Face Bones + Recommendations

I was recently diagnosed with a tumor or a cyst or a growth or a mass in my mandible.

Depending on which one of my mouth doctors was looking at the x-rays, I was recently diagnosed with a tumor or a cyst or a growth or a mass in my mandible. Like pretty much every other major diagnosis I’ve gotten in my life, it started with a doctor thinking I was exaggerating about how badly I was hurting and ended with a doctor saying he couldn’t believe I hadn’t chopped off my own head to get some relief on account of how awful I must be feeling. “Fucking ouch, ma’am!” is, in fact, what the surgeon said yesterday looking at the images of my jaw. And he was right about that: I’ve been in a lot of pain in a lot of different ways in my wild and precious life, but this one has been a whole other level of excruciating.

Luckily, my very strong antibiotics do finally seem to be working and I can see straight today! Unluckily, that means I have finally peeped the estimate they gave me for my surgery next week, including the way they had to put two zeroes on a second line of the treatment plan because the number is that big!

I have excellent insurance through my wife’s work, but of course, face bones are not covered under medical insurance in our god blessed USA. There are several teeth on top of this tumor that have to come out so the tumor can also come out, and get biopsied, and then bone grafts and tissue regeneration and new teeth and blah blah blah 17 itemized procedures and my dental insurance max caps out on line two.

Okay but wow, there’s some good news here! I still have 46 Socks stickers for paid subscribers to this newsletter! I had to order extra because the interest in these ones was really high due to a lot of people loving cats and also naps. So, if you’ve been thinking about getting yourself a paid subscription to my newsletter, it would be such a cool time to do that!

Also, for anyone who signs up for an annual subscription or SUPER SUPPORTER subscription, I will mail you a very official certificate.

And while you’re here, I do have a couple of recommendations for you.

• The Now Playing women’s sports app shows every single women’s sporting event happening on any given day and tells you where you can watch it. This is my new favorite thing. (Thanks, Nic, for sharing it with me!) (Goodbye forever, ESPN app!)

• Caity Weaver recently went looking for the best free restaurant bread in America for The Atlantic. I think Caity is one of the greatest writers of our generation, and this piece just further proves my point. It’s so funny and gloriously written, and it wallops you with a punch in the heart at the end.

• I have been catching up on my new favorite literary magazine: SICK! This piece called “Making Mulch” by Emma Yearwood from Issue #6 has stuck inside my bones. It resonates so deeply with me.

• Over at Literary Hub — Prone To Be Productive: In Praise of Writing in Bed by Megan O’Grady.

My face bones and this tumor are coming out Tuesday! I am so grateful to all of you for your support all these many years, in every way! Thank you for reading my writing!

love,

Heather