reading: The Second Assistant. Yes, STILL.
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I didn’t wear any green at all yesterday, and not one single person pinched my ass. Hmph.
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I swear, y’all, I’m not ignoring those of you who’ve asked whether I’ve gotten a new car yet. It’s a long story and won’t be told ’til there’s an end to it, which should be by the middle of next week. Hopefully.
(And it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds, believe you me.)
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Anyone watch Wife Swap the other night? Anyone else think that Nancy Cedarquist’s “The man is the head of the household; the man goes out and works, the woman stays in and takes care of the house” attitude was a very obvious cover for the fact that she’s a control freak who wants to control every instant of her family’s life?
Anyone else think that Nancy Cedarquist came across as extremely unlikeable? (Oh, for god’s sake. According to this, she doesn’t “believe” women should have the right to vote or work outside the home. What an idiot.)
Anyone else think that Michael Oeth was a dead ringer for John Kerry?
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The spud is, right now, laying on her bed, looped on some pretty good pain medication, nursing a sore backside. She had a pilonidal cyst removed from her tailbone area about three hours ago.
She first told me last Spring that her behind was hurting, and I didn’t want to look at it, because when you were 15, did YOU want your mother examining your ass? I don’t think you did. So I took her to the doctor who checked it out (I stayed in the waiting room, thank you), and she decreed that it was an infection and prescribed antibiotics and said that she wanted to see the spud again in 10 days.
Except that 10 days after her doctor appointment she was in California, so she never did see the doctor for a follow-up visit. But before she left for California, she did assure (ASSure me! Ha!) that it was feeling better and life went on as normal.
Then in January she told me that she was having the same pain again, and I made an appointment with her doctor, who again put her on antibiotics and wanted to see her in 10 days. I took her back in 10 days, the doctor proclaimed that it was better, and then referred her to a surgeon.
It seems that, for the most part, surgery is the only way to get rid of a pilonidal cyst.
The surgeon checked it out (I was sitting across the room and kindly averted my gaze to spare the spud some embarrassment. The same way I’m spreading (spreading! Ha!) stories about her butt all over the internet. That’s not embarrassing at ALL. Luckily, she’s not easily embarrassed and if you all send her get-well cards and large amounts of money, she might forgive me.) and said he wanted to remove it, went through the options – basically, some surgeons prefer to remove the cyst and then sew the opening, uh, open so that it heals. This surgeon preferred to remove the cyst and sew the opening closed so that it would heal closed and the chances that another cyst would develop would be slim.
The surgeon, by the way, was very personable. I’ve always heard that surgeons are assholes with god complexes (complexii?), but every surgeon I’ve ever had to deal with has had pretty good people skills and been not only funny, but nice.
So I asked some questions, and once those were answered I asked the big one.
“How long will she have to stay out of school?” I asked.
“About a week,” he said. “Just because it would be uncomfortable for her to be sitting in those school seats all day long.”
The spud? Out of school for a week? Missing all that school? Oh, I don’t think so. Because she’s a weirdo who doesn’t LIKE to miss school (I’m sure the social aspect of it has nothing to do with that).
“Does it need to be done right away, or can it be put off until Spring Break?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going to be gone for Spring Break, but we could do it the Thursday or Friday beforehand.”
Good enough for me.
Even better, there’s a fairly new Surgery Center in Madison where he has operating privileges, and it’s located about ten minutes from our house. So this morning we left the house at 6:10 and almost right on the dot they took her back to be operated on. The doctor came out to talk to me around 8:30 – everything went fine, there’ll be some draining, he prescribed strong pain medication for her – and we were headed home by 9:30.
They had a hard time getting an IV started, because her vein rolled and then blew (doesn’t that sound scary?) and the nurse had to do some poking around. The spud was pretty stoic during it, but
I wanted to scream like a little girl and run around in circles in sympathy.
So I brought her home, gave her some breakfast, and sent her upstairs. I went and got her pain medication prescription filled, gave her some of it, and she’s upstairs snoozing in front of the TV.
I plan to keep her doped up all weekend long, which should get her through the worst of the pain.
By the way, both my mother and sister had pilonidal cysts removed when they were in their early 20s (my sister could tell you some real horror stories, because she ended up waiting so long to have her done), but I never had a problem. Lucky me! I don’t envy the spud right now at ALL.
I talked to my sister earlier, who said “Now make sure you baby her!” and I said “I’m doing her laundry for her this weekend, what more do you want?” Heh.
Actually, I’m not usually much of a hoverer, but I’ve been up to check on her several times already, and it’s probably starting to freak her out. No doubt she wishes I’d leave her the hell alone and just let her SLEEP, GODDAMNIT.
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“Is it EVER going to warm up? Ever? Because I think we need to move to the fucking Bahamas if this shit keeps up.”]]>