So, it’s almost the big Holiday season! Let’s talk some more about my health, shall we?
First of all, nothing has happened so far this month, mostly because between late November and the end of the year we have a huge amount of holidays, so scheduling just doesn’t work then. But come January, boy howdy, do I have some stuff going on!
First of all, I get that long-awaited and much reviled colonoscopy (also known as the Pooperscope™), right at the start of 2020. I mean, seriously, right at the start. Like January 2nd, literally the first day that isn’t a holiday, I get a cable invasively placed up my fartbox, to look for abnormalities and whatnot.
(Note: Colonoscopy was cancelled, due to Gastroenterology fearing I might have a heart attack or stroke while mid-scoping. So it now has to wait until after the heart stuff is all done. Yay.)
I’m 51. This is the sort of thing that happens when you reach my age. So that’s something for you to look forward to.
Then, and more importantly, I finally have an appointment to have that TEE (Transesophageal Echocardiogram) done. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a necessary procedure, which involves placing an ultrasound device down my throat, so the doctor may take an echocardiogram of my heart from behind it. This will give him a much better view of the hole that is currently between the two upper chambers of my heart, and help determine whether or not it can simply be plugged.
If it can be plugged, that’s an outpatient procedure where I might be down for a few weeks at most.
If it can’t be plugged, I get open heart surgery, and will be out of commission for months.
Anyway, the TEE occurs at the end of January, which is a bit of a wait, but it was literally the first date my doctor had available. Being the Director of Adult Congenital Heart Defects within my Medical provider’s scope, for my region of the country, you might think that he’s a bit sought after for his services.
So that’s it. I am now just waiting things out, and am focusing on having the best holidays I can, with the people I love. Especially since I literally can do nothing else for the next few weeks. Now it’s just a matter of waiting until we can determine which surgical procedure I have to fix my heart.
That’s not so bad, when you really think about it.
As for the shows, well all that hard work we all did to get podcasts recorded in advance was mostly for naught… sort of, anyway. Yes, since I’m going to be available most of January, we could have done many of these recordings that month. But by recording all of the remainder of 2019 in advance, I am able to get January knocked out now, and likely February done in January. This leapfrog approach means we will have normal content well into early 2020, even if I have to have The Worst Option (open heart surgery) sometime later in the year.
Best of all, we will be significantly ahead on “Knights of the Tabletop”, which is already recorded through March 2020, and I hope to be through June or July by the time we end up having the actual heart surgery done. So if nothing else, KOTT will live on unabated, for sure, and even if the other podcasts are put on hiatus at some point, they will indeed continue for now, and return as soon as I can get them there.
The blogs are the blogs. I’ll continue them as I can, as usual.
Hey, but on a final note, back on Black Friday I treated myself to a new violin. Sure, it’s only an AmazonBasics brand beginner instrument, but it’s an actual acoustic violin, that I can take anywhere. I have received it, and yes, it’s precisely what you might expect from an AmazonBasics violin. After I managed to break a string during initial tuning, and then replaced all four strings with Di’Addario Preludes, it sounds way better, and took almost no effort to get in tune!
Yes, this breaks our long-standing tradition of not buying ourselves presents from September through December (due to My Lovely Bride™ and I both having birthdays during this period, not to mention the holidays), but we both broke this tradition for good reasons.
We decided to put mostly empty boxes under the tree this year. What we will have there are either things we bought during our Faire visits this year, or small notes to each other, just fun things for each other, given with Love. When we first got together, that was the only sort of Yuletide we could afford, so it’s nice to return to this sort of holiday this year, especially considering how the year has been thus far.
Anyway, that’s all I have for today. Cheers!
