Tuesday . April 08 . 2003 . 11:21am what's going on in my belly? It's the middle of April, and there are snowdrifts piling up along the sides of the streets. That's just wrong, friends. I will take the Bush administration's unilateral stance of blaming all things bad on Saddam Hussein. Damn you, Saddam, and your evil weather machine! Meanwhile, I called my surgeon's office about the fact that I'm still having abdominal twinges. I didn't want to, because I know how hypochondriac I must sound, and I know as well as anyone else what they would probably tell me without any good (bad) evidence of flagrant peritonitis, but still, I had to ask. Because I've been fucked over several times before by doctors who didn't believe me until my appendix exploded. And because we're leaving the country in three weeks and I want to make sure that everything is smoove before we start traipsing around Italy, because who know what kind of voodoo medicine they practice over there? (Kidding. I'm sure their hospitals are infinitely more efficient than ours. But I don't know how to say "abscess" in Italian, dig?) Mind you, I don't want this abdominal discomfort to end up being much of anything. I want to believe that it's what everyone hopes it is--remodeling, resolution of inflammation, adhesions, return of normal bowel function. These are thing things that I know are likely. But I'm also the one who went through it the first time (and the time after that) so I think I'm pretty on-key when it comes to differentiating different kinds of pain. So what I mean is, I want this all to be nothing, but I also want people to take me seriously. The first indication I had that I was getting the brush-off was when the department had my surgeon's nurse call me at home, as opposed to the surgeon calling herself. Now, I love her nurse, she's sweet as anything, and she really helped me out the last time I had an appointment, but I know that a call shunted to the nurse is a reassurance-and-hang-up call. NURSE You know, just because you had appendicitis doesn't mean everything is related to your appendix. MICHELLE I know. NURSE It could be other things. MICHELLE I know. NURSE Like maybe you ate something wrong. MICHELLE I don't think so. NURSE Or maybe you're getting your period. MICHELLE I don't think so. NURSE You can't be on antibiotics forever. You have to stop sometime. MICHELLE I know. All I'm telling you is that I had no discomfort when I was on the meds, and I have discomfort now that I've been off for a few days. NURSE It could be gas. MICHELLE I KNOW. She didn't tell me anything that I hadn't thought of, and she didn't tell me anything different from what my surgeon would have told me, but something about how everything went down made me feel as though they thought I couldn't tell the difference from a regular stomach ache, menstrual cramps, and weird inflammatoary pain. And maybe I can't. In fact, probably I can't. I don't know what I want. Oh wait, I do. I want there to be no discomfort, so that there would be no reason to call anyone for reassurance in the first place. Trust me, I'm not one of those people who grooves on being sick, I don't want another CT scan any more than they want to do one on me. Did you know that each of those things costs more than $1000? Thank you, sweet student health insurance. On a non-bowel note... We printed up 80 wedding programs before we realized that we got the date of the wedding wrong on the cover. Well, the day is right, but the year is wrong--for some reason, we wrote "2001" and missed the typo on multiple proofreads. Oh, and I spelled his mom's name wrong. Someone help me out here: is Cecelia or Cecilia the common spelling? I thought Cecelia, but maybe I'm wrong. Cecilia looks like "cilia," which reminds me of, you know, bronchi and fallopian tubes. Anyway, his mom is Cecilia (don't tell her what I just said about the cilia) so I have to buy more paper and possibly, another printer cartridge. Dang. Oh, wait, so I just looked up the last track of Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits and it is spelled "Cecilia." I thought it was with two Es because when they sing it, they go, "Oh Ce-CEEEEEEE-lia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please, to come home." But that's just tricky pronunciation, maybe there is no such name spelled "Ce-CE-lia." However, in a world where people can give their babies the most appallingly misspelled or just made-up names (please do yourself a favor and check out this site for real examples of what I mean), I'm sure that a few Cecelias running around wouldn't cause too much of a stir. xo Michelle Countdown to the wedding: 19 days |
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Tuesday . April 08 . 2003 . 11:21am what's going on in my belly? It's the middle of April, and there are snowdrifts piling up along the sides of the streets. That's just wrong, friends. I will take the Bush administration's unilateral stance of blaming all things bad on Saddam Hussein. Damn you, Saddam, and your evil weather machine! Meanwhile, I called my surgeon's office about the fact that I'm still having abdominal twinges. I didn't want to, because I know how hypochondriac I must sound, and I know as well as anyone else what they would probably tell me without any good (bad) evidence of flagrant peritonitis, but still, I had to ask. Because I've been fucked over several times before by doctors who didn't believe me until my appendix exploded. And because we're leaving the country in three weeks and I want to make sure that everything is smoove before we start traipsing around Italy, because who know what kind of voodoo medicine they practice over there? (Kidding. I'm sure their hospitals are infinitely more efficient than ours. But I don't know how to say "abscess" in Italian, dig?) Mind you, I don't want this abdominal discomfort to end up being much of anything. I want to believe that it's what everyone hopes it is--remodeling, resolution of inflammation, adhesions, return of normal bowel function. These are thing things that I know are likely. But I'm also the one who went through it the first time (and the time after that) so I think I'm pretty on-key when it comes to differentiating different kinds of pain. So what I mean is, I want this all to be nothing, but I also want people to take me seriously. The first indication I had that I was getting the brush-off was when the department had my surgeon's nurse call me at home, as opposed to the surgeon calling herself. Now, I love her nurse, she's sweet as anything, and she really helped me out the last time I had an appointment, but I know that a call shunted to the nurse is a reassurance-and-hang-up call. NURSE You know, just because you had appendicitis doesn't mean everything is related to your appendix. MICHELLE I know. NURSE It could be other things. MICHELLE I know. NURSE Like maybe you ate something wrong. MICHELLE I don't think so. NURSE Or maybe you're getting your period. MICHELLE I don't think so. NURSE You can't be on antibiotics forever. You have to stop sometime. MICHELLE I know. All I'm telling you is that I had no discomfort when I was on the meds, and I have discomfort now that I've been off for a few days. NURSE It could be gas. MICHELLE I KNOW. She didn't tell me anything that I hadn't thought of, and she didn't tell me anything different from what my surgeon would have told me, but something about how everything went down made me feel as though they thought I couldn't tell the difference from a regular stomach ache, menstrual cramps, and weird inflammatoary pain. And maybe I can't. In fact, probably I can't. I don't know what I want. Oh wait, I do. I want there to be no discomfort, so that there would be no reason to call anyone for reassurance in the first place. Trust me, I'm not one of those people who grooves on being sick, I don't want another CT scan any more than they want to do one on me. Did you know that each of those things costs more than $1000? Thank you, sweet student health insurance. On a non-bowel note... We printed up 80 wedding programs before we realized that we got the date of the wedding wrong on the cover. Well, the day is right, but the year is wrong--for some reason, we wrote "2001" and missed the typo on multiple proofreads. Oh, and I spelled his mom's name wrong. Someone help me out here: is Cecelia or Cecilia the common spelling? I thought Cecelia, but maybe I'm wrong. Cecilia looks like "cilia," which reminds me of, you know, bronchi and fallopian tubes. Anyway, his mom is Cecilia (don't tell her what I just said about the cilia) so I have to buy more paper and possibly, another printer cartridge. Dang. Oh, wait, so I just looked up the last track of Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits and it is spelled "Cecilia." I thought it was with two Es because when they sing it, they go, "Oh Ce-CEEEEEEE-lia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please, to come home." But that's just tricky pronunciation, maybe there is no such name spelled "Ce-CE-lia." However, in a world where people can give their babies the most appallingly misspelled or just made-up names (please do yourself a favor and check out this site for real examples of what I mean), I'm sure that a few Cecelias running around wouldn't cause too much of a stir. xo Michelle Countdown to the wedding: 19 days |
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