Well, I told y’all last month about the debacle of discovering I had a malignant melanoma on my right shoulder. This past Tuesday, I had it taken off. It has proved to be an interesting experience, if I do say so.

I haven’t been worried about the surgery ever since we spoke to the doctor and he assured us there was nothing to worry about. Still, I couldn’t help but get a little nervous as the time drew near. I’m generally averse to pain in all its many forms and I wasn’t sure how much pain was going to be involved in getting this cancer off my shoulder. I also am not crazy about being put to sleep.

Until Tuesday, I’d only been put under twice. Once for my wisdom teeth back in high school, and once a few years ago when I had my carpal tunnel disorder fixed. I woke up during the wisdom teeth surgery for a bit. It was just long enough for the nurse to twist the knob a little, and I was right back out. For the hand surgery, I was so nervous the nurse went and got Budge to calm me down so I’d quit shaking long enough to get an IV started in my foot. Yeah, it had to be in my foot because they were working on both arms. I was barely out during that procedure. I felt some discomfort I thought I wouldn’t feel, and I remember a good bit of the surgery. So in all, getting put under is not a favorite thing of mine.

I got up Tuesday and got a shower with antibacterial soap, per the instructions I’d gotten on the phone. Actually, Budge had gotten the instructions because I didn’t recognize the number calling so I didn’t answer. I was glad of one thing. We didn’t have to be at the hospital until 9:30 AM, which is a lot better than the butt crack of dawn we’ve usually had to get there whenever Budge has had her surgeries. We got checked in at the business department and they walked us back towards the surgical waiting cubicles where I’d get prepped.

At that point, the took Budge away. That set off alarm bells because I don’t like being separated from her in strange places and I didn’t know why they were taking her away. I’d always gotten to wait with her whenever she had surgery. She told be later she was concerned about it too. Turns out it wasn’t much of a big deal. I just went and got changed into the hottest plastic Tyvek gown I’ve ever been in in my life. Then they started an iv in my arm and the parade started.

I call it a parade because it’s a procession of associate medical folks who have something to do with my surgery. I talked to the doctor in charge of knocking me out. (No I can’t spell it. Leave me alone.) Then the surgical resident and a medical student came by to let me know they’d be assisting the doctor. Then a couple more people with various titles showed up and finally, the nurse brought Budge back in to wait with me.

It was a wait, too. We sat there two hours waiting to go to the operating room. Come to find out, this is common when Dr. Trocha has surgical days because he has one patient after the other stacked up ready to go. He’ll go in and remove the lesion in one patient, his resident will close the incision, and he’ll already be gone to the next one. He had eight the day I was there. Anyway, we spent two hours listening to the Yacht Rock channel on the hospital tv system. Thankfully, we both like ’70’s easy listening music or it could have been tedious.

They finally came and got me and wheeled me back to the OR. All I remember after that point was the room was freezing. I barely had time to register that fact before the nurse pushed something in my IV and the next thing I knew, I was waking up looking at Budge and a nurse in recovery.

So far, the recovery hasn’t been so bad. I bled a good bit the first couple of days so Budge kept extra gauze taped to me so I only ruined two shirts. They put this tape on my shoulder over the incision, and I don’t know what it’s made of, but it puts duct tape to shame. It is STUCK! I’m supposed to leave it on until I see the doctor in two weeks, so it must be some durable stuff. I can get it wet, but I’m not supposed to turn it to the shower head directly.

The gash is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. The spot was just a centimeter or so square but he cut out a seven inch trench in my shoulder! I guess he wanted to be thorough. Mission accomplished. So I still can’t lay on that shoulder, which is a bummer for me because that’s my preferred shoulder. I also have to be careful pushing or pulling too much so I don’t pop a stitch, although I don’t see how that’s possible through that space age polymer tape they have on me. The worst part is it itches like crazy. Of course I can’t scratch it, so I pat it to try to get it to stop. It works about half the time.

But that’s it. That’s my surgery in a nutshell. I now have to put that I’ve had cancer on any medical history I fill out, and I have to go to the dermatologist every three months for a couple of years, but other than that, I don’t have anything to worry about! So, remember I love y’all and keep those feet clean!

So in the middle of last month, that being June, I went to the dermatologist because that’s what you do when you hit fifty. You start going to various and sundry doctors appointments to keep up with the rapid pace of decline in your body. The dermatologist visit was for a full body scan that Budge determined I needed because I’d never had one. Okay, better not to argue with Budge, so off to the skin doctor I go.

I get there, fill out a very large stack of paperwork, and wait my turn. The pretty nurse from Eastern Europe calls me back along with her trainee. She has me sign another form or two then tells me what I’m having done. She says take off everything but the undies and the doctor will be right in. She didn’t say she and the trainee would be in also, luckily that doesn’t matter much anymore.

So the doctor comes in. Now I’ve had fast exams. I know doctors today aren’t given the time they once were to spend with patients because of the demands of insurance companies. This was next level though. He had a spray bottle of liquid nitrogen that he wielded like an Uzi all up and down my arms, blistering what he called “pre-cancerous lesions.” I had little red dots all over.

Then, he got to my right shoulder and the pace of the exam slammed to a stop. Apparently, the spot Budge has been worried about for the last three years was, “interesting.” So he shot that spot up with numbing liquid, took a scalpel, and sliced off a quarter sized piece of my epidermis. Didn’t hurt at the time because of the lidocaine, but in the shower the next day was a different story.

He told me he was going to send the skin off to pathology for a biopsy and someone would be in touch. Then he wished me a good day, told me to get dressed, left the office, and promptly went on a month long vacation.

A week went by and I hadn’t heard anything. Then two weeks. I figured it must not be a big deal so I forgot about it. That was until I got the phone call. It went something like this:

“Hello?”

“Yes, may I speak with Mr. Wham?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Wham, I’m from the Oncology and Thoracic Surgery Group here at Prisma. I’m calling to set up your appointment to come see us.”

That was a bit of a surprise. Why was I getting a call from an oncologist’s office? So I asked her, “Excuse me, ma’am, but why am I getting a call from an oncologist’s office?”

“To set up your consultation appointment.”

“WHAT consultation appointment?!”

“To talk about your surgery.”

“WHAT surgery?!”

“To remove your melanoma.”

“Ma’am, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, WHAT MELANOMA?!”

“Sir, have you not received a call from your dermatologist?”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

“Why don’t you give them a call and call us back?”

“Okay. That sounds like a capital idea.”

So I called the dermatologist’s office forthwith. Of course no one answered so I left a message. A rather detailed and somewhat irate message asking them to please call me and tell me why a cancer doctor was calling me to do surgery on my person.

I got a call about an hour later from a very contrite and very sweet physician’s assistant in the dermatology practice who let me in on the fact that my doctor had recently gotten back from the vacation and since he took his password to his computer account with him, they were just now finding out the biopsy results of my shoulder skin from nearly a month before.

I had a level four melanoma on my right shoulder. She was careful to be adamant that “level four” did not correlate in any way, shape, or form to “Stage IV” so I shouldn’t let that upset me. It was a measure of how deep the lesion was in the skin and mine was level four out of a possible five, five being worst – of course. She then apologized again profusely for just getting back to me and told me to call the oncologist office back and they would take care of everything.

So I did, and I got an appointment set up for a week later.

Then I proceeded to sit in my chair dumbfounded. I had cancer. Now, I had no idea how bad this cancer was, just that I had it. Cancer has always been a HUGE fear of mine. My little cousin died when we were just kids of cancer. One of the best friends I ever had died of horrible cancer right after I graduated from college. I had no idea what the proper amount of worry was appropriate to apply to the situation so I resorted to the default setting and hit upon “Worst Case Scenario.”

Budge was supposed to go to the beach the day after I found out, but she cancelled her trip because she didn’t want to leave me brooding all weekend about what was going to happen to me. All I could think of at the moment was the song “Live Like You Were Dying,” by Tim McGraw. Again, I had no idea what to think.

My oncologist appointment was the next Friday and that would have been enough, but I had to get through a gauntlet of other appointments before I got to it. Keep in mind, I am pretty much a hermit now. I don’t go out unless accompanied by Budge unless it is absolutely necessary and the week leading up to my oncologist appointment I had an endocrinologist appointment about my testosterone injections, my quarterly psychiatrist appointment, AND my first, overdue colonoscopy in succeeding days leading up to the grand finale. I was shook to say the least.

I made it through the endocrinologist appointment easily since she is one of my favorite doctors anyway. I always like to hear from Dr. Stephens, my psychiatrist, because he’s been with me through some bad times going back over fifteen years. I spent Wednesday prepping for the scoping and so I’m not certain my anus and the rest of my body are on speaking terms again, but he scope itself was easy breazy.

All that was left was the oncologist appointment. Budge and I went. Everybody was extra nice. Just really good people, from the checker-iner to the nurse. Then the doctor came in. His name is Dr. Trocha and I didn’t know it, but he is a rock star oncologist. No joke. He told us his credentials and he ONLY does four types of cancer surgery: melanoma, pancreatic, liver, and stomach. He sees patients in three states and his success rate is off the charts.

Then he talked about my specifics. He said I was at Stage I. He wasn’t worried about any spread to lymph nodes or any sort of spreading through the body. He said all he needed to do was take a nice sized chunk out of my shoulder to make sure he got everything with nice margins, then he’d cut out two little pieces to make the incision look like a football so he could sew it up nicely and not leave me with nipples on my shoulder. He was very comforting and it was blatantly obvious he knew exactly what he was doing.

His scheduler called me yesterday. I have surgery August 27. He said it wasn’t a house fire so not to be upset, he’d take care of it all for me.

So there’s my little scare. I feel kind of silly I was so worried now, but the unknown is always scary. In any event, love y’all, get your required health screenings, and keep your feet clean.

It’s been some time since I wrote a post talking about mental health, and I was having trouble deciding what to post this month, so I thought I would write about two aspects of my mental health that give me fits. They are magical thinking and intrusive thoughts.

First of all, magical thinking is the idea that something you think or say can have a real effect in the material world. Now I realize words do have power and your thoughts affect a great many things about you, but these are different. Let me give you one “for instance.” Ed is one of our cats. He likes to get in my arms, and he usually picks a time when I need my hands to do something – write a post, maybe. I may get frustrated with him when he does this. Here’s where the magical thinking comes in. I will get frustrated with Ed and think about how aggravating he is being. Almost immediately, I am consumed by thoughts that he will now die because I thought what I did.

I know our spoken or thought ideas aren’t going to have real world consequences most of the time. I’m not talking about if you tell a policeman he’s an idiot, and then you get a ticket. That’s getting what you asked for. Here’s another. I read the Bible to Budge every evening almost without fail. I would like to say it is because of some great faith-related principle or something, but the simple truth is I have a tremendous fear that if I don’t read of a night, something horrible will happen as a direct result. One of the cats might die, or Budge might die or who knows what could happen.

One last one, I would like to live in a house before I die. It’s a dream I’ve had since I was a child. Right now, and for all of our marriage, Budge and I have lived in mobile homes. For the last twenty-seven years, we’ve lived in the same mobile home. I am very careful what I think regarding where we live and where I’d like to live because I am afraid if I think negative thoughts about our mobile home, again, something terrible will shortly happen. My two worst current fears are the whole place going up in a fire, or a tree crashing through the middle of our home. As a matter of fact, just writing those thoughts down fills me with a sense of dread.

So, that’s magical thinking. The other thing I struggle with is called intrusive thoughts. Now, I learned what these were called after I spent several years thinking I was a complete psychopath or a repressed serial killer or something. Basically, an intrusive thought is a thought about something that just pops into your mind out of the blue, and it is about something you would never, ever think of doing.

I held babies in the church nursery for over ten years up until this past March. I stopped in March with the official reason being I was taking a break after so many consecutive years of service. The real reason is I got weary of holding one of these beautiful tiny babies who I loved with all my heart and having the thought hit my mind, “You should hurl him or her against the wall as hard as you can!”

Thoughts like that will cause you to question your sanity, especially when you’re like me and you already suffer from mental health issues anyway. Another time I’ll just be petting one of the cats on my lap and have the sudden thought to choke the life out of it with my bare hands. These thoughts can come on so strongly and so suddenly I have actually shuddered like a chill went through me.

I thought I was the only person suffering from these thoughts until I finally, tearfully mentioned them to Budge. I was coming unglued thinking I was finally losing my hold on reality. She calmed me down and assured me that I was not alone. She had occasional thoughts like those that she couldn’t explain and they unnerved her as well. The next time I saw my psychiatrist, I mentioned it to him and he told me what I was experiencing was called intrusive thoughts and they are quite common in people with other mental health concerns.

Finally, I also found out that both magical thinking and intrusive thoughts are extremely closely linked to OCD. Dr. Stephens, my beloved psychiatrist, offered to give me a battery of tests to see if I was dealing with OCD because of these and some other symptoms I had, but I declined mainly because I already carry a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and borderline personality disorder. I just couldn’t bear the thought of adding yet another affliction to such a list.

Of course that doesn’t change the fact I still may have OCD and just be in denial about it. So that’s my little primer on magical thinking and intrusive thoughts. If you suffer from either of these symptoms, just know you aren’t alone. I’m right here with you and we all have to stick together.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

All across the district I live in, these last two weeks have marked the end of an era indeed. It is graduation season for Greenville County and some surrounding districts. I always looked forward to graduation when I was teaching. I taught a lot of seniors and seeing the excitement build as that cap and gown date drew closer and closer always made me smile. It reminded me of my own graduation so many years before.

My senior year was an unmitigated disaster, a trainwreck if you will, that I couldn’t help but participate in. Between school, work, and home, I can honestly say that nothing went right for the entire academic career, but I’m not writing about that because I’ve written about it elsewhere and I’m not going to go over it again right now. I am going to mention my actual graduation ceremony though, because it was a fitting cherry on top of the year.

The school where I taught and most other Greenville County Schools graduated in one of the huge venues in the county like the Bi-Lo Center or the Furman University Auditorium. No so Laurens 55. We graduated in the gym. Now we had a big gym, but it wasn’t well equipped for a ceremony so large. The year I graduated the class was 399 graduates and a crap ton of faculty and staff. We sat all up on one another on the basketball court. We barely had room to fit everyone in a cap and gown.

Now I don’t know if you remember your own graduation however long ago it’s been, but those cap and gowns are not nice breathable cotton. Nope. Pure polyester. Polyester is a plastic in the strictest definition so 399 soon to be former students and a lot of teachers sat on the floor of the gym wearing the equivalent of a plastic rain poncho.

Observing the proceedings were our parents and friends. Well, at least as many as we could shoehorn into the building. See, we had a limit of six tickets for every graduate. That meant not everyone who a graduate wanted to be in the audience actually got to be in the crowd. I had to make some decisions of my own. I had to not give Papa John a ticket so my stepmother could have one. I didn’t want my stepmother watch me graduate; I wanted Papa John, but Mama, in a bid to keep me calm and avoid any more rancor than what I’d already endured year to date, pointed out that due to his recent stroke, Papa John couldn’t manage the steps in the building, nor could he sit for the duration of the ceremony. I gave in because I was just too damn tired of fighting everything and everybody for nine months. In the end, I just wanted to get it all over with.

We didn’t have speeches at my graduation, so even though I graduated second in my class, I didn’t get to make a speech. Of course, no one in the administration was going to let me near a podium with a microphone after all I’d said and done my senior year. The reason we didn’t have speeches was interesting. Laurens 55 High School was created out of four tiny small town high schools: Gray Court – Owings High, Ford High, Hickory Tavern High, and Laurens High. Those four schools were white. They merged with four Black high schools that were as small or smaller. Eight high schools squeezed into one in 1972.

Yeah, you read that right. 1972. Almost twenty years after the Brown decision integrated the schools and Laurens was JUST integrating in 1972. South Carolina was one of the last states to integrate and it took the threat of Federal troops to get it done. So tensions were high all 1972. Each school had its own graduation and speeches by the valedictorians and saludatorians. The powers that were decided to avoid having to decided between black and white students so no valedictorians and saludatorians were chosen that first year and it continued on down to my class and as far as I know, that’s the way it’s still done.

So our class president made a speech. It was the only one. We didn’t even have a motivational speaker. Of course, it took two hours just to call out 399 names so we didn’t really have time to listen to anyone pontificate. So they called out the names, we walked across the stage and that was that. I haven’t seen most of those 399 people in the intervening 35 years. Some, I’ve wanted to see and couldn’t, others I want to forget.

That’s what I used to point out to my seniors I taught. I tried to make them understand that all the people they were so close to for the last, in some cases, twelve years were not going to be around after the walk across the stage. I’ve seen enough of them in recent years to know they understand now and they tell their own children the same as they are getting ready to graduate these days.

So that’s another year in the books. I wish I was back in the audience to watch some seniors I taught walk across a stage, but that era ended too. So there’s that.

In any event, y’all be careful. Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

I was casting about for something to write about for this post. I want to write things y’all find interesting and make them at least a little fun to read, but this month I was coming up empty. Then last night a little while before bed, Budge was reading a story in the news to me and to be honest, it bothered me more than usual so I thought I’d write about it.

The story comes out of Tennessee where the state legislature, both houses, have passed a law allowing teachers in public schools to carry guns on campus. The governor has signed the measure into law. It isn’t binding on any district as each district is free to choose if they want to have their teachers armed or not.

I think this is a supremely bad idea. Still, let me say from the start you will be hard pressed to find a more gun supporting person than me. I own guns that I shoot regularly. I support the broadest, least restrictive interpretation of the Second Amendment. I wouldn’t call myself a stereotypical “gun nut,” but I am pretty far to the right on guns. They’ve just always been a part of my life and I think they have some tremendous uses. If you come into my home uninvited in a wrong state of mind, you will be met with a response up to and including lethal force. In this case, however, I think the State of Tennessee is making a mistake — a grave mistake. There’s a time and a place for everything and schools are no place at any time for guns in the hands of faculty and staff.

The first reason I am against this law is that it provides no guidelines for who specifically is allowed to be armed and what training these people are going to have; if they are going to have any required. Tennessee is a southern state and the gun culture is pretty strong there, but still, I imagine there’s a great spectrum of gun knowledge and gun training among the faculty of any given school. Some people may have hours of training either in civilian classes or perhaps the military, while others barely know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of. That’s a problem. Is a district that opts to arm its teachers and staff going to provide any training before they are allowed to carry guns on campus? If not, what qualifications will be in place to allow a teacher to carry his or her gun? Will there be any? That’s a lot of questions.

A second reason I think this is a bad idea is it is potentially a divisive force in a school. I am a former teacher. I taught high school for ten years and was a middle school librarian for an additional five. I can say with some authority that faculties are not monolithic blocks. A decent sized faculty is a microcosm of the community it teaches, with some interesting outliers thrown in. Everyone isn’t in step on what color the new tile in the faculty bathrooms should be, much less who is carrying a gun. For better or worse, it is a fact that some people are deeply disturbed by guns. They don’t like guns and they may even be scared of guns. Now you’re going to have gun toting teachers next to those teachers who don’t want to be around guns. That’s going to foster division in a staff and if there’s one thing schools can ill afford today it is for the staffs to be further divided.

I also thing the potential exists for tragedy to come out of this misguided attempt to guard students. Where are the guns going to be? In purses or desks? Or will they be carried in holsters? Either way, what happens when a student or group of students decides they want that gun. Think it would never happen? Much less dangerous stuff gets stolen every day in classrooms all across the nation. Students don’t hold teachers in the awe they once did either so an attack on a teacher to take a gun by a student or group of students is not as far fetched as one might hope reading this. I admit, it seems unlikely at first, but I have seen teachers attacked for no reason, and now they have a definite target to obtain? Things can happen in a split second and if someone reacts wrongly, tragedy can ensue.

This type of tragedy is my final reason I see this new law as a bad idea. A gun has one overarching purpose — to kill. You can argue about target practice all you want but what is target practice if not honing skills necessary to shoot something or someone. There is the rub. No one should be carrying a gun unless that person has settled in his or her mind that they are willing to kill someone if they draw their weapon. A gun is useless otherwise. Pull a gun without the foregone attitude you are willing to kill and that gun can very well be taken away from you and turned against you and others.

Killing is not natural to the overwhelming majority of people. It’s why soldiers must be trained to kill. Taking a human life is something you don’t get over. It stays with you in a lesser or greater degree. On top of that, who are these teachers going to be asked to kill? Who does most school shootings? Students. Present or former students. Teachers get into teaching for students. Do it for any other reason and you won’t last long. God knows it won’t be the money. Teachers assume an overwhelming responsibility for the students in their care every day. Now you are going to have that teacher choose whether or not to kill or seriously injure one of the students they have practically vowed to protect?

I realize on the surface it makes sense. I also will concede several school shootings have been stopped by a teacher with a gun produced from a car or carried surreptitiously against policy. But what happens when there’s more than one motivated teacher? Could we see shootouts in the halls of a high school? What about friendly fire incidents? I know people are trying to find a solution to school shootings, but this isn’t it. The logistics are too nebulous and the psychological burden too great.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!