So, guess what? I had surgery the other day! There I was, getting ready for work and my husband says, “So, are you ready?”

And I say, “Not yet.”

And he says, “If you don’t hurry, we’re gonna be late. We have to make it all the way past Ben White.”

And I say, “Whach you talkin’ ’bout Willis? “

And he rolls his eyes and says, “Phaidra, it’s surgery day” and I hear the pop of my denial bubble.

********************************

Ok. That was totally made up. I was WAY too nervous Monday night to be in denial anymore. I was pulling one of those “up-every-couple-of-hours-cause-I’m-afraid-I’ll-oversleep” stints and obsessing over what shoes I should wear and whether or not they’ll notice if I put lotion on my hands. Then at 11:45 pm, I downed as much water as I could in the 15 mins before the  “no eating or drinking after midnight” rule kicked in because otherwise, it would be hard for the nurse to put the IV in (things you learn along the way…) and no one wants that.

Then at the surgery center (we were 10 mins late), we sat around, filled out paperwork, let them stick me with needles and IVs and watched them literally move the furniture around for about an hour (they were short of beds, supposedly) until the nurse says, “Ok. You need to speak with anesthesia.

Twenty minutes later, “Have you spoken with anesthesia?

Twenty minutes later, “Have anesthesia stopped by yet?

Another twenty minutes, “Anesthesia hasn’t stopped by yet?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. I better go chase them down. Don’t let them take you back before I give you the happy pills.”

This threw me, as you might imagine, because I had assumed until then that no one would “take me back” without anesthesia and I really wanted something more than “happy pills.”

Luckily, the anesthesia guy showed up shortly after that to announce, “Your doctor is running late, so we’re gonna wait to give you the shot. But, in about an hour or so, we’ll take you back to get your nerve block going.”

Anyway, after reading about fun stuff that could happen if the nerve block went wrong and being told that before they could numb my leg, they would use electrods to jerk the same limb around similar to “the frog’s leg in high school biology,” I got quiet, contemplative even. I sat in a recliner and watched the staff roll in and out a couple of different stretchers before leaving the third. I Twittered a bit on my iPhone. I got more quiet (thanks for all the Tweets everyone!). Hubby and I watched some TV. I finally got my “happy” pills. Ricky read my chart. We laughed about doctor’s writing… Then the assistant came to tell me he was there to “take me back.” I’m not sure if I even smiled.

In the back room, the assistant asked me to lie prone while they got ready to stab my leg with electrods to make sure they got the right nerve (ok. he didn’t describe it that way, but that’s what they were gonna do), “It takes about five minutes once we start.” No sound from me whatsoever except for, “Can I have a tissue?”

I just couldn’t help myself. I tried wiping the evidence away on the back of my hand, but the dark splotches on the sheet from big, fat crocodile tears were growing larger by the moment. I wasn’t sobbing so when he handed me the box and saw the tears, I guess, his eyes got round and he disappeared. Two tissues later, the anesthesiologist walked in with a syringe, “I think you need a fun shot.”

A few more tears. Ready to go.

Ten minutes later, “Did you not read the book where your nerves are supposed to be?” Gotta love that doctor humor. More tears, another “fun shot.”

Fifteen minutes later, “I’m gonna have to numb the whole leg at the hip.” Weepy eyes, more tissues, another “fun” shot.

Then my orthopedic surgeon comes in and I realize in the next moment that he is a truly nice, nice man. He leaned down, looked me in the eye, said something encouraging and then patted me on the head… sounds weird, but I appreciated it at the time. After the next fun shot, I only remember waking up in recovery, shivering but thankful that I didn’t remember the rest of the block.

I don’t even remember much of the recovery or drive home, either. It’s like giant blur in my head now. I remember:

-the nurse was originally from Ontario so I told her how I  want to move back to Canada

-a blissfully endless supply of warmed blankets

-Ricky running out to buy me crutches at the local pharmacy because they were $50 cheaper there than at the surgery center, and

-the anesthesiologist checking on me and stating, “That was a huge break.”

All I can tell you about the rest of it is that I made it home, it took my husband and my father-in-law’s encouragement to get me in the house and up the stairs and I’ve pretty much been in bed since.

I’ve been to my blog several times over the past month with ideas for posts that were funny, funky, witty… everything but whiney. And yet somewhere along the way, they would transform, morph into a wah, wah, wah, poor me. I am SO obsessed, so focused on my upcoming surgery that nothing else blocks it completely out.

I’m so tired of it.

So, for the rest of this blog, I am determined to talk about other things and completely ignore the fact that  tomorrow I’m going to be “under the knife,” as it were.

Here we go. Things that are happening that are NOT surgery related:

• My son turned six this past week so we decided that it would be a good idea to have his party at Chuck E Cheese aka “The Evil Place.” Somehow in this convoluted thinking, we thought it would be easier to host 25 kids at this fun-filled place than at our house. And, in a way, it was except that we never expected parents to drop off their kids with us rather than stay and participate in the “fun” that is Chuck E Cheese. My brother pronounced at the end of the event that this birthday party most certainly belongs in Dante’s Inferno as its own level of Hell. I, on the other hand, thought it could be made a whole like better by installing a tequila bar and electronic ankle bands for parents who leave. Ricky’s just glad we didn’t have to clean anything.
• Mexican Martinis rock!
• My daughter is surpassing me in my reading goal. A couple of years ago, I thought I’d start reading adolescent fiction in an effort to have something to talk about as my kids got older. I’ve picked up a stack of books that I thought were high enough above the immediate reading abilities of my daughter that it would take her years to catch up. Well, I was right in the statement “it tooks years” only it was two years, not the 4 or so I imagined. So, Moira is now reading books like Rick Riordan’s The Lightening Thief and Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in addition to more standard 2nd grade books like the Disney Fairies series, Benton’s Franny K Stein. I’ve actually purchased books for her teacher based on what I thought Moira would need rather than what they tell me 2nd graders are reading because I feel guilty that the teacher might have to go get books for her classroom library that don’t get her the most bang for her buck. I’m so proud of Moira, but envision a fortune in book store purchases in our immediate future.
• My son will be adding to the book debt soon, but I think he’ll be more of a Captain Underpants reader than a Disney Fairies reader.
• My husband ran his first ever Marathon this past February. He rocks.

• My son is determined to be a photographer. I just hope his sister’s godmother is wrong when she states that we’ll be lucky he doesn’t choose to be a war correspondent.

I think that’s it for now, except to reiterate that Mexican Martinis rock. I’ll be back after surgery with more whining, I’m sure.

Surgery. I’m having surgery.

Really. I’m having surgery.

I’m serious. It’s surgery.

Oh! Hi there. I was just trying to convince my brain that early in April, I’m gonna have my leg opened up and tibia sawed in two in order to repair my broken ankle. Don’t mind me. One of these days I’m really gonna believe it even.

Until then, however, I get to plan a birthday party for my son and a first communion for my daughter, the latter of which I’ll be on crutches for (I’m having surgery. I’m having surgery.). Maybe I’ll use the two weeks of required bed time to catch up on all the planning and my class schedule. I’ve always wanted downtime, haven’t I?

Be careful what you ask for…

I got news back on my foot & ankle and it’s not good. The verdict is that I had broken my ankle and the first doctor who I saw was a complete nincompoop and let me walk around on it for two and a half months, changing his diagnosis 3 times and not listening when I said things were not working. My new doctor, even though he stood me up for the first appointment and sent in his Physician’s Assistance (who turned out to be great), got me a real MRI instead of the in-office “revenue producing” version and found the problem as soon as he saw the films.

Trouble is that the cost of a correct diagnosis is that I can no longer pretend that it’s all in my head and that physical therapy actually might fix things. Fact of the matter is I  have a 90% chance of having to have surgery that will include sawing my tibia, digging into my knee for cartilage to plug into my ankle and then screwing my ankle back together with nuts and bolts. Thus ends Phaidra’s illustrious try at triathlons. WAH! I am so sad about his fact I can’t even convey it properly.

But just in case I’m in the 10% bracket, I get to now where the full, up to the knee boot for 3-4 more weeks. If I do end up having to have surgery, it will be 3-4 weeks of rehab on crutches and then several more weeks in the boot. No running for exercise ever again… or any other high impact sport for that matter (’cause everyone knows how much I like sports. Ha!). I will be restricted to swimming, biking and, I kid you not, according to my doctor “water jogging.” Why would anyone jog in the water when they could swim? Oh well. Probably just a personal preference thing.

And in case you need a few more reasons for me to ask for valium:

- I signed up for an online Creative Writing class

- I signed up for a tech writing class

- I signed up for a grant writing class

- I added another dept on to my admin support duties and they’re needy

- I still have two young kids and a marriage to somehow maintain

-  AND Ricky is still traveling 25% of the time

I’m telling you, I dream of a Valium prescription. Unfortunately, I will have to continue dreaming ’cause the only recommendation I got so far is to drink some wine in order to relax…

Too bad I can’t drink because of my kidney stone treatment.

ARGH!!!!!

To save the internet from another blog containing the f-word 47 times and, at the same time, update friends, family and strangers that happen to wander by on what’s happening in my life, I’ve come up with the following exercise.

Please put the following in the correct order:

     

Ok. I lied. They’re pretty much in order with tomorrow being the MRI. Of course there are lots of details that no pictures can explain so feel free to make up whatever story you feel best exemplifies my visual expression. I’m sure it’s more interesting than the real story…

What in the hell is writer’s block? I thought I knew. I used to go through periods of time during which I couldn’t write and thought that I was suffering from the famous affliction, but now I figured out that it’s not really “writer’s block” I suffer from, no. It’s more like “writer’s impaction.” The difference? Writer’s block, to me, would look like this:

There was this writer, walking down a road, looking at all the foliage and dreaming about life. All of the sudden there’s a huge brick wall blocking the road; can’t go under it, can’t go through it, better go around it. So he takes out his handle dandy writer’s survival backpack (think literary Dora) and using all the tricks of the trade (writing exercises, visualization, just writing gibberish, letting things perculate…), he manages cut through the underbrush, sludge through knee deep mud, even chop down a few trees, in order to make it back on the road to the next, great American novel. Sometimes, when faced with another brick wall in the road, a forest fairy with nothing better to do that day comes by and blasts the bricks with her magic bazooka, but that’s kinda rare.

Here’s what “writer’s impaction” feels like:

There was this stupid, useless, lazy, bad mother who thought she could string two words together well and therefore called herself a writer. Instead, while stuck in traffic, with two screaming kids and the ice cream her husband asked for melting in the trunk, it dawned on her that any previous creative writing done was only due to some stupid magic fairy dust she found by sheer dumb luck. Unfortunately, it was probably meant for someone else and the punishment for using someone else’s magic dust is large verbal boils, impacting all thoughts in the brain and allowing none to get past the tiny, ineffective (and infected) filter installed in whatever part of said brain that controls language. The only relief offered by a doctor is to lance the boil with scalpel made from memories so far beyond her emotional capacity to cope with that a cure doesn’t seem feasible and permanent brain damage is already under way. Also, she hasn’t slept in 7 years.

And that’s why I haven’t updated my blog.

I don’t think this take’s much explanation other than I went playing at www.instyle.com/hairmakeover and reaffirmed why I am not a blond:

And have no bangs:

And stay away for big Dallas hair:

…and super short hair:

I can’t even wear honey blond, Ferrah hair:

But this looked marginally better:

And this looked even more familiar:

But I think I’ll go ahead and stick with my crazy, curly long hair for now:

As I’ve mentioned before, my sister was in town last week and during this time we had to have a “come to Jesus” one afternoon after she told my daughter that she and her kids were leaving early, but failed to mention this to me, presumably because she didn’t want to face me.

Well, during this “discussion,” I had the strangest memory pop up. You see when I was an oh-so-dramatic 15, I tried to commit suicide by taking huge amounts of my mom’s blood pressure medicine. I could probably regale you with stories of why I thought I needed to, but the real answer to that question is that I was 15 and my family is crazy. I’m sure I’ll feel the need to share more later, but for now, that’s a good summary.

And really it’s back story, the memory actually comes from what happened afterwards. My family and I were forced to go to family counseling and it looked something like this:

A larger office with my father and his new, already pregnant wife on one side of the room, my mom, brother and sister on the other side of the room and me in the middle, on the back wall, facing the counselor. And Mr. Man (the counselor who’s name I have long forgotten), is looking at me most of the time, I’m guessing to judge my reaction to anything and everything that happens.

His dialog starts with a telling of his his purpose in family counseling and quickly brings up the fact that my suicide attempt was hard on everyone. To prove this, he turns to my sister and asks, “So, were you afraid your big sister was going to die?”

My sister answers chuckling, “No. I knew she wouldn’t die. Phaidra’s gonna live forever.”

I’m sure she meant it as a joke, but something on my face showed and Mr. Man looks me in the eye and says, “That’s a pretty tall order for you to fill.”

That’s the end of the memory, but the weird things is that it pops into my head 18 years later during this heavy discussion with my sister.

My sister started crying after telling me how she has always wished we were best friends and how disappointed she is that we’re not. Then she told me how she wishes that I was never embarrassed of her when I was 20 and how sad it made her to know that when I was 23, I picked her as my maid-of-honor out of guilt. Then there’s the fact that she’s always wanted my approval above others and how she just can’t get over the fact that I don’t seem to like her. And to finish it all up, after I apologized several times for not being the friend she wants and trying to assure her that I indeed did like her and reminding her that we’re sisters with very different lives/interests, she says, “It was always you that I wanted comfort from when I was a kid, not Mom and Dad.” and “I just wanted you to pick me over anyone else just once in our lives.”

By the end of the conversation, I was feeling like a pretty bad sister. She assured me that that’s not what she meant, but I still felt bad for not being what she needed. I started planning on how to be what she wanted me to be and then that memory from 18 years ago pops up and I think, “That’s a pretty tall order for you to fill.”

I think I’m destined to be the bad sister and I can’t even explain how horrible that realization makes me feel.

Several times since my last post, I have sat down to write something and only 2 of those multiples times did I even start something remotely coherent. My only excuse… and I think it’s a good one… is that my sister and her kids have been in town; one week of it at my house. We’ve trekked up to Dallas and tooled around Austin in that ancient ritual of entertaining family.

I am pooped. I can’t think beyond when bed time is.

And, as a side note, my youngest starts Kindergarten tomorrow. I just can’t believe it, frankly, but there it is. I’m really hoping that some time this week I’ll actually write something more than this.

But it could just be a dream for a while.

Ok, so I really have no reason to complain. My kids are with my sister and my husband and I have the house to ourselves for a week and while I know I’m going to pay for this pleasure by having to wear a hair dress the entire week my sister is in my house, for right now, I should be happy and carefree, right?

WRONG!

Instead, I’ve hurt both my hips and my shoulders exercising which has made sleep nigh impossible and my checking account much lower with trips to my “sports thereapy” guy; who, by the way, chuckles at me when I say things like, “I thought exercise was supposed to make you healthier.” His response, “It will, now do these other exercises to strengthen the muscles you’ve strained.” Argh.

On top of that, my family is going to be descending on us this weekend and my nerves are frayed at just the thought of it so I’m a bit edgy as Saturday approaches.

And this morning when Ricky and I got up early to go bike riding together, I thought, “This is going to be great. We finally get to exercise together.” But again, WRONG! As I was pumping up the tires on my bike, Ricky tried to “help me” and between the two of us, we managed to tip over the bike while the pump was still attached, causing the valve to rip open the tube.

A little irked now, I think, “No problem,” then say, “Ricky you go ahead, I’ll change the tire and catch you in a bit.” After the obligatory husband offer of help that I wave away because I know how to change my own tired, darn it. I grab my repair kit, whip off the tire, pull out the backup tube and…. let’s flash back for a moment, shall we?

It’s 3 months ago and I’m buying the stuff to go in my repair kit. I’m looking at tubes and I think it’s weird that Academy is only selling 26″ tubes (or, more likely, they were out of the other ones) and I know for a fact that my tire is a 27 or 28″, not a 26″. Ricky says, “No. It’s a 26″. Just buy the 26″.”

Well, I feel less sure after his confident statement, but not convinced he’s right so I decide to hold off on the purchase. The next day Ricky goes to the bike store where I bought the bike (looking for a bike for himself). When he got home he states, “They told me you need a 26″ tube for your bike.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the 28″ stand for on the tire,” I ask.

“I don’t know but they said you need a 26″ tube.”

“Ok.” And because I’m really a novice at these bike things and Ricky seems so sure that it’s a 26″ tube, I head over to the store and pick up one of the 26″ tubes for my kit (they were too expensive at the bike store).

But today… Imagine my frustration when the FLIPPIN’ TUBE IS TOO SMALL!!! I have wasted 30 minutes of cool air time (August in Texas means you exercise in the morning or it gets too hot for the average mortal) and my tire is still unusable. AND it, of course, had to happen to the rear tire so it was a bigger pain to get off than the front tire. I am so frustrated at this point that I throw the bike and all its parts into the back of my van planning on making Ricky pay the bike store to put it all back together with the right tube. But for now, instead of a nice bike ride, I get to go for a stupid jog instead. Which means I have to switch bras, find my cap to keep the sun out of my eyes and find an extra house key because Ricky has the one we keep by the front door. Harumph!

Little did I know, ten minutes into my “wog” (intervals of running and walking), Ricky cruises up on his functioning bike. Grrrr

“How’s it going?”

I relate the tired incident.

“Eeeek. I’m sorry.”

Grunt

“Ummm. Do you have a house key?”

“Yes.”

“Well since I gave you mine, I don’t.”

“You didn’t give me yours. I took the spare.”

“But where’s the one I had?”

“I have no idea ’cause I don’t have it.”

“Well, I have no way in.”

“Ok fine.” I stop, give him my key and then we part ways.

Thirty more minutes of sun-drenched, humid-air filled wogging later, I show up to the front door of our house, dripping with sweat, still filled with frustration over my morning so far and lo’ and behold, I am FRIGGIN’ LOCKED OUT OF THE HOUSE! I have no way in because Ricky’s upstairs on a conference call and took my key! I do the only reasonable thing available to me, I begin banging on the door with both fists figuring if he doesn’t make it down, I’ll eventually beat my way through the metal door.

Luckily for Ricky, rather than answer the door and wonder who the crazy person was, he quickly states, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize I locked the door.” That quick apology is really the only reason I’m not in jail for spousal abuse. He really is a smart guy most of the time… or has a strong sense of survival. Either way.

After all that and then getting cleaned up, I made it to work, but that witch Fate wasn’t done with me yet. An hour into the work day, I find out that I didn’t get the job I had applied for a few weeks ago. I really never expected to get the job, but MY GOD, could it have been worse timing? I mean I guess I could be in the hospital on chemo or something, but GEESH! I think the only reason I didn’t go home and lock myself in the bedroom with a quart of Ben & Jerry and Steel Magnolias is that I had lunch plans with a friend. Luckily, the nachos were a good alternative and I muddled through the rest of my work day, relatively unscathed.

And now here I sit, writing a whiny blog entry, chanting something my brother says all the time in an effort to banish my annoyance at life:

“It rains on the just and the unjust alike.”

“It rains on the just and the unjust alike.”

Yeah, but it would be nice if my umbrella worked on occasion.