I have an ileostomy. It's my secret weapon against the onslaught of crazy colo-rectal tissue and health-related misery. I really love my ileostomy. A lot. It's taken the pain out of my life. It's temporary, I'll only keep this little jewel of a medical miracle for 6 months or however long my bowels take to heal, but this is the easiest my life has been since my mid-teens, at least 10 or 15 years.
Oddly enough, I fought having the procedure for the ileostomy. I was a little traumatized by the number of surgeries I'd had, the length of time I'd been in the hospital, the seemingly unending drudgery of being a really sick person. I didn't want to return to the hospital, I was confused by being at home and I very much needed some stability in my life. Thank god for my mother, she was my stability.
It took about 72 hours for me to appreciate the ileostomy. Those first 72 hours I was really, really high on morphine. I didn't want to be bothered with anything, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and all the nurses in the hospital were disappointed to see me back on the floor. There was too much emotion around my return to the hospital. Once I realized that I wasn't going to have crazy pooping problems any more, though, I let go of the morphine and decided to spend some real quality time with the ileostomy. This wacky nurse came by and showed me all about changing my bag and she had about 1000 pet names for the stoma (the bit of the intestine that is pulled through the abdominal skin). She made the ileostomy interesting and cool and even I (still high, but coming down a bit) could tell it would change my life forever.
I find it endlessly amusing that I don't sit on toilets any more. There goes that Hepatitis concern right out the window! I've made some mistakes with my ileostomy and I've only had it for 6 weeks now, still can't sleep on my stomach, and I eat a restricted diet - but my life has changed immeasurably. I have peace of mind. I don't worry about my next bowel movement, if I will bleed or how much it will hurt. I don't have gas. I don't eat to ease my mind, I eat when I'm hungry and when i eat I actually chew my food, which I can't say I did well before. I've been a part of something tremendous, the changing of my entire life.
I'm looking forward to exercising 5 times a week, not just when my whole being doesn't hurt. I look forward to wearing clothes and enjoying the fit and fashion again, not draping myself in surgical scrubs because they touch my abdomen the least. I'm already seizing every day and new adventures because I feel so fortunate to have another chance at life.
Showing posts with label Surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surgery. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Stigmata
I have matching holes on my hands - dead center. I've decided I'm manifesting Stigmata (where an individual begins showing all the signs of Christ's suffering on the Cross). I think i can live without bleeding from my scalp or developing holes on my feet, the hand-holes are enough. It's been nearly a month since I wrote anything, especially anything coherent. So funny because for the past month I've been shuttled in and out of the hospital so many times you would think they were paying me for a medical trial. But they weren't paying me, I was paying them. Let's have a quick review of Fast Times at Northside Hospital: A Primer.
1. April 17h - My first surgery. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy because I was so genuinely optimistic and had such precious little puppy feelings about the whole thing. The doctors were going to make me all better, I was going spend up to 7 days in Club Med relaxing, catching up on my writing, sleeping and enjoying primo pain relievers.
2. April 18th - I was up and skipping down the hallways of my ward. Joy to the World - I could feel the change! Okay, I was not skipping, i was shambling, but when I heard my surgery took 9 hours, 4 of which I spent in a jackknife positiion hanging upside down, a shamble was a skip in my book.
3. April 19th - Gets tricky here. I was in the bathroom getting changed up for a walk (shamble) and suddenly I smelled something terrible and felt pure acid on my legs. Upon looking down I witnessed just about all the blood I had inside of me evacuated on the floor. My mom started talking fast, I think it was to keep me from passing out or going into shock. at that very moment - with the nurse launching into STAT mode - my friend Jenn showed up for a sick-and-shut-in visit. What she found instead I cannot describe. I asked my mom to get Jenn out of there, but she couldn't, not navigating me to the bed where I managed to out-white the sheets. This would be what the medical books call a "complication." I am hustled back to the operating room where I amuse myself listening to my surgeons argue about transfusing blood into me BEFORE or AFTER they find the source of my bleeding. (after won, thank god) I go back into surgery.
4. April 20th - Wash. Rinse. Repeat with less blood. I go back into surgery.
5. April 21st - 3 surgeries under my belt. I've traumatized everyone, not least of all myself. But I'm still feeling positive. Heck, they did some patch jobs, that means the shit's really gonna stick, right?
I spend the next few days doing my Club Med activities. Around the 24th they let me go home. HOME!!!!!! I'm scared to death of home. What if something happens? What if nothing happens? I feel safer in the hospital, but I keep those thoughts mostly to myself, I decide even if I am afraid I have to keep on moving. The ride home is excruciating. Who knew there were so many bumps and potholes? Who knew my dad would hit each and every one of them? It just felt that way, but feelings are facts, or so some therapist on TV used to say. And then, once home, I have to re-learn how to "do" stairs. I put my hands on my father's shoulders and take each step he takes. Jesus Mary and Joseph, I have largely forgotten a lot of detail activities in my life. I don't realize I am still under anesthesia from all those trips to the O.R.
Just as I get accustomed to Home I develop another complication. There are calls for me to get to the E.R. post-haste. I politely refuse. I am tired. I am not bleeding. I support my body's right to be complicated. I'll deal with it all tomorrow. Two days later I go into the E.R. and meet with my surgeons. They tell me there is another surgery that will stop the complications. This would be surgery number 4 in less than two weeks. It seems a tad excessive to me and since they can't say my complication is life-threatening I can't say I'll sign up to be diced, have a portion of my small intesting pulled out of my stomach, bagged and left there until everything else heals up properly. Sounds freaky to me.
thus begins the GREAT CAMPAIGN TO GET CAMILLE TO CONSENT TO ANOTHER SURGERY.
The campaign took 5 days of coersion by 3 surgeons. I finally reached my limit emotionally with all the complications and decided one more surgery wouldn't affect anything that hadn't already been through the ringer/washer/whatever. I beat the 24-hour mark set in my main surgeon's head before which he was going to remand me to the operating room. He is pretty respectful of my desire to be self-determined, but if i hadn't made the decision he would have made it for me. Two days later on May 4th, I got a breathful of the fun-gas and woke up to a swollen abdomen (something I had not had before) and tubes poking everywhere out of said swollen abdomen. They checked me in recovery and when I looked down at myself I closed my eyes and swore I would never look again. I looked like a terrible pizza experiment. I had been fitted with a super-pubic catheter to replace my trusty and painful foley, I had an ileostomy, my vanity was permanently hampered.
I surf the morphine highway for the next few days. I ask for a dosage increase because what they have given me does not stop the ache, the pain or the personal mortification of what I am undergoing. An increase provides me with long hours of near-sleep and as an added bonus I am the funniest person in the room. I want to talk and I am convinced I'm having cogent conversations, but really, I'm just babbling softly like a 1 year old at play alone. I scare the living shit out of my grandmother who cannot stand to see her happy granddaughter reduced to such a state. My mom watches me very carefully. I develop "junkie" itches. These match all the junkie needle marks from my last visit to the hosptial (every time I went into the E.R. they gave me a new I.V. every time I went back to my room they gave my a new I.V. I have marks from my wrists to my elbows). The junkie itch, I must admit, is annoying. My nose won't quit feeling funny and I can't keep my hands from rubbing it. Then my whole face. I sit on my hands to talk to my surgeons when they come in and spend the entire time twisting and contorting my face into fabulous pastiches. It would be funny if it weren't so god-awful sad.
I start to heal and I let the morphine go. I don't like addictions to anything. So, one day, realzing I'm not in pain - I simply stop. Things start going well, I see the healing. It's not so bad. I'm spared the pre-op pain and the ileostomy is functional and seems well-intended. It's also temporary, just until everything else heals up. I start nurturing the tiniest possible kernal of hope.
Then they send me HOME again. This time I remember the stairs. It is now May 8th. I have a banana, then two because I've been encouraged to do so to boost my potassium levels. They bananas stop EVERYTHING and I spiral into a world where I cannot breathe, cannot move and cannot tell which way is up. Around 1:30 am may 9th I finally bring some of it back up, but with my snazzy new digestive system (the ileostomy) it's all digestive acid and banana. I decide I should go to the E.R. but there is no practical reason to do so. All I can think is I will feel safer - safer from myself, safer from the world - in the confines of the hospital.
It's a nice thought but I have to learn how to live with me - four surgeries and lots of scary moments - outside the safety of the hospital. It's funny to think I've been institutionalized (is that the word?) but I have. It's May 11th and I'm still dealing with those bananas, but I'm doing better. I can't believe I just wrote all of this out. it's time for breakfast of chicken broth diluted with water. I've definately joined the Skinny B*tch Club - membership is limited to those who spend at least a week in the hospital and months recovering from serious illness. Hey, when you can't eat you lose a shitload of weight.
More later. Maybe. Barring complication.
1. April 17h - My first surgery. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy because I was so genuinely optimistic and had such precious little puppy feelings about the whole thing. The doctors were going to make me all better, I was going spend up to 7 days in Club Med relaxing, catching up on my writing, sleeping and enjoying primo pain relievers.
2. April 18th - I was up and skipping down the hallways of my ward. Joy to the World - I could feel the change! Okay, I was not skipping, i was shambling, but when I heard my surgery took 9 hours, 4 of which I spent in a jackknife positiion hanging upside down, a shamble was a skip in my book.
3. April 19th - Gets tricky here. I was in the bathroom getting changed up for a walk (shamble) and suddenly I smelled something terrible and felt pure acid on my legs. Upon looking down I witnessed just about all the blood I had inside of me evacuated on the floor. My mom started talking fast, I think it was to keep me from passing out or going into shock. at that very moment - with the nurse launching into STAT mode - my friend Jenn showed up for a sick-and-shut-in visit. What she found instead I cannot describe. I asked my mom to get Jenn out of there, but she couldn't, not navigating me to the bed where I managed to out-white the sheets. This would be what the medical books call a "complication." I am hustled back to the operating room where I amuse myself listening to my surgeons argue about transfusing blood into me BEFORE or AFTER they find the source of my bleeding. (after won, thank god) I go back into surgery.
4. April 20th - Wash. Rinse. Repeat with less blood. I go back into surgery.
5. April 21st - 3 surgeries under my belt. I've traumatized everyone, not least of all myself. But I'm still feeling positive. Heck, they did some patch jobs, that means the shit's really gonna stick, right?
I spend the next few days doing my Club Med activities. Around the 24th they let me go home. HOME!!!!!! I'm scared to death of home. What if something happens? What if nothing happens? I feel safer in the hospital, but I keep those thoughts mostly to myself, I decide even if I am afraid I have to keep on moving. The ride home is excruciating. Who knew there were so many bumps and potholes? Who knew my dad would hit each and every one of them? It just felt that way, but feelings are facts, or so some therapist on TV used to say. And then, once home, I have to re-learn how to "do" stairs. I put my hands on my father's shoulders and take each step he takes. Jesus Mary and Joseph, I have largely forgotten a lot of detail activities in my life. I don't realize I am still under anesthesia from all those trips to the O.R.
Just as I get accustomed to Home I develop another complication. There are calls for me to get to the E.R. post-haste. I politely refuse. I am tired. I am not bleeding. I support my body's right to be complicated. I'll deal with it all tomorrow. Two days later I go into the E.R. and meet with my surgeons. They tell me there is another surgery that will stop the complications. This would be surgery number 4 in less than two weeks. It seems a tad excessive to me and since they can't say my complication is life-threatening I can't say I'll sign up to be diced, have a portion of my small intesting pulled out of my stomach, bagged and left there until everything else heals up properly. Sounds freaky to me.
thus begins the GREAT CAMPAIGN TO GET CAMILLE TO CONSENT TO ANOTHER SURGERY.
The campaign took 5 days of coersion by 3 surgeons. I finally reached my limit emotionally with all the complications and decided one more surgery wouldn't affect anything that hadn't already been through the ringer/washer/whatever. I beat the 24-hour mark set in my main surgeon's head before which he was going to remand me to the operating room. He is pretty respectful of my desire to be self-determined, but if i hadn't made the decision he would have made it for me. Two days later on May 4th, I got a breathful of the fun-gas and woke up to a swollen abdomen (something I had not had before) and tubes poking everywhere out of said swollen abdomen. They checked me in recovery and when I looked down at myself I closed my eyes and swore I would never look again. I looked like a terrible pizza experiment. I had been fitted with a super-pubic catheter to replace my trusty and painful foley, I had an ileostomy, my vanity was permanently hampered.
I surf the morphine highway for the next few days. I ask for a dosage increase because what they have given me does not stop the ache, the pain or the personal mortification of what I am undergoing. An increase provides me with long hours of near-sleep and as an added bonus I am the funniest person in the room. I want to talk and I am convinced I'm having cogent conversations, but really, I'm just babbling softly like a 1 year old at play alone. I scare the living shit out of my grandmother who cannot stand to see her happy granddaughter reduced to such a state. My mom watches me very carefully. I develop "junkie" itches. These match all the junkie needle marks from my last visit to the hosptial (every time I went into the E.R. they gave me a new I.V. every time I went back to my room they gave my a new I.V. I have marks from my wrists to my elbows). The junkie itch, I must admit, is annoying. My nose won't quit feeling funny and I can't keep my hands from rubbing it. Then my whole face. I sit on my hands to talk to my surgeons when they come in and spend the entire time twisting and contorting my face into fabulous pastiches. It would be funny if it weren't so god-awful sad.
I start to heal and I let the morphine go. I don't like addictions to anything. So, one day, realzing I'm not in pain - I simply stop. Things start going well, I see the healing. It's not so bad. I'm spared the pre-op pain and the ileostomy is functional and seems well-intended. It's also temporary, just until everything else heals up. I start nurturing the tiniest possible kernal of hope.
Then they send me HOME again. This time I remember the stairs. It is now May 8th. I have a banana, then two because I've been encouraged to do so to boost my potassium levels. They bananas stop EVERYTHING and I spiral into a world where I cannot breathe, cannot move and cannot tell which way is up. Around 1:30 am may 9th I finally bring some of it back up, but with my snazzy new digestive system (the ileostomy) it's all digestive acid and banana. I decide I should go to the E.R. but there is no practical reason to do so. All I can think is I will feel safer - safer from myself, safer from the world - in the confines of the hospital.
It's a nice thought but I have to learn how to live with me - four surgeries and lots of scary moments - outside the safety of the hospital. It's funny to think I've been institutionalized (is that the word?) but I have. It's May 11th and I'm still dealing with those bananas, but I'm doing better. I can't believe I just wrote all of this out. it's time for breakfast of chicken broth diluted with water. I've definately joined the Skinny B*tch Club - membership is limited to those who spend at least a week in the hospital and months recovering from serious illness. Hey, when you can't eat you lose a shitload of weight.
More later. Maybe. Barring complication.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Mourning a Noble Sound
Ah, who gives a flip what the category for this blog was? I was thinking of removing my last post because I was angry when i wrote it, but in reading it over I don't see anything too bad in there. I didn't add "frog" to anyone's name and I have no need to do so.
I'm wearing the cutest little red armband that will help the people in the O.R. match my bloodtype should I have occasion to need a transfusion while on the table. It's a very long process getting your pre-operation legwork done. You have to see the docs - the colo-rectal guy let me keeep my pants on - SHOUTOUT TO THE COLO-RECTAL DOC!
I worried myself sick the night before not so much about the money, I'm resourceful and it's time for surgery, sticky relationship politics notwithstanding - but about whether I would face yet another signmoidoscopy.
If you don't know what a signmoidoscopy is you are probably under 75 and have a healthy colon. Lucky You. I've had 4 or 5 in my lifetime thus far. I didn't think much of the first one going in - you get undressed in a little cubicle and put on a paper bag slit up the back and little sockies. But the techh, who was the soul of compassion, asked 22-year-old me what I was there for and I replied accurately 'I dunno, they said they felt something...but I'm sure it's nothing."
Says the tech, "People don't come up here for nothing." That may have been misplaced professional pride, but the visit went downhill from there. It was such a complete violation, it was the perfect complement to the prep required the night before which was heavy on Magnesium Citrate. Yeah, if you know what that is you're probably ROLLING right now.
Go ahead friendly reader, roll to the drugstore and get yourself some Mag Citrate and suck on it for a little while. Rip me an email once you figure out what it does and how it goes about doing it. Rip *hahahahahahahahah* It comes in cherry flavor.
I'm warbling along with chanteuse of the moment Amy Winehouse. I have another voice I'm falling in love with - Philippia. I'm so glad to have heard and seen her before the changes I'm about to go through. She's one of my friends, find her and check out the music.
My mom comes in tonight for a two-week stay. Funny, I dont think I could get her to take a two-week vacation without me staying in the hospital for a week. it takes all kinds. Me and my papa partied and danced and sang and talked and loved each other and a whole room of people thursday night. I got shitfaced. Well, not quite, i don't even know if I'm able to get shitfaced, but i did get slurring intoxicated, which seems to be my limit psychologically and physiologically. Me slurring over something that is not dispensed at a pharmacy is kind of new and interesting. But I felt safe, I had my team K, N, J, and Papa and feeling safe is everything.
This hopefully won't be my last output before I go Demoral for a couple of weeks. I have more to say, but, mom is coming, i gotta clean the house!
Wish me luck (on the house and the surgery).
camille
"You have to be willing to accept that pain is a part of the process."
I'm wearing the cutest little red armband that will help the people in the O.R. match my bloodtype should I have occasion to need a transfusion while on the table. It's a very long process getting your pre-operation legwork done. You have to see the docs - the colo-rectal guy let me keeep my pants on - SHOUTOUT TO THE COLO-RECTAL DOC!
I worried myself sick the night before not so much about the money, I'm resourceful and it's time for surgery, sticky relationship politics notwithstanding - but about whether I would face yet another signmoidoscopy.
If you don't know what a signmoidoscopy is you are probably under 75 and have a healthy colon. Lucky You. I've had 4 or 5 in my lifetime thus far. I didn't think much of the first one going in - you get undressed in a little cubicle and put on a paper bag slit up the back and little sockies. But the techh, who was the soul of compassion, asked 22-year-old me what I was there for and I replied accurately 'I dunno, they said they felt something...but I'm sure it's nothing."
Says the tech, "People don't come up here for nothing." That may have been misplaced professional pride, but the visit went downhill from there. It was such a complete violation, it was the perfect complement to the prep required the night before which was heavy on Magnesium Citrate. Yeah, if you know what that is you're probably ROLLING right now.
Go ahead friendly reader, roll to the drugstore and get yourself some Mag Citrate and suck on it for a little while. Rip me an email once you figure out what it does and how it goes about doing it. Rip *hahahahahahahahah* It comes in cherry flavor.
I'm warbling along with chanteuse of the moment Amy Winehouse. I have another voice I'm falling in love with - Philippia. I'm so glad to have heard and seen her before the changes I'm about to go through. She's one of my friends, find her and check out the music.
My mom comes in tonight for a two-week stay. Funny, I dont think I could get her to take a two-week vacation without me staying in the hospital for a week. it takes all kinds. Me and my papa partied and danced and sang and talked and loved each other and a whole room of people thursday night. I got shitfaced. Well, not quite, i don't even know if I'm able to get shitfaced, but i did get slurring intoxicated, which seems to be my limit psychologically and physiologically. Me slurring over something that is not dispensed at a pharmacy is kind of new and interesting. But I felt safe, I had my team K, N, J, and Papa and feeling safe is everything.
This hopefully won't be my last output before I go Demoral for a couple of weeks. I have more to say, but, mom is coming, i gotta clean the house!
Wish me luck (on the house and the surgery).
camille
"You have to be willing to accept that pain is a part of the process."
Friday, April 13, 2007
I don't ever want to drink again - I just -oooh - I just need a Friend
Well, I just got the wind knocked out of me. I've been making all these plans for the surgery of the century or at least the last half-decade - I just learned that I would be footing the entire bill. I thought - oddly enough - that I was in a partnership and we would we partnering in getting me better, but I think my partner has decided to do something else with his funding.
I mean, there is property in St. Lucia and his retirement to think about.
"I'll be some next man's other woman soon."
this is an Angry Blog. No matter how many cliche's there are "you come in alone, you go out alone" when you tie your raft to someone else's it's hard to believe when you find out the other rafter has been hiding a store of beef jerky they don't want to share or something like that.
Look, even my metaphors are fucked today. It's 3:08 am est, midnight + 8 PST - really, for all of this i could have stayed in san francisco on someone's couch and figured things out without all the stress and the changing.
but i suppose the purpose ofthe exercise was stress and changing. and I am a better person. Though i'm disappointed, hurt, angry and probably won't get a lick of sleep this evening (he snores peacefully next to me) I can face this challenge without skipping a beat or delaying my procedure. And for a number of weeks I won't even be aware of his presence enough to really resent the position he left me in on the 11th hour.
"do me good and all this craziness will disappear"
well, i have to go marshall my resources. my final question of the night: why do men think women require less money than they do to enjoy life? that truly flummoxes me. And why do men expect women to do more with fewer resources.
specifically - why my man. and if i find myself in this situation, is he my man or just a warm body with a pulse that makes me laugh on occasion.
questions at 3 am...i want a drink and a darvocet and a valium. but i wouldn't even sleep then, its easier to be sleepless and see the proctologist in what can only be described as a truly *fine* mood.
"It's not enough you love blow and I love Poe"
GoodMorning Life.
I mean, there is property in St. Lucia and his retirement to think about.
"I'll be some next man's other woman soon."
this is an Angry Blog. No matter how many cliche's there are "you come in alone, you go out alone" when you tie your raft to someone else's it's hard to believe when you find out the other rafter has been hiding a store of beef jerky they don't want to share or something like that.
Look, even my metaphors are fucked today. It's 3:08 am est, midnight + 8 PST - really, for all of this i could have stayed in san francisco on someone's couch and figured things out without all the stress and the changing.
but i suppose the purpose ofthe exercise was stress and changing. and I am a better person. Though i'm disappointed, hurt, angry and probably won't get a lick of sleep this evening (he snores peacefully next to me) I can face this challenge without skipping a beat or delaying my procedure. And for a number of weeks I won't even be aware of his presence enough to really resent the position he left me in on the 11th hour.
"do me good and all this craziness will disappear"
well, i have to go marshall my resources. my final question of the night: why do men think women require less money than they do to enjoy life? that truly flummoxes me. And why do men expect women to do more with fewer resources.
specifically - why my man. and if i find myself in this situation, is he my man or just a warm body with a pulse that makes me laugh on occasion.
questions at 3 am...i want a drink and a darvocet and a valium. but i wouldn't even sleep then, its easier to be sleepless and see the proctologist in what can only be described as a truly *fine* mood.
"It's not enough you love blow and I love Poe"
GoodMorning Life.
Monday, April 09, 2007
The Long Dark Teatime of My Soul
Okay, here's the deal: My nerve is slipping. I was doing okay, I've been so happy about this surgery - about the direction my life is finally taking ("you can make the pain stop?! sign me up!") - wait testosterone break, maybe i'm just low on my Y-chromosomes BRB - okay, stocked up on the T, some phenagren for my stomach and pycnogenol to keep my blood circulating. Where was I? Right, hyperventilating.
There is something reassuring about having a rhythm, a routine. Just taking the pills calms me, reminds me I'm here now and that is always good enough and sometimes better than anything else. I've been working on refining my writing, to make a career out of stringing words together. This is no secret, it's the impetus for this blog and really the only thing I've wanted to do my entire life is make people feel good, to make people think, to have folks to sing along with, to have all the laughter I can gather.
My boyfriend's ex is in the ICU right now and the situation is wearing on me. My first thought gets the selfish/fucked-up award for the week: "Shit, now she's in the hospital before me! I'm always second!" I laugh aloud at it, but that's really what I thought. Her situation is serious. And so is mine. So tonight he mentions the chance that I could end up in the ICU - you know, we were talking about how my mom would be in the hospital with me for every moment that I spend in the hospital. That's my mother, maybe not your mother, but it's my mother. She watches me breathe and I love her for it. Night nurses are demon spawn - I'll take my mom any day!
So, anyway, he's like "yeah, well, if you end up in the ICU she won't be able to be in there with you." I'm sure he didn't mean to slip a razor into my happy veil of upcoming surgery, but damned if I haven't been having problems breathing since then. Amy Winehouse's bluesy gritty voice and sharp lyrics help me laugh, but the laugh is a little pneumatic still.
Going into surgery I don't care to think about the downsides: I know when I wake up I won't feel anything for a while and then the pain will slam into me like a Mack truck and I'll have to start dealing with Recovery. Here is a hint: Surgery ain't shit when compared with recovery. Recovery is your body launching full-on attack because it's come under heavy artillery fire, but you were sleeping and could not respond at the time. Recovery is a war - all internalized. And in my case, all my organs will rearrange themselves over time to where they were supposed to be in the first place if I'm lucky.
Keep me out of the ICU. I have no desire to be intubated - it screws your throat. Will my insurance pay if I end up in the ICU? okay, really, that was a joke, but No ICU for me, please. No death. Just the major surgery and let me suffer all the indignities of recovery. let me recover. let me recover.
Right now Amy Winehouse is moaning "do me good and all this craziness will disappear." I'm pleading for a Mulligan, a do-over, a Get Out of Jail Card from the ICU. I can do club med for 7 days of demoral and an additional $23 hours per day for a private room (the hospital repeats that on their "holding" message), but no ICU. I'm not too young, just let me be too lucky.
Okay, she just vamped through Me & Mr. Jones and let's be real: I can't ask the universe to promise me anything except a few laughs. I think I'm going to call it a night, have a nightcap, and see what tomorrow brings. I've got to laugh at myself, it's not yet time for crying.
A final thought from what I'm listening to: "I want to touch you, but that would just hurt." Makes me hug myself, gives me a chill.
Oh shit!
I'm having major surgery in a week. So far I'm cool, I'm looking forward to Club Med - I need to iron out the hospital's policy on my Ipod and Bose system in my room, but I'm certain we'll reach an arrangement. And i can't lie, looking forward to having a week of my life erased by prime pharmaceuticals, though I wish it could be a week of my choosing, like "apply the demoral to that week when i finally figured out I did not want to be married" or "that week when i didn't get the Fulbright" as opposed to the week when I'll be in so much pain everything else will cease to exist.
it's been a couple of days since I logged on to bore the masses with me drivel. Superhomie Kyle rolled through San Fran style and we maximized our chill/girl time. We checked in on each other. Kyle is getting married, Camille is getting cut - we are ladies with things going on in our lives, ya know? So we had massages (shout out to Jenn who's table is as BIG AS HER and she carried it up three flights of stairs, then gave each of us a full hour of hands-on relaxation). After that we all went out to eat and then hit up a networking event that probably qualifies as the "first time i've been out for a good time in Atlanta" since moving here. Since my memory is always a little foggy, I can't give it that designation officially, but it's definately the best time i recall having in three years. For one night I felt free and open to the world of possibility. I heard phenomenal singers, the mother of the featured singer got up and did Summertime by the Gershwin brothers.
She started out so downtempo...I mean, you could have gone and eaten dinner between the notes she was singing. Then the band kicked in with a solid samba for the rest of the song. Reminded me of an arrangment Al Jarreau did on his Tenderness live album. Speaking of, I could have sworn someone told me he would be in town recently. Je t'aime Al Jarreau.
Then Sunday, since it was too cold for Eastering, I hung out with my newest homie Kym E and we just bummed around. She g'd me for some brand-spanking new lime green asics Kyle had just bequeathed to me, so now we are friends for life. it was nice having a day with nothing planned other than somehow eating and catching a little sunshine. I walked out onto the deck of my apartment and noticed a gaggle of guppies lined up with easter eggs that jingled. I like things that jingle, so I inquired as to whether they did an easter egg hunt for jewelry (can you think of anything more rewarding? i mean REALLY!) and they said no, it was mostly change though there were a few plastic easter eggs hidden with dog shit in them. Not cute. They were a friendly lot who were happy to take on a few more revelers, so Kym enjoyed the libation of the moment (vodka and lemonade, who knew?) and then we made our way to my new favorite Chinese place - The Ricebox. We ate and chatted - it's so beautiful not to have a schedule.
Tomorrow I return to being a Camille with a Schedule. I think my nervousness about surgery is that I won't get completed what needs to be done in time to beat the clock. There is a date and time when I'm going under anesthesia - can I get a physician credentialed in under a week? Only time will tell. It's my real-life version of Where In the World Is Carmen San Diego.
Anyone else remember that game?
it's been a couple of days since I logged on to bore the masses with me drivel. Superhomie Kyle rolled through San Fran style and we maximized our chill/girl time. We checked in on each other. Kyle is getting married, Camille is getting cut - we are ladies with things going on in our lives, ya know? So we had massages (shout out to Jenn who's table is as BIG AS HER and she carried it up three flights of stairs, then gave each of us a full hour of hands-on relaxation). After that we all went out to eat and then hit up a networking event that probably qualifies as the "first time i've been out for a good time in Atlanta" since moving here. Since my memory is always a little foggy, I can't give it that designation officially, but it's definately the best time i recall having in three years. For one night I felt free and open to the world of possibility. I heard phenomenal singers, the mother of the featured singer got up and did Summertime by the Gershwin brothers.
She started out so downtempo...I mean, you could have gone and eaten dinner between the notes she was singing. Then the band kicked in with a solid samba for the rest of the song. Reminded me of an arrangment Al Jarreau did on his Tenderness live album. Speaking of, I could have sworn someone told me he would be in town recently. Je t'aime Al Jarreau.
Then Sunday, since it was too cold for Eastering, I hung out with my newest homie Kym E and we just bummed around. She g'd me for some brand-spanking new lime green asics Kyle had just bequeathed to me, so now we are friends for life. it was nice having a day with nothing planned other than somehow eating and catching a little sunshine. I walked out onto the deck of my apartment and noticed a gaggle of guppies lined up with easter eggs that jingled. I like things that jingle, so I inquired as to whether they did an easter egg hunt for jewelry (can you think of anything more rewarding? i mean REALLY!) and they said no, it was mostly change though there were a few plastic easter eggs hidden with dog shit in them. Not cute. They were a friendly lot who were happy to take on a few more revelers, so Kym enjoyed the libation of the moment (vodka and lemonade, who knew?) and then we made our way to my new favorite Chinese place - The Ricebox. We ate and chatted - it's so beautiful not to have a schedule.
Tomorrow I return to being a Camille with a Schedule. I think my nervousness about surgery is that I won't get completed what needs to be done in time to beat the clock. There is a date and time when I'm going under anesthesia - can I get a physician credentialed in under a week? Only time will tell. It's my real-life version of Where In the World Is Carmen San Diego.
Anyone else remember that game?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Back in the Saddle Again
Well, after a lazy, wonderful weekend in the country - the real country where you don't get cellphone or internet service - i'm back in the city for my big appointment with my big-time surgeon. Maybe today I'll get my surgery date. I hope, i hope, I hope.
I have to give a shout-out to le petite soeur cuz she drove me to the Super 8 Motel last night to get my Wi-Fi pirate on for wirk. Poor thing was drooping over the steering wheel while I flashed off quotes for the business website. Bless her heart!
I'm not all that excited to be back in the "city." yesterday I met one of my uncle's 20+ kids (yes, he pretty much stuck it anywhere he could) and this guy has lived in the ATL all his life and he's like "so do you go out? to the clubs? 112? Visions? Any of the strip clubs?" I'm in the hammock soaking in 75 degrees of pure sunshine and smelling bbq I cannot eat and I'm saying "no, no, yeah, i went there in college, but not since i've been living here for 3 years and strippers are usually exploited."
My one interesting tidbit was that the girlss in the Atlanta clubs inject saline into their asses to make them jiggle more. My father, wit that he is, thought this was effective and very, very funny. All I can think of is Hepatitis, cause they aren't going to doctors for the saline treatment, they are filling a syringe and going from girl to girl. Somebody's gonna get something, that's all I'm saying. And for a jiggle that barely yields $5 per song...I've written about this earlier - not enough money for the kid.
Anyway, the boyfriend/boss was being his regular asshole self and that bothered me and I'm just thinking "shit, I don't have any friends around this place, I barely get out of the house and that's just sad because I'm a person with very little sense of stranger danger. I'm the girl who gets into the car with a friendly stranger and ends up in some hole-in-the-wall club dancing and having a good time and gets home safely."
Oh well, I have to focus on the positive. i was so annoyed earlier that I turned to Papa and demanded "say something positive for me because I'm having a really hard time right now" and he simply smiled at me. *Boom* the tension - emotional, mental and physical began to dissolve and he laughed and said "see, that's all you needed. Sometimes there are not words that can do more than an action."
So, to all you out there, I send a smile, a genuine warm caring smile. Best day to you!
I have to give a shout-out to le petite soeur cuz she drove me to the Super 8 Motel last night to get my Wi-Fi pirate on for wirk. Poor thing was drooping over the steering wheel while I flashed off quotes for the business website. Bless her heart!
I'm not all that excited to be back in the "city." yesterday I met one of my uncle's 20+ kids (yes, he pretty much stuck it anywhere he could) and this guy has lived in the ATL all his life and he's like "so do you go out? to the clubs? 112? Visions? Any of the strip clubs?" I'm in the hammock soaking in 75 degrees of pure sunshine and smelling bbq I cannot eat and I'm saying "no, no, yeah, i went there in college, but not since i've been living here for 3 years and strippers are usually exploited."
My one interesting tidbit was that the girlss in the Atlanta clubs inject saline into their asses to make them jiggle more. My father, wit that he is, thought this was effective and very, very funny. All I can think of is Hepatitis, cause they aren't going to doctors for the saline treatment, they are filling a syringe and going from girl to girl. Somebody's gonna get something, that's all I'm saying. And for a jiggle that barely yields $5 per song...I've written about this earlier - not enough money for the kid.
Anyway, the boyfriend/boss was being his regular asshole self and that bothered me and I'm just thinking "shit, I don't have any friends around this place, I barely get out of the house and that's just sad because I'm a person with very little sense of stranger danger. I'm the girl who gets into the car with a friendly stranger and ends up in some hole-in-the-wall club dancing and having a good time and gets home safely."
Oh well, I have to focus on the positive. i was so annoyed earlier that I turned to Papa and demanded "say something positive for me because I'm having a really hard time right now" and he simply smiled at me. *Boom* the tension - emotional, mental and physical began to dissolve and he laughed and said "see, that's all you needed. Sometimes there are not words that can do more than an action."
So, to all you out there, I send a smile, a genuine warm caring smile. Best day to you!
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