All right, update on my notice from this morning.

  Short version and schedule notice:

  First of all, went to the surgeon’s office. Mostly good news, while things looked really bad to me, they weren’t as scary as they seemed to be. Unfortunately, due to today's chaos (mostly), probably no Budding Scientist chapter tomorrow unless a freaking miracle happens, and no more Markets chapters until next week. By next week the schedule should be back to at least 2 Markets chapters and 1 budding scientist chapter, maybe 3 Markets chapters and one (longer and more edited) Budding Scientist chapter, depending a bit on other follow up surgery stuff. If something goes wrong again, I’m sorry and that may change, but at least for now things SHOULD be fine unless a crazy emergency pops up.

  Much Longer explanation:

  So, I don’t remember how much I discussed what I was getting surgery for during my previous notices. So for full context, I’m getting surgery to handle receding gums. It’s genetic, there’s not much I can do in personal life to stop it, but short story is that my gums are constantly trying to flee from my teeth, which leaves the roots of my teeth exposed and can eventually cause them to just fall out entirely, since they no longer have anything to… you know, hold them in place. Your gums are important. THis happens a lot in older people, but is happening way way earlier for me because sometimes you just roll crappy dice with genetics and such.

  Luckily, I live in the modern era, so there is actually a solution to this problem - surgeons can ‘borrow’ flesh from the roof of your mouth (where it will grow back. Not sure why human evolution prioritized making flesh regrow HERE and yet has no way to regrow like… a hand or something if you lose that, but whatever. Anyway). Then, they stitch it onto the parts of your gums that are pulling away, do some other stuff to make it all join together as if it was all originally meant to be there, and let it heal. What are those things? I have no idea. I’m a writer, not a medical professional. Anyway. Assuming things go well, everything heals together, your gums are now restored, and ideally it all looks and feels pretty normal, has functioning nerves, all that stuff, and the teeth in question have no more issues with potential severe pain due to exposed roots, they won’t fall out anymore, et cetera et cetera. You get the idea.

  I had that done last week.

  This morning, I woke up spitting out globs of bloody flesh (I thought), bleeding all over the place near my surgery site, and bleeding. And bleeding. And bleeding. Like, I bled for literal hours on end. I spent at least seven hours today just… dribbling blood while I sat over the sink, trying to keep the mess reasonably contained and hoping the bleeding would stop. Things would kinda slow down when I applied surgery gauze and pressure… but then the bleeding tended to start right back up again after a while.

  When I woke up this morning to find that I was spitting out solidified chunks of blood and I was bleeding all over the place, I panicked. My thought was that somehow, the flesh my surgeon stitched to my gums got loose, ruining the whole surgery. Maybe it had slipped out of the stitches, or I had torn something in my sleep, or… something. It seemed like a reasonable enough assumption, given that the surgery site was bleeding and I literally spit out several globs of bloody flesh right after waking up. (this turned out to be a slight misconception, but I fully believed it right up until my surgeon explained I was mistaken). I was thinking that I would need to get the surgery redone from square one.

  My second thought actually came considerably later. By that point, I had already called my surgeon, and scheduled an appointment to get it looked at, and had now settled over the sink to wait out the bleeding. That was when I started to get more concerned, because the bleeding didn’t stop. My thought was ‘I have been bleeding for five hours straight, is it time to panic yet? How much blood can humans lose before blood loss is a concern? Am I at that level yet? What are the symptoms for blood loss being an issue? Am I gong to get killed by freaking gum recession surgery? That would be the lamest death ever!’ This, uh… was probably an overreaction, but I was having a pretty rough morning already, and the constant bleeding, as well as the advice from a few friends I was chatting with at the time was definitely around where panic was starting to really set in. That’s when I wrote the author’s note from earlier, right after calling my surgeon and saying ‘do I need to go to ER? Urgent care? How worried do I need to be about nonstop bleeding, spitting out globs of bloody flesh near the surgery site, wtf is going on???’ I called my poor surgeon multiple times today, and many of those times were probably an overreaction in hindsight, but like… I feel I was pretty justified in panicking at the time, and I would probably do the same thing again in the same situation. Better safe than sorry, you know?

  Anyway, so long story short, the first time I talked with the surgeon, she scheduled me to come in so she could figure out what happened. Second phone was mostly ‘nah, it’s probably less bad than you think, just wait for the appointment and use more gauze to help stop the bleeding. You ain’t gonna die that fast.’ So I was like ‘okay, not time to rush to the ER or anything, I have some time to kill before the appointment, guess I’ll write a note explaining why I’m about to vanish into the void until I figure out how worried I should be.’

  Turns out, my worst fears - that the surgery had outright failed, the flesh had come loose from the stitching, and I was now bleeding out - all turned out to be false alarms. I was overthinking. Although I still feel I was pretty justified in going full panic mode at the time. Look, I have zero medical expertise - in my head, constant bleeding for seven hours is time to panic. I still kinda feel like that’s justified. Anyway.

  What actually happened is that the mouth guard I wear while I’m asleep (because I grind my teeth while unconscious) ripped over a part of the donor tissue site, where my surgeon ‘borrowed’ some flesh to stitch to my gums. (At least that’s what we think happened. Surgeon also noted I might have had some kind of allergic reaction to some part of the plastic used to protect the surgery site, though she deems it unlikely, since it’s very rare, although it does happen, apparently). This reopened wound then failed to clot, because as it turns out, the human mouth is filled with saliva, which makes it hard for injuries to clot blood and stop bleeding. Or at least that’s my understanding, from my surgeon’s explanation. Anyone who is a doctor or something, feel free to point out I’m misunderstanding how the human body works, I’m going off of my surgeon’s loose explanations while she was also distracted, you know, dealing with the situation. Anyway, this morning my blood clotted a bit, got dislodged by tongue movement, saliva, whatever - and then a new clot started forming, and I kept bleeding as new clots kept showing up, failing, and getting replaced in an endless cycle of ‘oops, failed to make a blood clot.’ This is where my ‘spitting out flesh’ came in… I was actually spitting out malformed blood clots? I think? In my mouth all I could really identify was that they were definitely solid, and covered in blood, so that’s where I was totally thinking ‘oh god, all of this flesh has to have come from SOMEWHERE, and I know for a fact that there’s a whole lot of kind of loose flesh right in that area. Things have clearly gone terribly wrong.’

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  I was also bleeding a lot less than I thought I was, since blood was getting mixed with saliva, although I was still bleeding for like… seven hours straight, almost. It was just a dribble, not a flood. Although apparently, it would not have realistically ever stopped on its own??? I think? Or maybe the surgeon was saying that the glob of malformed blood clots wouldn’t have ever disappeared without intervention? Not 100% sure what she meant, I’m going off of what I think makes the most sense here, again, I’m not a medical professional.

  Anyway, the blood clots from the wound were an issue, because they had basically become this… kind of tumor-looking glob of solidified blood. It looked freaking horrifying. Like, you know how in some movies aliens like, lay eggs inside of human skin or something? (Or how some parasites and whatnot do that in real life?) It looked kinda like that. And it was also constantly bleeding. She jammed me with some anaesthetics, then removed it with a laser. Which is kind of cool, but also I also literally got shot with a laser today. I feel like I accidentally entered a sci-fi movie set or something. Ahem.

  I am so glad that I was running around trying to stop the bleeding with gauze this morning, because if I had seen it I probably would have been panicking like ten times more than I already was. After using a freaking laser to remove the great blood clot, she tossed on more surgical tape and whatnot to seal it all closed until it can heal.

  It should heal back to normal just fine as long as nothing reopens it, assuming we figured out the issue and diagnosed it correctly (meaning, I now have a new mouth guard that should not reopen the wound). My mouth does kinda taste like burnt human flesh, which is… gross, but not the end of the world. It should all heal up fine and leave no permanent issues, even if it’s rather unpleasant right now. The anesthetics have worn off, and the area definitely hurts, but like… not the end of the world. Even if focusing on writing a story is kinda hard right now because the great blood clot area hurts, I’m not in any real danger of permanent injuries or death, just mild, constant pain and unpleasantness that should disappear soon-ish. On a side note, the surgeon also took a look at the surgery site itself, and says that unlike the donor tissue site, it’s healing up really nicely so far. Can’t get the stitches out yet, and they are still constantly scratching the inside of my cheek and making life even more annoying, but that’s life sometimes.

  So, basically, things looked terrifying on my end, but they were less concerning than I was afraid of. I also didn’t have to deal with any real complications from the great blood tumor of doom or the reopened surgery site since I called the surgeon pretty fast after realizing something was wrong. There shouldn’t be any real major long-term problems, either financial or medical, at least related to this incident. Things are still basically fine, surgery wise.

  That being said, this incident still has some leftover nonsense I gotta take care of. First of all, I’m totally out of a few medical supplies, like gauze, since I went through like… way, way too much gauze trying and failing to stop the bleeding earlier. I should probably get more, because especially if something like today happens I clearly need to have some laying around. I also need some new supplies to deal with countermeasures against the highly-unlikely-but-possible plastic allergy stuff, which my surgeon gave me some of and told me what I need to get for the rest. My internet also freaking died sometime during this whole mess, and has not turned on at all since it died (I’m running on phone wi fi right now to send this message, and I freaking HATE phone keyboards so much you cannot possibly understand holy macaroni). My kitchen and bathroom also look like horror film sets, because while most of my blood ended up in the sink, not all of it did. And, uh… the blood also got in plenty of parts of the sink where water did not get rid of it. And basically, long story short, I need to like, sanitize everything with a whole lot of cleaning supplies, because I’m sure whoever gets this apartment after me whenever I move out would appreciate not getting whatever plagues can fester in human blood that has been dried to the wall or floor or whatever can appear. I’m sure they’d also appreciate not wondering whether someone got murdered in the bathroom.

  I’d also appreciate getting my security deposit back when I leave, and I’m pretty sure ‘apartment was splattered with enough blood to look like a horror movie’ is a major demerit for that. Today was really long and stressful, the great blood clot of doom spot now kinda hurts, and my internet won’t turn on, so tomorrow, writing and editing are probably not gonna happen. I’m sorry. I know I originally said earlier this week that Budding Scientist should be fine, but like… shit hit the fan this morning, and tomorrow I have emergency surgery shopping to do, a huge mess to clean up, and I’m probably still gonna be in pain and running on phone wifi.

  I do legitimately feel bad about it, because I try really, really, really hard to keep promises I make. I hope that’s noticeable, for those of you who have been around for longer? I try to be pretty explicit about whenever something might impact the schedule, and unless things go wrong, I generally do what I say I’ll do. At least, that’s my impression of my own actions, idk. Maybe I’m forgetting a bajillion times I broke promises or something, or… I don’t know, whatever. I’m just rambling now, but that spot hurts and I already edited this note twice, so I’m not editing out the nonsense I just wrote. So there! HMPH.

  Assuming things are… sane again by next week, I should be back to a regular schedule of 3 Markets chapters and 1 Budding Scientist chapter. If things go a bit wrong, which probably means‘nothing went strictly wrong but I’m in more pain than I expected to be, and/or I am worse at handling it than expected,’ maybe we get 1-2 Markets chapters and a shorter, somewhat less edited Scientist chapter - though since I still have the work from this week I managed to get done, I imagine that’s probably not going to happen, since I still have three days of Budding Scientist chapter drafting from this week to pick up with next week. I’ll see you next week, assuming nothing else goes wrong.