Today, August 8 of this year of our Goddess, I shall be (chas v'chalilah) ripped open like a bursting pinata and my innards will be put back inside. I hope they remember to sew me up.
Okay, real stuff: I've had an umbilical hernia for years now. My doctor, FINALLY, told me that my bellybytton looks like a side pocket in a pair of khaki's and the distinct protrusion was an UH.
My first question? "Is it going to kill me?" She looked pensive, then said "Probably not."
Uh boy. And SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!
She went on to say that these hernias usually occur when someone has had abdominal surgery. I had abdominal surgery. It was laporascopic choleysystectomy, and kinda their last shot at figuring out why I had.... other symptoms. The lap choley (they dun tooken out my gall bladder) didn't work.
Symptoms continued. (To be coy about it, let's just say I could not be more than 50 feet from a toilet. Ever.)
Several years passed. My belly button began to stretch into that side pocket, and something hard and weird was beginning to protrude. And occasionally hurt. 3 years ago my doctor told me to stop exercising, especially seated sit ups, because (and those of you who know what an umbilical or a groinal [groinal? is that a word?] hernia is, good, good): for the rest of you, it means that the muscles in that area, the ones that Goddess built into those areas, are there to keep your intestines from falling completely out, slithering down your legs and crawling off to start a restaurant, sometimes those muscles split and tear and the intestines try to make a break for it, and exercising would only speed up the process.
K had had his Stroke, so I lost my tennis partner, my walking partner, my stair running partner. I began to gain weight like a grizzly bear in September. I did not like this situation. (Did you know that bears have no satiation element in their brains? They just gorge on trout and salmon and grubs and honey and small antelope and stupid people who taunt them at Yellowstone Park. Good gig, sure, but I was this close to eating my backway neighbor when the surgery option was brought up.)
Finally, a few months ago I accidentally whacked the protrusion, which made me look 8 months pregnant, on the counter, while watering one of my many plants, and yowza lady, I saw stars and got icky and had to sit and the pain did not go away this time. I left him a note on the computer (he gets up at 4:30 am. to write, and I go to bed around 3 a.m., because I write better at night) begging him to find someone, anyone, to help me with this thing.
Kimit got on the horn and begged the first hospital he called to help me. He described what I was going through: the nice lady, Sue, said she'd have to talk to me, but from what he described, and our monetary sitch, she didn't think we'd have any problem getting on a pay plan, or (please Goddess), a gratis surgery.
So, I called back, told Sue what was going on, I cried because the pain was still with me, and she said she was going to put me on hold, call the surgery and ask them if they could help me, then came back and said she'd be on the phone and listening to what Deb (another nice lady) would tell me. Deb told me that they WOULD DEFINITELY help me, and if I couldn't pay they'd either work out a payment plan or it would be free.
Free? (chas v'chalilah) the nice lady said? Now I was really bawling.
I went in for a consult and an MRI. The doc looked at it and said "Oh, yes, this is a hernia and we need to cut you open and put stuff back where it's supposed to be, then put in some window screening to keep the stuff in, and then close you up with a knitting needle and yarn."
No, no, he didn't really say that. What he said was actually FRIGHTENING but if it worked, the giant bump that makes me look 8 months pregnant would go bye bye. I hope.
He also said this surgery would be incredibly painful. I said, "That's going to be a problem in that the only pain reliever I can take is Advil." No, really. He wanted to give me Demerol or Vicodin or Oxycodone but, alas, I am a lousy drug addict as almost every pain reliever above the level of Advil makes me puke like you wouldn't believe (and even the IV pain meds they used to keep me shut up during the surgery, from the original lap choley, when I got home? it wasn't pretty).
So, he's going to try something called "Trupethrmothanzion", I don't know what it is, he spoke fast and didn't write it down.
And yesterday? I got a bill for 3k for the MRI and the consult!!
Oy. Anyway, I shall be under the knife today. On Wisconsin.