SURGERY SALE (I've got some 'splainin' to do)

Well, hello folks. You may have noticed over the last couple years, but I'm really good at keeping up with blog posts. Like clockwork, this guy. Indefatigable. Nah, in reality it seems like I only ever manage to make one when momentous life events fall from the sky or we get a really cool leather in--and there's some overlap there. This post is one of the former: I'll be undertaking a wee bit of surgery at the beginning of May that's going to throw a pretty substantial wrench in some things, but make others much, much easier. Let me explain. 

What it means for you:

Check out the home page, dog! I've put EVERY SINGLE ITEM that was set aside for pop-up markets on sale. Most of these hand-stitched, full grain cardholders and wallets never even hit the website before today, and now they're 25-40% off. Most of the stock is brand spanking new, but there are a few display pieces with slight imperfections and are priced the lowest. These babies are ready to ship next business day, and of course they qualify for free shipping in the US. There's a little something for every taste, from luxury French goat, to a rustic Western Volta cardholder, to authentic crocodile tail. It's the biggest sale I've ever put on, and I would love to clear out as much as possible, so these prices will be good at least through the month of April. 

Also important to note is that I will not be able to craft, package, ship, or fulfill any type of order except for digital pattern downloads and digital gift cards for the entire month of May. I know that this is wildly inconvenient for my regular customers, and I am so sorry, but I'm going to do my best to use the month of April to its fullest and get ahead of orders. If you are considering placing an order for a custom watch strap, wallet, or keychain, now is the time!! Any orders placed after the last week of April will come with the disclaimer that no work will begin until some time in summer. 

What it means for me:

Firstly, apologies for taking this long to get to the meat and potatoes of the thing; I just really wanted my friends and clients to know what's coming up that will affect their plans and business. Here's the rub: I was born with a defect called cleft lip and palate, which is when the various parts of your mouth and/or nose do not fuse together as they should, leaving a gap, or cleft. This is considered a fairly "common" birth defect, affecting about 1 in 700 children globally and 1 in every 1,000 in the US. There is very little, if any, rhyme or reason to why a child is born with a cleft, with both genetic and environmental factors at play, but there can be a wide scale of severity. Some children born with a minor, unilateral cleft lip (only only opening) can have issue repaired in only one or two surgeries and be right as rain without even remembering the experience at all! A bilateral cleft lip is more complicated to repair, since, as the name would imply, there are two gaps in the lip instead of one. A cleft palate can occur with or without a cleft lip, and is when the palate (the roof of your mouth) does not finish its shift in the development factory before calling it quits and can leave one's sinuses wide open to one's mouth. Appetizing.

Some children are born with all of the above, which is where I fit in. I was born with both a bilateral cleft lip and cleft palate. In UNO, that's a Draw Four. In tabletop games, it's a nat 1 on a d20. If you're baking bread, you've forgotten to add yeast AND salt. Is this bit worn thin yet? Please don't misunderstand me: there are far, FAR more deadly and detrimental birth defects than my bilateral cleft lip and palate. While in the hospital, I have seen twins fused at the tops of their heads and kids who would never walk on their own. This is not that. I have been blessed with an overall extremely healthy, privileged, and (arguably) productive life thus far. The caveat, though, is that it took over a dozen surgeries between birth and 18 years old to get me to where the surgeons, orthodontists, dentists, speech pathologists, and ENTs wanted me to be both functionally and aesthetically. Orthodontic Jenga, with 12 years of braces, and a recurring stand-up routine where they would graft bone from my hip into the roof of my mouth, only for it to eek its way out over a couple of months to the sound of a sad trombone. There were attempts and repairs and attempted repairs. Success and failure, "great", and "good enough". 

After all those surgeries, though, I was basically done. Reassembled, patched up, braces off, with a bottle of champagne smashed on my hull. This, however, was not to last, and the final surgery ended up falling more in the "good enough" category than the "great" one.

Over the next ten years, I realized that I was having more and more trouble breathing through my nose. Not just allergies, though I do have those, and yes, I've tried local honey, thank you! But more so from the fact that my septum, the bit that separates your nostrils, holds your nose up like a good camping tent, and lets you exhale dramatically when you get sent a funny gif, had packed up and left for greener pastures. That is to say, the majority of my septum is missing, and what is left is "folded like an envelope", per my surgeon's medical and stationary opinion. There are various other issues causing my breathing to fail me, and we are going to, finally, tackle them all at once. I believe, and my family, and my doctor believes, that this will increase my quality of life, which I think everyone should be so lucky to stumble across.

I was hoping to ignore this and will it into a non-issue, but sometimes we need to face the music (currently the music is humid woodwind sounds standing in sad substitute of normal airflow) and do something to improve our lives so that we can be most present for our loved ones and most able to move through our days without friction, if it can be helped. This can be helped. I'll be enjoying a combined full septoplasty/rhinoplasty along with a couple other procedures involving the migration of cartilage from various other parts of my body in what I like to think of as a cartilaginous "Love It or List It" scenario inside the human body. Thanks, Ms. Frizzle.

While recovering over the month of May, I plan to make a series of blog posts talking about my experiences living with cleft lip and palate in more detail and hopefully help to elevate the voices of those trying to bushwhack their way through something similar. 

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to browse this novel of a blog post. I don't talk much about my surgeries (in the past or newly ongoing), but over the last couple of years as I took my small business full time, I have formed such a connection with my clients and with other business owners and artist-types that I feel like I actually want them, you, to know what's going on in my life. So thank you for the support, the confidence, the kindness. May it be re-gifted in droves.

-Thomas