Harnessing the healing power of snark
My husband: “So, how are you feeling?’
Me: “Well, I have cramps, fibro pain, AND a migraine. I really want to go find Life and punch it in the nut sack.”
My husband: “Hey, wait a minute. You’re assuming that Life is a guy.”
Me: “OK then, I want to go find Life and stab it in the face.”
My husband: “There ya go.”
So when last we left the spellbinding story of my Gallbladder Adventure my husband was transporting me to the Emergency Room so that, OMG! THE PAIN! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!
So we finally got there, just in time for us to…hurry up and wait.( FYI-apparently midnight Saturday night is the primo time for visiting the ER.) But happily, between his iPod and his Blackberry my husband was able to entertain himself. And I passed the time by hanging out in the hospital bathroom.
Now, I must tell you something about myself. (YOU: And this is different, how?) And it is that I have a MAJOR problem with germs, real or imagined. And I am S-E-R-I-O-S-L-Y OCD about this.
For example, let’s take the “towel situation” here at home.
We of course have dishtowels here that we use to clean the kitchen. But I am only able to use them if I am the one to take a clean towel out of the drawer and if I am the only one use it to do the kitchen chores. Once I hang it over the handle of the dishwasher I physically cannot use it anymore. I just can’t. Because, even though it is just the two of us here, living together in the bonds of holy matrimony for fourteen years and germ-ing it up together, if I even TRY and touch the towel again, or look at it, or stand on the same side of the kitchen as the dishwasher, I can feel in my nervous system each individual germ marching up from the towel onto my skin, cheering and chugging back some beer as they prepare to have their raucous way with my body.
So needless to say, public bathrooms are kind of a problem for me.
But people, on this night I was SETTING UP HOUSE in that hospital bathroom. If I could have, I would have moved in an air bed and a La-Z-Boy, because that’s just how much time we were spending together, that bathroom and I.
(And have I mentioned yet that I was wearing my jammies, my jammies that I dearly love, my jammies that have gotten me through so many bad days over the past 3 years, my jammies that are like a second skin? In the public bathroom? Touching Public Bathroom Stuff? AND I DIDN’T EVEN CARE? That is what pain can do to you, my friends.)
However, three-and-a-half hours later and four visit to my new little hidey-hole later I was starting to feel some relief, so I decided to tell my husband that we could go back home. But then, suddenly, I heard, “Ryan?”
And let me tell you-if a multitude of the heavenly host had suddenly descended from the sky in that moment and started serenading me, it would not have sounded sweeter than the sound of someone calling my name, telling me that I was next.
So I burst out of the bathroom and my husband booked it down the hallway in order to let The Name-Calling Man know that, “Yes! I am here! Please take me back to a room and heal me now!”
So I blissfully (if somewhat hunchback-edly) followed The Wonderful Man Who Called My Name back to the treatment rooms, right into Room 7, my new home away from home. And once I changed and got into bed I was finally able to…hurry up and wait some more. (Unexpected Bonus Information I Received While In The ER: Apparently walk-in patients come third, after people who arrive in ambulances and people who are complaining of chest pains. Whatever.)
However, the representatives from Admission, And How Will You Be Paying For This? could not have shown up more quickly, offering me the soothing panacea of approximately 8 trillion forms to sign, plus explaining, in loving detail, the entire history of hospital policies and procedures since the beginning of all time. Like I wasn’t in enough pain already.
Thankfully my husband was there to perform the role of Someone Who Was Actually Listening To What They Were Saying, and he didn’t seem to hear anything sketchy or objectionable.
But honestly, I don’t have a friggin’ clue as to what I signed that night. I would’ve signed anything they wanted if it would’ve made the drugs come a little more quickly. So it is entirely possible that a hospital representative could appear on our doorstep one day bearing proof that I accidentally signed away my husband’s flat-screen TV. (Although I really hope not, because I have no idea how I would explain that to him. The surgery card only goes so far.)
But finally, FINALLY, once the nice bureaucrats left, and once I’d completely abandoned all hope of any pain relief ever, in this lifetime or the next, there in my doorway, shimmering in the glow of a glorious golden light stood the ER doctor or, as I preferred to think of him, The Man Who Could Get Those Drugs A-Flowing.
To be continued…
So it’s been three weeks since my surgery, and I was really hoping that my funny writing mojo would’ve returned by now. But I guess most, if not all, of my creative energy is being used to heal my body, which, ok, I guess I can live with that.
But I also want to get past this “not-writing” energy habit, because I could easily see three weeks of not writing turning into three months or more. So today I am going to write something (with no guarantees about its quality) so I can start to break through this invisible force field of resistance.
So I guess I will tell the tale of my little adventure in surgery, because otherwise this post would just consist of me yelling things like, “Dammit, Tigger! Stop peeing in my office!” And you know, there’s only so much narrative juice you can squeeze out of something like that.
So that lovely week started off as so many of my weeks do, with multiple doctors’ appointments, neither of which were close to me, and neither of which were close to each other.
At one appointment I got to have some more blood drawn due to my elevated liver function. That was really scary for me, because the doctor didn’t really explain what that was or why that was happening, and then he murmured something about possibly needing an MRI of my liver, and so that was when I pulled a hefty dose of Denial out of my toolkit and did everything in my power to pretend that that experience was not actually happening.
Then at my second appointment I got to check in with my sleep doctor and order more supplies for my CPAP machine, including my “mask of choice”, AKA “The Pig Snout”. I was also all set to practice some personal sovereignty, defined as Being The Queen (or King) of Your Own Internal Space, which I’ve been learning about lately from Havi Brooks and Hiro Boga. Because I absolutely LOATHE having to be weighed and having to talk about my weight every single damn time I have to go and see a doctor, because DUDE-I’ve already got enough stuff to deal with without having to add Feeling Bad Because Of My Weight to the mix.
So this time I just told the nurse what number to write down, and then while I was waiting for the doctor I decided what I would say to him if he dared to bring up “The-W-word”. Namely this: “I’m sorry, but we’re not currently accepting feedback on anything related to weight at this time. We are only accepting feedback related to CPAP and sleep issues.”
So I was all set with my fun answer, but as it turned out he never even mentioned “The W-Word at all.” Apparently my inner sovereignty was so powerful that it flowed out to meet him before he even came into the examination room. So, YAY me!
And then I made it through the rest of the week until about midnight on Saturday, at which time commenced The Battle Between My Body And The Agents of The Hostile Takeover.
A few hours earlier I started having the most God-awful pain in my right side. This had happened to me before, and it was really scary because nothing I did seemed to help it at all. And while it was here I was absolutely incapable of finding any relief. No pain medicine even touched it, and no position, no matter how much I contorted myself, brought me any relief.
Now you all know I have fibromyalgia (a chronic pain disorder), among MANY OTHER health issues, so you know I know from pain. But I’ve got to tell you that this was absolutely The Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. But I was prepared to white-knuckle my way through it-AGAIN-until I started throwing up, which had never happened during any of my previous attacks. So that, combined with the fact that I was unable to manage the pain AT ALL, convinced me to ask my husband to take me to the emergency room, where our adventure will pick up next time.
