As I've mentioned, a number of things have held me back from finishing sams adventure book 2, tentatively titled the helping hand, one of which is recovering from surgery.
There's a little known illness that's considered the anesthesiologist nightmare, where a small previously undiscovered tumor on your adrenal glands sends your blood pressure skyrocketing under anesthesia, fortunately mine only got to 270+ over 150+ before they brought it under control, and continued the procedure. I was unconscious, but everyone else was worried i was going to stroke out on the operating table.
As you can guess, it ended up not being a simple morning surgery, with bed rest at home that afternoon.
The good news is that i sneezed today, for the first time in a week. While this is good because sneezing while recovering from surgery can be really painful, that's not why it is good news.
Backstory: when i was about 3 years old my mom noticed i was starting to sneeze and get congested a lot. I've sneezed basically every day of my life since then, once over 100 times in a single day, and lately an average of 15-20 times per day. No, it's not allergies, but for nearly 40 years that's what it was attributed to. I had acid reflux. A series of unexpected events discovered that high-powered acid reflux medication stopped me from sneezing, as well as stoping me from getting erections, among other terrible side effects that procluded continuing to use them. It took a year of testing to get the insurance to approve the surgery, a nissen fundiplication, where they take my stomach, wrap it around my esophagus, and tie a pretty little bow on it, all to create the equivalent of the p trap under my kitchen sink in my tummy. Amazingly they do this after cutting only 6 tiny holes in my belly, reaching in with chopsticks, or something similar. It keeps the surgeons hands clean.
So that's where I'm at, feeling lucky to be alive. 80% of undiagnosed adrenal tumors discovered during surgery have the patient die from the anesthesia spiking their bp. 50% of all diagnoses of the condition happen post mortem during the autopsy. I'm just, for your sake, glad it's rare, with only 2 people out of every million in the US having it.
Oh, and I went a week without sneezing, so if you're invested in Kleenex stock, better sell it quick, because I'm not using fifty boxes a week anymore.