Amazing Zippered Woman

The Nip and Tuck Express

I must begin with an apology.  It seems like an inordinate number of my recent posts have dealt with grotesque procedures being perpetrated upon my body.  But you must understand.  If one truly strives to be bionic, one must be willing to constantly “have stuff done.”  These atrocities are simply stepping stones which must be endured to maintain my superb physical plant.  If my incident descriptions are too graphic or just plain boring, fire off a comment and I’ll stop with the blood and guts. I’m more than capable of fabricating stories about reading trashy novels and eating bonbons while Tom Selleck gives me a massage - naked. 

Last week it was stainless steel pipes in my eyes.  And this week it’s liquid lightning shot into my ass.  After several weeks of intense, excruciating, horrible, gut-wrenching lower back pain and sciatic pangs that knocked me out of bed, I finally agreed to a series of three steroid injections administered directly into my spinal region.  I haven’t wanted to go on-and-on about  this latest physical crisis because I fear that my DEAR READERS will begin to think that I’m a pathetic hypochondriac, or worse, making up symptoms to get out of doing the ironing or shelling those peas that were recently harvested, or painting the garage.

I opted for no general anesthetic to minimize my time in recovery so Tom could at least make an appearance at his office.  (After all, weekly surgeries are ginormously expensive.)  This decision proved to be a BIG MISTAKE.  The doctor assured me that I would be fine with just localized numbing shots.  His promised numbness was a bold-faced lie.  There I am on this skinny table, on my stomach, with sizable portions of my body hanging off on both sides.  Nurse Nita rolled the elastic waistband of my yoga pants down and my tee shirt up. All I could think about was the huge, globular fat roll that was created as a result of all this rolling up and down of my apparel.  For the several minutes that Dr. Backburn spent preparing my ”sight” (my butt is now a “sight,”)  I continued to fixate on this tremendous tube of whale blubber as it slowly began to fill the entire room. I’ve never felt so exposed.  It didn’t help that all the nurses in the surgery suite had bodies that hinted at night jobs as exotic dancers.

Finally HE said, “Are you ready?”  Without even waiting to hear my answer, HE began to mutilate my left butt cheek with at least 12,000 jabs using a needle as big around as my arm. HE proudly announced that these tiny little pokes would more than take care of all the external pain.  I wanted to ask about internal pain, but never has the chance.  HE next rammed what looked like a garden hose into my spinal region and dispensed several gallons of yellowish crud that was the consistency of Karo Syrup.  Suddenly a blinding pain shot down my left leg and blew my foot off.  I heard it hit the wall.  At this point I think I might have died for a few seconds.  My next clear memory was hearing the words, “All done.”  I didn’t even have a chance to ask about how they had reattached my foot, before I was slammed into a wheel chair and taken into the recovery area where the Big Irishman was waiting.

As we all know, every cloud has a silver lining.  My s.l. from this particular cloud was that I was allowed to take home a flippin’ $2.00 ice pack. Although when the bill hits, I bet we will discover that I was actually charged $600.00 for that $2.00 ice pack.

The next stop on the Nip and Tuck Express is cataract surgery.  They plan to slice off the top half of my eyeball and install some fancy-pants, state-of-the-art lens that will allow me to see through people’s clothes and also look into the future.  I sure hope the eye doc doesn’t dent my stainless steel pipes.