(no subject)
I'm two days behind on writing narratives and I should be working on them right now, but my brain is too full and it makes writing platitudes and encouragements difficult.
Last Wednesday I found out that the only way to deal with my neck lump is to have surgery. Since my lump is behind my parotid gland, they're gonna have to move my facial nerves aside to extract it. There's a 2% chance that they might nick something along the way and I get facial paralysis on the right side of my face.
That's very scary.
Thus far I've been trying to reassure myself that there are worse things that would affect my life/identity, like losing function in my hand or eyes or brain, but the facial thing is still pretty scary. Would I still be able to teach? Maybe I can wear some half-face covering or something. :O
Anyways, it's a 2% chance, which means there's a 98% chance that I'm going to be fine (for various definitions of fine). I want to talk about it with someone, but I'm not really sure what I want people to say. Hoosband has not been helpful in this regard. Maybe what will help is to for me to think of things that I can still have a career in if facial paralysis prevents me from working as a teacher.
[...]
Well, I've spent the last 30 minutes looking at (a) websites that claim to do surgery to restore facial mobility, and (b) videos of people with bells palsy (bc it's the most common type of facial paralysis) talking. And ... it's not ... tooo??? bad? Like, not great, but it seems like regular talking doesn't look too weird, and I think students would get used to it if it's permanent.
I still feel tired and stressed and emotionally overwrought, but maybe I can muster enough fortitude to write 9 more narratives. (And then grade research papers. And then write 15 more narratives.)
Last Wednesday I found out that the only way to deal with my neck lump is to have surgery. Since my lump is behind my parotid gland, they're gonna have to move my facial nerves aside to extract it. There's a 2% chance that they might nick something along the way and I get facial paralysis on the right side of my face.
That's very scary.
Thus far I've been trying to reassure myself that there are worse things that would affect my life/identity, like losing function in my hand or eyes or brain, but the facial thing is still pretty scary. Would I still be able to teach? Maybe I can wear some half-face covering or something. :O
Anyways, it's a 2% chance, which means there's a 98% chance that I'm going to be fine (for various definitions of fine). I want to talk about it with someone, but I'm not really sure what I want people to say. Hoosband has not been helpful in this regard. Maybe what will help is to for me to think of things that I can still have a career in if facial paralysis prevents me from working as a teacher.
[...]
Well, I've spent the last 30 minutes looking at (a) websites that claim to do surgery to restore facial mobility, and (b) videos of people with bells palsy (bc it's the most common type of facial paralysis) talking. And ... it's not ... tooo??? bad? Like, not great, but it seems like regular talking doesn't look too weird, and I think students would get used to it if it's permanent.
I still feel tired and stressed and emotionally overwrought, but maybe I can muster enough fortitude to write 9 more narratives. (And then grade research papers. And then write 15 more narratives.)