Since the age of 7, I have said good-bye to God-given parts of my body. No wonder I'm such a mess!
Baby boomers look forward to going into retirement and having a ball!
So many of them are also keeping their bodies in shape so they can look like the teenagers they always wanted to re-capture.
Enter People Power Granny! Look like a teenager? Hell, I never liked the way I looked as a teenager. Why would I want go go back to then? It was then...and even before...that I started losing parts of my body!
First, the tonsils were taken. Both little sis and I were sickly kids, and why? Doctors back then said it was the tonsils' fault. They had to go, and if we were good little girls, we would get some ice cream as rewards. Didn't sound like such a bad idea to me, so I cooperated. Not so, little sis! It took three or four nurses to hold her down before we were put to sleep with the ether. She was right. The ice cream wasn't anywhere good enough to make up for the sore throat left by the purging of the tonsils.
But eventually we recovered. But soon I was to loose more.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had had enough of Bucky Beaver and "What's up, Doc?" jokes from the boys at my small but mean Catholic school. Mom and Dad couldn't afford to put braces on my mess of a mouth, so they found dentists in Omaha who consented to pull out my four huge front teeth. In exchange I was given four false teeth that looked, well, false, of course. Every night they go out of my mouth into a small container, and I look like Dracula. I even scared my little 18-month-old grandson over the holidays when he saw me without my teeth.
My body remained pretty intact between 1960 and 1999. I did expel five children who look much better than I...even handsome and beautiful!
But getting back to 1999, that was the year I said good-bye forever to my mother, father and my gallbladder. That was also the year I never want to experience again! Don't know if hell could be as bad! I understand that the gallbladder came out pretty lickity-split through a laparoscopy procedure. After I was sent home a few hours later, my hell became unbearable. I ended up in the emergency room and was re-admitted to the hospital for three more days while my body and liver recovered. I think the liver missed that swell bile from the gallbladder, and was having withdrawal symtoms.
Now here we are another 10 years later, and the doc is now telling me that it's time to take the thyroid. I would like to save it. They can have the lump around it, but I've gotten a little attached to that little butter-fly-like gland. Folks tell me that I can take medication, and I'll never miss it.
But you know, I've already lost my tonsils, four-plus pretty good teeth, and my gallbladder. What will go next?
Maybe I'll just pass away piece by piece, so when the "big one" comes, like Archie Bunker used to say, I'll have less of me to bury. Maybe I can get a discount from the cemetery or mortician.
I'm now taking nominations for what I should shed next. A lung? A foot? My eyes?
My appendix?
No wonder I'm such a tiny woman!