Day 15 of 'The Daily Post' - and my 200th blog post.
It’s amazing, when you come to think of it, how many body parts you can do without. Your appendix, tonsils, adenoids, gall bladder…
I made an inventory of the bits and pieces that I’ve lost. I'll start with my wisdom teeth, which I had out in my early 20s. Haven’t missed them at all. I had all four out at the same time under local anaesthetic. This didn't strike me as particularly unusual or brave at the time, but since then, I've only met one other person who hasn't had a general anaesthetic for four simultaneous wisdom extractions. I did ask the dental surgeon why he did all four at once, and he replied "It's not a very pleasant procedure, and I usually find that if I do two, then the patient doesn't want to come back and have the other two done." Actually it wasn't too bad.
Back to the inventory:
The boobs, of course.
A lymph node.
My hair.
Three moles – one which I didn’t like the look of a few years ago, and then a couple more in the armpit/chest area, that the breast surgeon removed as a bit of a freebie (“Have a mastectomy, and I’ll throw in a couple of molectomies for you.”) They were going to analyse those, but the lab lost them, which I have to say, didn’t inspire my confidence. The breast surgeon reassured me: “it’s not as if they lost them, really. It’s just that they’ll be in a huge bank of thousands and thousands of samples, and we could ask for the lab to go through all those samples and find them, but I really honestly think that would be wasting someone’s time, because I had a good look at them and they weren’t at all suspicious.” Which might have been medical speak for “my resident fouled up and forgot to send them to the lab”. I decided not to pursue the matter, since I had had all my moles checked at my annual well woman appointment, and those ones had indeed been deemed to be not worrying.
Looking at this list, it reminds me of a song. When the season is right, I can sing:
On the fifth day of Christmas, I had removed from me:
Five hundred thousand hairs (rough estimate)
Four wisdom teeth
Three brown moles
Two lovely boobs
And a lymph node.
Poor impaired me!
.
I love the fact that you can make light of such adversity (not sure that is the correct word, must consult thesaurus).
ReplyDeleteAnd you can add me to your small group of (virtual) friends who also had 4 wisdom teeth removed under local anaesthetic. Also remember it not being that painful and suffering from incurable fit of giggles later.
LCM x
Funny post about a painful subject. I think you're one awesome woman.
ReplyDeleteGuess what? Me too on the local! I KNEW there was a reason we got on... (didn't find it too bad, actually - it was just the teeth grinding on my jaw bone sound that I wasn't too keen on).
ReplyDeletewow Iota this is real British black humour. Do Americans in your mid-west town 'get you' at all?? Just out of interest..... How is the hair? When will it strat growing back?
ReplyDeleteOOOHHH you had that with your wisdom teeth too - I wasn't that keen on the crunching sound and I thought I was fine to drive back to my my Mum's afterwards but I got outside took three steps and promptly fainted. I had tocall my parents to come and get me I was sooo embarrassed.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post!
And people do fine on one kidney and can even have half a liver cut out with no ill effect. So may the list continue... Anyway, just to let you know I'm back on my Word Imperfect blog after an unreasonably long absence. Hope you can visit.
ReplyDeleteI actually had my wisdom teeth, all four, removed with just a local. My parents wouldn't let me go all-the-way out. I remember the recovery as being way worse than the procedure.
ReplyDeleteYou are inspiring with your ability to combine missing body parts and a festive holiday song. A rare talent indeed! : )