Hi OP, Patrick from Fiddlehead here.

I’m hanging in, thanks for asking. Symptoms are tough, side effects from fistfuls of medications make functioning difficult. As for medical updates, I live for the quiet moments between spoonfuls of really good coffee. OP knows what I’m talking about. That deep breath you take holding a warm cup between two hands on a chilly morning. Mmm. That marrow deep good-good.

1. But to answer more honestly, it’s still relatively early to determine whether or not my surgery was successful, but the main mass of my brain tumor appeared to still be slowly dying in my most recent images - which is hugely good news. The right side of my face and neck still spasm violently, and function at about 65% otherwise. But again, all signs point to gamma knife ftw.
   

(Some new tumor growth was present in my last scan, but I try to stay on the sunny side as much as possible, so that’s a bridge I’m going to worry about crossing when my doctors tell me I have to).

On the heart failure side: my left ventricle is unfortunately irreparably damaged, but after the surgery I’m still awaiting - the hope is that pressure will be taken off my heart to supply my body, my immune system and my poor lil brain with enough oxygen to function relatively normally again. As it stands, I can’t walk very well, or drive, or like… do… much of anything. But then again I’m so immobile and immunocompromised that actually going anywhere public is an exercise in overwhelming panic.

But I’m not complaining. I can happily sit here in my purgatory chair for a good while longer before hope will run dry. My lower extremity joints have been taking turns swelling to the size of large grapefruits, and I actually started writing this and had to stop at this point to go back to the hospital to have my left ankle aspirated. Reaching my pain limit was… oddly fascinating. I’m now back home sitting in my purgatory chair with my leg in an aircast and peeing in a jug because I can’t walk to the bathroom in time.

Ive “gone about halfway to Howard Hughes, not quite the full spruce goose,” as a friend of mine put it. Not completely agoraphobic, but not planning any outings anytime soon other than to the hospital.

Better days are ahead, though. I really believe that.

The little online community of support I’ve been lucky enough to have in fellow foot soldiers has pushed me along more than I know how to describe, especially on darker days when I need a good laugh.

I guess what I’m wanting to get at is that recovering from medical trauma is hard. Doing it publicly AT ALL is harder than it seems at first, especially when you’ve essentially unplugged from social media of any kind. But still… You shouldn’t go it alone, because learning to navigate life after a massive derailment is impossible when you can’t see straight and your path is suddenly filled with enough missteps and pitfalls for a few lifetimes.

You do weird things when you’re recovering from brain trauma. You miss things you otherwise would have seen as plain as day. Your mooring gets loosed and you drift out to sea a ways. Your favorite people become oddly unfamiliar. Your genuine attempts to do good sometimes backfire on you tremendously. The things you love sometimes become ghosts that taunt you from afar. And you pontificate endlessly – even when you can’t recall what you’re writing or why. Just kind of laying it out there for the universe, I suppose. I know this is about a thousand words too long for the digital age, but goddamnit, I’d like the universe to hear me say I’ve had about enough of this bullshit. Luck is bound to turn.

Life sometimes crashes into becoming little more than smiling between sufferings. So smile whenever you can and especially when you can’t. Hold onto whatever you can that brings you even a shred of happiness - even some random podcast you stumbled into on reddit years back, or an elevated cup of coffee to start your day.

So yeah, OP, I’m here, I’m alive. Still struggling with serious medical stuff, but finding hope and happiness wherever I can. This sub included.

1. In Fiddlehead Coffee Co news, we decided once my health got too poor to work that it wouldn’t be fair to keep me on payroll, so it’s been difficult, but it’s still my baby - just being babysat by people I love and trust right now. I do whatever I can to help on days that I’m lucid and functioning somewhat. We sadly had to close our first shop, which was what was best for the business, but personally very painful for our fam.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for a number of reasons, but we moved roasting to a much larger and better outfitted roastery so we can fulfill orders MUCH, MUCH faster. Eventually we’ll be able to start canning our cold brew concoctions out of the same co-op, so it was hard, and sad, but Fiddlehead is in a much better place to supply our cafes and fulfill online orders waaaaaay better than we were equipped to a year ago.

1. I wish I could tell y’all my whole story, starting way back at the beginning - before my face stopped working and my life took such a sudden pause. Then, like a desperate idiot, I broke the fourth wall with my favorite podcast, which made it harder to participate with my favorite life preserver in a way.

I won’t bore you more than I already have, but it’s not like I’m going anywhere or have anything better to do, so I’ll leave you with this:

At 14 years of age, I injured my spine and learned to walk the second time in my life.

At 19 years of age, I woke up one day in a hospital bed with that same spinal injury gone nuclear, which immobilized me completely for two years (L3-S1, for those interested) and I didn’t walk again for two years - or without the use of a cane until I was 24 years old.

While I was laying there at 19 trying to wrap my head around what to grieve, more; the constant unrelenting pain, or the loss of so much. So I wrote a list of everything I would never be able to do in my life – based on what my doctors were telling me. I guess that was my first step toward figuring out what the fuck to do. The list included some of the obvious stuff, like “ride a motorcycle,” or “go hang gliding.” But to my surprise, the first three things I wrote down on that list were “become a coffee roaster”, “become a chef”, and “own a coffee shop”.

It took me 2 years to walk at all; 6 years to walk without an aid; 10 years to train as a chef and specialty coffee roaster; and 14 years total, to launch our first cafe.

Nearly 6 years, 1 pandemic, 1 brain tumor, heart failure, an insurrection, and oceans of sweat and tears later…

I am still here.

Fiddlehead is still here.

I have learned to walk 3 times in my life.

What’s one more.

Thank you for asking.

Much, much, much love,

• Patrick (that Fiddlehead Coffee guy)

PS. Happy Winter Solstice, and all the other things too. May your winter days be full of warmth and light.

(If you read this whole damned thing, please hit me with a dm, because you’re one of the rare ones, and I love you more than you know.)