That's My Bix!

After much ado, Hodor has left the building.

Hodor is the name that Jane gave to my evil twin lump in my noggin. It was a pretty good name and also, I am likewise reading A Game of Thrones and found it funny. And also, my lump would frequently shout “HODOR!” by means of giving me a low throbbing skull ache.

I went in to have Hodor removed and my adorable doctor took one look at Hodor and said “Yeah….. I’m not touching that. You need to have that done by a specialist and shit.” She didn’t say shit. It is authorial intrusion. Forgive me. The evil twin makes me want to swear.

True fact: when you have an evil twin growing in your noggin, they send you to an Ear, Nose and Throat guy. For real! Even if the evil twin has nothing to do with an ear, a nose nor a throat.

I went to the ENT dude, who was, by the way, DELIGHTFUL, all expecting to be de-lumped that morning. However, so sadly, he looked at the lump and said “Uh… yeah….I’m not touching that in here. We need to have that done in a hospital and shit.” He might actually have said shit. I don’t recall because of all the brain juice being sucked up by my evil twin.

(It did actually occur to me that perhaps the evil twin was using some kind of telepathy to subtely change these doctors’ minds. It totally could happen!)

Because I thought I had an assload of travel coming up in January (actually, I’m still traveling in January, just not an assload), he offered to de-lump my skull on the very next day, which was a Saturday. Apparently with the holidays and everyone’s insurance being jacked up by the evil insurers (who may or may not have evil twins of their own), the specialists end up working every single weekend in December, removing polyps and nodes and nodules and creepy badness from the population. Who knew these people had such sucky Decembers? Yeah, I kind of feel bad for the medical staff under their own crushing insurance woes.

At this point, I really didn’t care what they had to do. My three month headache was about to turn into a four month headache and I was ready for it to be pretty much over. If he told me they couldn’t do it once I was in the hospital, I probably would have gone at it with a melon baller or something. Or for a holiday motif, I could try using an ice skate, like Tom Hanks did on his rotten tooth in Castaway.

On Saturday, Esteban decided to go brew beer at Scotty Boom Boom’s, and I was pretending to be tough and noble, so I told him it was fine and that I could drive myself. And truthfully, I was actually fine, until I walked in and saw the freaking operating room, complete with giant doughnut thing to hold my head still while they SLICED INTO IT LIKE A CANTALOUPE.

True fact: when an ENT is going to slice into your noodle, they wrap you up in a sheet and then clip it closed using giant binder clips so that you don’t freak out. Unless being basically confined in a straight jacket freaks you out, of course, and if so, you’re screwed.

The ENT staff were basically jovial and had a little comedy routine to distract me from their grisly task. The only part that really sucked was the Lidocaine, which I already know sucks and I already know that my body metabolizes it way faster than normal people and I need like four times more than most people. After it finally took hold, though, the entire thing was done in the matter of minutes. Best part? ENT dude said it was just small enough that he could perform the lumpectomy without shaving my hair off, and the stitches are all internal, so I don’t have to go back and have anyone poke Hodor’s old crib.

Afterwards, though, I got a little shaky and spazzy. I drove home in somewhat of a weird shock and then hated everything. I had to go out and run an errand and as I was backing my car out of the garage, I pulled out at a weird angle (or had parked at a weird angle) and managed to crack the passenger mirror on the garage door like a fucking female driver stereotype. Then I was pissed, sore AND a numbskull.*

I took pictures of Hodor, of course. It was FASCINATING. Even the doctor was impressed at how large it actually was, and after seeing the little bastard rolling around in the specimen cup, I’m surprised the headache wasn’t worse. It was an unbelievable thing to be trapped between a skull and a scalp. It was bigger around than a nickel, but it was spherical, so imagine something as big AND as round as a nickel. Also, it was surprisingly weighty.

You want to see the photo, don’t you? I knew you would.

I wanted to take it home with me, to float it in formaldehyde in a jar on my desk and point to it whenever I was at a loss for a particular word (I blame Hodor for all of those words that are on the tip of my tongue. Hodor took them and keeps them locked up in a box, only taking the words out on special occasions) but the medical people needed to medical stuff to it and make sure it wasn’t cancer.

True Fact: It wasn’t cancer.

If you like medical rubbernecking, read this: Hodor was probably caused by some violence done to my head when I was a teenager, which caused a tiny nip of skin to get tucked into itself/healed over and then the hair follicle of said skin nip then started growing bigger and juicier and then growing a conscience and then sentience until it became HODOR! and began punishing me with nonstop headaches. And for you, here’s a video (keep in mind that the camera is distorting my fingers to look bigger and Hodor looks smaller because its further away, but in reality it was probably about as big as my thumbnail.) If you want to read more about Hodor’s actual diagnosis, here’s the wiki on it.

Speaking of headaches, I had been hoping that my constant headache would go away the moment Hodor was ripped from my brain. Alas, it was not so. There was a ton of swelling and ache-y crap that I ended up plopping an ice pack on the back of my head and holding it there with a long towel most of the weekend, all the while putting up with the same damned Hodor headache I’d had all along.

BUT! About a week after the OR visit, I noticed that the headache was definitely subsiding. I still have a bit of one but my regular doctor said that there are probably a few toxins still hanging around in the general area and it might be as long as a month. However, given how much the headache has already gone away, I am pretty optimistic that my evil twin has done its last damage.

Esteban, however, postulated that perhaps Hodor wasn’t the evil twin. Perhaps it was the GOOD twin and now the evil twin is writing this here blog entry. Interesting concept. If so, I can only hope that Hodor was keeping me from becoming the evil genius that I was destined to become all along. They have the BEST secret lairs, after all, and also, I am quite looking forward to having henchmen.

Truthfully, I have some ambitious home improvement projects planned for 2012 and henchmen would really come in handy.

*That was actually one of the ENT doc’s OR jokes. A riot!