Will you pray for me? I’m afraid I’m going to die next Tuesday.
My doctor’s office is ignoring me. I’m trying to do what they told me to do, take an antibiotic a week before my surgery, but they haven’t called it into the pharmacy and haven’t called me back when I called them about it. How confident do I feel knowing that these people don’t even return my phone calls, don’t facilitate what they said I needed to do in order to be safe for my surgery?
I still have this stent in my ureter, that tube between my kidney and my bladder. I still have a kidney stone that’s 1.5 centimeters in at least one direction, but I’m thinking about skipping out on this doctor and finding someone else to do the surgery, someone who calls back when I call to arrange what they told me to do to be safe before my surgery.
I still feel like a corn dog. Did I tell you I feel like a corn dog?
I feel puffy inside my skin. And a little meaty inside that. And then there’s that little wooden stick that gets jammed into the puckered end of the hot dog and holds it straight when what it really feels like doing is flopping back and forth in the hot grease as it cooks. Every time I bend over to pick up a noodle that I dropped, every time I reach up to get a glass out of the cabinet, every time I simply put one elbow over my head to stretch after lying on the couch for three hours, I feel that corn dog stick jammed up inside me.
I feel like crap. I went to the dog park for a half hour with Teddy today and I felt as though I was driving drunk. I remember those days before.DUI when I’d get into my car completely plastered to drive home. Yes, I admit it. Yes, I was one of those people back in the 1980s who drove twenty miles an hour under the speed limit because I knew my reaction time was closer to what was happening that way. I never had an accident. I never killed anyone.
Thankfully.
Seriously, that was back when everyone drove drunk after going out. We all tried to sober up, but we drove home anyway. We drove drunk. It’s a wonder anyone near a bar survived anyone driving home in the 80s.
But I made it to the park alive today. And I didn’t have to drive under the speed limit either.
Then, when I walked, slowly, to the fenced-in area where a pack of Teddy’s friends waited, I could feel the corn dog stick moving about inside me, keeping me from flopping around.
I also felt like a half-inflated water balloon.
I look like I’m a little pregnant. My ankles aren’t fluffy, but my gut is a big bloated mess.
I bought a new mumu from Amazon three days ago. It was really hard to sit upright and choose a loose dress that wouldn’t make me look homeless, but I did it even though it hurt. I found something I thought I might like and pressed that buy-it-now button. Then, I reclined on the couch until it arrived.
Late last night, some car drove too fast up the driveway and dropped it in front of the garage where Mike could drive over it on the way to work. Thankfully, he rescued it from his car and brought it inside for me. This dress is beautiful. It’s embarrassing to wear it around the house with my ugly slippers. It’s the ultimate in fat-girl fashion. I wish I’d bought a dress like this years ago. I feel like such a pretty corn dog. It’s a twirly dress, loose, flowy, and soft.
The problem was that my pretty new dress smelled like a Bandaid. I tried to wear it anyway, hoping the smell would dissipate, but I kept thinking about an episode of House in which a couple of kids were poisoned by wearing jeans they’d bought off a truck without washing them first.
You know House. They almost died before anyone figured it out.
So, I washed my new mumu, but the care instructions required hand-washing and line drying. Shit. Couldn’t I have bought a cotton version of my beautiful new mumu so all I had to do was throw it into the laundry with the towels and underwear?
Even with my broken finger…. Remember I broke my finger at Wild Waves? Yeah, I think I rebroke it the other night. I woke up in the night wrestling with my comforter and felt a little snap and a sting and my pinky finger decided to go all blue and green again.
But who has time to worry about a broken finger with the corn dog stick?
So, even with my broken finger, even with a corn dog stick stuck inside me, I decided to wash my new mumu.
By hand.
I already felt like I was half-way through a House episode because of my rebroken finger, my kidney stone the size of a finger to the first knuckle, and the corn dog stick I could feel inside me every time I moved. I needed to wash that Bandaid poison out of my mumu so I didn’t add poisoning to the mix.
Then, I imagined wearing that dress to my surgery, this flowy pretty black dress with a scoop neck and three-quarter sleeves.
And I felt ridiculous.
I am either stuck wearing something really pretty that begs for new shoes or wearing my faded blue and white mumu that only really looks right over a bathing suit at the lake.
And I’m not even sure I want to show up to this soiree. Remember? I’m not thrilled to put my life into the hands of people who won’t even return my phone calls. You know what I mean? If you’re going to get really drunk, you want to be with people who will take your keys and drive you home, people who make sure you’re tucked into bed on your side in case you throw up in your sleep.
So, I’m kind of afraid of Tuesday.
Thank you for listening, jules