There Are No Words: 2016.08.24

Productivity

Energy Budget Estimate – 2015: ?; 2016: 50¢

Today I was reminded of a productivity technique[1] that I think can help me out quite a bit. It’s called the Ivy Lee Method, and it’s over 100 years old:

THE IVY LEE METHOD

During his 15 minutes with each executive, Lee explained his simple method for achieving peak productivity:

1. At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.

2. Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.

3. When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.

4. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

5. Repeat this process every working day.

I used to do something similar with the people I worked with, and found it very effective. I’m going to start doing it again, starting tonight.

1. Edit video from last Change.FAIL Podcast episode.
2. Blog Post to Medium (tomorrow’s entry to this log).
3. Remove construction detritus from yard.
4. Walk the dogs.
5. Spend 1h writing the short story Journeyman (a tale that takes place is a world I came up with a long time ago with friends).
6. Finish production process for RSS feeds for Change.FAIL podcast.

I’m feeling less stuck today, but still have a very low energy budget to contend with, so things that would normally just happen in the background – not be considered tasks – need to go on the list for now. Normally I would not include dog walking on the list, for example, but right now I need to consider this in terms of what I can do.

Now, to look back over this day last year…

2016.08.24

7:00PM – A Lump In My Throat

I had a surprise delivery today.

When someone tells you there can’t be a Skeptical Community because the godless can’t care for each other, point them to this. It is a completely unexpected gift from the community to a member of the community recovering from cancer surgery.

I have no idea who set this up or who made the order, but by chest is thick with happy love feelings for all of you. (I would tell you you left me with a lump in my throat, but that’s what they took out for causing all the trouble in the first place.)

Some kind of wonderful.

I still don’t know who arranged for those flowers to be delivered. Somebody did some sleuthing and stalking in the most positive sense.

7:00AM – Swallow Test Alert

This is the day I had my swallow test done – a precondition for going home to continue recovering from the surgery.

This morning my lovely wife brought me street clothes. One of the staff here said I looked like I was in disguise, not wearing a gown.

I have a swallow test in 45 minutes. Here’s hoping there are no leaks: the tube will be able to come out. If there are leaks I’ll be relying on my lifeline for a while longer.

One of the doctors explained how important the tube is for me right now. If they take it out for any reason and I can’t swallow, they have to put a new tube back in (even if only to set up a tube going directly from my skin to my stomach for longer term tube feeding). Putting a tube back in is really risky. There is still a lot of healing tissue, and sutures in there, and putting in a new tube would jeopardize them. Fair enough – but I REALLY want this think out. It is uncomfortable at best, painful at worst, and always in the way.

In retrospect, I wonder if this was some scaremongering. Sure, a new tube would be risky. But they could have popped out the TEP (the one way valve that lets me vocalize) and put a catheter down the existing hole. I wasn’t able to speak yet at all anyways, so that wouldn’t have been a big loss in terms of functionality. Taking out the TEP is not particularly pleasant and maybe it would have been much higher risk? I’ll ask my surgeon when I see him next month.

In the first picture, you see my questions for the day. The priority order was 3, 5, 4, 1, 2, but the order they occurred to me is what you see.

The lymphedema (that swelling you see in the second picture) is very uncomfortable, and makes it very hard to move my head. The doctors said they would not order a consult with the in-hospitable lymphedema expert until after I have been released back into the wild, and only if the swelling is still bad. I will push them a bit for more information on outcomes with and without early treatment for this. They all say “walk more” which is fine, but I can only walk so much post surgery and with a tube and having to spit all the time and not able to talk. I’ll keep doing what I can.

#FBAEW re:Swallow Test

10:00AM – Spittoon Of Doom No Longer In The Room?

Initial results of swallow test look good. The doc needs to go over the images with more care a little later today before saying for certain that the tube can come out – but right now it looks like my reinvention and rediscovery of the skills associated with a with a spittoon are not going to see a lot of fun action in the future.

For anyone interested, if you have to spit a lot into a cup, spit along the top edge, not the bottom. Make as much of a squirts as you can, like you’re trying to hit a hated enemy a metre away, as this helps with clean separation of goo from skin. Finally, roll the top edge of the cup along your bottom lip to scrape/catch any dangling tendrils of slime.

… Basically, exactly what you see in the movies and old TV shows with people chewin’ tabacca and spittin’ in a cup.

The actual swallow test was pretty disgusting from a flavour point of view, and interesting from a testing point of view. I drank barium mixtures of various consistencies while standing inside a giant continuous X-ray imager. I got to review the recording afterwards, which was fun. I think it was pretty obvious there were no leaks into my airway given that I would have been coughing up a storm immediately. I’m glad they were thorough, however.

Evening – Good News: No Tubes!

Mom (Kathy Sammy) posted this:

Swallow test good. Feeding tube out. Who knew jello could be this good! How wonderful to see Julian sipping a glass of water.

Was I ever thrilled to get that freaking tube out of my face. It was stitched into the cartilage of my nose to keep it secure. That meant when the tube got caught on something I was in for a world of pain. That happened a lot. Way too often, really. In an ideal world my tube would have been much much shorter – with only about 15–20cm hanging out of my face. Another tube could be attached easily enough for feelings and drugs, but for walking around and doing stuff, it was too long.

Late Night – Sore Back

Tonight a sore back is kicking my ass. I normally stretch out the painful knots I get from my (very minor) adult onset scoliosis (between my shoulder blades). A little slightly modified yoga, the vertebrae pop pop pop, and the pain is gone for hours. Now, having had my neck dissected, the muscles that I need to control that kind of motion? They’re not working right. For example, I can barely lift my arms over my head, holding them straight out from the side – like a jumping jack. Bending over forward at the waist with my arms above my head? Nope nope nope.

I did ask for new drugs and have already taken them. This may be the worst – or at least, most acute – pain I’ve had so far in all of this. I can feel the HM kicking in… Here’s hoping.

Be well.

– j

For fun, look at the icon for pain on my Facebook.

On a positive note, I regained a lot of the strength in my arms. I still can’t do the stretches I used to, since inverting (head below belly) is a recipe for a big mess, but I can do a lot more than I could back then.