This is something I’ve talked about in my Writing Tips, something I’ve mentioned elsewhere as well—but here’s Jeff Walker, a guy who I admire for the way he treats folks while being tremendously successful, whose pay-forward ethic runs on the same track as mine—and he’s got a take on what you put into your brain and how it affects what comes out that you NEED to read.

I’m fervent about controlling what I allow into mind mind, and I get good results in my life because of this. Clearly, as you’ll read below, I’m not alone.

http://jeffwalker.com/injecting-poison-in-your-brain/

Realize that everything he’s saying about entrepreneurs is true for writers, too (who are, in fact, also entrepreneurs).

Let him know what you think. Let me know what you think, too.

But graceful? No. In years of nursing, I carried home some hellacious bruises because on my way to codes I would bounce myself off all manner of pointy objects, and not slow down for damage checks or damage prevention.

Years later, when I feel good, I walk fast. And for the first time in months, I was starting to feel good again. So my internal speed regulator bumped me back up to my normal cruise speed—which is about twice as fast as most people seem to walk.

And, because of that whole damn graceful thing, I sped right into an obstacle on the floor in my still-not-unpacked office, whanged myself across the room, careened into the wall, bruised my right wrist and my left thigh from smacking into other objects on the way, and jarred myself so hard my teeth clacked.

But, aside from the bruises, I figured “no harm, no foul,” and went back to my regularly scheduled life, as I have always done.

Two days later, I had a sudden cluster of icepick migraines, which had died down to almost nonexistent in recent weeks. When I went to stand up, the room spun in circles.

And now I’m back to square one, back to being constantly and queasily dizzy, back to migraines, back to being unable to look either left or right without feeling the world lurch.

This time I know how to fix the problem, and this time I know what caused it, so A) I’m not afraid it’s something that will kill me, and B) I should be able to shorten my recovery time.

But I HATE feeling like this. I HATE having to slow down. I already have too much I want to do and not enough time to do it in.

This. Does. Not. Help.

Something considerably more important: Not long back from a TDY the Middle East, the Air Force Kid has extended his enlistment in the military in order to take a year-long assignment right in the middle of harm’s way.

Please keep him in your thoughts.

BUT….

I got a prescription for Antivert (meclizine) which is also available over the counter as chewable Dramamine or Bonine, and which I’ll probably end up just getting that way if this stays a problem. And the medication works. It only treats symptoms, but that it does beautifully.

I feel better than I have in a couple of months. I can work sitting up at my desk, I can walk without having to lean on Matt or a wall, the room is staying in one place instead of rocking like it was careering through heavy seas, I have no nausea, and even the headache is mostly better—though after doing a real-time happy dance just because I could, it went from gone to present again. So I’ll limit future happy dances to mental ones.

If the meclizine continues to work for me, I should be able to get myself back on a regular work schedule.

Right now, after having done a ton of e-mails, I’m getting ready to go through the 150+ pending Editor Applications. I felt too bad last night to even look at them, though I did check to see how many were in there. (Fewer than there are now.)

I’m hoping last night was the last time I’ll lose any work because of whatever this is.

Oh. The anemia is a non-issue. It was a temporary dip, and I’m back to normal there.

My symptoms haven’t abated—I’m having a rough time sitting up right now to type this—so we have more testing upcoming, some for serious stuff. But I’m truly grateful to have both of those monster diagnoses off my back.

And I appreciate every e-mail you’ve sent expressing support or letting me know of personal experiences with this same batch of symptoms. I haven’t had the strength to answer them all, but I have read every one.

Also got some copies of very cool pictures of the inside of my head, and when I get the office put together (I haven’t been up to unpacking, and Matt’s been doing everything on his own in between being with me), I’ll scan a couple and post them here. I got out of nursing BEFORE MRIs were common technology—if you haven’t seen what science can do with giant magnets and film, you’re in for a (mildly creepy) treat.

Speaking of science brings me to the following question. My father-in-law is an award-winning public-school science teacher who is angry and frustrated about how dumbed-down, poorly constructed mandatory curricula are crippling the way science teachers can teach in public schools and how these curricula are actually preventing kids from learning real, usable, fascinating science.

After trying to fix the system from the inside—and I’ve watched him fight this fight for years—he’s determined to find a way to teach good science on his own.

If you have a kid in any variety of school (public, private, or homeschool), would you please drop by his blog, read his first post, and give him your ideas on what good science teaching for your kid would include?

Here’s the post:
New Online Science Course

I really appreciate any comments you can offer him.

And I’ll keep you updated on my medical stuff as I progress through testing (or if I find ANYthing that will help these symptoms and get me back to work).

The news is excellent. My brother-in-law came through the second surgery beautifully. He’s at home today, and while he’ll be on disability for a couple of months while he recuperates, he is himself, and all the horrible things that could have happened didn’t.

I’m still going to be around sparsely for the rest of the month. We had a huge amount of hard physical work staring us in the face before all this started, and we put it aside for the last couple weeks (for obvious reasons)…but our completion deadline is the end of this month. All the work’s still there, and now we have half the time to do it.

So I’m going to spend today mostly sleeping. And I’m going to work like a dog the rest of the month.

After that, I hope to be back here regularly again. I’ve missed being here.

The news on my brother-in-law, by the way, is there is no news. He’s in a holding pattern now, where the hospital with the doctor who WANTS to do his surgery suggested he go to a bigger medical center, and the bigger medical center said he’s not a county resident and he’s self pay, so no chance.

At this point, he’s controlling the seizures pretty well. In theory, he may be able to get the surgery in January.

My Writing

Last week went OVER seventy hours working on Hot To Revise Your Novel, including working all morning today.

Next week, I think, will be more sane. A lot of what I’ve been doing is one-time stuff associated with setting up the How To Revise Your Novel course software, the course forums, adding a NaNoWriMo forum to HTTS, testing things, creating workgroups….

A lot, of course, is writing the course and interacting with my two beta students, so even once everything is set up, I’m still going to be logging some serious hours. And once the Early Birds hit How To Revise Your Novel at the end of November or the first part of December, that’s going to require some additional time, too.

But, to get to the point, I wiped out around 3 AM last night without ever getting to my fiction.

I’m not going to write tonight. Today is my Official Weekend, Dammit^TM.

But I’ll be back tomorrow night. With fiction.

How did you do yesterday? How are you doing today?

This will also allow my brother-in-law to get his Dilantin levels up, to decrease the odds of further seizures, to get his blood pressure down, and to otherwise improve the baseline health that would affect his surgical outcome.

Tomorrow would have been better, I think, but not with his surgeon halfway around the globe for a week or so immediately afterward.

My brother-in-law had a seizure, and ended up back there again, and we were there all night waiting for news.

The story has an up-side this time.

A neurologist came to see him who has done the procedure he needs, who is willing to do the surgery for him, and who will work with the family and deal with the payment issues after the giant tumor is removed.

He’ll have surgery this Thursday.

I did not, however, do any writing tonight.

The tumors in his brain are benign. That’s the good news. The diagnosis is intracranial cavernous hemagiomas.

The bad news is, he needs to see a neurologist. He needs to have at least the largest of the hemangiomas removed from his brain—it’s 9cm in diameter, about the size of a baseball.

Because it has been slow-growing, his brain has rerouted around this mammoth tumor, so that until about a week ago, it wasn’t apparent that anything was going wrong. Last week something—we have no idea what—changed, and suddenly he had right side weakness, periods of incoherence, and what has become evident as short-term memory loss.

Now the tumor has become something that, if he is to survive, must be fixed. There are only a few places in the country that can do the surgery required, which involves threading a catheter through a blood vessel in his leg up into his brain, breaking up the tumor, and sucking it out a bit at a time.

The process is nightmarishly risky. Unbelievably expensive.

Not having the surgery, though, is a sure thing, in the worst of all possible ways.

And he has no health insurance, though he might yet be able to get it through work, and it might yet cover this condition. That remains to be seen.

Assuming he can’t, he and his folks are left hoping that a 9cm cavernous hemangioma in the brain, along with smaller hemangiomas, in a 34-year-old patient with few neurological symptoms (so far), and a history of leukemia as a kid, would be a rare enough and tempting enough case to interest a teaching hospital into taking him on for the education he would provide its medical students.