Comfortably Numb

This is the song that has been my recovery soundtrack, making me - not unusual at all.

Of course if this song is the soundtrack, "my hands felt just like two balloons" was the earworm. Even if it was only one hand. No one ever wrote an iconic lyric about that (or if they have, I'm not aware of it). More on the hand in a moment.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here much before - it's certainly something everyone in my real life knows about me - I love to write longhand. It is quite habitual for me to pull out a notebook and jot down random thoughts and phrases as they occur to me. When I was out of surgery and brought to my hospital room, the first thing I asked for was my notebook and pen. Now this was the night that my best friend was the button that delivered my pain meds. I hit it pretty fast and regular (I know, I know, that's what he said...). I dreamed lovely dreams and - because jotting things down is habitual - made notes about them when I was awake. Alert would be overstating it. But awake happened.

What a hoot.

I wrote of pure white cliffs and clear skies. I wrote of rocks and waves and clean air. I saw the course my life should take with utter clarity. And it was beautiful, man. (The same could not be said for my handwriting.) The word bliss was utilized with an almost shocking frequency. I wanted everyone to know this pure, true - well - bliss that I'd discovered.

Then the writing took a turn as true clarity started to make it's return. In letters not quite as tall and not quite as loopy and spidery, I wrote, "What if this is all just an effect of the drugs? Oh please don't let this be an effect of the drugs!" and later "What if this is all just an effect of the fasting?" (I hadn't eaten in 48 hours at that point) "Don't some religions utilize fasting to facilitate insight? Oh please, don't let it be an effect of the fasting!" Reality bites.

It was just funny to be able to read it over later - to actually be able to watch myself bliss out then crash. It's nice to have a recorded memory of the revelations, though, even if they are awfully silly in retrospect. It's nice to know that I was conscious of feeling that way - at least for a little while. Conscious enough to want to record it for posterity. Bless my little drug-addled heart.

When I stopped hitting the pain button so often, my recovery began in earnest and it went well. I did everything I was asked to do and, in my humble opinion, was a model patient.

Then the hand thing happened. Around 4 am Sunday my nurse came in to very routinely change my IV bag. Immediately after she did, I knew all was not well. My hand hurt and started to swell. It started to stretch. It got scary pretty fast. I'm a little bit on the older side of young, which means, for the purpose of this story, that there is a little extra skin on my hands. (Sometimes I see them on the steering wheel and don't recognize them. It freaks me out for a minute.) That extra skin filled up in no time flat as my hand literally blew up like a balloon. I estimate that it was about four times it's usual size before my (rather desperate) nurse got it all taken care of. I developed the wrist equivalent of cankles as my hand faded directly into my forearm. Which was also beginning to swell. There's a name for this - my nurse used it, my mom used it - but I can't retrieve it. At any rate, it's just something that happens and it wasn't a result of anything my nurses or I had done wrong.

It took two solid days before my hand returned to normal size.

I couldn't write in my notebook anymore.

I had a hard time signing my discharge papers.

And, as Tom told you a couple days ago, I couldn't type.

As of this morning, it is weak and it still hurts. I won't even tell you how many typos needed to be corrected in this post because I don't have the control that I would like. It'll come back. Stronger every day.

I Am Not a Beautiful or Unique Snowflake

But I am a flake.

And I'll tell you all about it here in an unprecedented second post in one day.

Responses from my blog go straight to my email and to Tom's as well.

My blog posts on Facebook as well.

Since posting this morning, the outpouring of concern in both places has been overwhelming. And it has been overwhelmingly AGAINST going to the school of casual discomfort.

At about the same time that Tom was IM'ing me to ask me to please listen to my bloggy buds, I was reading an e-mail from one of my nearest and dearest IRL buds pleading with me not to do it.

I canceled.

I will reschedule with the original doctor - the one who made me feel comfortable - the one with a professional office with private surgery suites with big windows overlooking the woods - the one who thinks IV sedation is fine but total sedation is better. I will call him as soon as I am recovered enough from the hysterectomy to know when I will actually be able to make - and keep - an appointment.

I will still feel - be - ugly - very very ugly, no doubt - for several months. That is inevitable. But I will not be as anxious about the procedure or about the ultimate result.

Now here's the thing: I would not have come to this conclusion without the support of my blog and Facebook community. How powerful is that? Tom was too close to the situation. I value his opinion, of course, but in this case - I don't know - I felt like I was just being a pain in the ass and a big whiny baby. And he was going to be affected by this. I didn't want to make things harder on him. My online community stepped back and said - NO - this is really scary - these are valid concerns. The little bit of distance made a difference.

As I was chatting with Rosa (my IRL friend I was e-mailing when I made this decision) I said, "How much does it suck that these people who know me only through the interwebs were able to give me the love and support that I needed, while my mother said, 'It'll be fine, there won't be any difference. Why would you pay more for the same thing? ' " Then I reminded her and myself that my mother is the one that made me walk home from school after a root canal.

Ya'll.

I am breathing so much easier since I made that phone call.

I am still upset that it is something that will have to happen. I wish I didn't have to put it off - to keep that low grade worry in the back of my mind - but I really think I'm making the right decision.

And I really have you to thank for that.

And I don't know how to thank you.

Thank you.

That's Me in The Corner

Ok, so here's the thing: I have perfect teeth. Now the only people who have ever bestowed that compliment upon me were dentists and x-ray techs. I have perfect teeth, not a beautiful smile. Not by any stretch. Capish? You see, while they're perfect - structurally - and while I've never had a cavity, and while I have a perfect bite (oh, this is sounding a lot like bragging, but I promise, that isn't where it will end up...) - I have my share of problems. Maybe more than my share, but don't we all sort of think that, where problems are concerned?

The first is purely cosmetic. One of the two reasons I do not have a beautiful smile. I have never whitened them. They are the natural shade of teeth well into their fourth decade of existence. That shade is, I can assure you, not a blinding white. The reason I haven't jumped on the whitening bandwagon has to do with the other, much more major problem.

When I was seven and still had a mouthful of baby teeth I was playing Brownies and Fairies in a church basement with my Brownie troop (oh, like you never played Brownies and Fairies...) and I tripped over my own clumsy feet and slid face first into a stage. I knocked out my front tooth - one of my ONLY permanent teeth - in a perfect diagonal. There was a lot of blood. And a lot of screaming Brownies. I think the Fairies were pretty distressed, too.

Because I was so young the only solution they could offer was a series of temporary caps as I grew. I had my first root canal in second grade. The dentist expected me to completely lose all four of my front top teeth due to the impact. Forty years later, that one tooth remains the only one I've had problems with, but oh the problems I've had.

I had a second root canal sometime in Jr. High. I remember this clearly, because my mother sent me to school in the morning then picked me up a few hours later, signing me out for a dental appointment. I had the root canal with a local anesthetic. When it was all said and done, there were about 45 minutes left in the school day. Instead of taking me home, my mom took me back to school. I was still drooling a little bit when she dropped me off. For one lousy class. Sometime in the middle of class, the drool stopped and the pain started as the anesthetic effect wore off. I didn't learn anything in that class, I can assure you. Then I had to walk home. My mom still feels a little bit bad about that. I may or may not remind her of it from time to time.

Sometime in high school I had a permanent cap installed and that was pretty much that. I needed a new one every 10 years or so. Just couldn't whiten because the cap wouldn't whiten and would then stand out. Not too bad.

Until recently.

Now they tell me there's bone loss, and quite a good bit of it.

Now they tell me I need an implant.

Right there in the front.

And that while the implant itself heals, I'll be toothless for - oh - about six months - give or take - depending on how well the healing is progressing. But not to worry! Because I can use a flipper! Which I have also referred to as a flapper and a flopper. Which makes the dental people laugh, but it seems like a pretty easy mistake to make to me. It is a purely aesthetic device that will keep me from looking like a picture with the tooth blacked out. It will not be functional. Think about that. I cannot eat without having a big blank space right in the front of my mouth.

Oh. My. Hell.

Do you know how much of my social life revolves around eating? Did you read my last frakkin' post? This means I can't even eat dinner with my family. For half a year. I'll drink a lot of smoothies through straws and nibble on things huddled over in a corner when no one is around. Maybe I'll lose weight. That would be a nice side effect. Of course I'll gain it right back as soon as I go back to solid food. I know how that works. I've seen Oprah. So there's not even that.

Ok, so I have this diagnosis that is giving me nightmares. Then comes actually getting some of this accomplished. First I made an appointment with a clinic near my home. I was pretty comfortable there until they told me how much it was all going to cost. I mentioned my concern to my primary dentist and she said, "well, there IS another option..."

Long story short, she sent me to an implant clinic at the local university. I am freaking out at this point. Dental school? Really? But it was a difference of around $2,000. But STUDENTS??? Freaking out is really an understatement. I won't get a manicure at a cosmetology school. There were a couple of days there when I couldn't stop crying. Ask Tom, he'll tell you. He kept saying, "Go back to the place where you're comfortable! It's only money!" Only money. Yeah. Money, in case you didn't know, is not something we swim around in, here. A couple thousand is significant to us.

So I go to the school for a consultation.

It's a big medical center and a big school. There was construction and I was detoured. Shit. Google maps hadn't said anything about that. Parking? She was a bitch. I got lost several times once inside the building because I couldn't find the clinic I was looking for. When I finally did, I felt my heart fall into my stomach. This was a school all right. There was no privacy. There were just chairs in a big open room. That's where all of this humiliation would begin. In a wide open space full of teachers and students. With me as a visual aid.

Now at this point I reminded myself that as part of my living will I agreed to donate my body to science. And I read Stiff. I know how cadavers are treated. But I figure privacy won't be as much of an issue when I'm a CORPSE!

So, despite my reservations, I take a seat and I sign the papers. The papers that say:

- a student will do all of the work, which will then be approved by a certified oral surgeon.

- there is no guarantee that your results will meet your expectations.

They said other stuff, too, but those two got the tears flowing. Right there in the waiting room.

I had my consultation. They didn't want to give me IV sedation. I stood firm. They shrugged and said they'd try, but if I'm a hard stick, they'll just do it with a local. I'm a hard stick. Fuck.

Then the scheduling - oh my stars, the nightmare that was scheduling. They were to call me. I waited three weeks. (I wasn't in a real huge hurry) I finally called them. They informed me that they never call patients and that I had been misinformed. Really feeling like I'm in good hands, now. So they say they'll 'see if the doctor still has my charts' and call me back. Four days later, no call. I called them again. Answering service. Message. No callback. I called the next day. Got a person. They put me on hold. I got disconnected. Called back. Straight to voicemail. Where I left a detailed message, as instructed. Next day? No call. Called back, spoke to a real live person, got it scheduled. "Bring an iPod or something, because if they can't do the IV sedation, you can listen to music to drown out the sounds..."

I think it would take a lot more than an iPod to drown out the sounds (of my screams)...

I've assumed the position in the corner, now, knees to chest, manically rocking, thumb in (still fully toothed) mouth.

When are they gonna do this? September 10.

When is my hysterectomy? September 11. (Yep. 9/11. What could go wrong?)

I won't be able to eat brownies.

I could sure use a little fairy dust.

Happy lucky joy time in the casa de Mommakin.

There's no hope for me. Send help for Tom.