Surviving a Knife Fight with a Zombie Biker Gang

I don’t often update my blog lately except for book reviews. Most of the time, it’s because I’m spending every free moment writing novels. (Writing blog posts takes longer than you’d think.)

But a lot of other things have been going on, so in the brief moment where I don’t feel like I’ve been beaten by a zombie biker gang and left for dead, I thought I’d write an update.

I’ve been having odd health issues for a while—okay, a year. But doctors haven’t been able to diagnose anything because my symptoms didn’t make sense. To make a frustrating story short, a spinal surgeon finally ordered an x-rayed and said, “Uh, wow…Are you sure you're not in a lot of pain? Your neck is really beaten up. It looks like the neck of an 80-year-old.” Gee, thanks.

So I found myself having surgery on a Saturday morning. I asked about recovery, medications, etc. The surgeon talked about how I might have trouble swallowing and talking, but he’d make sure I’d have this really great looking scar. And since I didn’t have folds in the skin of my neck, it would take extra surgical skill and coolness (my words, not his).

I am recovering and am the owner of two artificial discs, have had my vertebrae roto-rootered because of root nerve compressions, and have a very cool scar. Honestly, I don’t care if the scar looked like a railroad track disaster, but everyone else does. My chemist son oohs and ahs over the deep tissue sutures and especially the skin adhesive, waxing eloquent about plastic coating and hydrogen bonding (dipole-dipole interactions), London dispersion forces, van der Waal interactions, etc. (Yay! So excited about that, except, you know, not.) My husband’s retinal surgeon also took time to check out my scar and wanted to know who’d done the surgery since it was a class-act. (My husband had four emergency eye surgeries during this time. Neither of us was allowed to drive. So we are thankful to our daughter who came up from Atlanta—she and the chemist became the Patient Management Team.)

In the meantime, I try to write, which has been very difficult, especially on high doses of Percocet and Valium. However, the Valium dosages are going down and words are flowing again. I’m so very thankful. As is the rest of my family—there is no creature quite so difficult as a writer who’s not writing.

Yes, they often go in through the front of
the neck to do surgery on the spine.

Here’s a photo of my “very cool” scar. Honestly, right now it still looks a little gross—though I’m assured that won’t last. But I’d kind of like it to look gritty—because then I could make up this great story about how I survived a knife fight with a zombie biker gang using only my wits and a set of car keys. Alas, I had a very skilled surgeon.

Sadly, you can hardly see the scar. :(

Here’s me writing. It takes too much energy to get dressed first thing in the morning—so I write in my leopard pajamas. When I’m tired and my arms are burning, I get dressed for the day. Writers write—and you do whatever it takes.