So... It's been awhile...

     A long, long while it seems. So, yeah… (so Aussie) I’ve been missing in action for a several years. There has been reasons as to why that is. After careful, and anguishing, deliberations, I’ve decided to come clean with the whole story. It was not an easy decision.

Here we go…

     After moving to Australia, I had… issues is about the best way to put it. I think it was depression. Okay, it was depression. I wondered if I’d made a mistake leaving everything and everyone I knew behind. I also felt a bit guilty running off and leaving my country to that lunatic that had recently been elected to the run the damn place. But, I kept moving, slowly, so very slowly.

     Looking back, I didn’t take into account the physical pain I was in. It became worse and worse, so I finally had to do something. I couldn’t walk. I ended up getting a hip replacement.

     The surgeon said it was probably the worst that he’d ever seen. The technical term was bone necrosis. In layman’s terms, it means that the bone had basically died and looked more like honeycomb than bone. He even ended up picking bone shards out of tissue and muscle with tweezers. Oh, and joy of joys, he told me I’d have to have the other one done at some point.

     The reason for the bone deterioration came from being a chef. Apparently, those who stand on their feet on hard services often have the same issue. So, if you’re a hairdresser, chef or checkout chick, make sure you wear good shoes and stand on a mat if possible.

But wait… There’s more!

     Went to the dentist do get a cleaning and she found a small spot. The only reason she spotted it at all, was because I nearly jumped out of the chair when she went to put in those thingies for doing x-rays. She had a good look and said that I needed to see a specialist in Sydney, as soon as possible.

Oh yay! But wait… Yep, there’s more!

     The dentist, such a sweet young woman, said the ‘C’ word. Maybe. Perhaps. A possibility. Lin was so nice, she even gave me a big hug before I left.

     I made an appointment with said specialist and four days before the appointment, they called and cancelled. No dentist or dental specialist were allowed to do any kind of procedures. Covid hit. This was mid-February.

     So… there I sat… waiting for Covid to do whatever the hell it was going to do. Do you have any idea how hard it was to go grocery shopping, with a cane, masked up, gloved up and have a face full of hair? Not fun. It was so itchy, and I felt like I was being smothered to death. All the while thinking… asking… do I have cancer?

     The wait was then finally over, come April. The end of April. Let me tell you, those were some long-ass eleven weeks. Not only dealing with Covid 19, but in the back of my mind I was constantly asking myself if I had cancer. Myself, being the ass that I am, never answered that question.

     Went and saw the dental specialist in Sydney. By the way, that is a six-hour drive from where I live. He told me he needed to get two tissue samples. The good doctor and his staff were hysterical. Such a funny group. We had a good discussion on bourbon. He then loaded me up with novocaine and proceeded to cut pieces out of my mouth. Even with the novocaine, which hurt like hell, the cutting out pieces of my mouth was still painful. I thought I was going to piss myself to be honest. That was a bitch of a day. It also ended with beer and tequila.

     Now the wait. Ugh!

     I returned home the following day and waited. I tried to keep myself occupied but that was futile. My mind kept racing about what would happen and what would I do. I really dislike having anyone mess around in my mouth, nose or ears. I guess that’s why I never jumped on the cocaine bandwagon. I hated anything up my nose. And in my prior career, there was plenty of coke going around as well as other things. Nope, nothing going up my nose!

     The call came at 6:30 p.m. I knew it had to be bad for a doctor to be calling at that time of night, and it was. Bad. Real bad. The nice doctor told me that yes, it was indeed cancer and that he was recommending me to yet another specialist that specialized in this exact type of cancer and had already contacted him. I needed to make an appointment as soon as possible.

     Oh… So much more.

     Back to Sydney I went. The very next week. That was one long drive. It turns out I had a rare type of lymphoma that had attacked most of the lymph nodes in my jaw line and had metastasized to the soft tissue of the bottom of my mouth, which is why it hurt when I had those initial x-rays.

     It was bad, really, really bad. So much worse than I could ever have imagined. I’d never heard of anything like this. My prognosis was if I did nothing, the tumours, yes, more than one, would continue to grow and that I would basically suffocate to death. Or I could undergo a complex surgery that would be… horrific. It would take five different surgeons to do it.

     I’ll put it in simple terms here: What they wanted to do was to slit my throat, peel back my face, knock out all but three of my bottom teeth, chisel away the effected jaw bone, cut my tongue out, cut out all the soft tissue from the bottom of my mouth, cut skin from forearm, stick it into my mouth, oh and if they have to take most of the jaw bone, they’ll cut bone from my right femur and graft it into my jaw. Yippee!

     Here is how they outlined the recovery: I wouldn’t be able to eat any solid foods for several months, meaning at least three months I’d have a feeding tube put into my stomach and I’d have to connect a device and pour some kind of concoction in. I would be able to drink water only at first and then other watery liquids. No milk.

     Now, for those who know me, I love my milk. Always have. Telling me I couldn’t have milk was almost more than I could stand. I didn’t ask about beer, but I figured it was watery enough.

     June 18. Surgery. An eleven-hour surgery with five different surgeons and who knows how many others were in that room. I was told sometime later that it was a difficult surgery and that I was lucky.

Just a little grossness.

That is raw meat exposed!

What they cut out they stuck in my mouth!

Yeah, right. So lucky. Pfft.

     I spent ten days in an ICU with nurses constantly poking a specialized thermometer and pulse monitor into my mouth every hour. I had so many wires and tubes running in and out of me it wasn’t funny. I bet I could have wired an entire house with all that wire.

     And as if that weren’t enough, the IV needles stuck into me kept failing. Now, admittedly, I am a hard stick. Whenever I have blood drawn it usually take two or three tries to get any out. So, at one point I had an IV stuck into my leg because that was the only place they could get it. Oh, and after that one crapped itself, they put in a PICC line, which goes directly into your body. Don’t ask me how that works but they had to do it with some big x-ray type machine.

     I think it was around day three or four after that surgery that I was praying for death. I even asked one of the nurses to just kill me. I asked several people to please just kill me. I couldn’t talk. I had a breathing tube and other tubes either running into my mouth or my nose. I couldn’t drink. I really did want to just die. I remember thinking why I’d ever have agreed to this.

Oh yeah, there’s a whole lot more…

     Post ICU wasn’t much better. I was in that hospital for three weeks after ICU. Every morning, I had those doctors poking and prodding me, and yes, I do mean all of them. I still couldn’t speak, so I was using my phone to communicate as best I could. A few days later I was able to get my computer brough to me, so I then used that.

     That’s when it came to my attention that I was immune to morphine. They were trying to manage my pain with morphine or morphine based drugs. I kept telling them (typing) that I was in constant pain. It wasn’t until I completely lambasted them that they took me serious enough to change the pain medication. It took a few trial and error tries, but they finally managed it. After about four days, post ICU, I had a lot less pain. There was always some pain, but it was at least tolerable. Those were the longest days of my life, I do believe.

     In that month, I felt that I had experienced hell. There was no way I could have ever imagined such a horrifying time in my life. It was beyond measure.

Yep, there is more…

     After I was discharged from the hospital, I swapped one nightmare for another. Radiation and chemotherapy are no joke. Three days a week I was carted off to get a round of radiation and chemotherapy. I understood what it must feel like to be a piece of chicken frying. I was fortunate to not have to have large does of chemo, and that was only for about a month. It was the radiation that did me in. Six weeks of that shit. I lost the bottom of my beard. It has never grown back.

     I was never so glad to get home. I could sit in my recliner with a dog on my lap. I couldn’t pick the dog up, but at least I was home. At the point I could at least speak, although not very well. There was still a lot of swelling and having most of the lymph nodes removed from my neck, I had a lot of fluid back up that had to be massaged out. That was three or more times a day. That was fun.

     Feeding myself, via the tube poking out of my stomach was also such a joy. NOT. It smelled bad, it was messy and a royal pain. By this point I’d lost so much weight that I had to get new sweatpants. At one point I used suspenders to keep those up. I was so weak. I could barely make it to the bathroom. I was living in my worst nightmare.

     The recover was very long and painful. When I was finally able to put food in my mouth, it was like baby food, and nothing tasted right or not at all. My entire life had been constructed over what I could taste. It was how I identified myself. Defined myself. I was a chef with an exceptional palate. What I was left with was close to nothing.

     To me, it felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under my feet and a grand piano fell on me. There were times when I couldn’t breathe. Who and what was I now? Why in the hell did I ever agree to this torture?

     I was on so much pain relief that there were times I found myself staring off into space, drooling. I again prayed for death. I even tried to kill myself a few times. The only thing that happened was I barfed a lot. Talk about pain!

     Did it get better? Eventually. It took well over a year and even then, I wasn’t… me. I was lost. I saw no end and I didn’t see much of a future either. I tried to write and failed. I tried to cook and failed. I couldn’t taste much of anything. White wine still to this day tastes more like vinegar.

     I became more and more reclusive. I felt no joy. I was living in a perpetual fog. I couldn’t remember things. It was like I was living in a world of grey. That lasted for several years.

     To this day my palate is probably about seventy-five percent of what it was pre-cancer. There are times it really pisses me off. I’ve always preached about having balance in food, but when you can’t taste everything, it’s very had to achieve that. That is still the case today.

     Is there more? Well, of course there is…

     Remember that whole hip thing? Yep, the other one finally crapped itself. Broke would be a better word I suppose. Got that done without any complication. I was now the proud owner of not one, but two titanium hips! Yippee, look at me go. I have to carry a little card with me when I go to the airport declaring I have metal in my body. Woot!

     That was November of last year. I was up and walking about but still using a cane. Which leaves me to telling you about my feet. After all those years of standing in a kitchen on hard floors, it was my hips and feet that paid the ultimate price.

     Now, my feet were never all that great. I abused the hell out of them my whole life. And now it is time to pay the piper. My feet… let’s just say that it would be easier to tell you what’s not wrong with them. This year has been the worst ever though. The neuropathy has gotten so much worse and cold weather kills me. I stumble around like an old drunk.

     But I need to go back a bit. After I had the remarkable hip surgery I contracted bacterial pneumonia early in December. Another week in hospital, three of which were in ICU. I almost didn’t make it.

Okay, you know me by now… yes… there is more…

     While getting all the chest x-rays anyone could ever want, they found something else. What they refer to as a triple A. Abdominal Aorta Aneurysm. Not just one. No, I had to be the over achiever once again. There were two. The big one was five centimetres, and the other was only two. The recommendation is to do a surgery when it is three centimetres. Ya gotta hand it to me. I don’t do little shit. I have to go for everything in a big way.

     I spent four days in the hospital, between Christmas and New Year’s getting tests run. So many tests. I had three different doctors on this go round. They finally said I was fit to have heart surgery. Whoopie!

     January 3. I had heart surgery. Only one surgeon this time. In the hospital another four days. I am sooo over hospitals, let me tell ya. Now I’m being told that all that radiation therapy I had fried my thyroid. Here I am, about to have heart surgery and now I have no thyroid. More medication. I feel like I’m a walking pharmacy already, so why not load up another pill or three for me to take.

     I’m home. Still a little weak and recovering. I have to go and get a check up at the little local hospital. When I say little, I do mean tiny. Nice doctor does the usual blood draw, and I go home. Yay!

     Phone call. I need to go back to the hospital. They need to double check something. They do a quick RAT test for Covid. Pretty standard protocol these days. You guessed it. I had Covid. Not only did I have Covid, but I had a blood Staph infection to go along with it. Fuck my life.

     Back into the hospital. Intravenous antibiotics and quarantine. I was told I was lucky, again. It could have been worse had I not had the Covid vaccinations. To be honest, I had no clue I had Covid. Had zero symptom’s. There for four days.

     Came home. Something wasn’t right. I had no appetite. I ate very little. I’d lost a lot more weight. I had no energy. I started doing smoothies with protein powder, hoping that would bring my energy level up. I need to say here, that after cancer, my energy level was never the same. But now, a dead slug would have more energy that I do.

     Oh! I left out all the oral reconstructions that I had to have. Remember me saying I hated having someone in my mouth? Think of me in a dental chair for six-hour stints at a time. Yeah, that happened.

     So, this is my life now. I’m an old man who stumbles about with very little energy and almost a total recluse. I go days without speaking. I eat very little, and it takes me forever to eat it seems. Very slow. I may leave the house once a week to get groceries. My social contact is the check out chick at the local grocery store. That’s pretty much it.

Now what?...

     Well, I had this story that I’d been working on, or off, mostly off, for a number of years. I think I started it back in 2018. I decided since I couldn’t really do much, it was time to buckle down and get it done. So I did. It’s finished.

     Release date is September 8, 2025. It can be purchased via my website for one week and then general release on September 11, 2025.

Just a little tease.

Yup, you guessed it… there’s more…

     I am more than halfway done with another book. It seems I missed writing and now it’s flowing like no body’s business! This is another story I’ve wanted to get out of my head for a number of years. It’s a story that is very close to my heart. There’s a lot of me in this story. This story revolves around food and a small diner. A grandmother and people around are composed of many people I’ve had in my life.

And yes, more…

     I’ve also decided to finally sit down and write a cookbook. I have so many recipes I’ve developed over the years. Many passed down from my grandmother and my mother, who was a good cook. Couldn’t bake anything to save her life, but a good general cook.

A birthday cake I made for a neighbor.

Everything but the Happy Birthday thing is edible.

All made from sugar!

     Many chefs and cooks that I’ve worked with over the years helping me to develop my own voice with food. The last few years I’ve even taken to baking, which was something I never liked to do. But now… I have the time. The pastry chef I had in culinary school would be so proud of me. I can do one hell of a cake these days.

     These days, my life consists of me writing for a few hours each day. I putz around the house a bit. I do a little gardening when I’m not like a dead slug. I still enjoy playing in the dirt, just not to the extent I used to or want to. Little bit at a time is better than nothing. I have a big lawnmower, so I do get to ride on that. I’ve become a big fan of audio books for that reason. Now I even do laundry with headphones on!

Time to wrap this up I suppose…

     I had a hard time writing all this. I have never been one to tell my business, but this… felt like it needed to be said. I know I cut everyone out of my life, but I hope this explains part of it. A big part of it. I’ve been through hell and back a few times over the last eight years. I’m still here. I’m still kicking, admittedly, not very high.

     I’m afraid I’ve used up most of my good karma coins by now, and I don’t have much opportunity to replenish the purse, but I do when I can. I hope everyone who reads this remembers to do something nice for at least one person a day. It doesn’t take much. Sometimes, just a smile will do the trick.

     I don’t think I’ll be doing this blog once a week anymore. I don’t have that much energy to spend on it. Maybe I’ll try and aim for once a month.

Till next time…

Max