids, at which point I would need to make sure that I was taking in 2000 calories a day as the pain and lack of taste would affect my interest in eating. That being said, they have good painkillers that are very effective for this sort of thing, and I have a Ninja blender that could turn a brick into soup.

Long term effects would be a permanent drop in my saliva production (he said I’d probably need to have a water bottle next to my bed, which I already do), but it wouldn’t affect my ability to swallow or speak, and my sense of taste would eventually come back. I can live with that.

The Chemotherapy Oncologist: Dr. T (also a very nice guy—really, everyone I met at the cancer center was a doll) had spent a rotation at the University of Chicago Medical Center so we commiserated on Chicago winters. He didn’t think that I would need chemo, but it would depend on the PET scan and the path results of the excised tissue. We talked a little bit about the effects of chemo and what I could expect from that. He also asked me when I was supposed to get the PET scan. When I said it was two weeks out he said, “That’s unacceptable,” made some calls, and got it for me the next morning.

The PET-CT scan: I showed up after not eating anything since midnight, got a shot of radioactive glucose, waited for an hour for it to make the rounds of my body, then spent a half hour with my arms over my head while the scanner did its thing. A PET scan finds areas of high metabolic activity, which can include cancer, incisions, infections, and recent bone breaks. Unsurprisingly, it picked up on some low-level activity in my jaw, more apparent on the side with the cancer and much spottier on the other side. The doctor who wrote the report said that the other side might be due to an infection; since I had an URI/sinus infection complete with sore throat, coughing, etc. at the time, that could explain it. Oh, and apparently I have a large mass on my right ovary, but it didn’t react to the tracer so it’s either a cyst or a fibroid. Quelle surprise, said the woman with PCOS. I’ll get that dealt with once the jaw is done.

The Surgery:

The surgery was scheduled to happen on last Monday but there was a scheduling miscommunication between my surgeon’s office and the hospital so the event has been moved to 7:30 AM on Monday, October 9. Once I’m out of surgery I’ll spend between 2-5 days in the hospital (I’m hoping for two but it’ll be whatever they recommend), then go home to recuperate and heal for 2-3 weeks before they start the radiation and/or chemo.

Pretty much every medical professional I have spoken to has gone out of their way to reassure me that they can handle this and I have an excellent prognosis. I choose to believe them, so I’ve been doing my best not to panic. I probably won’t be bringing my laptop to the hospital but I’ll load my login details into my phone and hopefully I can update you tomorrow. Think good thoughts for me, please, and if you would like to support me in a more material way you can always join my Patreon. The most basic tier gets a free short story from me every month for $3, plus updates on my work and sneak peeks at the current WIP. Higher tiers will get bonus material, a free ebook, print book, or hardcover book, and all proceeds will go towards paying off my medical bills. And if you can’t swing that, totally cool—I will be happy with prayers, healing vibes, and any good thoughts you can shoot my way.