-- The happy week I did NOT burn the building down. (File under "life goals")

Now that it's been a full week since I tried to burn my workplace down, I've finally stopped hyperventilating enough to share the story.

It was Friday and everyone had bolted early for the weekend. I love when the office gets quiet even if it does feel somewhat haunted. I can drown out ghost vibes with laser focus and was in a happy, productive groove when a new, unanticipated problem suddenly presented itself.

I planned to stay late but I had not planned to be hungry.


(Now you know where my logo comes from.)

This new information (that I was about to die due to limited caloric intake) presented itself instantly, as it always does.

There is never a “lead in” to starvation.


Sleep comes on slowly and allows one to adapt to increasing drowsiness at a leisurely pace, leaving enough time to crawl into bed. Thirst also creeps up sluggishly.

But not hunger.

Hunger ambushes you into a perilous hostage situation.

The need to eat at regular intervals, despite being fairly predictable, escaped me. I had a hearty lunch and somehow this registered as never needing food again.

I started searching my cubicle for snacks but only found mouthwash and ibuprofen.

Not even a stray soy sauce packet! The entire space was a wasteland.

Now, there ARE vending machines in the building but they were several floors away and I didn't want to sneak past the guards on the way back with fistfuls of cheetohs as my bounty.

This was becoming a terrible dilemma.

Suddenly, with the razor-sharp instincts of a malnourished hyena in the middle of a long, bleak arctic winter, I remembered…

THE COOKIE.

Two weeks ago someone brought a gigantic cookie the size of a pizza pie to the office Halloween party. Slices had been energetically carved off since then and it was mostly decimated but earlier I passed by the tray and noticed that not only was it still there, it WASN’T EMPTY.

A sliver of cookie was still left!

That would be JUST enough nourishment to sustain life for one more hour until I could escape and find real food.

Have you ever seen Naked and Afraid? If a single mealworm could save somebody's life, that cookie sliver could save mine.

I knew what I had to do.

Office parties are like shipwrecks. Free food is immediately decimated by the nearby wildlife. The North American Colleague is a voracious and vigilant creature. But somehow a single shard of confectionary goodness survived.

There was no way to tell, however, if the tray been closed properly in between feedings. This could be bad news, as we have mice at night.

Bravely fending off my demise required a quick calculation between life and one of TWO imminent deaths:

1. Either DON’T eat the cookie, and die of starvation, or
2. EAT the cookie, and die of hantavirus.

I decided there had to be a third option.

3. MICROWAVE the cookie to disinfect it from the myriad invisible mouse germs that must inevitably be blanketing it. 

Satisfied with the plan, I snuck to the kitchen to nuke my prize morsel. I set it for one minute; scientifically calculating the delicate balance of time between desiccated cookie crumbs and hantavirus destruction.

Alas, I overestimated.

White smoke began pouring out of the microwave door like I had set off a volcanic reaction. I was positive this meant the cookie was on fire. I cracked open the door to check and more smoke billowed out. I panicked and tore out of the kitchen looking for help.

Since this story started with the spoiler that the building did NOT, in fact, burn down, I’ll fast forward a bit.

A guard came and saved my life, the building AND all the cheetohs in the vending machines. (I know, right? Miraculous!)

No one was injured from smoke inhalation, the charred cookie remains did NOT get a second chance to burn the building down by flaming up in the the trash can (thank goodness to a hearty soak in water), and your heroine slunk out of the building in shame, narrowly escaping starvation.

I lived to tell the story and even awkwardly learn to draw using my toes. (Just kidding, it only LOOKS like that. Trackpads make clumsy drawing pads.)

The end!

Trigeminal neuralgia: the serial killer inside your own face

I'm not gonna lie, this past month has SUCKED. First I had the carnival of oral surgery, which I thought would be a breeze and most assuredly was NOT but then last week I was visited by the trigeminal nerve fairy.

I'd heard of the trigeminal nerve since I was a biology major but reading about it in a textbook while preparing for a test on cranial nerves is far different than suddenly being afflicted by trigeminal neuralgia.

What is a neuralgia? It's a fancy way of saying "nerve pain." Trigeminal neuralgia describes the trigeminal nerve, one of the cranial nerves serving the face:

Source

So, trigeminal neuralgia basically means "lightning bolt inside your fucking face."

Originally saved here.

According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, "Trigeminal neuralgia, also known as tic douloureux, sometimes is described as the most excruciating pain known to humanity."

Trigeminal Neuralgia:
Kicking ass and being recognized for this by NEUROSURGEONS

What is "tic douloureux"? Oh, it's a fancy French word for "wince." You know the way you might wince if a serial killer was stabbing you? Same thing, except the stabber is invisible.

I was thinking about this. When we watch movies, you may see someone stabbed or branded with a hot cattle iron or a struck by a lightning bolt. You see them wince and fall to the ground. But the cause is obvious so no one is like "bro, what just happened? You're weird!"

But if you're standing on line at the supermarket and a trigeminal neuralgia attack strikes, no one can SEE it. It feels LIKE a stabbing, so there'll be all that wincing and body part grabbing, the way you would if you wanted to contain the innards behind whatever had been slashed open, but in reality, you're standing on this slow line and nothing bad is happening in the world so no one can tell why you're having a personal emergency.

The disease is also apparently known as "suicide disease" because you wish for death rather than bear it. I would never have fully understood this before experiencing it.

Luckily, medicine helps, and I'm on an anti-epileptic medicine (despite not having epilepsy), because "sodium-channel inhibitors" inhibit neural activity and the goal is to reduce the transmissions of electrical impulses hitting the trigeminal nerve from the brain.

Realistic photo after "neural activity" is reduced... 

The mild side effects are grogginess and dizziness, which I hope get a little better by the time I have to go to work next week.

One thought about where trigeminal neuralgia comes from is that since the nerve originates in the brain stem, a blood vessel may bump up against it and over time, wear away the insulatory outer sheath or myelin.

How does trigeminal neuralgia manifest? It really does feel like being stabbed. The sensations last a few seconds to a few minutes. (Unless you have the "atypical" kind and it's constant.) You're fine, until the pain hits, a 10 on a 10 scale. Or maybe a 20 on a scale of 1-10. It's unbearable.

One of the symptoms (among severe "lancinating" or stabbing pain) is "anxiety at the thought of the pain returning."

DUDE, entire MOVIES have been made based on the fear of the serial killer returning. Hollywood is FULL of them.

Having trigeminal neuralgia is like having a little serial killer sitting on your shoulder and they just stab your face when they feel like it.

It can be multiple times in a minute, or maybe one time in an hour. You just don't know. And when you go to sleep, the little serial killer hangs out with you, sometimes stabbing you out of sleep. Someone make a movie of THAT. Last night was the first time in 4 nights I actually GOT sleep because the medicine worked (it seems like it takes a little while to fully kick in). So as you can see, it's been great.

Why can't I just get the flu like normal people???

-- That time I fell asleep typing and then sold my notes

I once had a special gig in school where I got paid to write up my notes for Intro to Microbiology. There were two outfits in town that paid students for notes and one said, “Well, we don’t normally hire the same note-taker as the other place because it’s good for students to have a variety to choose from, but no one else stepped up so the gig is yours if you want it.” 

I was broke at the time and working two other jobs but I appreciated the side hustle. It happened to be the worst semester of my entire life. I had just moved to the area and everything was so much more expensive. I was the most sleep-deprived I'd ever been (well maybe except for the time I was a counselor at a sleepaway camp, which should really be called “awake-away camp," but I digress.)

One night I was up until the wee hours typing up my notes and I fell asleep right in the middle of typing. 

Sitting up. 

My head didn't loll, my fingers didn't fall away from the keys, my shoulders and arms didn't drop. I just kept typing. I fell asleep typing, woke up typing, and continued to type until I was done. I never realized I had fallen asleep. I never re-read the notes so I never saw the evidence that I was out cold for a few straight minutes.

The next day, I handed my notes in, got paid and went on my merry way.

Months pass. 

The night before the final, I pulled out my notes to study and saw the following:

1. Transformation
2. Conjugation
3. Transduction
   
   artificial protoplanst. Fusion and electro poradion and gun & micro injection. Profus kindks memeebrane stick and DNA transfer, elec open pores in cell sideface, gene gun -- coat projectile w/DNA & shot into cell. & hiccp injection pucure cell walls.
   
   Know the basis of how genes are transferred (figure 9.16, pg. 261 for example).

I typed this?

How did I not realize I'd fallen asleep? What was I trying to say??

2am and I just discovered (along with 299 other poor slobs from class) that an entire concept was useless!

I still have no idea what this was about. But I owe a few hundred students a beer!

-- Adventures in oral surgery (because that sounds like fun!)

I didn't want to write about this until the results came back because then I could make it funny without scaring anyone, but I still have to wait another week and I cannot withhold the carnival of bodily fun any longer.

Last week, I had a tongue biopsy and while some of you will immediately understand that cutting into a body part that has only slightly less nerve endings than a clitoris would involve some challenges, I did not. I’ve bitten my tongue before, how hard could it be??

Oh, my friend. How wrong I was.

The first mistake was scheduling the biopsy on my lunch break.

Doc: “Do you have any questions?”

Me: “How long is this going to take?”

Doc: “Well, usually about an hour.”

Me: “What? An hour?? Aren't you just grabbing a couple cells?”

Doc: “Well it's more involved in that... wait, do you have someplace you have to be?”

Me: “This is my lunch break, I'm heading back to work afterwards.”

Doc: “Um, do you need to reschedule?”

Me: “Why would I need that? Let's just get it over with.*”

(Lesson 1: never schedule an invasive medical test on your lunch break.)

The word "biopsy" is slightly terrifying because the implication is that something must be very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that very serious people in lab coats must look at pieces of you under a microscope and figure out if whatever it is happens to be wrong enough for you to die.

So I don't know for sure, obviously, but the thing wrong, in my case, appears to be that I have very sharp teeth and they've abraded a portion of my tongue. But they need to rule out the worst case scenario first, so, fine.

The eventual treatment will probably be to shave gentler fangs but in the meantime, I have to wait for the results.

The sharp molars that probably caused the initial injury have been scraping against the newly raw patch like shards of glass and the whole experience has been NOTHING like a good, old-fashioned stray chomp. I can’t believe I thought even for one second that a biopsy would be like an errant bite. 

I'm on the verge of turning into a grouchy Dr. House except instead of a medical degree and staff, I have a search engine and a husband. But I suddenly understand so much more about chronic pain. It’s nearly impossible to function. This must be what’s fueling the opioid crisis, but if I felt like this indefinitely, I’d be addicted too. Poor Dr. House, I’m sorry I was so harsh when I yelled at the TV “put the pills down!”

(Credit: Telegraph.co.uk)

I’ve had a nearly constant fever for six days so along with that and the discomfort, mining this situation for comedy potential has had limitations.

Nevertheless, lets press on.

Before the procedure, I was led to an assistant.

Doc: "Okay, let's get you set up with a care plan."

Me: "Care plan?"

Doc: "Yes, this gentleman will help you."

Me (thinking): Oh how nice, the office has a special person on staff just to tell patients not to smoke and stay hydrated so they heal. Aww!

Careplan dude: "That'll be $500."

I whipped out my credit card. Weird billing policy but whatever. They promised they’d reimburse as soon as the insurance company paid and since my dentist recommended this oral surgeon so emphatically, the important thing was just that he just have mad surgery skills.

Then it was time for the procedure. 

Have you ever had laughing gas (also known as nitrous oxide)? It’s usually given to help tolerate things like this. I’d had it once while getting my wisdom teeth out eons ago and that went well. I didn’t have any reason to suspect it had side effects like causing intestines to blow up like puffer fish eels (if that were a thing). 

There is a reason people are sedated during colonoscopies: pumping air into the colon (in order to insert a camera and look around) is pretty uncomfortable. Intestines are meant to hold food, not air. 

Towards the end of the procedure, I started to feel sharp pains in my belly. 

I had no idea it was related to what was happening up north but the level of internal alarm escalated with the rising discomfort. 

When the part that hurts is NOT the part that the surgeon is cutting, the immediate thought (after “really, universe?? NOW???”) is that some kind of personal emergency must be happening, either related to that time of the month or food poisoning.

I tried to conceal my distress. (I'm a very private person, as you can see. I only share details with the entire internet.) 

There was no way I could describe what was happening so I kept quiet until it ended and I was cleared for driving.

I fled to the car and raced home. At this point, the agony was so high that I started questioning the nature of what must be happening. It was very possible I was actually in labor. After all, plenty of people have babies without ever knowing they were pregnant, right? 

I considered driving to a hospital but I decided I’d rather just give birth on the bathroom floor in the privacy of my own home. I pulled in the lot and crawled upstairs to die.

Luckily, I brought my phone so I could start working on funeral arrangements and the Dr. House part of my brain came alive. I began googling and lo and behold! Nitrous oxide can "distend" bowels or “transfer” into “body air cavities.” Isn’t that nice. 

It did go away after a few hours, thankfully. I can handle one body part being out of whack but not TWO at the same time.

It will be 6 weeks before I can eat normally but I should be allowed to have coffee again Thursday. The more important question is, when can I get back to smoking cigars and chewing tobacco?? (KIDDING. Too soon?)

There may be a part 2!

-- I used to be nice once

I don’t do this type of thing anymore.

But I used to be nice once. 

A friend had asked for a favor for their friend’s cousin’s uncle’s neighbor’s coworker’s teacher’s mechanic’s grandson and wondered, would I PLEASE feed their cats while they go on vacation? 

I thought how hard can it be? They lived 3 streets away. Sure I could dump some food in a bowl on the way home from work. 

Somehow I neglected to imagine that this arrangement would include dealing with the litter box. I understand that what goes in must come out but they asked me to FEED them, not manage what happened after so it hadn’t even crossed my mind. I agreed and we set up a time to meet.

The next night I stopped over to review the details. They gave me a full house tour.

“Here are our two cats!” They motioned at two blurry grey forms as they streaked across the living room and dove under furniture.

“Sweeties, look who’ll be taking care of you when we’re gone!” They cooed. 

The cats eyed me suspiciously from underneath a china cabinet. No matter, I am the animal whisperer! I may technically be a “dog person” but cats are cute too. I bent down earnestly to reassure their owners that I would lovingly care for their little darlings when one emitted a loud hiss and nearly shredded my hand. 

I tried to pretend bleeding was no big deal and retracted calmly. Their house wasn’t too far from the emergency room after all.

The owners tried to help me save face. “Oh they take a little while to warm up to people, I’m so sorry. But the last person healed up real quick!”

I mentally calculated how much I was earning from the job and figured fine, I can feed them without touching them as long as they don’t outright attack me. 

I got this.

The owners took me upstairs to show me the routine. 

“This isn’t personal, but we always have a backup plan. We’re keeping the upstairs tub filled with food just in case. We want you to fill the food bowls BUT we have a 20lb bag we emptied here. It’s the same stuff. Our last petsitter thought we didn’t trust her but it wasn’t that, we just like to play it safe. We’re soooo glad you understand!”

They don’t have a mouse problem, I wondered? Um, okay. I guess overfed cats still hunt whatever might be eating from the bathtub trough. Weird, but whatever. 

They brought me back downstairs to the kitchen. “Oh and see these two platforms? This is where we give them their treats. They get eight from this bag, and four from the green bag, but ONLY while standing on the platform. It’s very important to keep this up or they will learn to beg.”

Okay. This is getting weirder, but whatever. It’s also turning into a bit longer of an ordeal than just dumping food in a bowl but they are only a few streets away so shouldn’t take up my whole night. 

Then they pointed at the water bowl.

“We have water bowls in every room just in case they get thirsty. If you could just clean and refresh each bowl when you feed them, we’d LOVE that.”

Oh man, this is turning into more than a 15-minute stop. It’s not unreasonable to want fresh water but if they were my cats, there would be ONE bowl, and it would be near a sink. I mean, why would you want to hate your life? But that’s their business.

“Okay, last thing. We have two litter boxes, one for each cat.”

(No. Oh no, please no.)

“The thing is, we don’t believe in adding the litter to the landfills. So please dump all the waste down the toilet. You can just slide the boxes down the hall to this bathroom and empty both there.”

I didn’t know what to say.

They continued.

“Now, one of the cats doesn't LIKE the litter box. He usually just goes on the floor. But we keep a bottle of windex and paper towels right here to make it easier to clean.”

I began hatching an escape plan. I was done. When the ratio of care outweighs the endorphin release, it's time to reconsider: is this really worth it? The answer here was NOPE.

“I think that’s about it — did you get everything?”

What? Were you saying something? Look, I checked out 20 minutes ago. I'm just nodding so this hostage situation can end.

"Oh, and can you play with them?"

That's about the only thing I was originally hoping to do, actually, until one of them gave me cat scratch fever.

"Please text us every day with pictures and let us know how they’re doing!”

Luckily, they didn’t notice the noose I was fashioning and I was able to gracefully explain that, so sorry, I won’t be able to do this job after all. Who could pass up the joy of all this at $10/day? It’s unfortunate that my cat allergy suddenly came back. But at least it freed up an opportunity for the next person!

Trying out a new platform... we'll see how it goes!

I have mixed feelings about this but I'm trying out a new platform:

https://hannahsphere.substack.com

Homemade Almond Bark: Idea vs. Execution, a life story by me.

This release is soon to join compendium volumes such as "Taming Frizzy Hair: Idea vs. Execution," "Learning Modern Dance in Middle Age: Idea vs. Execution," and "Willpower: Those Sweets Have No Grip Over Me (Idea vs. Execution)."