the one where I had an alien baby

I don’t know how it happened. I wasn’t a crew member of the Nostromo and if I had a facehugger, no one told me. If you are my friend, please know, I would want you to tell me if I have spinach in my teeth, my fly is down or if a facehugger has taken a shine to me. The short-term embarrassment is nothing compared to the long-term consequences. 

"You sure there isn't anything on my face?"

Well, anyway, I had an alien in me.  It was the only explanation.  I had sharp pains right below my sternum that weren’t going away.  Rather than wait around for my little chest-burster to make a surprise appearance, I went to the doctor to see if we could narrow down the due date.  As expected, I was sent to get an ultrasound. 

I told the ultrasound technician that I didn’t want to know the sex because all that mattered was that it was healthy and had two mouths.  She just murmured something about the gel being cold and went to work. I thought she would have been excited to do a scan of an actual incubating alien, but she was stone-faced.  I suppose after a few years in the biz, you’ve seen it all.

My doctor got the results of the ultrasound the next day and promptly sent me to a surgeon.  Apparently, my little guy was breach and wouldn’t be bursting out on his own, so they would go in after him.  Surgery was scheduled for the next morning. 

Around this point in my pain-induced haze, I noticed that they were referring to my alien as “gall bladder.”  I just figured this was for security reasons and to keep the media in the dark.  These doctors were savvy.

So, Friday morning I check into the hospital.  Thanks to my back surgery a couple months back, I knew what to expect: poking, prodding, millions of questions, leg squeezer things, “this will help you to relax,” “slide on over to this table,” oxygen mask being lowered, bye-bye juice pumped into my vein and the world going black.

When I wake up, my alien/gall bladder is gone.  I feel a pang of remorse that I didn’t get to say good-bye, but I knew how these things worked.  Some government black-suit whisked my alien away to a secret bunker in the desert where it will be sealed in a glowing green tube of liquid.  I can only hope that he’ll remember me when the mothership returns.

I had bigger problems to contend with, however.  The Percocet they gave me for pain made me feel like I was starring in a completely different movie.

"I think it was something I ate."

Before we called a young priest and an old priest, my husband called my doctor, who told me to, duh, stop taking the Percocet. I got some nausea medication and was down graded to Extra Strength Tylenol for pain.  That was Monday.  Last night I ate my first full meal – a sandwich. My stomach actually recognized it as food and digested it.  This morning, I finally feel like a human being again.

I go almost thirty six years without being treated for anything more serious than a sinus infection. Now, in the first few months of 2011, I’ve had back surgery and my “gall bladder” removed.  I feel like a ticking time-bomb.  I know better than to ask “what’s next?” so I’ll just hope that I can get a few months of peace before my next hospital visit.

"Nurse? Can I get more ice chips?"

planning ahead

Today is the first day of the rest of my year.  And I am planning on the next 325 days being much better than the first 40.  But, that’s just it – now I can plan. 

Yes.  My day planner finally arrived.  Hallelujah!

It’s so much more than just a day planner, though.  It has pages for doodles, lined pages for notes, pages for lists, pages to tape pictures to and write comments, pages for reviews of anything like books, movies or wine.  This little green book will not just help me plan my life, it will document it.  It will be a repository for all my random thoughts, feelings, things I want to do and the things I have done.  At least for a year. 

Because of this, I will go back and fill in thoughts and events that occurred in the days prior to its arrival.  It’s important for me to document the arch of time from January 1 until now.  I need the perspective.  I will mark the day that my sister’s husband suddenly announced that he wanted out of the marriage.  A note when my mother flew up to Michigan to see my grandmother, settle a few matters and then drive her down to Florida  for good.  And, I will make a note in the white rectangle designated for February 6th: took husband to the hospital.  Thankfully, now I can also note the day I was able to take him back home: today.  Perhaps on one of the lined note pages, I will scribble a few words about Atrial Fibrilllation and other new terms I learned during my many hours sitting in a cold hospital room.  Certainly I will document how relieved I was when the doctor said that my husband’s heart had sustained no permanent damage and most likely an episode like this will not happen again.  That is, if he stops drinking.  Hopefully, this “if” is not as big as it used to be.  A hospital stay has a way of slicing through all the dark layers of denial. 

I know that my life will not be perfect now that a little bundle of plastic and paper has finally found its way to my door from Korea.  For some reason, though, I do have hopes that the arrival of my planner will signal a switch of fate.  I need a few good days.  And now, I can flip through the blank pages of my planner and envision all the good memories that will be written there.

drama

I’ve told my husband many times that one day it would finally be me laying in the hospital bed being pumped full of kick-ass drugs while he sits in the uncomfortable chair watching bad tv and worrying.  Well, without the haze induced by Demerol, Versed, or Morphine (all of which my husband has been administered in copious amounts) laying in an uncomfortable hospital bed in a freezing ER while fully conscious is the most annoying experience of my life. 

Ok, so I passed out in my sister’s bathroom for no apparent reason.  They (my sister, her fiance, my husband and my mother) all inform me, as I still lay sprawled out on the cool tile floor,  that I am extremely pale and my lips are purple.  My future brother-in-law uses his EMT training and starts holding up fingers and asking me questions.  I think I pass his tests, but I’m the one with the purple lips, so what do I know?  I get propped up on some pillows and, while still a little woozy, I don’t pass out again.  I hear someone mention the ER and I want to protest, but my husband’s face looks so worried, that I just go with it.  I get lifted to my feet, which is more difficult than it should be because I managed to wrench my knee all out of whack on my trip down to the floor.  With help, I make it through the bedroom and to the kitchen before the black dots start edging their way into my field of vision and I have to sit down before I fall down.  There is no question about the ER now.  I’m helped back onto my feet, half carried to my car and rushed to the hospital which is, luckily, only about two miles away.  Once there, my husband finds a wheelchair and I am rolled into the chaos that is the ER on a Saturday night. 

Four hours, an EKG, a heart monitor, 20 blood pressure readings, four vials of blood, two cups of pee, and a chest x-ray later I am told by the doctor that my diagnosis is (drum roll please): Syncope (pronounced sink-uh-pee).  In English:  I fainted.  No shit.  All that to figure out that I got “the vapors” and I didn’t even get so much as an ibuprofen for my knee.  Check please!

Later, I find out that my family and every other person they called, had diagnosed me with a raging case of Bun-in-the-oven (pronounced knocked-up) and had already gone so far as to name the baby.  My mom’s boyfriend was already planning on teaching it how to sail.  That was enough to make me want to pass out all over again. 

No, I am not pregnant.  The pee test in the ER and the fact that I am in full “that time of the month” mode totally confirm it.  So, keep your baby names for someone who won’t throw heavy objects at you if you so much as mention them to her again.

death, work and what I won’t talk about

Yesterday I was told I look like a dead woman.  Okay, apparently I look like her before she died, but still an awkward situation.  Am I supposed to take the comparison as a complement?  I have no idea what this woman looked like.  Am I supposed to feel bad that I reminded her of her dead friend?  Well, sorry lady, I was just trying to visit my friend and her new baby girl in the hospital. 

Said friend and her baby girl are the reason I probably will look like a dead woman soon.  I am filling my friend’s position at work while she is out on maternity leave.  Thing is, no one is filling my position while I am filling hers, so I have to do both.  Two full time jobs for eight weeks.  Well, now it’s seven weeks and two days, but who’s counting? 

My one consolation is that I am going on vacation in 28 days (yes, you better believe I’m counting).  But, I can’t talk about my vacation.  Just thinking about it makes my stomach cramp and my breathing erratic.  Talking about it triggers what I can only assume is a panic attack.  I am morbidly certain that something horrible will happen that will either prevent my vacation from becoming a reality or will make it far less than enjoyable. 

Looking forward to the future is an impossiblity for me right now.  I will only feel completely at ease after I have dropped my bags at the foot of my hotel bed and have filled my lungs with warm Caribbean air. 

Meditations on infidelity and gasoline

My last entry reminded me that I hadn’t posted this story here.  Hopefully, it’s the last of the Al stories. 

I found out that my stepfather was having an affair with the wife of my mother’s first cousin the day my husband set himself on fire.  You just can’t make this stuff up. 

I got the call while at work:  “I am calling from St. Mary’s Hospital.  Your husband as been in an accident.”

“What kind of accident?  Is he okay?” My voice was trembling.

“I don’t have all the details, but I know that he’s been badly burned.  He is in an ambulance on the way to the burn unit at Doctors Hospital in Augusta.  We don’t have the facilities to treat him here.”

I must have made a loud noise of some kind because people had started to gather around my cube, concerned looks on their faces.  I frantically grabbed my things and called my sister on the way to my car.  She told me that she was on her way and would drive me to the hospital. 

My mind was swarming.  Burned.  I didn’t know where or to what degree.  I didn’t know if he was conscious, if he still had a face, if he was dying.  My sister arrives and as we start our trip she informs me that our mother, who lives 600 miles away, has called and is on her way.  Al, our stepfather, and Gramma (who was down from Michigan for an extended stay) were going to be with her.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  “Did you tell her that wasn’t necessary?  That I don’t even know if he’s that bad?”  Of course, I know my sister has told her all these things and more, but mom insisted on coming. 

I get a call from one of the EMTs in my husband’s ambulance.  He will be okay.  He’s conscious.  His hands and stomach are burned, mostly second and third degree.  They let me talk to him and as soon as I hear his voice, strained, but strong, most of my nerves stop jangling.  He has a voice, which means he has lips.  I can work with this.  I get the first of the details, too.  He was refueling the lawnmower, and the gas ignited.