So, I was thinking about this today, and have come to the conclusion that what is happening to my body is not so much a sad turn of events, or perhaps even some would say a tragedy in the making, but rather, a vast medical wing conspiracy.
It came to me this morning in the glorious cleansing ritual that the commoners refer to as a "shower". It is a Conspiracy of Pauls.
Exhibit A: My urologist is Dr. Paul K. He has been to Omaha, he owns a hunk of Warren Buffet's empire, please go to Dairy Queen today and support him.
Exhibit B: My General Practitioner is Dr. Paul G. He has never been to Omaha. He is Italian (I think) and there are lots of good Italian restaurants in Omaha. Watch the Sopranos tonight, think of Dr. G.
Exhibit 3: My favorite actor is Paul Sorvino. He is Italian, he sings Opera, probably likes ice cream, and I don't care if he has been to Omaha or not. Go watch "Goodfellas" tomorrow.
Can you see it?!?!?! It is all here in dark green and dots! Paul K. discovers the pain, Paul G. writes me prescriptions to treat the pain, and Paul S. plays the legitimate businessman who supplies the pharmacy with the drugs that "fell off a truck" to fill my prescription!
Oh....My......GAWD!!!!!
It is now that I will advise you of the fact that I inherited the Blanche DuBois gene from my mother's side of the family. Fortunately it is tempered with the Hakuna Matata* gene from my father's side of the family, so the majority of my hysterical rantings and dramatic license are literary.
Dr. K has already talked to a local laparoscopic surgeon at the Kidney Stone Center at Riverside hospital here in Columbus. He has agreed to take my case, and my information is being sent to him, I see him Tuesday.
We leave and take Buddy to school. We are late, and he managed to stop for one picture,
and then I got one more.
He pretty much left me in the dust.
We picked Buddy up at noon, came home. I made him his "first day of school" lunch, PB&J cut in triangles and arranged like NASCAR flags around the bottom of plate, red grapes in the middle and quartered strawberries across the top of the plate. I served this with a glass of "yellow juice" which is, ironically, Orange Juice.
He looks at the plate, and the side of yogurt served with it. "oh Nice!" He thanks me and proceeds to eat a package of Zesta Saltine crackers.
Buddy, don't you want to eat the lunch I made for you?
By now I'm bent over the counter, holding it for support, I literally cannot stand because of the pain.
"nope, it's too pretty"
Never again will I serve aesthetically pleasing food.
I convince him to come upstairs and play with his trains so I can lay down. After about 90 minutes, he is in the bed with me, and we are watching a very entertaining episode of Spongebob Squarepants, when I finally feel the meds winning out over the pain.
We go see Dr. G. I tell him of my Paul Conspiracy Theory. He looks suspiciously at me, and now I know I'm being watched.
He prescribes a Duragesic Patch for me. I put it on when we got home. I began to feel a gradual numbing of the pain a few hours later. It flared up again, but I was able to beat it back with Percocet and rest.
Narcotics do not make me sleepy. I don't get a "high" from them, so I don't understand why people abuse them. I guess if you aren't in pain, you get all euphoric with them, but not me. The Duragesic patch so far is great, except keeping it on. I'll have to find a better place on Sunday when I put the new one on.
Then I tried to go to bed. Normally, this is an exercise in futility. But I felt myself drifting off to a peaceful sleep....and I freaked out. Oh No! I feel floaty and light, I must be having a fentanyl overdose....ack! must consult internet immediately!
Anyway, I got about two hours of sleep in, when I was awakened by a smell. I got dressed and followed my nose to the source.
The bassets looked guilty in their crates. I was sure one of them had an accident.
I let them go potty and investigated the crates. It seems that Mr. Brutus had some really bad gas. So bad that when they came back inside, he immediately ran to bunk with Henry. It must suck to have one of the strongest senses of smell in the animal kingdom.
So I'll leave you with this. Hounds are the most burying type of dog I've ever seen. Give them a rawhide bone, they have to go bury it....to let it ferment or age or something, and then go dig it up a few hours or day later and enjoy it. This must be a useless "throwback" instinct, as they tend "bury" their bones in blankets, clothes baskets, couch cushions, etc.
Monday, Super G cleaned the litter boxes for me.
He found very little cat poo, (all dogs love catbox crunchies) but he did find a rawhide bone.
It is so very weird to live HERE.
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* Hakuna Matata is a phrase from the Disney Movie, "The Lion King" which translates to "no worries"
That is how much of a loss I'm at today.
It started yesterday, as I finished up my last post, Buddy yells down from upstairs "We're washing the dog!"
Bug has been wanting to wash the new foster dog since he came here, even though he got a bath the day he arrived, even though he's the cleanest thing in our house, she has been bugging me to "take him a bath". She's good at bugging me about stuff, hence her nickname.....Bug.
So I go upstairs. The door to Buddy's room is closed. I open it, and see what the next 20 minutes of my life are going to involve.
The dog in question, a 65 pound Basset Hound puppy, is laying on the floor happily chewing up a wooden train track. He is wet, from the top of his head down to his tail. Bug is holding a 409 bottle that has been rinsed and filled with water. It is used to squirt this dog in the face when he barks at the cats. Now it has been turned into his shower.
Buddy is holding the foaming hand soap pump, busy pumping out more foamy soap onto the dog's back. They rub it in, look up at me and smile. "We're washing the dog."
Somewhere in the back of my head, a small hammer comes out of a dark, dark place. This hammer pounds on my optic nerves, my precious last few nerves, causing my eyes to twitch.
I take the track away from the dog, and lead him into the bathroom, snatching the water bottle and the soap as I go. I turn on the water and heave the dog into the tub. Thankfully he's a sweet lug, and a rather dim bulb, I was done rinsing him before he realized he was getting a bath. I towel him off a bit and send him on his way.
Bug yells out as he passes, "hey, he's wet!"
Ya think?
I don't even want to get into today. Because today started at 2am, when PeeCircles howled in his kennel. I let him out to go potty, then I had to pee. Damn dog is contagious.
Then I couldn't get back to sleep. The other dog, the dog that used to be so horrible, who is now considered "good" was fast asleep. I can't get to sleep anymore without listening to her obsessively-compulsively lick her feet.
Too late to take Nyquil or Xanax. Too early to get up and do anything. argh! I lay there and listen to my husband snore. I hear strange noises. Could be the cat, or could be the evil clown that lives under my bed. I know he's there. He's been under every bed I've ever slept in since I was a child. Yup, can't sleep. He knows I'm awake................
Sleep finally came around 3. Then I overslept, getting into the shower, with Buddy trailing me, at 7:15.
Out of the shower and getting dressed at 7:35, had to wake up Bug. Might as well just set about to defy the laws of thermodynamics, it will take about the same amount of time. Threats are made, tears are shed, but she eventually moves because I resort to Hagatha, my old British Nanny alter ego. With a voice that can curl hair, I rail at her to get moving, or she'll be walking to school.
Her bowl of Cookie Crisp takes 30 minutes to eat. Then she has 10 minutes to brush her teeth, pee, wash her hand, brush her hair, pull it up, clean her glasses, get dressed and put on her backpack.
Oh wait, she has 10 minutes to pee, I do the rest for her.
I drag her out the door and she hops on the bus.
The kids play downstairs for about 20 minutes before they start going in and out of the dog door. Here is my stroke of genius.
Hey kids, wanna paint the swingset? and the house? and the deck?
I hand them clean paint rollers and a few old paint brushes. I fill a bucket with water, hand them some sponges and discover what will become nearly TWO HOURS to do my data entry. This is unprecedented. How fortunate that the weather was nice and everyone was agreeable.
This will never, ever, happen again.
I fed them lunch, and then had enough time to shampoo the carpets upstairs, while simultaneously doing laundry, and dishes, and work the data entry job. Clearly the parenting fairy sprinkled me in my sleep, as I was efficient and fun today.
Then I found the dog outside with one of my sandals, a day after he destroyed one of my Crocs sandals. Three hours later, he finished the job. I bought these sandals five years ago at Wal-Mart. They have served me well, and even though the sole of the left one was cracked, there were still decent and comfortable to wear. Until Mandiblor stole the right one, and ate the back off of it.
Asshole.
Tomorrow is trash day, so I suppose I'll have to give two pairs of shoes to Waste Management. I suppose I could set them out on the curb tonight, so a garbage picker can come along and give them new life, but somehow I feel that is along the lines of abuse of a corpse. My shoes deserve a proper burial. In a landfill somewhere, with dirty diapers and used motor oil. Perhaps they'll be fortunate enough to fall in next to some Twinkies, and be preserved forever......
One day, a paleontologist will be looking the the fossilized remains of our landfills and assume that our species died out starving to death, trying to eat our shoes as mysterious alien spongiform beings petrified within our bodies, preserving our shoe leather for all eternity. (I really need to get to bed)
Our old storm door was out on the curb this morning. Around noon, a beat up blue Ford pickup showed up, and the storm door went to its new home. I hope it serves them well, with it's rusted out exterior and tattered screen.
Buddy's room still smells like dog pee. That is for another post, but yes, we have issues in that department. Even after I scrubbed it with the carpet cleaner, it smells of urine. And I wanted this damn dog.
I really wish that wooden floors would fall out of the sky, land in my driveway and Paul Sorvino would come to my door wearing a tool belt and a wife beater. Super G will be working on it (the floors part, not the Paul Sorvino part.) But that would be a cool birthday present, for both of us. I'll get the floors, and he won't have to install them! A win/win proposition if I ever heard one. I'll have to call up Paul's agent, see if he's available.
