DOD268: A Helluva Haeley Health Hupdate

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that doesn't even need Eli Bosnick. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith. Hello, Thomas Smith!

0:00:32 Thomas: He's really been weighing down the show. You know, he's just been dragging it. Yep, yep.

0:00:40 Tom: Have you noticed the same thing? Because I've noticed the SAME thing. Like, I didn't want to say it while he's here, because... But I'm sure he's not going to listen.

0:00:46 Thomas: I'm like, hey buddy, make a joke once in a while. Like do, you know, he's always so serious.

0:00:52 Tom: Man.

0:00:53 Thomas: No, but I was thinking actually the role of Eli Bosnick, I think will be played by Thomas. I think I can do this. I think we can do it. Yeah. Can I say something brave? Can I say something brave. I can it.

0:00:54 Tom: Can you do it? Can you be the Eli Bosnick of... from your heart? Is it from your HEART?

0:01:05 Thomas: Yeah, from my heart.

0:01:07 Tom: Yeah, I think...

0:01:07 Thomas: Tomifer, Tomifer Bethesda Curry, from my heart, say something brave, I can do it. No, we had, Eli had a emergency schedule thing. We actually got several fucked up schedule things happening in short order. And it was so cool because we got ahead in order to facilitate

0:01:13 Tom: You can. I believe in you. You, I believe, I believe in you, but

0:01:26 Thomas: Tom's news. Oh, wait, I'm going to be Eli. In order to facilitate Haley faking whatever, you know, pretend medical thing she had.

0:01:31 Tom: Yeah, right, yeah. Right, yeah. Her, they do a lot of faking at MD Anderson down in Houston, kid. Look, I want to give everybody an update, I do, and I will, about Hayley and about her health. I know that's what people actually want to hear. I know it's actually the most important thing, but first I've got to talk about Houston, because I cannot go to Houston without being shocked and appalled every time by how horrifying and lousy and shitty and unappealing every square inch of that That fucking city is, I've been there four times now, four times, Thomas Smith, Haley's dad. I know I mentioned on the last show, Haley's dad flew down to Houston to be with us, to be there, to lend support. He stayed there for, I think like three days in the hospital. He went home, he went back to his hotel in the evening, but he was there. Like he got up, he drove over to the hospital. We sat with her, hung out with her

0:01:36 Thomas: Yeah, that's why I'm here.

0:02:00 Thomas: Oh. Wow.

0:02:22 Tom: For, for I think three days while she was like actually recovering from surgery in the hotel. It was wonderful. It was just, it was great. It was just awesome, but like a major topic of conversation was, can you fucking believe this city we're in, if you've never been to Houston, it defies imagination and expectation. Thomas, have you been there, dude?

0:02:22 Thomas: Wow.

0:02:34 Thomas: I think I've only stopped through it. I've been to Austin a long time

0:02:45 Tom: Eight million people. I've been, look, so I've been to Dallas. I like Dallas. I've been to San Antonio. San Antonio's a fine little touristy city. I've been to Houston. It's unrecognizable as an American city for the fourth largest city in America Eight million people. Yeah, it's fucking massive. It's so big, you start driving in Houston and, like, you never stop driving through Houston It's f*****g unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's the never-ending story of cities. Yes, and

0:03:00 Thomas: Ago. Fourth? Oh wow. Huh. To this day, Tom is still driving through Houston.

0:03:15 Tom: Like, what I learned, because I'm fascinated with how horrible this city is, I just think you can still fighting to this day. When you land in Houston, you're like, okay, well, it's probably just shitty around the airport, and that's

0:03:18 Thomas: They say if you stop at a car wash in Houston, you can hear Tom scream still. Yeah. Most airports pretty shitty. Yeah, there's

0:03:29 Tom: True, and that's true. Like, that's normal, right? Yeah, I grew up around Midway Airport. Like, I get it. Like, it's shitty over, my Midway, like, that's where I grew up. Yeah, yeah, right.

0:03:35 Thomas: There's a reason we put people like Tom next to the airports when they're going. Yeah. People like Tom's mom.

0:03:39 Tom: Yeah, but, like, it never gets nicer.

0:03:43 Thomas: So I'm being Eli, just to be clear. Fuck poor people. Fuck them. They're dirty. Okay. That's, that's. Yeah. There's nothing brave. Money is good.

0:03:50 Tom: They're dirty, filthy. Can I say something beautiful and from my heart? Yeah. Fuck poor people. Max will never have to go to Houston. Like, so I, I look this up because I'm like, okay, am I just a crazy person? I look it up. There are several articles you can find naming Houston not

0:04:02 Thomas: He'll never be around an airport.

0:04:13 Tom: Only the ugliest city in America but one of the ugliest cities in the world, Thomas Smith.

0:04:13 Thomas: Wow. In the world. Well, I mean, to be fair, our cities are pretty fucking ugly here. Like, so you'd figure we're the big leagues of ugly cities, so

0:04:23 Tom: Yeah. There's no, like, arts district, theater district. The city doesn't, isn't divided into, to districts. So the stuff you might want to go to is just randomly interspersed amongst the stuff you would not want to go to. So like everything is just random randomly placed near another thing. Like you will legitimately be driving by like a laundromat with all the lights burned out.

0:04:27 Thomas: Huh.

0:04:46 Thomas: Man.

0:04:46 Tom: And then there'll be like a gated community next door to like an empty lot surrounded by barbed wire, by like a fucking rub and tug massage parlor, near like some massive building, and I'm not even making this up at all, like some huge, like, corporate headquarters, and this will be on the same city block. It makes you feel crazy. I

0:04:51 Thomas: Yeah. It's so funny. Wait, hold on, is that how it should be, though? Is that like better? I don't, you know what I mean?

0:05:09 Tom: Don't think so, man. Like, I don't know. Look, I understand that, like, the argument is, like, well, what about gentrification and segregation and, like, all that. Look, all of that's very legitimate, but it makes you feel crazy when you're in Houston. The woman we met in the, in, in the very first line, when Haley and I were there, so we fly down to Houston. Let's just tell the whole story. So we fly out to Houston,

0:05:20 Thomas: Like, yeah. Yeah, here's how bad Houston is. Tom went, and, you know, his wife's had a major, major medical thing that I think has gone well, and he's like, I don't care about that, let me talk about this fucking

0:05:37 Tom: It's stunning. It's just stunning. So we get down there and it is a topic of conversation between Haley and I as we're like driving to MD Anderson, right? So MD Anderson is one of, if not the best hospital in the country and arguably one of the best hospitals in the world. And they have this world -renowned cancer center. We're going to the cancer center, even though she doesn't have cancer.

0:05:45 Thomas: City. Everyone there just hates being in Houston so much. Like, fuck, I guess I'll just study how to be really good at my job. I was fucking, yeah, can

0:06:04 Tom: So, yeah, everybody, even the cancer in Houston is trying to get out of you. That's the thing. It's like cancer is like, get me out of here. Throw me in a biohazard.

0:06:14 Thomas: I spread to another person? I, I forget. What are the rules of me?

0:06:18 Tom: God. So if you've been to like one of these centers of excellence is the second one we've been through. And that's like a name for certain types of like major medical institutions like Mayo or Cleveland Clinic or like Sloan or MD Anderson. And so they feel different, right? So they have a lot of people who are coming in from out of town, from out -of -state, from out of the country in order to avail themselves of these services. So they have a very different like setup. So we're standing in line the day before. We fly down, we check into our hotel, and we have to get up very early the next day to go do some lab work. So, we're standing in lines like seven o 'clock in the morning or something. We're doing lab work. And there's this big like assembly line process for all of this stuff. And And we're kind of just quietly talking about how shitty Houston is like this, you know, like trying to, and the lady in front of us hears us because I can't whisper and she's from Houston and she turns around and I'm like, oh man.

0:06:29 Thomas: Hmm.

0:07:11 Thomas: Yeah. Fuck.

0:07:11 Tom: And she's basically like, yeah, it's fucking horrible. She's like, yeah,

0:07:14 Thomas: Like here, we have a mic for that. Do you want to give them the mic? Yeah. Go up. There's a little stage. Does anyone talk shit on the city we're in? Yeah. You actually earn credit on your hospital bill if you do it.

0:07:21 Tom: Do a tight five on Houston. It's fine. We have a whole thing here.

0:07:28 Tom: So she's like, "Yeah, you, you haven't got to be, make sure, you know, to always lock your car doors, like, even in what they think of a nice part of town." She's like, "You don't want to have your purse visible. People steal it." I'm like, "Cool, cool city you've got. This is great." So we go and we do all the lab work and everything, and then we meet with the surgeon.

0:07:40 Thomas: Sure. Wait a minute. Are we, are we, I wasn't sure. Do we need to do first ad?

0:07:47 Tom: Oh, we got it to the first ad. Oh yeah, all right. You know what's even shittier than Houston? The Auto Ads. Pretty much nothing, but the Auto Adds are pretty bad.

0:07:48 Thomas: I wasn'T, I thought you were still on like a Houston. I wasn 'T sure. Yeah. And you know, it's possibly not worse than Houston. In basically the un gentrified auto ads. There's just no stratification in them. And frankly, we're lost every time we go to the auto ads, we don't know where we're going, but you can get rid of the Murr. I forgot the Z light shop. Damn it. Uh, and he's, Oh, he actually always thinks of something pretty funny for this. Well, you know, can't win them all. Uh and

0:08:16 Tom: Well, can't we just, like, cut and paste something from previous episode in here? You know, just, "Hello, this is Eli Bosnick."

0:08:21 Thomas: You can help pay for or Haley's fake medical problems at patreon.com/seriouspod. And you can get rid of the auto ads that are so bad. They may be the one thing that they're all, they compete with Houston.

0:08:37 Tom: They are that bad.

0:08:37 Thomas: They're so bad they compete với Houston, but we can't, we can'T rule on that. That's too close of a call. Patreon .com. Yeah.

0:08:43 Tom: Unlike

0:08:53 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:08:53 Tom: Houston. There's a way out of the Auto Ads. So we go through and we get these labs done and everything, it's this whole assembly line process. Then we've got some time to kill and we're walking around MD Anderson, and again, this is like one of these, like, centers of excellence. They literally have a helipad for, like, Saudi princes to, like, fly in and then helicopter over from, like, it's a whole thing. Like, MD Anderson, we're told, like, it's going to be a different kind. Well, it looks like the place hasn't been renovated since the late 1960s.

0:09:20 Tom: Like, the place is like, oh, God. So we're looking around like we're not feeling real good and confident here. Like, it has that, like churn and, like everybody is hyper -efficient at their job. Everybody's here. Like, It's got all that stuff. But, like you look around, you're like, this place is, like kind of beat to shit. Like, its like Really kind of beat to shit, doesn't inspire great confidence. So we're feeling kind of nervous. And then we go and we meet the surgeon. And this is the reason we travel down there. The reason we traveled down there was specifically for this one surgeon. There's been documentaries about this guy, like he is a big deal guy. And so there's no reason to go there. We could have had the surgery locally, but like the people that do this surgery locally may or may not be as proficient. It's a micro whatever surgery. It's very precise and careful and all that stuff. And so, you know, we go and we we meet with this guy and this guy immediately just like puts everything at ease Just puts everything, it is

0:09:20 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then he hands you a brochure. That's like, so you're in the worst city in the world.

0:10:22 Tom: Which, by the way, I got the barbecue. Uninspired, entirely uninspire. You can get better barbecue in those suburbs out

0:10:28 Thomas: I don't know. Look, I'm going to be real with you. I don' t understand. I don'' t eat meat anymore, so it kind of doesn' t apply. But I did. Once upon a time, I did eat meat.

0:10:31 Tom: Here. Yep. Tell me Yeah. Yeah.

0:10:37 Thomas: Barbecue, to me, it' s pretty binary. It' s like, this is great because it' S just the, back when I ate meat, the idea of barbecued meat and some fucking, whatever sauce you got going, whatever food it is, it'' s either, wow, that is delicious, or it' m poison or something. I don'T know.

0:10:39 Tom: Yeah. Yep.

0:10:55 Tom: You kind of can't fuck it up. Yeah.

0:10:55 Thomas: There's not really. Everyone is like, oh no, this is the better barbecue than this. I'm like, if both seems great, I don't know, man, I can't, I'm not, I can evaluate, and maybe this is just, it's just me, I can evaluate how I like songs and movies pretty well, like when they're really good, it's hard to pick one, you know? When it comes to like good food like that, I'm just like, I donno man, it seems good, it both of it's good, I donna fucking know. Everybody's pretending, I think I've

0:11:21 Tom: Look, when it comes to barbecue, and I'll get fucking killed for saying this from certain purists or whatever, but I agree with, like, good barbecue is very good, and then there's bad barbecue, and there's not a lot of middle ground. And it's not the hardest thing to cook. Like, I've made lots of it's not particularly challenging. There's a method to it, you follow the method, and it turns out great. That's it. Like, period. You're

0:11:43 Thomas: Always had a problem my whole life with those opinions that people have that I think are just bullshit because of, like, regional whatever. Like, they just want to claim their little thing they know is better, and I've never been able to handle. I'm like, I don't, okay, man, I don't fucking, I can't deal with this. Anyway, yeah.

0:11:58 Tom: Just like, sure. Yeah. All right, anyway. So anyway, so the surgeon immediately puts us at ease. Was just saying a lot because up until that moment, up until the moment we talked to that guy, literally in the cafeteria ahead of time, I was like, look, I'm not making you do this. If this is something we decide you're not 100 comfortable with, we can go home, we'll figure something out. I don't know what the thing is to figure out. The problem is that I, we don't know what fucking thing is, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean Maybe

0:12:20 Thomas: What You're gonna learn the surgery or what? Oh

0:12:24 Tom: There's somebody else we go to, you know, I like, but like we weren't feeling very confident just in the space that we were in, and we're, and I think nerves were There Too. For sure, you know, it's a big deal, but the surgeon just, just immediately, just Like puts the whole thing at ease, just immediately puts the whole thing. And I'll tell you, I've never had anybody describe in more detail exactly what they were going to do and how they were gonna do it and why this approach, you know, is better than the other approach. And, you know, every question that we had, cause some people, you know, we look online, you talk to people that have had this surgery and some people lose their sense of taste and smell for a long time because the surgery is done through the nose. It's called the transphenoidal approach, and he's like, oh yeah, he's like, well, I approach, you know, from this, there's a big cavernous space here. Here's where all the olfactory nerves are. I'm not going to get near them

0:12:29 Thomas: Gotcha. Sure. Yeah.

0:13:03 Thomas: Wow

0:13:11 Tom: Here's how I go, like, he's just like Everything, he's got, like, a really good answer to. When he first got the MRI, and it's like, yep, there's the tumor here, and we're just like, sure, question mark, you know, like it's not like if you squint and, like, cross your eyes or whatever, you know? And then he's like, oh yeah, it's like, what you got to do is adjust the contrast on these things, then you can really see it. And he's like, got His, and he adjusts the contrast, and it's like, boom, it's right here, and you're like, oh yeah, okay, well, it's right There, so that makes you feel better. Yeah, right. So the next day, early in the morning, we get to the hospital, five in the morning, we have to get to the hospital. So we get to the hospital five o'clock in the morning, meet Haley's dad there, and, you know, get, get set up. So

0:13:12 Thomas: Hmm, yeah, that's awesome.

0:13:24 Thomas: Oh, right, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Wow. Instills confidence.

0:13:50 Thomas: Yeah, that's five. Are you on back in time a little bit? So it's early for you. Time zone wise.

0:13:54 Tom: No, it's the same. So it's the same time zone, central, central, central. Yeah, yeah. So thankfully we didn't have to deal with any nonsense there. So, you know, 5 a.m. is fucking horrible. You got to get up at four to get there at five, you know, it's just, it's a nightmare. Yeah.

0:13:55 Thomas: Oh, so you're in the same time. Oh yeah. Okay.

0:14:04 Thomas: Oh yeah, I can't do it. I'd stay up. Yeah yeah.

0:14:07 Tom: Well, I don't know, we kind of considered it, but being tired is like the least of our worries, you know. So we get there, we meet Hayley's dad there, and then, you know, you do all the pre-surgical stuff, which mostly includes just being hooked up to every machine and IV. They put an arterial line in her arm, which was kind of crazy.

0:14:24 Thomas: Is that different than IV? I don't know what that sorry.

0:14:25 Tom: Yeah, it's different than an IV. So, like, IVs go in your veins, veins. Nothing typically goes in your, in your

0:14:32 Thomas: Pretend I'm an idiot.

0:14:33 Tom: Artery. Yeah.

0:14:33 Thomas: Arteries are they're different. They're like just the big ones or, or something? Oh

0:14:35 Tom: Yeah, yeah. No, so, so when your, your blood pumps out, that's into an artery. Blood returning to your heart is a vein. Yeah, yeah. So the blood that pumps out of your heart is, that's an artery, and that is, like, uh, it's, it's like a higher pressure situation, like literally higher Pressure, and then the blood returns to your heart through veins, which are smaller and thinner and not as robust.

0:14:43 Thomas: Really? Huh. Oh, okay. So it's like when you nick an artery, that's why it's like this zombie show, whatever, like, yeah. Oh, I never, literally never thought about

0:15:02 Tom: That's a huge, big deal. Yeah, it just shooting blood everywhere like a fucking, yeah, yeah.

0:15:07 Thomas: It, wow, okay.

0:15:08 Tom: So they use your veins to put medicine and shit, and that's what your IVs Are for, and to add fluids. But if she needed blood for a blood loss issue, like if they had to actually, like, transfuse her, the best thing to do is to transfuse through an arterial line. So they open, they, they have an arteria, well, it hurts like hell. I didn't Know this. She's never had one before, and it hurts like hell. So she's got this arterial liner arm, she got IV in one arm and IV in another arm, she's hooked up to every fucking thing, and then you just, just kind of wait, you know, you just kind of wait for a while, and, like, people come in and ask you the same question. They make you verify your name, like, 30 times, your birthday, like, 30x. It's like, it's a crazy

0:15:12 Thomas: Yeah, hmm. Oh Wow, yikes.

0:15:41 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, which brain are we Doing? Amputating this one? Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. They do that when they're doing any, like,

0:15:45 Tom: Yeah, right. Dude, they did that on her nose. They wrote the word yes on her nose. I'm not even kidding. I have a picture of

0:15:50 Thomas: I know. And it's so funny because they should do it. Like the fact is like, they'll fucking amputate the wrong arm if they don't do it, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, you know, if it's the cost of maybe not, that is, I'm going to write something and draw a dick on your face or whatever. Like, fine. If that helps, fine,

0:15:59 Tom: It. Yes. Yes, so they, they write the word Yes on her nose, which I took a picture of, which is hilarious because nobody likes, like, a close-up of their own nose. That's like the worst, most, most unflattering photo. And then, you know, we wait for a while, and then they, they wheel her back through, and then my job. So my experience and her experience at this point differ greatly, right? So she goes Back and she has surgery, you know, that's a big fucking deal.

0:16:12 Thomas: Yes. Yeah. And she going out, is she going full out? Yeah.

0:16:32 Tom: Oh yeah, it says it took hours. Yeah, it's, it's like, uh

0:16:33 Thomas: Nice. Okay. That's what So I was wondering, I was going to ask earlier, like, couldn't they put her out and then do the arterial thing or?

0:16:39 Tom: You know, one would think so, because they put you out and then they do the catheter and they do other stuff, so like, there's plenty of time, right? So the surgery took a few hours, but then there's also just, like, they knock you out and do all this other stuff time as well. So like, they wheel her back there at like 7, 7:30, and then Scott, her dad, and I hang out for the longest time we've ever hung out together in our entire lives. Yeah, dude, we hung out until like 1:30 in the afternoon, two o

0:16:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:02 Thomas: I was gonna say, how's that? How's that conversation?

0:17:10 Tom: 'Clock or some shit. Like, we're just hanging out being nervous, nervous, waiting in the waiting space, and like, you have to like pick your waiting zone when you go back there, so like, it's all like named after flowers, so we're like, I guess we're geraniums, you know?

0:17:10 Thomas: Wow.

0:17:25 Thomas: Wow. Weird. Huh?

0:17:25 Tom: So we tell the guy up front, like, we're in the geranium lounge or whatever, so he can come find you when he needs to, like, when a nurse has to give you an update or the doctor is ready to come, like, have a conversation with you or what have you. So if you want to, like, leave and get a cup of coffee or go down to the cafeteria or whatever, you go to the front desk and you're They're like, hey, I'm a geranium scout or fucking whatever. Like, Kenny, if you need me, like, I're going to go grab a cup of coffee. I'll be back in five minutes or whatever. And then they tell you, like. Okay, this would be a good time to go. Or no, you know, you should.

0:17:55 Thomas: Oh, wow. Based on like what's happening in the game right now.

0:17:57 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, hey. Maybe. Yeah.

0:17:59 Thomas: Surgeon's doing real battle with the tumor right now, it's probably a good time. He called timeout. They're gonna, it is halftime.

0:18:05 Tom: So we wait and hang out. And it was actually kind of awesome. Like, Scott turns out, her dad turns out. Of course, to be a great guy. Like, he and I got along just famously. We had real talk conversation too,

0:18:06 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:18:15 Thomas: Wow.

0:18:15 Tom: Which I was like, God, are we just going to like bullshit for like, you know, how's the weather? Don't you hate Houston for like six hours or something? He was opening up to me about his life, about like stuff. And like, I was Like, yeah, sure. You're doing it. I'm doing it like we had like real talk conversation. So like we like got in there together and like, it was great.

0:18:21 Thomas: Man.

0:18:31 Thomas: Man, hey man, not to racially profile, but if Hayley has ADHD and that's genetic and maybe her dad has it, people like us with ADHD, it's on or off switch. It's like either not talking or here's my entire life, right? Here's all of it, gotcha.

0:18:46 Tom: Yeah. And I don't know if he has ADHD or not. He doesn't strike me that way. But very quickly, there was like a real like, hey, we're both here because we both love the same person, and so there was a lot of like just like kind of trust right there, I think, that we both felt. But

0:18:59 Thomas: Me, Eli Bosnick, that's the person. So just getting Eli in there.

0:19:04 Tom: It's funny because like I was, you know, I have a hundred other things to be much more nervous about, but I was like, I hope it's not really weird and awkward because I don't know her dad. Her dad lives in New

0:19:13 Thomas: Oh yeah, I would be more nervous about that. Not nervous, but like just dreading it, like, uh, man. I just, I'll be honest, I, I'd want to do a crossword or something. I don't want to just do something.

0:19:16 Tom: York. Yeah. It was kind of nice because like both of us would lapse into, to like long periods of time where like I'm reading a book and he's like doing whatever on his phone, and then we would chat, but like when we chatted it was like real conversation, like serious, good. It was great. It was great, actually, and like being able to do that and being able to like have something that was like really open with somebody that was not it was actually consequential help make the time go by but also make kind of melt the anxiety away a little, you, you know, because the whole time you're just like, somebody's cutting into my wife right now and I don't know what's happening and I just have to sit here.

0:19:35 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, jokes aside, that's probably how I do it. That's nice. I like that. That's Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, and in her freaking dome, like in the head area, which is is pretty important.

0:20:10 Tom: Right. Yeah. It's not nothing. You know, it's it's a nerve wracking wait. So the doctor eventually comes out and he's like, hey, so let's let's give the update. And I immediately was like, OK, I have to surreptitiously voice record this entire conversation for Haley, because if I don't, I'm going to translate what he said to her, she is going to ask me a question I don't know the exact answer to or don't remember the exact wording of, and then she's going to be annoyed with me, right? Because I'm going to be like, why, I think he said, or he said something like, and she's gonna be like, that is not precise enough, that is, that doesn't work for me.

So I was like, there's no way. So I like, I take out my phone and I hit the voice record, I just like, I'm holding my phone and I'm recording the whole conversation, and it was actually, it's actually kind of like weird too, because they have a variety of these, these rooms, and because again, this is a huge center, right, where they're just doing like dozens and dozens of surgeries a day, you know, it's a massive space, so they have these rooms, and the rooms are like clearly set up to deliver both good news and bad

0:20:15 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. Wow. Oh.

0:20:46 Thomas: My God. Oh.

0:21:16 Tom: News, so there's like tissues everywhere in these rooms for like the bad news.

0:21:21 Thomas: I thought you were saying there's like a good news room and a bad news room. It's like, well, let's make our ones like pink ones, like black.

0:21:26 Tom: They walk you in, there's different music, a sad trombone. Why are we going in the sad trumbone room, Jim? I don't want to go in a sad Trombone room. But like, yeah, it's like you walk in, this like tissues everywhere and stuff, and you're like, oh, this is a room where people don't always get the answer they want. Like, I don't, I'm pretty scared. Like, I would like to get the answer I want, please. And he goes in and he's like, hey, so you know, we went in, right, where we thought there a tumor would would be, because that's something they don't tell you too, by the way, is like they look on all this imaging and they're like, yeah, the imaging is suggestive of or seems to show, but like until they look in there, it's never a hundred percent. That one, that's the only thing that they're gonna find.

0:21:56 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:22:08 Tom: And two, that the thing that the imaging will actually be the right kind of tissue. So he's like, when we go in there, we're looking for these specific markers. We took a lot of that out. I got out the old melon baller, scooped out her memories. Yeah, she got, we, we got rid of junior high. Nobody likes junior high, so we scooped that out of there. But he was very confident. He's like, you know, we went in there, and you know, like you can, it was actually kind of gross, but I'll say it's like you could actually feel with your scalpel, with your tools.

0:22:13 Thomas: Yeah. Like, yeah, we found all this gross brain in there, didn't, uh, yeah, yucky yuckums.

0:22:37 Thomas: Jesus.

0:22:36 Tom: He's, like, when it's a tumor, he's, the tool just kind of falls through the tissue with very little resistance. He's like, so that's one of the ways you can tell is just by feel, and I'm, like cool.

0:22:41 Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah, but when I stab someone's brain, it takes, it takes a few tries, takes a few

0:22:49 Tom: There's a little more. Yeah, he did say, he's, like, you know, you can make a a pocket in anything if you push hard enough, and I was like, duly noted, man, duly fucking noted. He felt really confident that he got out the material that he was looking to get out. It was right where the imaging suggested that it would be. He felt like really good about it, so that was, that was great. And then, you know, we were a few hours later able to go up and actually see Hayley and sit with her. She spent a few days in the, uh, hospital. The first day in the hospital is the, the fucking worst. Like they literally had around 24 hour, hourly neuro checks.

0:22:54 Thomas: Goes. Jesus Christ.

0:23:10 Thomas: Nice.

0:23:26 Tom: So every single hour they come in and they do a neurological check.

0:23:30 Thomas: She had to be like, man, woman, but. But what was that? Yeah. Wow.

0:23:33 Tom: Man, woman, camera, child. Yeah, so they, they have to come in every hour and do that, but then they also have to come in whenever it is, whatever the schedule is, to do your vitals, then they got to come in every time there's a shift change, then they gotta come in every time somebody down the hall all sneezes twice, then they got to come in like there's somebody constantly coming. For the first 24 hours that you're there, there is literally someone in that room every 40 minutes on average. It's fucking insane.

0:24:03 Thomas: Which I guess is good, but that must suck.

0:24:06 Tom: Dude, it's so bad. It's like they're like, we just gotta rest and relax. You're like, rest and relaxed? Somebody's in here taking my blood pressure or fucking adding a medicine to an IV or like making me fucking like push on their hands and shit for the neurological check. How is anybody supposed to wait, just, are you resting okay? How are you? What he made resting okay? Go fuck yourself. And then there's like, there's two kinds of nurses, right? This is what we've discovered.

There's the nurses that are sane people who understand that you feel like shit and you're not in the hospital because today's your favorite day, and then there are nurses who burst into your room at full volume, like fucking Eli Bosnick Just like, like three in the morning they'll like open the door. Not knock. Gently, not gently ease the door open because it's three o'clock in the morning, but like fling the fucking door open with gleeful abandon, flip on the lights. "Hey, just gotta come in here and check and make sure you're alive." And you're like, "Yeah, awesome. You do know it's, it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and you are a psychopath. An actual living psychopath."

0:24:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I think the UN defines this as torture, like, honestly. So, I don't know why they don't do that. I don' t know that. Like, it can't be good for, like. Healing. Eventually, they gotta let her get some sleep, right?

0:25:13 Tom: Right, it's miserable, man. It's so bad. No.

0:25:20 Tom: I think they do this specifically so that you're so, so miserable, all you want to do is sign yourself out and go home. So they can keep the bills down. I think that's it. Because it's just so bad.

0:25:27 Thomas: Wow. Wow. They're like the, the server, like when you're staying too long in the restaurant, it's like, okay, did you, uh, Haley's barely conscious. Like, did you guys need anything? You got, you got your orders, right? You got, and you did dessert.

0:25:39 Tom: Get the fuck out of here! I will literally kill you.

0:25:46 Thomas: That's kind of weird. You didn't, did you need another menu thing or, or you're just going to sit there? Okay. All right. Just going to beep there. Okay.

0:25:58 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:26:00 Tom: I gotta tell you about the food, too. They send a guy up from nutrition or whatever, and he is making this big deal about this menu and how you can order anything you want.

0:26:09 Thomas: It better be barbecue. They bet. I like, they all should always have the regional flair to it.

0:26:14 Tom: And I can order anything off of that menu as well. So I'm there the whole time. I got to eat, you know.

0:26:15 Thomas: You know, Tom's just, Tom just just eating the most he's ever eaten and slept in his life. It's actually Tom's quality of life went up a thousand percent just from not having to work and be, or wait, did you still work your way through this? You didn't work. Okay. So this is actually the story of Tom's

0:26:29 Tom: Well, I didn't work. No, I haven't worked at all. No, I didn't work. I didn'' t even check my email. Nope.

0:26:36 Thomas: Best days that he's never had. I wouldn't be surprised if he can see, like, the future. He can see through the fabric of the universe, you're

0:26:39 Tom: Not even close. What a nice staycation I had. I had a nice day staycation. I used all my vacation time for the year, but I didn't work. Is there anything else? Can you dig around up in my dome? Actually, I want some of the medicine that's on there. Yeah, have

0:26:47 Thomas: Asking the surgeon, did you see any other, like, future tumors in there, like anything else that, yeah, you do a follow-up, right? We can. Oh, I know. Gosh, I was gonna say that earlier. The getting the night night just disappearing is really nice. It's really satisfying. I have, uh, I think once or twice, and it's, yeah, it's like you just wake up and you're like, why did I wake

0:27:02 Tom: You been under general anesthesia?

0:27:11 Thomas: Up? Why? Like, literally, when you wake up and you're like, why am I waking up? What did I awake up from? That's the best. It's the most, yep. I wish we could do it all the time. Michael Jackson tried that and didn't work out. Yeah.

0:27:11 Tom: Yeah. It's unreal to just be turned off and turned back on again. You're like, right, yeah. Propofol, it's the same thing that they use for anesthesia, which is crazy. It makes you realize that you do still have a sense of time passing while you sleep, because the difference when you have anesthesia, there's no sense of time having passed at all. You're just like, hey, so and now. Right, yeah.

0:27:30 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, you say, oh, when you sleep normally. Yeah, yeah, okay, because I was gonna say, like, no, I had no fucking idea what. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, yeah.

0:27:41 Tom: Right, so when you sleep, sleep like a regular, like, at night sleep, you think you're completely unconscious, but you're not. There's a sense of time having gone by, but like when you have general anesthesia, you're just like, so you're gonna put me and I'm awake. So that what the, it's just this total, like, somebody just, like, rips the timeline and throws it in the garbage, like that part of your life didn't happen. It's fucking weird.

0:27:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:03 Tom: So we stay in the hospital. She has her surgery on Friday. We stay in the hospital Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We end up getting discharged. She's doing pretty rough, like, just to let you guys know. So the surgery was on paper a success, but they won't actually know for quite some time biochemically whether or not the surgery is a full success. So what I mean by that is, so yeah, Haley has something's called Cushing's disease and it's, it's caused by a pituitary adenoma, microadenoma, which is a, so like very small tumors. Her tumor is four to five millimeters. So these are very small tumours. The whole pituitory gland's the size of a pea.

0:28:11 Thomas: Yep. Hmm. Really? Peter Cushing, famously, he, the guy who played the in Star Wars. He had it. Oh, wow.

0:28:44 Tom: So the tumor fits inside of something that small. Yeah. Looks like a pair of testicles actually hanging down from the brain. It's crazy looking.

0:28:50 Thomas: Dude, that surgeon's got to be a wizard. That's got to be fucking incredible.

0:28:52 Tom: It's fucking nuts, dude. You can watch the surgery on YouTube and it's crazy.

0:28:55 Thomas: You know, It never even occurred to me that now you could do that. It's such a different age we live in. We're like, yeah, do you want to watch on YouTube someone getting the surgery you're about to get? That's cool.

0:29:04 Tom: Thomas Smith, I'll tell you that like Haley and I were talking and I watched her surgery and I was like, you know, I didn't watch my neck surgery. And then, like, I watched my neck surgery, and I was like, I wish I never saw that at all. That's fucking nuts. That's fuckin' crazy. Like, they're like, got this thing, like a Dremel, and they're dremeling out your disc. It's fucking crazy. Yes.

0:29:11 Thomas: Yeah, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it. But yeah, What's crazy is when it turns into, like, a plumbing or hardware problem and the body is converted into lumber or something. Like, it's like, well, here's where we get the saw. And And then we're like, you know, and you're like that a body shouldn't be that. I don't know what's happening.

0:29:28 Tom: Yes. Yes. Orthopedics specifically is far too mechanical for my liking. It's just, it's like, I don't need to see that. I wish I wish I hadn't watched that. That's fucking weird. So Haley has Cushing's disease. And so it's caused by a pituitary microadenoma on the pituitory that is metabolically active. So it's not cancerous, meaning it's not going to grow. It's not gonna spread. Well, it may grow, but it's got cancer cells in it, but it is metabolical active.

So what that means is it releases chemicals which stimulate the body to produce cortisol in excess of what the body needs. And that's the problem. So Haley was producing multiple times more cortisol than her body needs in order to do body stuff. And it's very dangerous. It has a host of negative downstream effects on the body, muscle wasting, fatigue, hair loss, just misery in general. It's terrible. It is a lousy disease.

So the idea is they go and they take out this tumor tumor, and then it will no longer produce this chemical called ACTH. It's a signaling hormone that will cause the body to produce all this extra cortisol. The problem is that the body doesn't just, like, react instantly, especially to hormonal changes. So her body now has to learn how to produce cortisol on

0:29:44 Thomas: Don't like it. Yeah.

0:30:49 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yikes.

0:30:58 Tom: Its own without the tumor over signaling, because it's been over signaling for years. Yes. All right. I was fucking lazy.

0:31:03 Thomas: Damn. So your body's like, I miss that tumor, you know, actually we'd grown so close. It was like you and Haley's dad. I really got to know that tumor. Yeah.

0:31:11 Tom: We just all of a sudden bonded, like arm and arm, like, you know, like dancing through the meadow. And we won't actually know until she does testing over the course of weeks or months. We won't know if her cortisol has dropped and stays low. So you go in there and take a knife and you fuck with an organ, it's going to change the organ's response to the world for a while. So we actually have to get testing, and multiple tests over a course of time, to see if her cortisol is actually dropped to the right level. In the meantime, the problem is her cortisol drop goes from, like, being way too high to way too low. So now she's got

0:31:25 Thomas: Hmm. Sure.

0:31:47 Thomas: Yeah, dude. So they're going to make you put some cortisol in a cup like I was supposed to do with my thing. I never did. Nah, nope, never tested it. I, I look, I could practically feel the disconnected tubes in there, like, it was so obvious. And then, uh, you know, Lydia went off birth control and nothing's happened, so I think it's fine.

0:31:51 Tom: Like, yeah. Exactly. You didn't tell you, you didn't test your vasectomy? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

0:32:16 Ad: [Ad break 4 — ad music]

0:32:19 Tom: So she goes basically from having Cushing's disease, which is too much cortisol, to temporarily being what they call adrenally insufficient, which is essentially like having Addison's disease. So now she has to supplement hydrocortisone in order to stay functional. And then she'll have to wean off the hydrocortisone and hope that her pituitary sort of picks up the slack. So it's a long road to recovery. It'll take us several, probably a few months before we really know did biochemically this actually work. The surgery was a success in that, like, the tumor was removed and he felt very confident that this was the tumor. It wasn't a place

0:32:33 Thomas: Hmm.

0:32:57 Thomas: It looked exactly like a little peter.

0:32:57 Tom: He was looking for it. It does appear to be the tissue, yeah. It does appear to be the issue. But in the meantime, she's still pretty miserable, so, you know, we're trying to figure out what the right schedule for the dosage for the the hydrocortisone is, because if it drops too low it can be very dangerous. Your blood pressure collapses and, like, you know So there's a lot of stuff that you need cortisol in your body to survive, so you've got to make sure that you're dosing it properly. And then cortisol is also something that has a curve. Well,

0:33:16 Thomas: Cushing, yeah.

0:33:26 Thomas: So if it's too low, do they prescribe, like, the X games or something. They're like, get out. You got a skateboard down a thing. They're like, Tom, uh, dropper from something pretty high. I have a guy in the hospital that's like designated, like, dressed up like a murder. I know it's, I went to medical school for this. I know, looks weird, but, like, it's, it's pretty important. It's actually pretty important. Yeah, it's

0:33:32 Tom: It, you're actually not that far off. So here's a crazy thing Right, right. Just jump out of court. Jump out from behind curtains and shit. This is a medical scaring. It's a medical scaring, it's fine. It is a jump scare, but like a doctoral jump scare. I did my thesis on this.

0:33:58 Thomas: Like, I'm just as much a doctor as all you. Okay. I know I'm wearing a Freddie, whatever. I'm wearing a Freddy Krueger. Yeah.

0:34:04 Tom: Freddy Fazbear thing. Oh, Freddy Krueger shows my kids. My kids are five nights at Freddy's kids, so I'm different. Well, Here's what's crazy. If your body's cortisol level drops too low, because she's had this happen, then your body, will in an emergency state, will kick up the adrenaline. It'll be like, oh, oh, wait a minute, and then you feel fucking crazy, right? Because now you've got this giant adrenaline dump out of nowhere, and that's actually a sign that your cortisol. So it's a whole balancing act. It's very complicated. It's super complicated, man, and I don't know anything. Yeah.

0:34:11 Thomas: Oh, right. Damn. Shit's complicated. It's also like, how is the body doing this all the time? I don't believe it. It is God. No, I'm just kidding.

0:34:37 Tom: That's, yeah.

0:34:37 Thomas: It is also not God because how would God get invented? That is the thing they never do. It is like that is even harder. Whatever, however crazy this is, having a God somehow for no reason is also So a thousand million times crazier, but it's like, how does your body, so the adrenaline then is like almost your body doing the like ER. Yeah. It's like food, you need 50 CCS cause she's, she's flatlining.

0:34:41 Tom: Right. It Yeah. It's an emergency parachute. Yeah. Yeah, it It's exactly it, yeah. Yeah.

0:34:58 Thomas: And then they just do the, yeah, that's crazy. You've got a little ER and there's a dated reference. You got a Little Doctor, uh, whatever. Yeah. A little Grishore. And now, well, now everybody's watching The Pit. I haven't watched it, but, oh

0:35:05 Tom: Little Grey's Anatomy, that's still going on. That show will never end. I've watched The Pit. It's pretty good. Yeah, The Pit is pretty good, yeah, so anyway, so she's pretty miserable, but we're hoping to figure out the right timing, the right dosage to get her cortisol and her hydrocortisone dose, rather, at the right times and whatever, and then it's just, we knew it was going to be a long road.

0:35:10 Thomas: Yeah, you've watched it. You got A Little The Pit in there.

0:35:27 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:35:27 Tom: It doesn't make the road being hard any better, so that's something that, like, I think it's worth saying is that just because you expect something to be bad doesn't make the bad thing not bad. There is a sense, I think, that people have. It's like, well, this is what you expected to have happen. It is like, yeah, but it still sucks. It it is like you can tell somebody that, hey, it really hurts to have a baby, and you are like, it hurts while I am having this baby. It isn't like, didn't we tell you to expect that? It still sucks! Right! It is like things that suck don't suck less because you knew they were going to suck. Right, yeah, yeah.

0:35:43 Thomas: Right. Yeah. It sure matters how much of it. Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:54 Thomas: Look, we told you to expect the worst pain imaginable. What are you complaining about?

0:36:03 Thomas: However, not to counter that, but it's got to be much, I mean, for you guys mentally. I mean the difference between you spent, you know, time is hard for me, but somewhere what feels like 10 years is probably at least several just not knowing what the fuck was going on. Like something was wrong, deeply wrong, like serious medical stuff with the person you love most in the world for years. And you're just like, what the fuck? It's why Tom doesn't believe in psychiatry. And you know, he got, doesn't Believe in medicine anymore. Like, I'm just kidding, but you've gone through struggles with the, uh, the medical system to say the least.

0:36:19 Tom: Yeah. Big wrong. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah.

0:36:38 Thomas: And that, so it's got to at least be a mental relief to be like, okay, now we're at least on a path. That's like a tangible thing that should, you know? Result in being better again.

0:36:49 Tom: Yeah, I, you know, I try to make sure that, like like, I'm having an experience that's different than Hayley's experience, right? And no, no, no, but, like, I do, like, I actually think it's worth talking about a little bit, so I want to make sure that, like, I'm not in my household, that I'm not, like, centering my own experience, right? Because the experience that I am having is a different and easier experience, right? My life is not in any danger. It's just that all the things that I love and care about are in danger, right? So it's

0:36:55 Thomas: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is not to say that it's any easier for her or anything. It's just like mentally for you.

0:37:22 Thomas: Sure,

0:37:22 Tom: Still like, it's a big deal, it is a massively big deal. There is no part of my life that is not affected by my wife being this sick, you know, there is not any part of life, my my work is affected. My, you know, social experiences are affected. My relationship day to day with my wife and how we interact with each other, my worries, all that stuff has been affected and changed. But like all of that is still easier than what she goes through.

0:37:31 Thomas: Of course. Sure, yeah.

0:37:49 Tom: Right. Because she's the one that's sick. So I try at home to make sure that like I'm not bringing that up. Right. Like that's not something I'm going to ask her to hang on to. Right? Hey, hold on to this for me. This is how I feel about this. Like, that's something that has to live somewhere else, you know, as far as my experience is concerned. Like the show. Yeah, I like the show way. Yeah. So what I keep thinking personally is I don't know what happens next. I don'T want to do the false optimism stuff. You know, like, I just don'T WANT to do that. What I know is that if we DIDN'T do the surgery, she was never going to get better. Never. There was never a chance that she was ever going to have to get bettEr if we didn'T do this surgery.

It wasn't possible chemically. Biochemically was not possible. Now it's possible she can get better. And that is such a difference. It's hard because day to day it's like, well, my wife is still suffering. So today in this hour from noon to two, it doesn't help. Right. But like when I reflect, it does because like she just needs to get better and she can't

0:38:04 Thomas: Like this show. Yeah.

0:38:52 Tom: Get there if we can't. If we didn't do this, it was not going to get there. She was never going to get better. It's been nowhere. And eventually this would have killed her.

0:38:52 Thomas: Quality of life has just been nowhere. Oh, wow.

0:39:01 Tom: So like eventually what would happen is like because your muscles weaken over time and eventually like people end up with diabetes and they end up with heart disease and they ended up dying of these things. So, you know, you don't have like if you have untreated Cushing's disease over time, your life expectancy dramatically shortens.

So it was not an option to not deal with it, you know? Was not like we could just be like, well, we'll just, you know, hit the pause button and live in stasis there. There's, there was no stasis. It was just a decline. And so, you know, I'm deeply hopeful that we've done what we can to not only arrest the decline but to give her the option, the possibility now, of gradually getting better. And like, I keep, keep thinking like the dream I have, like the thing that I hang on to that I think like I can't wait for is like, I can't wait to put her in the car and drive her to physical therapy. One of these days, I CAN'T wait for her to be well enough to start getting well. Do you know what I mean?

0:39:06 Thomas: Oh, man. Yeah.

0:39:57 Thomas: Right, yeah, it's a more active process rather than kind of just suffering. Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:00 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing I daydream about right now is like I day dream about like being able to put her in the car and drive her to physical therapy. There's stuff that like I'm going to be weird about too, is I've been driving her everywhere. I was thinking about this the the other day, I've been driving her everywhere for five plus years she's gonna get better and just have her life back, which is great, but it's gonna be weird for me to be like, you're just going somewhere like without me

0:40:15 Thomas: Oh, well. It is weird that you've been doing it like a chauffeur and have her sit in the back, though. It is kind of weird that for five years and you've been wearing a little hat. And like the little outfit.

0:40:32 Tom: Well, that way she can use the riding crop on me, you know? Yeah, which, you know, it helps everything, you know? So, but yeah, like I like at some point, you know, she's going to get well and then she's not going to need me the same way, and that is going to be an adjustment too. That I've been like, oh, at some point she's not going to want me to go with her to everything we do, you know?

0:40:50 Thomas: Wow. Fortunately, every entity in the rest of the world needs you all the time somehow. You know, so I think for other people, that could be a tough one. I think it's like, well, I have 75 other things that need me, my attention every minute. So maybe it won't be as hard, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's why it's like, I, I was like, I'm almost insisting, like the listeners, me, patrons, everybody needs to hear what's going on. Like, we've

0:41:02 Tom: Yeah, I won't be bored, I don't think.

0:41:09 Tom: Right, yeah, yeah, maybe it'll be fine. Yeah, so I do, I want to say too, like we got a lot of like really kind, you know, messages and well wishes and it's so nice, it's just such a nice thing

0:41:28 Thomas: Been waiting for the update for forever. It's great that it's, you know, as of right now, pretty much all good news. Right, there hasn't been anything that's been like, you know, you don't know for sure that's going to be like perfect or anything, but there hasn't been like, oh, this was a big setback here, this was wrong here, or this was bad here.

0:41:28 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, there's not been anything that we're like, oh fuck, you know, there's a risk of like, um, the big scary thing that we were worried about the most was, um, what they call a CSF or cerebral spinal fluid leak. So happens about 17 percent of the time, you said nothing you can do about it, just happens. It's a very thin wall between where he's working and, yeah, right, man, yes, I just

0:41:56 Thomas: Oh, oh wow. Oof. Yeah. And he's in there gouging shit just to test it. He's like, yeah, I mean, I had to test It. It looked a little harder, firmer than the other stuff. So I just wanted to see, I call it the stabby stabby scale. I was like, I want, oh, that's like a four on the stabbie stabbie scale. The tumor is like a one that just boop. Yeah, Yeah. Oh God. No, I see those. You ever see those videos of them practicing on a little grape or something?

0:42:10 Tom: I poke a knife in here and it feels good, so that's, that's pretty much what, yeah, oh no, nope, that's good stuff. I ruined that. That's, this is why I could never be a surgeon, man. I'd be like, well, I have bad news and bad news, yes.

0:42:31 Thomas: And you're like, dude, that's fucking awesome. I see those on Reddit or whatever. And it'll do, you'll do a little surgery on a little grape. You're just like, how is that even fucking possible? The amount of genius, brilliant, amazing things that humans have. And then also we're bombing an entire country because a guy is a rapist in the files. You know, and you're just like, the two, these two things coexist so fucking stupid on

0:42:44 Tom: Yes. Yeah, I know, man, it's fucking crazy. Yeah, so I, I just wanted to say thank you to the people that did, you know, reach out and express their, you know, concern and their care. It's really nice, it's really kind. It was

0:43:01 Thomas: Behalf of Eli Bosnick. Tom, you are welcome. I know you're thanking me, Eli.

0:43:09 Tom: All you, it was a Lia

0:43:55 Thomas: Bosnack, I did it, it was all me, Tom, for Bethesda Curry from my heart.

0:44:03 Tom: Hello, this is Eli Bosnick. Why are we going in the sad trombone Phone room!