surgery

It Came From Planet Zit, Victorian Quack Cures, and It’s Frozen

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monster zit

It has taken on a life of its own…

Thankfully this face crater is not on my face.  I have enough problems.  Unfortunately it’s on the POMC’s face, which really sucks for him.  Nasty.  The worst part of it is that if the antibiotics don’t kill it off he might have to go to a plastic surgeon and have it cut out.  Joy and rapture- and this for a guy who almost lost it over a simple blood draw.  I had my quarterly required blood draw yesterday.  Big deal. I really don’t even notice it, but then the phlebotomists at the lab draw blood all day long.  It’s simply what they do, and they’re good at it.  The POMC, on the other hand, I hate to see what kind of anguish he might experience over a minor surgery that will (while still being minor) have a bit more to it than a simple blood draw.

I had to have a funky growth taken off the side of my head about 15 years ago.  I was worried about losing hair over it, but they didn’t even shave that section of my head.  The actual surgery was about five minutes, and it wasn’t that bad except for the surgeon was a little rough with the Lidocaine.  Getting to surgery was the problem.  I was scheduled for 7:30 AM, but didn’t get taken in until almost 2:30 PM.  The guy who was scheduled for surgery right before me picked a really inconvenient time to Bite the Big One- as in, he commenced to take the Dirt Nap while he was on the operating table getting an ingrown toenail or something cut out.

Dead_Body_Man_by_MrMotts

Eventually, the Morgue Cart comes for us all.

So I had to wait around while they brought the code team in to try to get him jumpstarted.  That was an effort in futility.  Once they were satisfied that the guy was completely dead, and there was no revival going to happen, then I had to wait for the medical examiner’s team to come in and take notes and clean up and do the paperwork necessary to send the poor dude down to the morgue.  Then the cleaning crew had to come in and hose everything down so it would smell nice and disinfectant-y, presumably in the hope that maybe I wouldn’t get too freaked that some guy just died in there while getting a minor surgical procedure on somewhat of the same scale of what I was having.

disinfectant_gal

Yeah, the scent of shit-and-piss hosed down with disinfectant spray and Clorox doesn’t remind me of my own mortality and impending death. Not at all.  ‘Kay…  What made the whole experience even more fun is that the surgeon was a big burly guy with a very German name and a rather morbid sense of humor.

mad_scientist

I was rather pissed by the time they were finally getting me rolled in to surgery.  I had spent most of the day starving, sifting through stacks of distressed, inane and aged periodicals, and enduring such drivel on TV as Montel and other various daytime “Who Be My Baby Daddy” sorts of shows.  Even so, in spite of my angst, curiosity got the best of me, and I asked some of the nurses and orderlies what sort of disaster went down, and why it was cause for my very minor surgery to be so delayed. They were more than happy to give me the low down on why my surgery was delayed for seven hours.

I also had to find it funny when the surgeon comes loping in the operating room, syringe full of Lidocaine, saying, “Hey don’t die on me here- that’s what happened to the last guy.  It’s bad for business.”  At least the surgery was quick, and he didn’t do any damage to the facial nerve the growth was right on top of.  I can still eat without drooling and can enunciate when I speak, (these are good things.)  Also a good thing, according to the path lab, the growth was benign. It never came back.

Getting a new driver’s license and a registration renewal at the BMV is faster than processing a dead dude to go to the morgue, apparently.  Shit happens.  Sometimes the timing just sucks.

bmv

The BMV: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here!

Of course the weather here in beautiful Central Ohio is absolutely frozen- right now it’s 9º.  Of course when it is that cold here, that cold is always accompanied by gale force winds that make it feel like it’s 20° below.  Just walking out to the car is being outside too much in this weather.

1880-1910-HillsGenuineMagneticAnti-HeadacheCap-LC-USZ62-47346

I wish there actually were something like this device, and that it actually worked.

There is something a bit creepy about wearing batteries on your head.  There is also something a bit creepy about having a constant, splitting headache that feels like someone is trying to break out my hard palate from the inside with a crowbar, and to take the same crowbar and poke my right eye clean out of the socket from the inside too.

I’d duct tape some nine-volts to my noggin if that would make this shit go away, damn tootin’.

Unfortunately I think it’s just another reaction to stress and the stupidity that surrounds me.

weak-men-ad

I don’t think this would do much of anything.

wash away fat

I wish this one would work, but we all know better than that.

Domestic Insanity and Drunk-n-Stupid Meet Passive-Aggressive Revenge

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I know better.  I really do.

I’ve been somewhat ambivalent about taking Mom and Dad down to NC this Saturday.  I really doubt if Dad should be travelling this far this soon after open heart surgery, and I am freaky about taking him down in places where medical assistance is either not available or, if it is, it is, shall we say, primitive.  My sister lives in the middle of nowhere, and you have to drive through 12 hours of mostly nowhere to get there.  On the positive side Dad goes to his Dr. again tomorrow, and I will know for sure then if he will be OK to go, at least on a medical evaluation.

Another thing about this potential road trip that kind of freaks me is that I’m still having exactly the same issues I ended up in the ER for back in June.  Still have the heart palpitations and chest pain and all that mess, but according to the Dr.s I’ve seen including my family Dr., it’s nothing that’s going to kill me.  Yet.  I am still a wee bit apprehensive about driving continuously for 12 hours- Dad is allowed to drive, and probably will at least part of the way down, (Mom won’t be driving at all because she can’t drive manual shift,) but I’m coming back by myself since they’re staying all week. My sister or my nephew will be bringing them back.

I can’t die yet, because I don’t want to vote Democrat.  Ever.

Maybe I’m already on Obama’s death list and I just don’t know it yet.  Maybe there’s a little note in my medical records that says, “let this one die, so we can have more money to buy more pecker pumps for geezers and pay for birth control for people who should be keeping their legs together to begin with.”  I don’t think having heart palpitations constantly and up to the point of barely being able to catch one’s breath is “normal.”  But what the hell do I know?

Or maybe not?  Who knows?

I do know that I don’t want to go back to the same hospital where they called me Mildred and asked about my (non-existent) diarrhea,  put me in the same room with a howler monkey, and then told me that the reason why I have heart palpitations is because I don’t get enough sleep.  Then I go for the sleep study, get told I have sleep apnea, but not to the point where I need to be on a machine…I’m frustrated on that point.  I still don’t sleep for shit, haven’t for years.  I have to sleep at about a 45° angle to keep from drowning on the snot that drains down the back of my throat.   I don’t think I’ve had a really good night’s sleep since before I was pregnant with Steve-o- and he’s 21.  It doesn’t help that I have Tipsy McNumbNuts, who smokes like a chimney, screams like a banchee after a 12 pack or so, and has a taste for bad country music in the middle of the night, conspiring against my nightly repose.

Drunks should come with warning labels.

Jerry was on a roll last night even for a Monday.  I hope the boys at the shop are enjoying Tuesday Hangover Jerry today, ’cause it’s going to be a good one.  I hope they’re at least as loud and obnoxious as he was last night.

His TV, cable box, DVD player and stereo have been carefully configured (by me, he can’t figure out electronic anything) to be very simple to operate.  There is one button on the remote that turns the TV and cable box on and off.  It’s very simple.  Push the power button, TV and cable box turn on simultaneously.  Push the power button again and the TV and cable box turn off.  It’s not rocket science.  It is, however awkward at best to plug all this stuff in so that it works correctly.  I know what plugs in where, but I’m not particularly fond of the gymnastic feats I have to attempt to get the right things plugged into the right places.

It’s too hard for some people.

For some reason only known to God and maybe another drunk, finding the power button on the remote was too difficult for Jerry last night.  He wanted the TV off. So he unplugged everything- even unscrewed the freaking coax off the back of the TV and unplugged the AV leads from the DVD player for some bizarre reason.  Hey, kids, alcohol kills brain cells, just so you know!

Then to make it all the more entertaining, after prattling on all night last night on various rants and assorted nonsense, he’s sitting in the bed whining this morning that “the TV won’t turn on.”  Well, no shit, Sherlock, you unplugged every single wire you could unplug from every single AV device you have…

“Well, I need to watch the news,” he pouts, (insert Eric Cartman voice here) “and if I can’t watch it in here I’ll just use your TV.”

Oh, no you won’t.

Suffice to say as Jerry is a smoker with essential tremor, the world is Jerry’s ashtray.  To top that off, not only do I not want my bed to be full of stale beer farts and cigarette ashes, he doesn’t know how to operate my TV either, and I don’t need that screwed up too.  If he wants his little hole to be a fetid filth den, fine by me, but I like clean, fresh-smelling, burn-hole free sheets and a TV that works.

So at 6:30 this morning I’m back in the filth hole smoking lounge that is his room, behind the dresser, untangling wiring, plugging everything back in and moving the various electronics back to their proper places.  20 minutes later he was watching the stinking news on his own TV.  I could have wrung his neck.  Maybe it wasn’t nice of me to keep on muttering “dumb ass,” but it’s not as if Jerry being a dumb ass is a secret or anything.

I call ’em as I see ’em.  Then again, I’m fully aware he was raised by wolves.

I know he’s pissed at me for volunteering to take Mom and Dad to NC this weekend instead of frying my patoot off at the campground (I like going down there, but not when it’s supposed to be 95° and hotter all weekend.)  He’s pissed because he will have to remain sober so he can go back home Saturday night to take care of the dogs.  So all week long it will be passive-aggressive revenge (and as much drunk-n-stupid hijinks as he can stand to perpetrate) just so I know how much he will be “suffering” in his weekend sobriety.

If the World Ended 2 Hours Ago, Why Am I Still Here?

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I love black cats.  Isabel is quite sanguine today as usual.  None of the girls seemed to be tuned in to all the apocalyptic hoo-hah.

I figure the Lord is already here.  He’s been here eternally.  Even at the intersection of Morse Rd. and Cleveland Ave., (this billboard was up there last December) although I wouldn’t want to be there after dark.

Sheena did well at her vet appointment.  Her surgery is scheduled for June 22.  I am glad our regular Vet will be assessing her this time and will send the offending growth out for biopsy.  She seems to think these growths are benign, but that any strange mammary growth should be removed as a precaution.  I want it gone because of where it is.  Mammary cancer is not as frightening and deadly in dogs as it normally is in cats, but I’m not letting it get out of control- if that’s even what it is. With dogs, 50% of mammary growths are benign, and even those that are cancerous are usually not metastatic cancers.  Even so,  possible cancer is enough to be paranoid about.

I do believe what the Bible says about the End of Days.  I am not so confident in people who want to play with numerology, funky ancient calendars or manipulating Bible verses out of context to make them support outlandish claims.  The clearest thing in the Bible regarding the End of Days is that we can’t know when it’s going to occur, and we shouldn’t really try.  Any day might be my personal last, so all I can do is the best I can, and I’ll have to trust in the grace of God for anything and everything along the way.

I think it’s kind of funny how we went from annihilation by the Impending Ice Age to extinction via Global Warming in the span of less than thirty years.  It goes to show that science is not always right, and that the hubris of humanity is the third most plentiful element in the universe, right behind shit and stupidity.  Are we blatantly arrogant enough to think that the future existence of the planet is contingent upon whether we drive our cars or bury them?  The greenies haven’t made what I feel to be a coherent argument as to why I should exchange toilet paper for washable cloths either.

No human being is more than a slight electrical charge away from physical death at any given time anyway.  The only thing between me- or anyone else for that matter- and the Dirt Nap, is that spark that tells the heart to keep beating.  That’s a good reason not to put too much into this world and what it has to offer, because you’re going to spend a lot more time in the next.  Some things are for forever, but most things aren’t.  The challenge in this life is to learn the difference.

So we can hope people might put a lid on the doomsday soothsaying- at least until 12-21-12, that is.  Methinks barring personal calamity or God having different plans than mine for my sorry carcass, that I will wake up on 12-22-12 and  I’ll still have to get Christmas candy for my niece and nephew so that they can get (much to my sister’s distaste) their chocolate fix on Christmas Day.

I hate motorcycles.  I really do.  Clara is very disturbed by the bikers that tool up and down Stygler Rd. with their loud exhausts blaring.  I wish the bikers would stick their loud pipes where the sun don’t shine.  I don’t like things that disturb my dogs.

Not even Obama has done enough damage to bring on the apocalypse.  Yet.

Nothing Keeps a Good Dog Down, and (According to Clara) Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Green

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I know, sort of gross, but not as bad as I’d anticipated.  Sheena had three incisions, one for the spay – that one is barely visible, one to remove one mammary gland and nipple (not terribly aesthetically pleasing, but since the mass was right below the nipple, it stood to reason that it should be removed) and another incision to remove part of another mammary gland.  For having what amounts to a hysterectomy and partial mastectomy all at once, Sheena is remarkably unfazed.  Wednesday night, the day of the surgery, she was a bit in pain but mostly still stoned from the anesthetic and all the pain meds.  Yesterday she was a bit slow and tired, but today she has pretty much been trying to act like her normal hyper self- in spite of still being on Tramadol.  When Clara was hit by a car last year and had to have surgery to repair her front leg she was pretty well zoned on the Tramadols but they don’t seem to phase Sheena nearly as much.  Then again Clara was seven years old when she got hit, and Sheena is about three, if that.  Age does make some difference.  What really surprised me is the Vets at the clinic said Sheena was in heat when she was spayed.  She showed absolutely no signs, but then some dogs don’t.  Spaying her now may likely have saved her life although there is a good chance the mammary tumors were benign.  Mammary tumors in dogs are fed by estrogen- so in theory removing the tumors and removing the source of estrogen should prevent their return.

I only have two more days of Tramadols for her.  She has several more days of Keflex (what a joy trying to cram those down a canine gullet- the capsules are huge, and heaven help you if the capsule breaks, because Keflex is one of the nastiest tasting antibiotics there is, and I should know because I’ve probably taken every antibiotic out there at one point in time or another) for which I hope I have sufficient peanut butter.  It sounds mean but the only way to get pills down most dogs is to bury them in a wad of peanut butter, then scrape the wad of peanut butter containing the pills on to the roof of the dog’s mouth.

Clara of course is jealous, so much so that I joke that her brown eyes are turning green.  Little Miss Green-Eyed Monster resents the attention Sheena is getting, although I am sure she doesn’t remember all the special attention she got when she had all those stitches and then that seroma that had to be drained every other day for a month.  I did not enjoy that at all but at least she recovered fully.  I think dogs bounce back a lot faster than we do.  Lilo has not been nearly as clingy but then she’s always preferred Jerry.

Clara at the pet blessing.  Her eyes are still brown, in spite of her occasional jealous tizzies.

Jerry is in there whining about trying to caulk bathroom tiles- he’s about 8 or 10 beers into it which means I’ll have a mess to clean up tomorrow. He’s already trying to wheedle me into farting around with it too but I refuse to enter in to his drunk and stupid inspired home improvement attempts.  If only he would do this stuff when he’s sober, and preferably when I’m not home to hear about it.


Nerves, Waiting is the Hardest Part, and Sympathy for Sheena

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At one time in my life- before I discovered I have absolutely no aptitude for higher math- I considered a career in veterinary medicine.  I’d never made it through the algebra and chemistry, but I still have a passing curiosity for things medical and technical.  Blood and guts (as well as puke and crap) have never phased me, and I have a very limited sense of smell.  Had I just been able to somehow comprehend higher math I’d probably gone on to a veterinary or medical career.  Unfortunately my math abilities end at what I would call business math, and I still wonder how I made it through- with “B’s” no less- three quarters of accounting in college.  So I ended up in automotive. Still technical, but as long as you aren’t designing them, the necessary math skills seldom go beyond percentages and ratios.   Even I in my mathematical weakness can cope with those.

I dropped Sheena off this morning to be spayed- pretty sure that she was neither in heat nor pregnant- and figured she would do quite fine and the process would proceed uneventfully.  I didn’t think she would be old enough to have mammary tumors- a condition that claimed my very dear cat Daisy many years ago- so I was a bit shocked when the spay clinic called back and said she had two “small suspicious masses” on her mammary glands.  So not only does Sheena have to endure the spay surgery, she’s ending up getting a mastectomy as well.  I am still waiting to hear back from them.  I wonder if she is doing OK, if she can still come home tonight, and I wonder a lot of other things too.  I know that mammary tumors in dogs generally only have a 50/50 chance of being cancerous, and even if they are, if they are removed early, the cancer generally doesn’t spread (as it almost always does in cats) and the dog lives a normal life.   This really surprises me because Sheena is not at all body sensitive and I didn’t observe or feel any kind of lumps or bumps on her other than an innocuous, small lipoma on her right leg.   So if the tumors were so small that they could only observe them when the skin was pulled back during surgery, I would surmise that mastectomy should eliminate any risk of the tumors spreading.  My curiosity is if they are simply going to remove the just the affected gland(s), or if they are going to be a bit more radical and remove both mammary chains.  I’ll find out soon enough but I hate waiting and being in suspense. 

Of course had poor Sheena been spayed at four or five months of age she wouldn’t have mammary tumors.  In some ways I feel like we’re shutting the barn door after the horse has already escaped. I know the value of being sure to spay a non-breeding dog early, but we didn’t get to her early, and some people are just plain ignorant.

I will check Lilo when I get home, and Clara too, even though Clara is not as high risk for mammary tumors because she was spayed earlier and never had pups.  That is one disease that scares the hell out of me even though I’ve been assured it’s not as serious a thing for dogs as it is for cats. 

Poor Sheena.  She is going to be a basket case.

Anyone who is stumbling upon this, listen to me.  SPAY your dog.  Do it early.  Find a way.  Most dogs are not suitable for breeding anyway, and you don’t want to deal with heat or puppies – or the risk of mammary tumors and pyometra and all that other stuff.  We are trying to do right by Sheena now, because we didn’t have her when she was younger, but for other people with younger dogs and pups- DO IT NOW.  Or I will come and torture you.