Anne Giles Clelland

Wheaties Fuel for the Spirit

Wheaties is the middle layer of my daily morning breakfast, along with two other cereals from General Mills, Wheat Chex on the bottom, and Cheerios on the top.  I train for sprint triathlons and will admit that branding works and that I think many mornings, as I have for almost half a century, I am eating The Breakfast of Champions.

Knowing I'm a Wheaties fan, my husband bought me a box of the new Wheaties Fuel, sporting photos of my fav front-of-the-Wheaties-box athlete, triathlete Hunter Kemper, and four other guys.  I posted a Twitter update - a tweet - "I'm guessing the target market of new Wheaties Fuel is guys." Then I wrote this sassy post: Wheaties Fuel Reaches Target Market - Female Baby Boomer Sprint Triathletes and tweeted about it.

Wheaties Fuel is on Twitter.  @Wheaties_Fuel noticed my tweets and replied.  A conversation ensued, even a few emails, and then the ultimate online fan experience occurred - Hunter Kemper tweeted my post! 

That was about a month ago.  I tweeted about eating Wheaties Fuel before shoveling snow a few times.  Then I entered a hard time from which I am recovering well, but I'm still a little vulnerable. Kindness, in particular, makes me weepy.

I got tears in my eyes when this arrived in the mail yesterday.

Thank you, David and The Wheaties Team, for this box of Wheaties Fuel autographed by Hunter Kemper, yes, in it's own collector's case.  First I cried.  Then I laughed with joy.  You truly fueled my spirit.

Parotidectomy - Moving On

I’ve seen a martial arts move where the martial artist drops to the floor, swings his legs against the back of the opponent’s heels, and the unsuspecting opponent topples to the floor, surprised, baffled, aching.

That’s the metaphor that works best for me with regard to having a parotidectomy, or what ended up technically being “excision of a parotid mass.”  The morning after surgery’s jubilation at being alive and being able to smile, say, “Eeeee,” and raise my eyebrows was followed by getting hit hard, then harder.  I was floored.

Before the surgery, I Googled far and wide, found Poked and Parotid - Journal of My Parotid Tumor by Andy Little the most valuable chronicle of the general nature of what would happen before, during, and after a parotidectomy, and felt well-prepared.

For those who might find this post when searching for answers of their own about parotid surgery, here are some insights, observations and advice I would share with myself knowing now what I didn’t know then.  (And as of February 2010, when Andy Little writes, "Please feel free to write any time," he means it.  I know, because I wrote him.  And, with great kindness and comfort, he wrote back. Advice to self: Write Andy.)

Observation:  Pre-surgery fasting became tolerable after 5 hours, but I had to quit working because I couldn’t concentrate any more.  After that point, seeing food or thinking of food didn’t make me want to eat it because I had little energy for appetite.  Swishing water in my mouth every hour or so, then spitting it out, helped with the thirst, as did keeping my lips moist with cherry-flavored Chapstick, although alternating with petroleum jelly as lip gloss worked well, too.  By the time I went into surgery, I had been without food or water for 10 hours.  8 hours was required.

Insight:  Andy’s parotidectomy was in 2003.  Whether by local norm or by insurance requirements, what was once a surgery which resulted in hospitalization was for me in 2010 out-patient.  I got into my sister’s car, having had no food or water for 12+ hours except for a few juice cartons in the last half hour, about an hour after surgery, with a multi-inch, multi-stitched incision in my face and a drain in my neck leading to an open hole leaking saliva and blood.  I profoundly underestimated the shock and impact of this event on my system.

Advice to self:  Stock up on nutritious soft food for many meals for many days.  As warned, the discomfort in my face precluded opening my jaw wide or chewing, so soft food in small amounts was all I could tolerate.  Although I love Campbell’s chicken and rice soup, one can slowly eaten in small portions over many hours left me as hungry when I finished as I started.  I ended up subsisting on French fries and vanilla ice cream which provided comforting bulk, but not tissue-rebuilding nutrition.  I wish I had had two six-packs - one of Ensure and one of V-8.

Advice to self:  Don’t stay alone on the second and third days.  I train for sprint triathlons and write an advice column.  I appear physically and mentally fit.  We all thought I would be fine alone.  Alone, I lost all my strength and resilience of body, heart and mind.  I spilled like milk and am still mopping up.  Having a person present in the house, even a hired nurse, would have served as a container. 

Insight:  A hard cry eases the spirit, strains facial stitches, and requires an extra pain pill afterwards.  A thoughtful cost-to-benefit analysis would probably have been in order but I wasn’t thinking at the time.

Advice to self:  Follow directions.  A nurse friend told me that most people make the mistake of taking pain meds once they feel pain, rather than starting the meds before the pain starts.  Heeding her advice, I took the pain meds prescribed by my physician ASAP and experienced that state that some find of addictive relief - separation of self from pain.  I may have had pain but I didn’t know it enough to suffer from it.  I thought I was starting to feel fine, so I skipped a dose.  Two words:  Stupid hubris.  I returned to taking the meds as prescribed but never regained the full relief I had had while doing what I was told.

Insight:  Psychological stuff comes up.  Plenty came up before the surgery, and every moment of working through it strengthened me.  About this new stuff, some I’m working through, some calls for a struggle for which I don’t have much energy. 

Given Andy’s thorough record of parotid surgery, I only wrote one journal entry, 48 hours after surgery.  While it explains more of the details of my own case and story, it’s definitely written from the spilled state of despair.

When I was searching far and wide for information on paroditectomy, I wanted to see.  If you want to see, here's what I've got.

Pre-Parotidectomy Images

Post-Parotid Surgery with Bandages (The last photo is a self-portrait from the third day. Evidence for "Don't stay home alone.")

If you have a weak stomach, please do not click:  Parotidectomy Incision with Drain and without Drain

Parotid Surgery Incision (Less graphic and drain opening is covered by a bandage.)

Parotid Surgery Scar (begun 3/5/10 with photographs of the progression of the scar's appearance)

Parotid Surgery Scar after six months (added 8/22/10)

Parotid Surgery Scar after one year (added 3/28/11)

Here is what I wrote:

Scar - 2/4/10
Did It Just Begin - 2/7/10
Results of Longitudinal Research Studies - 2/12/10
Parotidectomy - Then and Now - 2/15/10
Journal Entry - 2/17/10

Andy Little kindly gave me permission to write about finding his site from both personal and business points of view:

A Google Real-Time Search Story - LeBron James Had a Parotidectomy, Too - 2/11/10
Social Media Works to Resurrect Static, Legacy Sites from Internet Obscurity - 2/14/10

Surgery was late Monday afternoon; this is Friday morning.  I assume I’ll have more insights.  That's it for now.  I'm ready to move on.  I'm tired.

The hardest part is the altered state of the feeling in my face.  It’s supposed to be short-term, back to normal in under a year.  Before surgery, I very carefully placed the right side of my face against my husband’s whiskered chin, against my cat’s soft side, against his cat’s tough little head.  I can’t feel them anymore.

***

Update 3/5/10:  I added these pictures, Parotid Surgery Scar, and am continuing to move on.

***

Update 4/10/10:  For 5 weeks, 6 days, and 23 hours, I felt as if I had a throbbing, aching hard-boiled egg protruding from beneath my ear, sewed to bursting just under the skin.  After showers, the gathered place at the top of the wound stung as if it were still open.  During the fifth week, so distressed and confused by the continued pain and the increased swelling and increasing hardness of the wound, I went to the after-hours, wait-in-line care facility.  The physician was satisfied with the wound's appearance - no heat, no redness, no red lines, no indication of infection.  He could not explain the pain.  Still so concerned and my surgeon out of town, his partner saw me as the last patient on Monday, March 29, exactly six weeks from the day of the surgery. 

My surgeon's partner was very reassuring and informed me that neck surgery is difficult and tricky and, for some, the wound can swell and harden.  I fell in the latter category.  He encouraged me to massage the wound.  I rubbed it gently.  "Like this?" I asked.  "No," he said, "like this," and it felt as if he pulled the "egg" out from the side of my neck and rubbed it briskly between his fingers.

I massaged the wound for maybe two days or so, then thought about it rarely.  Six weeks is considered the magic number for recovery from surgery and, for me, it took every day of six weeks for me not to have the pain and size of the wound a constant presence.

I received a very kind email out of the blue from someone who had had the surgery, who sent me a picture of their beautifully healed scar, who shared that they, too, had had an inordinately, surprisingly difficult time with the surgery.  They sent the picture to assure me that it did get better and added, "Hang in there." 

This post is long gone and buried in this blog so traffic to it comes primarily from people seeking information about, and solace for, their own parotid surgeries.  So to you, my fellow parotid surgery "experiencers," I share what was true for me:  1) I thought I was alone and I am not.  2) While I appreciate that Tolstoy was a man but captured a woman's experience in Anna Karenina and I think others can empathize with those who've have parotid surgery, I think it has its quirks that only someone else who's been there can truly understand. 3) It took me a full six weeks to be released from strong and constant pain.  The pain is occasional and annoying now, not ever-present.  I feel like I have my life back.

Parotidectomy - Then and Now

I am having a parotidectomy - surgical removal of the salivary gland - today.

Of all the sites I studied prior to this date about the procedure and the risks of surgery, I found the most informative and comforting  to be Poked and Parotid - Journal of My Parotid Tumor by Andy Little.  His site chronicles the entire process, from pre-diagnosis, to diagnosis, pre-op, surgery, and post-op, and even includes an epilogue.

Andy Little's paroditectomy was in 2003, a last photo of his parotidectomy scar was posted in 2005, and his site was last updated in 2008.  In hopes of adding information that might be of additional value since that date, I've created this post and will add to it as I proceed through the process. 

I find myself returning to Andy Little's blog to both reread the text and to examine his pictures, perhaps to use his pictures as a crystal ball in hopes of glimpsing some image of what the future holds for me.  For others with the same concerns, I will share as many pictures as I can.

My pre-surgery images are here.

I have shared some of my pre-surgery thoughts and feelings here:

Scar - 2/4/10
Did It Just Begin - 2/7/10
Results of Longitudinal Research Studies - 2/12/10

Andy Little kindly gave me permission to write about finding his site from both personal and business points of view:

A Google Real-Time Search Story - LeBron James Had a Parotidectomy, Too - 2/11/10
Social Media Works to Resurrect Static, Legacy Sites from Internet Obscurity - 2/14/10

The outpouring of support from family, friends and colleagues has given me great strength.  I am ready.

Results of Longitudinal Research Studies

"Somehow, we feel people our age should be...resting on our laurels...not engaging in risk-taking projects, embarking on unmapped adventures, and enduring the awkwardness and vulnerabilities of new mastery."

- Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50

I attended my nephew’s soccer game when he was about five and the parents and coaches on the sideline became apoplectic when, with great earnestness, my nephew’s teammate headed the ball with speedy little legs toward their own goal, and my nephew, with equal earnestness, ran with him to assist.

As the founder of an 18-month old company, I am, by definition, a novice.  My company is new, I’m new to it, so I am, at times, and with great earnestness, vulnerably awkward with techniques and goals.  Plenty of times, I don’t know the rules well enough to realize I’m plain just going the wrong way.

Especially in an age of corporate transparency, a company’s and a company’s founder's actions are subject to scrutiny.  Do I enjoy making errors in public?  Nope.

But compared to my geothermal passion for my company and my idea, an error is a hot rock in the sun.

As Lawrence-Lightfoot notes, I’ve lived long enough to have laurels to rest on, even to be termed a “master” in a field.  The results of longitudinal research, case study of one:  No matter the level of excellence and precision I achieved, to some greater or lesser extent, one occurrence was guaranteed.  I would err.  Humans err.

I’ve been asked, given the risks of the surgery I’ll have on Monday, why I haven’t sought out the top surgeon in the field, nationally, even internationally, to do the job. 

I have political views on health care that certainly have influenced my choice not to do that.  I’ve written often about my awareness that my attempts to control outcomes are almost always power-driven and fear-based.  I do my best to let enlightenment lead my way.

But the essence of my choice is this:  I think expertise can counteract humanity only so much. 

I could spend my family’s fortune, a huge portion of my fellow-insured’s payroll deductions, and fly to, let’s say, a leading research hospital in Paris, meet the esteemed master surgeon and his or her apprentices. 

I would then become a sheep, as are all pre-operation patients: no food or water after midnight, yadda, yadda, and the rather astounding request not to use hair spray in the morning because it’s flammable and we wouldn’t want fire in the operating room, now would we?

And in the morning I would be put under with anesthesia and lie on the operating table, powerless, subject absolutely to the surgeon’s humanity. 

Whether in Blacksburg, Virginia or Paris, France, that’s a human working on a human.  Humans, even masters, err.

As we are told by our grade school science teachers, each of us is unique.  With his impeccable record and reputation - and his own uniqueness - the surgeon who will operate on me on Monday could already be the ideal fit for my anatomy.

There’s no way to know.

Passes aren’t caught, hoops aren’t hit, soccer balls aren't kicked into the right goal.  Start-up company founders get their angel investor video pitches trashed.  With the highest hopes and the best of intentions, humans err.

On the way to Monday, I’m cranking through the grieving process.  I seem to have mostly acceptance going right now.  I feel a little sadness, a touch of fear.

Given the nature of my work, I’ve had the glorious experience of having multiple-year relationships with thousands of people, almost as if I’ve had my own private, longitudinal research study going.

All those joys and sorrows, all those seemingly impossible, even unspeakable, things happening.

I’ve seen one truth prevail.  It comes from depths.  And it wasn’t how much one could control others or outcomes.

The surgeon will have it, the staff will have it, my family, friends and entrepreneurial colleagues will have it, ultimately, no matter what happens.

Courage.

And I’ll have it, too.  No matter what happens.

Did It Just Begin

I wonder if It weighs like Mine--
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long--
Or did it just begin--
I could not tell the Date of Mine--
It feels so old a pain--

- Emily Dickinson, "I Measure Every Grief I Meet," cited in The New Yorker 2/1/10

"Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them."
- Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

When I was nine, my family met my fourth grade teacher and her husband at the grocery store. Her husband held out a hand to me, missing everything but a thumb.  I balked, afraid, but he insisted.  I remember the odd shape, the warm skin.

Making a connecting commuter flight in Charlotte in one of their sunny, glass terminals, I saw a face slick with burn, melted skin pulled red and mottled tight around his eyes, the hole of his mouth, bits of what had been his ears.  I felt shock, then such sorrow.  He sat alone, waiting for his flight, a young man by his energy and dress, not making eye contact, not speaking, not watching the children whose arms were jerked by their parents when they stopped to stare, not requiring that others shake hands with what had become of him.  To and from the restrooms and snack bar, I passed him several times.  On the last pass, I heard him sigh.

In business, scenarios are played out as worst case, best case, and realistic case. 

In therapy, it's The Worse Case Scenario and The Miracle Question.

In a version of The Worst Case Scenario, the client is asked of something he or she fears, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” To the client’s answer, the therapist asks, “What’s the worst thing that could happen because of that?” With support and only as the client is able, the therapist questions each answer, taking the client down, down to the deepest fear.  Often the answer involves death with a twist of powerlessness and a dash of presence - no one, too many, the wrong one.  In the unknown dark, the fear lurks.  Brought to the light, it threatens less.

A troubled client is asked a version of The Miracle Question:  “If you went to sleep tonight and woke up in the morning and all was well, what would have happened?”  In describing the details, awareness of possibility emerges.

As I contemplate surgery next Monday, out-patient, almost-routine except for that side bit about the facial paralysis, The Worst Case Scenario for me isn’t death.  I have plans for my life and would be sorry to lose those and I would be deeply sorry for the sadness of my friends and family, but I won’t feel that because I’ll be gone.

The worse case scenario for me would be answering the question, "How brave will I need to be?"

The worst case scenario for me would be the sigh. 

Were I to regain consciousness from the surgery and a miracle had occurred, it wouldn't be what’s resulted from the surgery.  I’ve learned that what comes from wishing for outcomes, or for wishing things were different, is irremediable suffering.  “All is well” for me would be that, whatever has happened, I am handling it.

Scar

"...destroy all of my beautiful wickedness? I'm gone! I'm gone!"
- The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz, 1939 film

"When I was young  I longed for scars
like my father's   They were the best
scars on the block...
'It's the ones you can't see that kill you'..."
"Scars," Peter Meinke

LBJ taught me the wonder of scars.

I got a few in the 70s, which, following LBJ's lead, I shared in mutual fascination with the fellow scarred, my mother protesting because their location required me to unzip my jeans.  It was the 70s.

Looks like in the 10s I'll be getting a new one for all to see.

I asked Dr. Aaron Prussin, "If it were your wife?"

"It would come out," he answered.

I'll have a parotidectomy on February 15, 2010 for this.  Since the facial nerve runs through the parotid, or salivary gland, in addition to some other possibilities, the major risk of the
two-and-a-half hour surgery is that my face will sag like a Dali clock.

Here's a detailed text description of the surgery and here, on YouTube, is how Dr. Soh does it in Singapore. (Spoiler alert: The needles come out at 4:46 and the knife at 5:18, which is when I stopped watching.)

Feel free not to click on the links here:  I'm going to look like this at first except mine's on the right side.  Hopefully, I'll look as good as Andy does eventually.  You can sit on my left when we're out to dinner if I develop Frey's syndrome.  Apparently, I'll have a nice dent in my neck, too.  A dent in the neck is better than a hole in the head.

The bottom line for this CEO is that I'm probably just not going to be too good lookin'. Ah, well. 

For my cool speaking gig on April 7, I'll bring props.

The procedure will be done out-patient at Montgomery Regional Hospital (which is amazing because they cut OPEN a guy's head in the ghastly video - okay, I looked) and I'll call on Friday, 2/12 to find out when the surgery is scheduled for Monday.  Dr. Prussin suggested I schedule no meetings for a week afterward.  I think that's to protect everyone from the Dali face thing.

He says for sure, long-term, I won't be able to feel my right ear lobe.  Maybe that's the time to finally get my ears pierced.

If you're not into scars like LBJ, or not into the CEO of the company that provides you service or with whom you partner being out of commission for awhile, I can understand that. If you wanted me the way I was, that makes complete sense to me.  For the change to come, small or large, the concern it may cause you, and the time it may take away from you, I am profoundly sorry. 

Dr. Prussin thought I might want to restyle my hair towards my face, rather than away from it, to hide the scar.

It would just get blown back.  I'm face forward, going fast.