back under the knife

Short entry, since I'm not feeling well. I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday that I didn't talk about in that day's entry; there didn't seem to be space for it in the entry I was writing -- that was the one about the mushrooms -- and I figured it would be worth while to do a new one, just to sum up.

So on Thursday I had the doctor's appointment I've been waiting on for a while. Namely, this is the Doctor X I wasn't able to get in touch with, the one who was apparently in charge of my melanoma case. He was going to get back in touch with me that Friday, if you recall. Hah. Just to make this perfectly clear, I hadn't heard from him once until the appointment.

"I tried to call you a couple of times," he told me when he came into the exam room.

Right. Caller ID, buddy.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. So anyway, doctor's appointment on Thursday with the doctor apparently in charge of my case. I considered venting at him a little, but I'm a good little Japanese girl and I don't do that sort of thing. Also, I was really hungry. The longer the doctor's appointment, the longer the delay before I got to food. A lot of people have avoided scenes with me because of my stomach. It should be nominated for some kind of peace prize. (Who'm I kidding? I'm a total pushover. I couldn't have a scene with Osama bin Laden if he stole my last glucophage pill.)

He was, for a doctor, remarkably free of the whole bedside manner business. "We need to make it bigger," he said bluntly, and grabbed my chin to inspect my cheek.

People have been doing that to me for the last month, mind you. This is one of the downsides to working with doctors. They tend to regard you as bits and pieces of anatomy only tenuously related to the controlling mind, which is itself hovering some six feet above the floor on the other side of the door.

He wanted to know when to do the surgery. I thought about my upcoming schedule. A week to be spent in the Cow. Two more weeks to be spent in New York. Massive projects to be accomplished with a development team in Staten Island before my trip.

"January?" I suggested hopefully.

He didn't like that answer.

"Monday," he said. "I have a cancellation on Monday. Is that a problem?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

"Yes."

"Then Monday is fine."

Wouldn't life be so much easier if we said exactly what we think?

So I had surgery on Monday. The scar is now about twice the size it was before. This time they didn't cover it with bandages. In fact, this time they didn't even use stitches; some sort of glue appears to have been liberally gobbed all over my cheek. That is to say, it's either glue or anaesthesia-inspired drool. Since it's not bandaged, I can actually see the scar, a long, red, slightly jagged line that stretches from my jawline to just underneath my cheekbone. There's a morbid fascination to staring at it in the mirror.

I've been dizzy and cramped with nausea ever since. Pain isn't so much of a problem when you can be distracted by other things. Headache the size of Montana, for instance. Light-headedness. The only things that've saved me from going absolutely nutters is my comforter, the three bottles of soda the Guy bought me, and P.G. Wodehouse Books on Tape, compliments of the library.

I'll be human by tomorrow, I think. I have hopes. I'm scheduled to go back into work tomorrow, anyway, so I don't have too much of a choice. In the meantime, I'm taking it easy. Lots of soda. Lots of porridge. Lots of sitting still and moaning companionably to myself.

The Guy went out yesterday morning and bought me the Finding Nemo DVD. I was too dizzy to watch it, true, but -- really. Could I have picked a better fiance?

Nanowrimo

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Should have done: 8,334