Thank you all so, so much for all your good wishes, positive thoughts, and prayers. We are still waiting, as the neurosurgeons have yet to put their collective noggins together and say what is happening next. That may be tomorrow.
Now, if you recall, a dear friend of mine had surgery for a brain tumor over a year ago, and what really freaked me out about her story - when she FINALLY chose to tell me - was that she had been diagnosed at the beginning of the summer and chose - let me say that again, louder: CHOSE - to wait until September to have the surgery to remove it. Not only that, but she told almost no one about it until, like, the day before they were gonna cut her head open.
It floors me that the words "brain tumor" don't also mean "emergency," "stat," "of COURSE the doctor will see you now, the rest of his patients can go fuck themselves," or "IMMEDIATE SURGERY". I do realize that open-head surgery is a big deal, but that's just it: it seems like SUCH a big deal that there ought to be medical professionals fluttering about you at every moment, working 24-7 to get the process moving because, hey, BRAIN TUMOR. Precious grey matter is being squooshed! That can't wait!
Well, apparently it can. Humph.
(Oh, that reminds me. My boss, for some reason, and this has only been in the last few weeks, has been typing the word "Humph" in her emails and comments, whenever she is feeling peeved, except she spells it "hump." So her emails to me are all...humpy. So she'll be going along, saying "This sales rep is really bugging me today. Hump." Or, "I don't like the intro to this article. Too dry. Hump." And I'm at my computer going, HA HA YOU SAID DRY HUMP! I have no plans to illuminate her; it's too entertaining. It's way better than when we were participating in a local event called the P.R. Bazaar and she kept calling it the P.R. Bizarre.)
While I was in my state of panic on Monday, my editor, Jake Finch, from Quilter's Home tried to call. And if there's ANY phone call I should be answering it's hers, but I just adore Jake and I knew that I would start blubbering if I heard her voice, so I let it go to voice mail and sent her an email in response.
(OH! Did I ever tell you about the MONTHLY COLUMN HEADING? If I did, forgive me, but Jake wants my pieces for QH to have their own Bitchy Stitcher column heading! As in "regular feature"!!!! This made me so excited, that I really wished that there had been someone who had been all "you'll never make it" so I could go SUCK IT, HATERS but everyone's been really supportive, so I'll just go "woo!")
So Jake writes me back, and says many lovely and wonderful things, some involving checks, others involving extended deadlines, and the one thing that lingers with me all day is this: "Your copy is ALWAYS so clean when it comes in it's not a problem to wait a couple more days." Not the part about waiting a couple of days. The part about my copy being clean.
Because I am such a fucking nerd, that the one thing that manages to lift my spirits when I am in personal turmoil is someone noticing that that I don't write error-filled copy.
So when I am on my deathbed, and the family is asking if this paper they are waving in front of my fading eyes is my last will and testament, they had better mention how CLEAN THE COPY is if they want me to pass over in peace and contentment. Otherwise I will haunt them for eternity by sticking a wet finger in their ear whenever they try to write "irregardless."
Hump!
