Three of you fellas – Ted and The Two Scotts – have been in leagues I’ve commissioned before. They already know what I’m about to tell the rest of you: I like writing these newsletters. A lot. I have no idea if you guys enjoy them or not, but it’s fair to say I’m my own biggest fan, which is all the reason I need to keep going. It’s pretty routine during fantasy football season to see my wife rolling her eyes or shaking her head in annoyance as I maniacally laugh over some idea or picture for the newsletters. She thinks I’m childish and lame. My response to her?
99% of the time I try to be humorous, but every so often I throw a monkey wrench in the works. Things like getting married, having my first daughter, and honoring my father-in-law after his sudden passing all rose to the top of the newsletters during those weeks. Hell, I think I may have even broken my religion-and-politics code of silence to rant about Trump after he was elected (shame on me). I hate to use this space to get serious – fantasy football should never be THAT serious – but sometimes it happens.
Sorry, gents, but this is one of those weeks.
Back in February, I noticed some small tingling spots on the heels of my feet. Over a period of weeks, those spots slowly crawled past my ankles, and while I could fully use my legs, my feet were completely void of feeling. Same thing happened in my arms, starting in my fingertips and eventually going all the way into my shoulders. There were times I cut or burnt the shit out of my fingers, and never felt a thing. Mucho pokes and prods later, they found a lesion on my spine. Doc pounded me with steroids for a few weeks and everything pretty much subsided…then promptly came back a few days later. The numbness and tingling stayed at a more manageable level after the steroids, but were still there.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and more crap started happening – numbness in other areas, shaky hands, and loss of balance. Commence more pokes and prods. End result is the spot on my spine grew quite a bit bigger, a second lesion showed up in my brain, and I walked away with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.
Why the hell am I telling you this? First, writing is suuuuuper cathartic for me. I really can’t explain it much better than that. I sit down at the keyboard and words just pour out effortlessly. I usually knock out a weekly newsletter in 10-15 minutes (spending another hour trying to bypass my workplace firewall when it comes to hunting down pics of barely legal midget strippers for the newsletter). Ask me to verbally come up with this shit for a youtube video/podcast/speech/etc? I’d still be trying to spit out that introductory paragraph up above. Master Yoda wasn’t joking when he said:
Second, there might be weeks I throw in the towel on the newsletter. I don’t really see this happening very often. Most days you’d never know there’s anything wrong. Also, I’m hoping to start taking a new medicine within the next month, and that should hopefully take care of most of the flare-ups as well as prevent additional lesions from growing. But I gotta tell you, this week was the worst one I’ve had to this point. My hands have been bugging me, and after typing on the keyboard all day for my job, the idea of sitting down to write this week’s newsletter sounded awful. As I said earlier, I look forward to these things every week. When the thought of it caused dread, I knew I had to face the fact that it just may not work some weeks. Rather than make up lame excuses, I’m letting you guys know. Well, I mean, you guys AND the other weirdos out there who read a blog about ten random dorks and their league (including you peeps from England and Romania…holla!).
Anywho, that’s that. I do not need any sympathy from you guys. I have more than I can handle with my family at the moment, thank you very much. If anything, I hope you guys will give it to me twice as hard as you already do. A little laughter is good for the soul, amiright? I am told by the doc that if you can find the right med, people go on to live completely normal lives that are only intermittently interrupted with flares. I can dig that. I also have all kinds of people, including Osterloh of the Great Scottsmen, who know folks with MS and reiterate the same things the doc is telling me. That’s also reassuring.
More important than officialdom and family, I know how I feel, and on the whole it’s no different than I felt prior to February. In fact, the only place I even notice a difference is when I’m doing any task for Osterloh at work. That being said, he’s so used to me living by Homer’s credo that I’m willing to bet he doesn’t even notice.
There, motherfuckers. Your first not-funny newsletter is over. I’ll try to keep this to an annual excursion, at most. Ask the three who’ve stuck it out with me over the years. They know I’m good to my word.
Before I go, if I was asked to make lemonade from this lemon, you know what I’d say? I now have a ready-made excuse any time I make a bone-headed play!
Best of luck in Week Seven (especially those affected by the Mahomes injury tonight….yeesh).
Andy
The Terrible Ten 